Chad Larson

[BYU FOOTBALL @BYUfootball]

Well well well

[Girl patriot 🙏 🇺🇸 🦅 @Girlpatriot1974]

Welcome to The Land of the Free!
🇺🇸🌏
God Bless America. 🙏

[El Programador Senior @5eniorDeveloper]

Esta es la mejor manera de ver el mundial!

[Matt Smethurst @MattSmethurst]

Goodness. What a prophetic quote from 44 years ago.

[Patrick Fox @RealCynicalFox]

"In a mixed ship the last thing a trooper hears before a drop (maybe the last words he ever hears) is a woman's voice, wishing him luck. If you don't think this is important you've probably resigned from the human race." - Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

[Codify @CodifyBaseball]

9th Inning ERAs:

0.50 SD
2.31 ATL
2.45 CWS
2.51 DET
2.56 TOR
2.65 CHC
2.92 NYY
3.09 CLE
3.18 NYM
3.34 TB
3.38 PIT
3.44 BOS
3.65 LAD
3.82 ATH
3.86 PHI
3.86 MIA
3.93 SEA
3.94 MIN
4.00 WSH
4.13 SF
4.59 BAL
5.01 HOU
5.12 TEX ARI
5.74 KC
5.77 MIL
5.83 LAA
6.81 STL
7.55 COL
7.65 CIN

[Champagne Joshi @JoshWalkos]

This guy is calling a hospital on behalf of a new mom who was charged $1,847,392 because her baby was premature and needed to stay alive long enough to come home.

The itemized charges are dystopian. $37,464 for heel sticks on a premature infant, $58 every time a mother held her own baby skin-to-skin in the NICU, $312 for discharge teaching on how to sponge bathe a preemie and $27,590 for phototherapy lights. That’s before even getting into the NICU bed charges.

Our medical system is one of the most corrupt, exploitative and evil rackets in the world.

[DocumentingLibs @HistorianUSA1]

😂🍪 This dude just walked out of a job interview and immediately recorded this in his car.

He knew the “biggest weakness” question was coming… brain completely short-circuited… and instead of the safe “I care too much” answer, he hit them with:

“Oreos. I’ll eat ‘em until the milk’s gone. Could be two, could be twelve.”

The way he says it with that deadpan delivery and then just accepts his fate is SENDING me.

Man, I genuinely feel bad for the guy… but I’m also dying laughing. We’ve ALL had that one moment in an interview where your brain just yeets itself out the window. Kid’s still out here job hunting. Somebody hire this absolute legend before he stress-eats the entire Oreo aisle.

Who else has completely bombed a “what’s your weakness” question?

[TONY™ @TONYxTWO]

Police in Jacksonville, Florida save this young man’s life from jumping off the Dames Point Bridge (Tallest Bridge in Jacksonville) 🙏🏼

The young man was ready to take his own life but these officers spoke from the heart and got him to change his mind.

“I love you. We all love you. We wear this badge for many reasons. This is the main reason. To reach those whom the devil thinks he got. He ain't got you. We got you.”

Love this!!

[Orietta Rose 🇺🇲 @0riettaRose]

Miss Pearl explains 10 small things she does to stay close to God each day 🙏🏽 🙌🏽

[🕊️ @lichthauch]

God sends small children into the world to expose men. you think you are holy until a three year old throws a bowl of cereal at the wall for the third time. you think you are patient until you have not slept for five nights straight, and the baby is still screaming. every half man, is found out by his own offspring. children are judges, sent in miniature to read your verdict out loud. God could have judged us from the throne. instead, he sent us toddlers. more effective

[Tolkien World @TolkienWorldG]

Sir Ian McKellen's favourite scene in all 6 films:

[Clint Teeples @TeeplesCY]

If the Book of Mormon were a fraud, the witnesses would have cracked. Here's why they didn't.

"I am a dying man. What would it profit me to tell you a lie?"

That was Oliver Cowdery. On his deathbed. Reaffirming the testimony he had maintained for over twenty years.

Here is how courts think about it:
Courts have used the same basic truth test for centuries. Three questions:

Was the witness honest?
Was the witness in a position to observe what they claimed?
Was the witness free from disqualifying bias?

Apply all three to the Book of Mormon's Three Witnesses.

Start with honesty.
Martin Harris was described by his own skeptical community as a "square-toed upright man," meaning someone honest to the point of being old-fashioned about it. Newspapers hostile to Joseph Smith still exempted Martin from charges of dishonesty. His neighbors could not reconcile his reputation for fastidious honesty with his claims of seeing an angel. Their actual words: "How to reconcile the act of Harris in signing his name to such a statement, in view of the character of honesty which had always been conceded to him, could never be easily explained."

They thought he was wrong. They never thought he was lying.

Oliver Cowdery was a lawyer, editor, and political candidate. He could have ended the ridicule with one short op-ed. He had access to printing presses in multiple states and spent years watching the association with the Book of Mormon cost him professionally. He never recanted. He took the hit and moved forward.

David Whitmer was elected city councilman and mayor by his non-Latter-day Saint neighbors. The Richmond Democrat wrote that no man had "more friends and fewer enemies." He was ranked alongside national statesman Alexander Doniphan in regional histories.

These were men their communities trusted.

Then comes the hardest test.
In July 1833, a mob of several hundred descended on the Latter-day Saint settlement in Jackson County, Missouri. Oliver barely escaped. A public bounty was placed on him. His workplace was reduced to rubble.

A schoolteacher named William McLellin, hiding in the woods nearby, pulled Oliver and David aside. He told them: our lives are in danger. Tell me the truth. Is the Book of Mormon true?

Oliver: "God sent his holy angel to declare the truth of the translation of it to us, and therefore we know. And though the mob kill us, yet we must die declaring its truth."
David: "Oliver has told you the solemn truth, for we could not be deceived."

McLellin believed them. He could not see a conceivable reason for them to lie in that moment.

David Whitmer's test was worse.
Two weeks later, a mob dragged David from his home, stripped him, tarred and feathered him, and lined him up at bayonet point in front of five hundred men. The commander offered him a deal. Deny the Book of Mormon. Confess it was fraud. Walk away a free man.

David raised his tar-stained hands and bore witness that the Book of Mormon was the word of God.

At least one mobster became a believer on the spot.

Now consider what they had to gain.
David and Oliver received no financial benefit from the Book of Mormon. Ever. Martin Harris lost his farm, his savings, and his marriage supporting its publication. Publishers warned him upfront that the book would be a commercial disaster. They were right. Martin spent years walking the streets of Palmyra with armloads of copies, selling almost nothing.

If money were the motive, recanting was always available. Critics tried alcohol, ridicule, legal pressure, and financial offers. None of it worked.

What courts call "the final test."
English and American law has long given special weight to deathbed statements. The logic is straightforward: when death is imminent, the usual motives to lie are gone. What remains is more likely to be true.

All three witnesses gave deathbed testimonies. All three explicitly rejected the idea that they had been dreaming, hallucinating, or imagining things. All three reaffirmed that they had seen, heard, and in some cases handled real physical objects.

Martin Harris, too weak to raise his arm, asked a friend to lift it for him in the position of a courtroom oath. Then he testified that he had seen the angel, seen the plates, seen the sword of Laban and the Urim and Thummim, and heard the voice of God.

He died with a copy of the Book of Mormon on his chest. His neighbors buried him that way.

The question courts ask last:
Could they have been hallucinating?

Clinical psychology has a straightforward answer. Group hallucinations do not occur. Hallucinations are private, subjective, and unshared. The witnesses described multisensory experiences, specific physical details, shared observations, and separate confirmations that matched each other across decades.

As two leading clinical psychologists in the field put it, there is no documented case of even two people sharing the same hallucination at the same time.

The witnesses experienced these events in separate groupings, in open settings, in daylight, with no staging equipment available within miles.

What this leaves you with.
You may not believe the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be. That is a reasonable position. But the Three Witnesses were honest men, confirmed by skeptics and enemies alike. They were mentally competent, trusted with civic responsibility. They had no financial motive. They maintained their testimony through mob violence, poverty, excommunication, estrangement from Joseph Smith, and death.

The simple dismissals don't hold.

Whatever the Book of Mormon is, dismissing it by dismissing the witnesses requires ignoring most of the available evidence. Courts would not do that. You probably should not either.

Source: Authentic by Lundwall and Lundwall

[Guitar Gods Unleashed @gguworld]

"Ramble On" is 56 years old and Robert Plant just walked onto The Late Show and made it sound like he wrote it this morning.

[John Attridge @John_Attridge]

Consider the lilies of the field. They hustle not, neither do they grind

[Kirk Rollins @nicoraytruth]

Why Mormonism may be true.. a take from a pragmatist

[Will @willmourds]

Ele só queria lavar as mãos e fechar as torneiras, mas a situação acabou saindo do controle, rsrsrs

[Chad Larson @chadhlarson]

- Isaac Watts

[Chad Larson @chadhlarson]

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast
Save in the death of Christ, my God.
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood

[Chad Larson @chadhlarson]

See, from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.