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The presidential race of Mitt Romney and the success of the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon have generated new interest in Mormonism. Stephen Mansfield's book The Mormonizing of America provides a careful study of this growing religion. The Book Stop blog is posting excerpts from the first two chapters of this book. The Mormons and the MediaNowhere in American society does this create an occasion of people talking past each other as when it comes to the media pursuing a prominent Mormon. Reporters naturally want to find something controversial about this visible person, so they ask about holy underwear....

The presidential race of Mitt Romney and the success of the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon have generated new interest in Mormonism. Stephen Mansfield's book The Mormonizing of America provides a careful study of this growing religion. The Book Stop blog is posting excerpts from the first two chapters of this book. What Matters to a MormonFor a Latter-day Saint, the heart of Mormonism is the restoration of priesthood authority. It is impossible to overstate this. At the core of everything Saintly is the unshakable belief that something lost for centuries was restored through Joseph Smith. It is now...

1. A cattleman at a school I just taught, during lunchtime conversation, shared a "mini lesson" that he teaches to children whenever he gets the chance. I think it is very wise, and worth sharing. It is simply this: EVERYONE HAS A STORY. And, SATAN IS REAL. 2. Building on that, I suspect many people out there are thinking this, but are too afraid to say it because they think that people will look down upon them as rednecks or stupid or unintelligent. Let me go out front as a person who doesn't give a crap what others think of...

You Have Left Your First Love Dean C. Haskins But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Rev. 2:4 You have probably heard this verse numerous times in your life, and, like me, were given an explanation of its meaning that was something like this—that the passage is speaking of “losing one's original zeal and fervor for the things of the Lord.” Now, don't misunderstand me; I know that can happen in one's life. However, is that really what John was saying about the vision he had on the island of Patmos? Before delving into...

The Ability to Believe Today's Scripture “...God has dealt to each one a measure of faith” (Romans 12:3, NKJV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria One of the greatest abilities God has given each one of us is our ability to believe. If you believe God’s Word, you can be successful. If you believe God’s Word, you can overcome mistakes of the past. If you believe God’s Word, you can fulfill your God-given destiny. There is incredible power in what you believe. What you believe is greater than your circumstances, greater than your trials, greater than your medical report,...

Reprinted by permission from Mormonism and Early Christianity, vol. 4 in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1987),168—208. ...By its very definition church history requires unquestioning acceptance of the basic proposition that the church did survive. ...the normal reaction to the question—did the church remain on earth?—has not been serious inquiry in a richly documented field, but shocked recoil from the edge of an abyss into which few can look without a shudder. Yet today that question is being asked again... ...The purpose of this paper is to list briefly the principal arguments supporting the...

The Church...of Latter-day Saints affirms...there was a falling away...The long night of apostasy lasted well over a millennium. During this period, man-made creeds and practices were substituted for the plan of salvation that Jesus...taught. SNIP C. A universal apostasy occurred... “For over seventeen hundred years on the eastern hemisphere, and for more than fourteen centuries on the western, there appears to have been silence between the heavens and the earth. Of direct revelation from God to man during this long interval, we have no authentic record...The passing of the apostles was followed by...a universal apostasy...“...an absolute apostasy of the Church...”...

In my previous column, “How the Apostates Take Over, Part 1,” I explained how apostates used the cause of equality to gain a destructive foothold within the church.Some of my readers have missed the point of this 2-part column all together, thinking it is about women’s ordination. People will see what they want to see. The deeper point is that those who deny the core of the Gospel used an innocent issue, such the role of women in the church, to flood the church with non bible-believing men, women, and homosexuals.This is how it happened:Initially, whole denominations acquiesced and allowed...

The evangelical church is under constant threat to compromise its reliance on biblical truth. The human desire to be accepted, to not be seen as "outside the mainstream," can be overwhelming. But that desire is our weakness, our downfall. It does not always immediately destroy the dam we build to protect the waters of truth, but instead it leads to tiny fissures that grow until destruction is inevitable. Twenty years ago, I experienced the painful demise of the Episcopal Church, which once was a bastion of biblical truth. It was not a pretty picture. It was a picture painted in...

Notre Dame professor Gary Gutting, who teaches philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has declared in the New York Times that the faithful "decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority" and what is moral or immoral. He writes, "...haven’t the members of the Catholic Church recognized their bishops as having full and sole authority to determine the teachings of the Church? By no means. There was, perhaps, a time when the vast majority of Catholics accepted the bishops as having an absolute right to define theological and ethical doctrines. Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone....

While some may argue that Rick Warren’s efforts are in line with what they understand to be the mission of the Church, the slippery slope is seen in syncretistic expression and practices of the Insider Movement, which may truly be called “Chrislam.” While Warren and numerous other well-meaning Christian(?) missionaries who endorse and practice the C5 or Insider methodology believe that they are serving Jesus, their methods always lead to dishonesty, blurring the lines of truth, compromise and eventually outright heresy.

As the media were blanketing airwaves and newspapers with nonstop coverage of old controversial religion-related remarks by Rick Santorum, something happened that compelled the media to also raise questions about a far more controversial remark that President Obama had made regarding religion. Did you miss the widespread news coverage these past days in which that really odd comment that Obama made about religion came back to embarrass him and embroil him in great controversy? Yes, you missed it -- such coverage never occurred. It should have -- and the fact that it didn't tells yet another distressing story about the...

The Episcopal Church: The fruit of building with Satan's blueprints... "That if gold rust, what shall iron do?/ For if a priest be foul, in whom we trust,/ No wonder is a lewd man to rust." - Geoffrey Chaucer. Remember V. Gene Robinson, New Hampshire's Episcopal "Bishop" who said that the Vatican's ban on ordaining men with a homosexual inclination was "vile" and represented an "act of violence"? As I noted back in 2009, Mr. Robinson once opined that "the Episcopal Church and its proclamation of God's inclusive love" was something which appealed to young people who want to be...

And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled. And when Saul enquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor.(I Samuel 28:5-7)I have no problem believing that God sovereignly granted revival in the 1960′s -70′s, renewing faith in the...

[Editor's note: The article below is written by Eric Allen Bell, a filmmaker who was recently banned from blogging at the “Daily Kos” because he wrote three articles that ran afoul of the mindset there, specifically naming “Loonwatch.com” as a “terrorist spin control network.” This article first appeared in our Feb 7 issue and we have decided to rerun it due to the massive interest and reaction it received. Don't miss Eric Bell on Frontpage's television program, The Glazov Gang, which we will air in our Monday, Feb. 13 edition.]

Featured Term (selected at random):LIBELLUS Certificate of sacrifice, testifying that a person during the Roman persecutions had offered sacrifice to the pagan gods. The officials were requited to superintend the sacrifices on a fixed day, receive in writing a statement from the person, and countersign the testimony in the name of the emperor. Many Christians apostatized; others bought certificates or had them procured by pagan friends. There seems to have been wholesale connivance by the officials. Those who refused to sacrifice were sentenced to prison or even death. A papyrus copy of a libellus, dating from A.D. 250, was discovered...

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has offered the Palestinians a powerful tool of propaganda: the comparison with Jesus’ passion. “We are to be freshly attentive to the needs of those who, like Jesus himself, are displaced and in discomfort”, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said during his Christmas Mass sermon at Westminster Cathedral. “A shadow falls particularly heavily on the town of Bethlehem tonight … We pray for them tonight”. It would have been more in keeping with Nicholas’ mission to mention hundreds of Christians losing their lives to Islamic terrorism and oppressed by Palestinian Muslim...

The USA’s first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, has responded to presidential hopeful Rick Perry's anti-gay TV promotion suggesting that "it must break God's heart to see religion used in a political campaign like this." Bishop Robinson of the Episcopal Church showed his distaste in a TV interview with MSNBC and also by writing an opinion piece in the Washington Post newspaper. Perry had stated in his commercial that “You don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t...

This is no nursery rhyme but rather the cast of characters lining up to appear at the 2012 Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly meeting in Pittsburgh. ACT I: An assault on marriageThe chameleon:  This character will attempt to lead commissioners to see marriage differently than the Church has historically defined it. Separating marriage from the Biblical narrative of creation and the Biblical witness of Jesus' affirmation between one man and one woman, the assembly will be asked to see a "new normal" that is inclusive of gay marriage. Presented plainly, the redefinition of marriage will arrive at the assembly through...

"In 1919, Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary. He immediately set plans in motion to de-Christianize Hungary. Reasoning that if Christian sexual ethics could be undermined among children, then both the hated (traditional) family and the Church would be dealt a crippling blow, Lukacs launched a radical sex education program in the schools. Sex lectures were organized and literature handed out which graphically instructed youth in free love (promiscuity) and sexual intercourse while simultaneously encouraging them to deride and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority. All...