Got occasional debate up in Holland with Dutch Reformed, JW's, or non-believers.
With Catholics we'd get "Oh, yeah, I was baptized as a kid, and we go to church on Easter and Christmas. Otherwise not so much."
Most people who let us in were nice and we had good discussions.
98% of the time we just got "Not interested."
While I don't know all the details about your situation enough to say "yeah, that's it," it is very common to see things and people come out of the woodwork when someone begins an earnest study of the church/Book of Mormon, prepares for baptism, prepares for going to the temple for the first time, etc.
It's an interesting pattern: when we are going through trials, we are drawn to the Lord. When we are drawn to the Lord, more trials come our way. The real test is to see which way we go during the trial, like Job.
And skipping ahead a bit, Moroni, Mormon's son teaches us this:
There is nuance to the term "divinely inspired scripture."
Most faiths and denominations within those faiths have arbitrarily decided what their religious texts will be for whatever reasons: political, social, by committee, etc.
LDS theology contends that God speaks to/interacts with all His children, and has since the beginning of time. While we recognize the authority and purpose of the Bible, we cannot deny that there are other groups besides the Israelites in Palestine to whom God has revealed important truths, and that He is not done interacting with us.
For myself, when I got my mindset away from "my church good, all others bad," and started seeing the bigger picture, I gained a greater understanding of the vastness of His plan. Every culture and faith has a part, even if some of us feel those faiths have gone off the rails.
The beauty of it is He knows the hearts of His children and will hold them accountable to the goodness they were taught.
I have gleaned even more understanding of my own tenets of faith by studying other religions and looking for the "stubborn bits" that pervade all ancient religions.
To "scripture:" spiritual writings have meaning and import within certain contexts. Personal revelation we each receive and write down become our own scripture. But they do not apply outside of ourselves. Revelation for a church responsibility likewise is limited to the context of that position. What one bishop receives for his congregation does not necessarily apply to another, and so forth. We do believe what apostles and prophets say is applicable to the church (or world) as a whole, when they are speaking in that office.
God gives similar commandments to specific individuals, groups, or peoples, in their time and place. The compilers of the Bible, and indeed Mormon and Moroni, all had to do their best to include but a fraction of the voluminous records they had access to. Because those are the only records we have today does not mean that the non-included stories and sermons of old couldn't also be classified as scripture; but we must trust that God inspired these individuals with the basics we needed today.
I guess that's a long-winded way of saying there's a lot more scriptures out there that we don't know about, or that we don't consider canon, but were just as important to the people they belonged to as our scriptures today.
"We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God."
@gwowls@latterdaylaura@Latterdaytruth It used to be, back before they reorganized the Twitterstake. Now it's more like a bunch of disjointed mission areas, where everyone is solo.
@plasmarob@realDrTT Pres. Oaks said the other day (paraphrased) that it's become a thing to try to lump all believers in Christ into the same pile. He said by /not/ maintaining our uniqueness [as denominations], we risk even greater loss of/damage to our religious freedoms.
Many of us, upon meeting Him, are going to be surprised to learn that what we thought was important doesn't in fact matter at all, or at least not as much as we think it does.
I did NOT say that β I said "The doctrinal issues will be resolved when we meet our maker β until then, it's time for followers of Christ to unite in our love of our Lord."
@Latterdaytruth I wouldn't have a problem running it on a locally-hosted model, but you're going to be limited by the hardware and model you can load.
A model primed with scripture and talks would be very interesting....
@realDrTT@ggbackpackers@plasmarob Also, Moses got the priesthood from his father-in-law, a non-Israelite descendant of Abraham. That implies there were other righteous tribes parallel to Isaac and Jacob's descendants during the hundreds of years they were in Egypt.
The Bible just focuses on Christ's lineage.
In The Ancient Tradition podcast, she brings together the "stubborn bits" that stick out in all faith traditions, particularly those of ancient societies.
Many have a heroic Christ/Son of God figure whose job it is to create the world and then save it. (And that in the premortal realm he defeated a dragon.)
We've (I've) dedicated every home we've moved into.
Arguably you don't "need" to do it more than once, but it's your home and in the future a family may wish to do it again.
Prayers and dedications are more for our own purposes than they are for that building or place. It is an act of both recognizing God's hand in things and consecrating what He's given us back to Him.
Events like major remodels, significant life experiences, undergoing/overcoming difficult challenges within the home, etc. could be great opportunities for a family to choose to rededicate a space (or themselves to the space, if that makes sense).
@realDrTT We learned how to debate in 7-8th grade. We had to learn arguments for both sides and be ready and able to debate either one based on a coin toss.
Do we not do debate classes in college anymore?