On the first day of temples, my Nelson gave to me . . . renovation in Salt Lake City.
On the second day of temples, my Nelson gave to me . . . two vaporware ones1
and renovation in Salt Lake City.
On the third day of temples, my Nelson gave to me . . . three in the Congo
two vaporware ones
etc.
On the fourth day of temples, my Nelson gave to me . . . four near Mexico City
three in the Congo
etc.
A bunch of years ago, I wrote a post where I converted a particularly memorable Conference talk into a hymn. I thought this would be a fun exercise to try again, this time with Russell M. Nelson’s “Think Celestial” from October 2023. Sing to the tune of “Choose the Right.”
Celestial is the way you must be thinking.
Keep in mind the coming afterlife.
Think not you can be merry, eating, drinking.
Be celestial as man and wife.
Chorus
Celestial! Celestial!
Stop thoughts that may be troubling you!
Celestial! Celestial!
Recall you’re one of chosen few!
Fabulous is the plan that God has for us!
If we tithe, attend the temple oft.
Chastity is the rule, it’s ever been thus.
Be safe. Don’t risk your parts cut off!
Chorus
Celestial! It will answer every question!
Celestial! It solves all hurt and pain!
Celestial! It erases all depression!
Heed not those who dare to complain!
Chorus
This guest post comes from Zatch, who last year also shared “Go to the House Mansion of the Lord.”
My spouse and I were talking earlier about the challenge of staffing all those new temples. Clearly steps have already been taken to limit the number of personnel required to operate a temple:
At one point in our conversation my spouse joked that maybe they’ll just use AI to fill in the gaps. That got us thinking about the role of technology in the temple, and how it could be used to further reduce the staffing footprint required. We came up with the following ideas, arranged roughly in order of most to least feasible (or least to most wacko):
Fastest hymn: “On This Day of Joy and Gladness” (Sunday morning) and “Praise the Lord with Heart and Voice” (Sunday afternoon).
Slowest hymn: “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” (Sunday morning), at least at the beginning and end.
Best hymn: “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need” (Sunday morning), “And the Glory of the Lord” (Sunday afternoon), and “Holding Hands Around the World” (Saturday afternoon).
Worst hymn: “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet” (Sunday afternoon). This was just a usual congregational hymn, but I really don’t like it because it sounds like something that would be sung from a Rameumptom.
Longest prayer: 108 seconds, J. Kimo Esplin, Saturday morning invocation.
Shortest prayer: 51 seconds, Ciro Schmeil, Saturday afternoon opening.
Best title: “God’s Favourite,” Karl B. Hirst.
Phoning-it-in title: “Following Christ,” Dallin H. Oaks.
Best laugh:
Best image: I really like Yongsung Kim’s painting The Hand of God that Juan Pablo Villar showed in his talk. I appreciate how Jesus looks happy, rather than annoyed, to be reaching into the water to retrieve Peter (or us).
Most troublesome image: While talking about contention, Dallin H. Oaks showed a picture of two men arguing. When I first looked at the talk, it was included, but now it appears to be gone. (You can still see it on the video of the talk on YouTube if you’re curious.) I’m assuming this means someone decided it wasn’t correlated enough.
Frequent commenter DaveW used the results of the Monte Carlo simulation from my last post on Church president probabilities to put together this fun follow-up post (and as an added bonus, he corrected an error in my post that came up from cutting off the simulation at 360 months).
I love numbers and spreadsheets and attempts to predict the future that rarely work out, so I’ve been a long time fan of Ziff’s work in projecting the future of the presidency of The Church. Longtime readers will be familiar with his Church President Probability posts going back to 2015. Ziff has done an admirable job of building a model and running 10,000 simulations to compile a view of things that are likely to occur with the presidency of the church. But I’ve always wondered, what about the improbable scenarios? What are the craziest outcomes in his 10,000 simulations that aren’t likely to happen, but still certainly could? Well, Ziff has been kind enough to let me look through his results, and now I guess he’s letting me share them here on ZD.
These uncommon outcomes come from Ziff’s work, so he deserves most of the credit here, but I did make one small improvement. His simulations only went 30 years into the future, which is generally pretty good for talking about the lifespans of senior citizens, but in some instances we needed a few more years to see how things would play out, so I extended his forecasts as much as an additional 20 years, so we can really see the outliers. One impact is that Ziff is slightly underestimating the odds that Kearon will become president some day (it’s more like 38%, not 34%), and the average time as president is a bit higher for the younger apostles (Kearon’s average should be more like 6 years, not 4).
Like all the super hero movies they seem to make now, these 10,000 simulations open us up to 10,000 possible universes. Almost anything can happen in the multiverse. So let’s explore some strange new worlds
World 2803: Some things can last forever?
The Q15 stay very healthy, and Andersen is surprisingly the next to go in 2027. Then Oaks goes in 2031 just before his 99th birthday, followed quickly by Uchtdorf that same year. In 2033 we lose Eyring (99), and Christofferson and Gong. Cook lasts until age 96 in 2037, and Holland until age 99 in 2039. And who is still in the biggest of the red chairs through all of this? Nelson, who makes it to his 120th birthday before finally turning the keys over to Bednar in September 2044. No one else reached 120 in any of the simulations. Eyring was the only one to crack 115, with 1 scenario where he made it to 118. The chart below shows the presidential succession through all the current Q15 for the simulation. (The x-axis shows the month and year.)
You’re familiar with surveillance states. We all live in one, to one degree or another. COVID and mass working from home also brought attention to surveillance corporations, which sometimes track their employees’ every keystroke to be sure they aren’t having unauthorized fun when they should be appropriately suffering for their paychecks. (Speaking of which, I probably shouldn’t be writing this post at work.) But what about a surveillance church?
I feel like the LDS Church is ideally positioned to become a surveillance church for several reasons. First, it’s exclusive. Unlike so many American Protestants, who believe members of many churches can be okay with God, we believe we alone have essential ordinances that members of any other church are missing out on. This is important because if, say, the ELCA decided to try intrusively surveilling its members, they’d all just go down the street and become Episcopalians or something. Second, it has a top-down hierarchical structure. By contrast, if say the Southern Baptist Convention said its member churches should intrusively surveil their members, they could just ignore it or leave the organization. Third, it isn’t too large. The Catholic Church is also exclusive and top-down, but it’s so gigantic that I think it would be harder to implement a surveillance program across the whole church than it would be for Mormons. Fourth, it isn’t too small. I imagine there are a lot of much smaller churches that would love to be super controlling and surveil their members constantly, but they just don’t have the resources. The LDS Church is, of course, ridiculously wealthy. Fifth, it has multiple tiers of membership (baptism level, temple recommend level), which provides more opportunities to prod members into compliance to maintain (or improve) their position.
Okay, let’s get to my suggestions. Only they aren’t suggestions so much as just thoughts or ideas of possibilities that could happen. You can probably guess that they’re at least partly tongue in cheek. But I’m a little bit serious too. I’m thinking along the lines of the quote attributed alternatively to Ray Bradbury or Frank Herbert that science fiction writers don’t write to predict a future, but to prevent it. I hope none of these ideas come to pass, but if a true zealot became Church president, or even a more garden-variety fundamentalist leaner, I could see some of them happening.
The Church announced yesterday that BYU will be adding a medical school. I have some suggestions for what it could be named and different medical areas it could emphasize. Please feel free to add yours in the comments.
We here at ZD are excited to bring you this exclusive leak, directly from the highest levels of the Church Administration Building, of a possible response by the Church to opposition by local residents to the proposed height of the steeple for the McKinney, Texas Temple.
Best hymn: “Oh, What Songs of the Heart,” Saturday evening. It gets bonus points for mention of Heavenly Parents, but I really liked it musically too.
Worst hymn: “Lord, I Would Follow Thee,” Sunday morning. This was just very bland.
Fastest hymn: “The Lord Is My Light,” Saturday evening.
Slowest hymn: “Did You Think to Pray?” Saturday morning.
Best and worst choir: I really liked the Utah Valley Institute choir that sang Saturday evening. I was much less a fan of the BYU-I choir that sang Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t a knock on their singing; I just felt like the arrangements they sang had weird pacing changes. (Sorry, as a music noob, I can’t explain it any better.)
Longest prayer: 167 seconds, S. Gifford Nielsen, Saturday morning invocation.
Shortest prayer: 51 seconds, Emily Belle Freeman, Saturday afternoon benediction. I appreciated that she didn’t force herself to use proper prayer pronouns.
Unsurprising prayer difference: Men gave eight prayers, with the shortest being 93 seconds (average of 114 seconds). Women gave two prayers, with the longer being 68 seconds.
Best slip of the tongue: While conducting the Sunday afternoon session, Quentin L. Cook welcomed us to the 109th annual General Conference. (It was actually the 194th.)
Best title: Patrick Kearon, “God’s Intent Is to Bring You Home”
Overdone title: Dale G. Renlund, “The Powerful, Virtuous Cycle of the Doctrine of Christ” I didn’t realize until I read the talk that he was quoting Russell M. Nelson, who has a love of hyperbole.
Longest talk: D. Todd Christofferson, 1961 words. (He also gave the longest talk among Q15 members last conference.)
Shortest talk: Susan H. Porter, 1252 words.
Best laugh:
Strangest joke: Jeffrey R. Holland, who hadn’t given a talk in a couple of conferences because of health issues, joked that it was because he gave a bad talk last time. He said that he was at risk of being banned again, “positioned on a trapdoor with a very delicate latch.” While I appreciate his willingness to laugh at himself, I found this an odd choice of jokes precisely because we have seen that speakers don’t get removed from the rotation if they do bad things. You can try to stealth canonize your favorite proclamation and still come back. You can openly set up a money-making scheme and still come back. It seems like a weird thing to call attention to.
Bad pattern: There was wall-to-wall discussion of temples and covenants. Two speakers—J. Anette Dennis and Dallin H. Oaks—brought up temple garments, which I feel like are mentioned in conference rarely if ever. (Gerrit W. Gong even exhorted members to buy our own temple clothes.) I have to wonder if President Nelson has noticed that maybe all the new temples he’s announcing aren’t drawing as much new patronage as he had hoped, so now he’s trying to drum up some more traffic to make them look more successful. This discussion showed up in some strange lines:
Beloved buzzwords:
Flush with success after its recent purchase of the Kirtland Temple from its sibling church, Community of Christ, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced today that it will be attempting to purchase other historic religious sites. Spokesman Orson Pratt-Whitney-Young explained that although the Church has expanded its temple-building program under the leadership of President Russell M. Nelson, that the acquisition of the Kirtland Temple “opened his mind to a vision of expanding our temple program in another direction.” Specifically, Pratt-Whitney-Young explained that the Church will be making offers of purchase on historic religious sites all over the world that are not related to the Latter-day Saint tradition.
For example, the Church has communicated to the government of England an interest in purchasing Stonehenge, the famed prehistoric megalithic structure. Although the site dates back to around 3100 BC and the Latter-day Saint Church only to 1830 AD, Pratt-Whitney-Young explained that some members of the Church believe there is a connection through the Jaredites, a group of people who fled the Tower of Babel in one of the faith’s books of scripture, the Book of Mormon. (In a later question-and-answer session, Young added that a former Church member is planning to publish a book outlining the connection, to be titled The Stonehenge Hypothesis.) Although the Crown has shown no interest in selling, Pratt-Whitney-Young maintained that the Church remains hopeful. He supplied an artist’s rendition of what the site would look like after the Church had made some “minor modifications” to “ensure the security of the site.” All would be welcome to visit the site once the Church owned it, he explained, although only qualified members of the faith would be permitted in the “tastefully small” Latter-day Saint temple to be built inside the iconic ring of massive stones.
In addition to Stonehenge, Pratt-Whitney-Young listed the following sites that the Church will be attempting to purchase from their current owners:
Pratt-Whitney-Young conceded on questioning that none of the other governments or religious organizations who currently own these sites has shown interest in selling. He pointed out, though, that the Latter-day Saint Church has “been led to amass great wealth by the hand of the Lord” (the Church has large real estate holdings, as well as a stock portfolio valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars) and that this wealth might be used to change the minds of reluctant government and religious officials. “Governments trust in the arm of flesh, and this leads them to the iniquity of endless borrowing,” he explained. “Perhaps one day when their debt grows too great, they will see the wisdom in accepting our offers.”
If we’re between Palm Sunday and Easter, that must mean it’s Holy Week. But more importantly for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, after Easter comes General Conference! I have some guesses about things we will and won’t hear about.
This post is a list of the funniest comments (and lines in posts) that I read on the Bloggernacle last year. Even among the comments, I’ve typically excerpted just a part of a longer comment. Each person’s name is a link back to the original comment or post, so you can go and see the larger context if you’re interested.
In case you haven’t read them yet, here are links to compilations for previous years: 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008.
Jack Hughes, commenting on Dave B.’s post “Next Up: New Testament” at W&T:
I believe in the basic Gospel teaching principle of “line upon line”, but not “repeat the 4th grade every year for the rest of your life”. That’s not what I signed up for.
Anna, commenting on Bishop Bill’s post “Love (terms and conditions apply)” at W&T:
See, most people base their idea of God on their parents because when we are infants, our parents are very God like. And sometimes we disobey and our parents don’t notice or simply fail to punish us. And so as an adult, we disobey God and go down to the honey tonk and take someone home to copulate like rabbits, and no immediate consequences follow, and hey that was fun.
Old Man, commenting on Elisa’s post “Royal Defectors” at W&T:
Some time ago I sought clarification regarding an apostle’s military record from the history dept. (The local seminary teachers were spreading some faith-promoting falsehoods.) The history folks forwarded my phone call and I ended up discussing the issue with that apostle. He laughed and shouted at me while his secretary held up the phone “Don’t believe everything you hear from CES.”
Best hymn: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” Saturday afternoon.
Worst hymn: “We Listen to a Prophet’s Voice,” Saturday morning. We can’t seriously claim to believe in fallible prophets while we sing this hymn.
Fastest hymn: “Arise, O God, and Shine,” Saturday evening.
Slowest hymn: “I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus,” Sunday morning.
Best tacit admission that the hymn is too long: The YA choir singing “I Believe in Christ” Saturday evening just skipped verse 2.
Longest prayer: 164 seconds, Michael T. Nelson, Saturday morning benediction
Shortest prayer: 49 seconds, Clark G. Gilbert, Saturday evening invocation
Best title: Robert M. Daines, “Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus”.
Worst title: M. Russell Ballard, “Praise to the Man”. Can we please just not with the prophet worship?
Title that sounds like a threat: Yoon Hwan Choi, “Do You Want to Be Happy?”. Well, do ya, punk?
Good patterns:
Bad patterns:
Random interesting bits:
From this Vice News story published on Friday, it sounds like the Church is distancing itself from Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad. Apparently, he had some connection with M. Russell Ballard (although the two aren’t related), but President Ballard now wants nothing to do with him. I can understand why, as Tim Ballard sounds pretty unhinged. I get why lots of Mormons have loved his books that read Mormonism into American historical figures like Washington and Lincoln. But at this point, as he’s using a psychic to contact Nephi and claims special intelligence on the Second Coming, he sounds like he’s about five minutes from declaring himself to be the One Mighty and Strong and declaring the time has come to put the Church in order.
Now that the Church is condemning Ballard, I wonder what other people or organizations who share Q15 members’ names they will also feel the need to explicitly distance themselves from.
I’ve often seen threads on AskReddit where commenters are asked to change the expected storyline of a movie by changing one letter in its title, or something like that. I thought it would be fun to try with LDS hymns. I’ve also added a note about what I think each revised hymn would be about. If you’re so inclined, please feel free to contribute your own in the comments!
Oh, May My Soul Commute with Thee – Wouldn’t your commute be improved by having Jesus riding shotgun? (He could probably take the wheel when needed.)
Amazing Grade – A student rejoices at passing a class they had expected to
fail.
Bark all Ye Nations – A celebration of Peter’s long-lost revelation about taking the gospel to the canines
Now Let Ur Rejoice – A celebration of Nanna, the patron deity of ancient Ur
An Angel Frog on High – Angelic frogs are the next logical step after angelic salamanders.
Oh, Code, All Ye Faithful – An exhortation for believers to learn to write computer code
The Wintry Day, Descending to its Clone – A complaint about how many identical dreary winter days a person may have to endure in a row
The Morning Freaks – A lament about how people who love mornings run the Church
Have I Done Any Goop? – A maker of slimy substances wonders at the value of their work
Rook of Ages – A hymn about the timelessness of chess
The Icon Rod – Lehi’s dream is reimagined with a rod made of religious icons.
Abide Sith Me! – A Jedi who has turned to the dark side of the Force encourages themself to hold strong to the evil they have chosen.
Sweet Is the Dork – In praise of socially inept but kindhearted people
Because I Have Beer Given Much – The next round’s on me!
Nope of Israel – A hymn of praise for people who leave the Church
Fastest hymn: “I Believe in Christ,” Sunday morning.
Slowest hymn: “I Stand All Amazed,” Sunday afternoon.
Best hymn: “High on the Mountain Top,” Saturday morning. This is frequently sung as a congregational hymn, which means a vanilla arrangement, so it was fun to hear a different version with stuff like organ interludes.
Worst hymn: “Keep the Commandments,” Saturday morning. This is a dull hymn to begin with, and the bland arrangement didn’t improve it.
Longest prayer: 270 seconds, Adeyinka A. Ojediran, Sunday afternoon benediction. This was the second-longest Conference prayer I’ve ever seen, being beaten out only by D. Rex Gerratt’s 274-second prayer in 2007. (My data does only go back to 1996, and is spotty prior to 2005.)
Longest prayer, honorable mention: 186 seconds, Thierry K. Mutombo, Sunday morning benediction. At the time he gave it, this was the longest prayer since 2010, but then he was upstaged by Elder Ojediran the very next session.
Shortest prayer: 45 seconds, Mark L. Pace, Saturday morning benediction.
Best title: Vern P. Stanfill, “The Imperfect Harvest”
Phoning it in title: Gerrit W. Gong, “Ministering”
Most overwrought title: Ahmad S. Corbitt, “Do You Know Why I as a Christian Believe in Christ?”
Good patterns:
Good/bad pattern: Russell M. Nelson gave only one full talk and the usual half-talk at the end to announce new temples, and the other First Presidency members gave only one talk each (like last Conference) leaving more opportunity for different people (especially women) to speak. Unfortunately, rather than getting more women added to the lineup, we just got an abbreviated Saturday evening session.
Bad pattern: Speakers capitalize even random titles for prophets (“Father Lehi,” “Prophet Joseph”), but of course still refuse to capitalize—or even mention—Heavenly Mother.
On the eve of its 193rd annual General Conference, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a startling announcement, through spokesman Brigham Orson Andreasson: the Church is getting into cryptocurrency. However, rather than involving itself with any existing cryptocurrency, the Church is introducing its own, a version to be called HolyWritCoin, or simply WritCoin. Andreasson explained that WritCoin is similar in some ways to other cryptocurrencies, but it also has its differences, and in fact technically fits into an entirely new category that is not cryptographic (hidden writing), but rather holygraphic (sacred writing, not to be confused with holographic). “It does not partake of the blockchain technology of the world,” he said, “but rather it uses a higher, holier technology known as rockreign. Rock refers to the rock of revelation upon which the Savior built his Church, and reign refers to the eternal reign of the Father and the Son.” He also likened the coming forth of WritCoin to the coming forth of the Church: “Just as inspired reformers of the Protestant Reformation paved the way for the Restoration, inspired creators of cryptocurrency have paved the way for the holygraphic WritCoin.”
General Conference is less than a month away. What topics do you think we’ll hear about? What topics
will speakers carefully avoid? Here’s a list of some of my guesses of topics and phrases and possible policy changes, along with the likelihood that they’ll come up in Conference talks.
Words and phrases
