credit:The Restoration House

“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord.” Psalm 106:1

St. Athanasius, 4th C. Bishop of Alexandria, is said to have prayed:

We give Thee thanks, our Father, for the holy Resurrection which Thou has manifested to us through Jesus, Thy Son, and even as this bread which is here upon this table was formerly scattered abroad and has been made compact, so may Thy Church be reunited from the ends of the earth for Thy Kingdom, for Thine is the power and the glory, for ever and ever. [A Little Book of Table Graces, Appletree Press]

For millennia we’ve been thanking God for his many blessings , nowhere more joyously than in the United States of America on Thanksgiving Day.

And we Americans show our gratitude by giving of ourselves to others. According to the Christian Post, Americans are still giving during our most recent economic downturn:

Seven in ten…

I have enjoyed reading the comments that have been made to my last post — Latter-day Saints examine racial history. I especially enjoyed the expressions of faith in the grace of God.

To clarify, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is built on the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe in a restored, not reformed gospel. We believe in living prophets and apostles and our doctrines are derived from an open cannon of continuing revelation from God. Our roots are in Christian teachings, but our doctrine is distinct relative to other Christian traditions because of our open cannon. If there are errors in our practice, those errors are of man.

Our open cannon makes us open for correction or clarifying revelations. It makes our church vibrant and responsive to challenges in our times. We often refer to the church as a “living church”.

We rejoiced in the clarifying revelation in 1978 that extended the…

My last post received a comment that was so important, I thought it deserved a whole post. A person asks about a Catholic friend who seems to have a mistakenly optimistic belief about his own chances for salvation. Here is the comment:

This person does not even attempt to lead a Holy life, much intentional lack of self control and mortal sin in his life. The danger I feel for this person is that he in all sincerity feels that he will receive salvation if he were to die in this state of his life.

He says, he realizes that he is living a life of sin, but as long as he repents before he dies, or even on his death bed that he will just have to spend some time in purgatory, but he will receive salvation (Heaven).

The reader asked about about both “salvation” and “purgatory” and I want to say…