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In my previous post, I wrote about how Latter-day Saints conflate the Abrahamic covenant with Christ’s New Covenant, seeing the two as essentially identical. As I argued there, this blurs the crucial distinction between God’s gracious promise and human obedience, leading to an overemphasis on works and an underappreciation of grace in salvation. Now I…
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Latter-day Saints often love to point to Jesus’s words about recognizing a prophet “by their fruits.” They highlight statistics like lower divorce rates or higher rates of charitable giving and claim that these outcomes prove Joseph Smith was a true prophet. But is that really what Jesus had in mind? And is that the only…
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One of the legacies of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Russell M. Nelson was his strong emphasis on covenants and the covenant path. President Nelson spoke frequently about covenants—especially about the Abrahamic Covenant. When I was LDS, I was taught to see the Abrahamic Covenant as the equivalent of the “new and…
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The Heart of the Matter When Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals talk about ongoing revelation, we often spend a lot of energy debating peripheral issues — like whether Revelation 22:18–19 supports the closing of the biblical canon. But that misses the heart of the matter. Latter-day Saints do not simply believe in an open canon; they…
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This morning, a friend liked an old post I made on the Book of Esther a few years ago, and so it got me thinking again about the story of Esther. From childhood, I always loved this story and enjoyed wearing costumes and going to the synagogue to hear the story of brave Queen Esther…
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“And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.”— John 1:16 (KJV) > “…he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace.”— Doctrine & Covenants 93:12 These two verses use the same phrase grace for grace” (or “grace upon grace”), but they tell very different theological stories.…
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The Bible teaches that everyone will rise from the dead to face the final judgment. But is that resurrection a gift for those who did not believe in Jesus? For Latter-day Saints, the answer is emphatically yes. The resurrection is seen as a universal gift from Jesus Christ — a baseline blessing extended to all,…
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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the challenge of finding the right balance in conversations about faith—between conviction and courtesy. Since the tragic shooting in Michigan, tensions have been high between Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints. Dialogue has never been more important, but also more fraught. Today in church, I heard…
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When I heard Elder David A. Bednar’s October 2025 conference talk, I was immediately struck by how important his central question is. It’s a question that every human being must face sooner or later: How can we stand before the judgment bar of God “with eager and hopeful anticipation instead of [] fear”? It’s hard…
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I’ve been having a lot of conversations with Latter-day Saints on social media this week both pushing back against some of the unfair criticisms against the Church and also trying to explain why orthodox Christians sees the issues that divide us as particularly important. As I’ve done so, I’ve repeatedly receive a variation of this…