Abide: Exodus 18-20
President Spencer W. Kimball said in 1976 that “Few men have ever knowingly and deliberately chosen to reject God and his blessings. Rather, we learn from the scriptures that because the exercise of...
View ArticleAbide: Exodus 24; 31-34
Often, when we speak about matters of religion, we discuss belief. “I know the Church is true. I have received a witness for myself that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I have had these experiences...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #141: Loving Dangerously, with Chad Ford
Knowing how to transform conflict is critical in both our personal and professional lives. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it. The reason, says longtime mediator Chad Ford, is fear. When...
View ArticleAbide: Exodus 35-40; Leviticus 1; 16; 19
When someone brings up Leviticus, my mind turns almost automatically to the Law of Moses. Which, I admit, doesn’t always seem like the most applicable thing to my life. However, when reframing it to...
View ArticleAbide: Numbers 11-14; 20-24
Elder Neal A. Maxwell once preached, “Faith also includes trust in God’s timing, for He has said, “All things must come to pass in their time.” (D&C 64:32.) Ironically, some who acknowledge God...
View ArticleAbide: Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy is the final book in the Pentateuch, containing Moses’ last sermons, as well as poetry regarding Israel’s future. Moses pleads with Israel not to repeat their past mistakes, such as...
View ArticleAbide: Joshua 1-8; 23-24
Scholars spend entire careers debating texts, their origins, their impact, and the most valuable contributions they make to broader understanding. At the Maxwell Institute, we participate in these...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #143: Saints in a Modernizing World, with Lisa...
“This Church will stand, because it is upon a firm basis. … The Lord has shown it to us by the revealing principle of the Holy Spirit of light.” Lorenzo Snow, April 1900 That quotes embodies much of...
View ArticleAbide: Judges 2-4; 6-8; 13-16
There’s a difficulty in reading the scriptures. I’m not referring to words on the page. I’m also not referring to the habit of scripture reading, though that could certainly apply, too. No, I’m...
View ArticleAbide: Ruth; 1 Samuel 1-3
The Old Testament names more women, and has more books named for women, than any of the other texts in the Latter-day Saint canon. They fulfill their roles as disciples, family members, and in...
View ArticleAbide: 1 Samuel 8-10; 13; 15-18
In Mosiah 29, Mosiah says that “if it were possible that you could have bjust men to be your kings, who would establish the claws of God, and judge this people according to his commandments, yea, if...
View ArticleMaxwell Podcast Episode #144: A Spiritual Life in Literature, with Matthew...
Spiritual experiences are famously transformative. They sometimes inspire dramatic effects of conversion and healing, of vision and new life direction. But even in their more quotidian forms they...
View ArticleAbide: 2 Samuel 5-7; 11-12; 1 Kings 3; 8; 11
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View ArticleAbide: 1 Kings 17-19
Solomon’s reign was glorious, but what he gained in wealth, wives and infrastructure he lost in spiritual standing. He had not been faithful to the God of Israel. Instead, he adopted a cosmopolitanism...
View ArticleAbide: 2 Kings 2-7
Elijah and Elisha are well-known to Latter-day Saints. The prophecy that Elijah would return was foretold in each of the four books of the Latter-day Saint canon. Indeed, Elijah visited the Prophet...
View ArticleAbide: 2 Kings 17-25
How do we learn from failure? Especially the end of an organization as large as a kingdom? What if two kingdoms fall? Today, as we look at the end of both Kingdoms of Israel, I hope that we can...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #145: The Idea of the “Heathen” with Kathryn Gin Lum
If an eighteenth-century cleric told you that the difference between “civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far,” the words would hardly come as a shock. But that statement was written by...
View ArticleAbide: Esther
Can one be directed by God when one doesn’t know that one is being directed? The answer, of course, is yes. We learn about how God directed Esther in ways that may not have been recognizable to her,...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #146: God’s Original Grace, with Adam Miller
In Original Grace, Adam S. Miller proposes an experiment in Restoration thinking: What if instead of implicitly affirming the traditional logic of original sin, we, as members of The Church of Jesus...
View ArticleAbide: Job
Job, as a literary and biblical figure, gives us a lot to think about. He goes from riches to rags to riches again. He loses his family but begins another. He’s at the center of a contest between god...
View ArticleAbide: Psalms Part One
Psalms! There’s over 150 of them marked in the book by the same name in the Old Testament. How can we read them? Are they more useful as a narrative thread, or as a spice to season our spiritual diet?...
View ArticleAbide: Psalms Part Two
One of the first things I tell my students, and that I repeat throughout a semester, is that texts do not interpret themselves. Every time a person reads scripture they see it with new eyes and with...
View Article(Reuploaded) Maxwell Institute Podcast #147: Slavery, Sacred Texts, and...
In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation’s sacred religious and legal texts – the Bible and the Constitution – to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates...
View ArticleAbide: Psalms Part Three
A book has many lives. It’s thought, it’s edited, it’s printed, it’s reprinted, it’s commentated on, and this repeats, if the book merits it, ad infinitum. This is certainly true for the Bible as a...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #148: The Weight of Legacy, with Kate Holbrook
Kate Holbrook, PhD (1972–2022) was a leading voice in the study of Latter-day Saintwomen and Latter-day Saint foodways. As managing historian of women’s history atthe Church of Jesus Christ of...
View ArticleAbide: Proverbs and Ecclesiastes
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs can fall by the wayside when we study them in Sunday School. They don’t always fit into the narratives that we understand about dispensations of authority...
View ArticleAbide: Isaiah 1-12
Isaiah. Latter-day Saints have a special relationship to this Old Testament prophet. Not only do we recognize prophets across all dispensations, but his words were carried by Lehi’s family to the...
View ArticleAbide: Isaiah 13-14; 24–30; 35
Richard Bushman once told me that “panic precedes revelation.” Dr. Bushman was discussing the process by which Joseph Smith received the First Vision (recall the line from the Pearl of Great Price...
View ArticleAbide: Isaiah 40-49
Jesus promises in the Gospel of John that he will not leave us comfortless, but that He will come to us. He promises in Matthew that he will give us rest when we are weary and heavy-laden. In my...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #149: Healing Our Racial Divide, with Derwin and...
Listen to Pastor Derwin Gray and Vicki Gray speak on Derwin’s new book, Healing Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, About Racial Reconciliation!Link to book: Amazon...
View ArticleAbide: Isaiah 58-66
Today we are joined by Dr. Joseph Spencer, a philosopher, theologian and Assistant Professor of Ancient Scripture here at Brigham Young University. Dr. Spencer is the editor of the Journal of Book of...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #150: The Proclaim Peace Conference
In June 2022, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and the David O. McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding hosted a conference based upon Patrick Mason’s and David Pulsipher’s...
View ArticleAbide: Jeremiah Part I
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View ArticleAbide: Jeremiah and Lamentations Part II
In last week’s episode, we discussed how Jeremiah introduces ideas about seemingly disparate events, including the apocalyptic here-and-now and the hope of a better future for all of humankind. As we...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #151: The Book of Mormon and Literature Studies,...
Latter-day Saints recognize the Book of Mormon as the “keystone of our religion,” a book that will bring a person closer to Christ than by any other book. How do non-Latter-day Saints read the Book of...
View ArticleAbide: Ezekiel 1–3; 33–34; 36–37; 47
We are blessed to live in a time of prophets. I define this in two ways. The first is that we are fortunate to live in a time where the priesthood has been restored and that the President of the...
View ArticleAbide: Daniel 1-6
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View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #152: Andrew Jenson and Latter-day Saint History,...
Andrew Jenson undertook a lifelong quest to render the LDS historical record complete and comprehensive. As Assistant Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jenson...
View ArticleAbide: Hosea and Joel
Throughout the scriptures, the Lord and His prophets teach of covenants, the ability for us to bind ourselves to God through the power of the priesthood. Sometimes, though, we forget that we are also...
View ArticleAbide: Amos and Obadiah
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View ArticleAbide: Jonah and Micah
One of my favorite sermons in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a sermon delivered by President Hugh B. Brown at BYU. It’s entitled God is the Gardner; I’m confident...
View ArticleAbide: Nahum; Habakkuk; Zephaniah
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View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #153: The Book of Mormon Art Catalog with Jennifer...
The Book of Mormon Art Catalog seeks to provide unprecedented access to visual imagery inspired by the Book of Mormon through a comprehensive, open access, and searchable digital database. In this...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #154: The Necessity of God, with Adam S. Miller...
In Adam S. Miller’s lecture, “The Necessity of God: First person, Present Tense, Imperative Mood” Miller talks about Tim Farnsworth, a man who cannot stop walking from the fictional book The Unnamed....
View ArticleAbide: Haggai and Zechariah
One of the most interesting days of my life took place a few years ago when I co-conducted a tour of the Jordan River Temple in Utah for non-Latter-day Saint specialists in American religion. As we...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #155: Nostalgia as Jewish Religious Practice, with...
In 2007, the Museum at Eldridge Street opened at the site of a restored nineteenth-century synagogue originally built by some of the first Eastern European Jewish immigrants in New York City. Visitors...
View ArticleAbide: Malachi
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View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #156: Finding Christ in the Covenant Path, with...
Finding Christ in the Covenant Path offers a fresh but faithful focus on the journey of covenants and discipleship through the double lens of ancient words and medieval images. The first part of the...
View ArticleAbide: Christmas
It’s Christmas! This may feel like an awkward lesson to have in the discussion of the Old Testament, it’s at least how I felt. But in considering the topic more deeply, I can’t think of a better way...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #157: Latter-day Saints in the French Imagination,...
In the nineteenth century, a fascination with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made Mormons and Mormonism a common trope in French journalism, art, literature, politics, and popular...
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