[{"content":"Somewhere in the back of most Latter-day Saint minds lives a mental map of the world with a few conspicuous blank spots. China. North Korea. Saudi Arabia. The logic is familiar: before the Lord can return, the gospel must reach all nations. Matthew 24:14 says so plainly. Those blank spots are the outstanding business.\nIt is a reasonable reading. It is also built on a word whose meaning has quietly shifted over time. What was once the secondary definition has become the only one most of us hear.\nThe word is nation.\nWebster\u0026rsquo;s 1828 dictionary notes that a nation, as its etymology imports, is a body of people descended from a common progenitor. The root is the Latin natio, from nasci, to be born. A nation is a birth-group. The political meaning, a territory, a government, a flag, is secondary. It is what happens after the birth-group grows large enough to organize itself into a political entity.\nThe biblical vocabulary confirms it. The Old Testament word translated \u0026ldquo;nation\u0026rdquo; is the Hebrew goy (plural: goyim), an ethnic people, a kindred group. The New Testament equivalent is the Greek ethnos, from which we get our word ethnic. The Great Commission, \u0026ldquo;teach all nations\u0026rdquo;, is literally: teach all ethne. All ethnic peoples.\nThe structure of human community, as the ancient world understood it, runs like this:\nFamily → Clan → Tribe → Nation1\nA nation is an ethnic people, a human community defined by shared descent, language, and culture. Political borders are drawn on top of this geography, imperfectly, and usually much later.\nMatthew 24:14 requires a witness to every ethnic people, not approval from every political government. Read that way, the picture looks considerably different.\nThere are converts from China, converts from Iran, converts from peoples whose governments have never permitted a single official missionary across their borders. By the ethnic definition, those individuals represent their ethnos in the covenant regardless of what any government has approved.\nWith the rise of the internet and the movement of peoples across the globe, it is at least possible if not probable that this prophecy is already fulfilled, or very nearly so.\nThe complete progression: Family → Household → Clan → Tribe → Nation → Race. Household here means the extended family unit, grandparents, married children, all under one patriarch, distinct from the nuclear family. Race carries its older genealogical meaning: a macro-lineage grouping above the individual ethnic nation, as in the three sons of Noah organizing the peoples of Genesis 10.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;","href":"https://jackribbun.com/posts/all-nations/","kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":"2026-05-31T00:00:00Z","objectID":"4df7e17def02ac11d25f0588510db0b7","publishDate":"2026-05-31T00:00:00Z","section":"posts","tags":[],"title":"All Nations","type":"posts"},{"content":"Click the image above to view full size. Cross your eyes slightly or relax your focus to see the hidden 3D image.\nIf you grew up in the 1990s, you probably remember Magic Eye books. Those mesmerizing posters filled with what looked like random noise—until suddenly, impossibly, a three-dimensional image would leap out at you. A dolphin. A spaceship. A castle.\nThe trick wasn\u0026rsquo;t in the poster. The trick was in learning how to see.\nSome people got it right away. Others stared for hours, convinced their friends were playing an elaborate prank. \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s nothing there!\u0026rdquo; they\u0026rsquo;d insist, frustrated, while someone next to them pointed excitedly at the hidden T-Rex that had suddenly materialized in the chaos.\nBut here\u0026rsquo;s the thing about Magic Eye images: once you finally see it, you can\u0026rsquo;t unsee it.\nThe moment your eyes lock onto that hidden dimension, the random pattern transforms. What was noise becomes signal. What was chaos becomes order. And from that moment forward, every time you look at that same image, the three-dimensional shape appears instantly. You can\u0026rsquo;t make it go away. You can\u0026rsquo;t go back to seeing just random dots.\nThe pattern has been revealed.\nLearning to See Here\u0026rsquo;s how Magic Eye images work: You have to defocus your vision. You have to stop looking at the surface and start looking through it. You need to hold the image close, then slowly move it away. You need to relax the muscles around your eyes that insist on focusing on the nearest object.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s almost as if you have a new pair of eyes. A new way of looking at things. What if you read your scriptures as if you were seeing them for the first time? What if you read your scriptures without overlaying your current understanding? What would stick out? What would remain? Are there any practices or beliefs you would change because of it? Is that not similar to becoming as a little child?\nAnswer Key: What You Should See But what do I know? I don\u0026rsquo;t know, Jack.","href":"https://jackribbun.com/posts/once-you-see-it/","kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":"2026-05-29T00:00:00Z","objectID":"427f0f0cb7c2f5ebfaa00ad398d21c66","publishDate":"2026-05-29T00:00:00Z","section":"posts","tags":[],"title":"Once You See It, You Can't Unsee It","type":"posts"},{"content":"There is a verse in the Doctrine and Covenants that most Latter-day Saints have heard dozens of times, usually in the context of a joke during sunday school. It comes from a revelation given to Joseph Smith in September 1831:\nBehold, now it is called today until the coming of the Son of Man, and verily it is a day of sacrifice, and a day for the tithing of my people; for he that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming.1\nRead quickly, it seems straightforward: pay your tithing, and you won\u0026rsquo;t be burned at the Second Coming. Fire insurance with a ten percent premium.\nBut read it again, slowly, and notice something about the wording.\n\u0026ldquo;He that is tithed.\u0026rdquo;\nNot he that tithes or he that pays his tithing. The verb is passive. Something is being done to the person, not by them. Someone else is doing the tithing. The person is the object, not the subject.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s a strange way to describe someone writing a check to the Church.\nThis revelation was given in September 18312. D\u0026amp;C 1193 that defines tithing wasn\u0026rsquo;t given until July 1838. Seven years later.\nIn fact, in September 1831, the saints weren\u0026rsquo;t practicing tithing at all. They were living under the Law of Consecration, given earlier that same year.4\nSo when Joseph received this revelation in 1831, there was no tithing law for the saints to comply with, and there wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be for seven years. Whatever \u0026ldquo;a day for the tithing of my people\u0026rdquo; meant to them, it couldn\u0026rsquo;t have meant pay your ten percent. That law didn\u0026rsquo;t exist yet.\nWhat if \u0026rsquo;tithing\u0026rsquo; here is similar word-play employed by the Lord in D\u0026amp;C 19? And it happens to be exactly the framework Isaiah uses in chapter six.\nIsaiah 6 is the chapter where Isaiah sees the Lord in vision, receives his commission, and is told that his message will mostly fall on deaf ears. The chapter ends on what sounds like a hopeless note: the land will be desolated, the cities emptied, the people scattered. But then at the very end:\nBut yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.5\nA tenth survives the first desolation. Then that tenth is refined again (\u0026ldquo;eaten\u0026rdquo;) until what remains is the holy seed, the substance of the stump. A tenth of a tenth. Isaiah is using the language of the Levitical tithe6 as a picture of divine selection: God is doing the tithing, sifting through the whole to find and preserve the remnant.\nThe tithed person isn\u0026rsquo;t the one who paid. The tithed person is the one who was kept.\nBut what do I know? I don\u0026rsquo;t know, Jack.\nDoctrine and Covenants 64:23, given at Kirtland, Ohio, September 11, 1831.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nDoctrine and Covenants 119, given at Far West, Missouri, July 8, 1838.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nThe heading to D\u0026amp;C 119 notes that the law was given after the saints had failed to live the more perfect law of consecration.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nDoctrine and Covenants 42, given at Kirtland, Ohio, February 9 and 23, 1831.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nIsaiah 6:13. Isaiah Explained\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nNumbers 18:24–28.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;","href":"https://jackribbun.com/posts/tithing-fire-insurance/","kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":"2026-05-27T00:00:00Z","objectID":"7e6a0ba72ad659feba5cf0628f2a3e19","publishDate":"2026-05-27T00:00:00Z","section":"posts","tags":[],"title":"Is Paying Tithing 'Fire Insurance'?","type":"posts"},{"content":"Many of you probably feel inadequate in your testimony of Jesus. I am willing to bet that at least some of you have never felt the burning in the bosom (D\u0026amp;C 8, 9) or have heard his voice speak to your mind or heart. This can lead to feelings of frustration or disappointment. It can cause feelings of doubt, especially when others who scoff at those who believe in Jesus seem so sure in their position. It\u0026rsquo;s fine to rely on the testimony of others until you can reach a point of being able to stand on your own. While we might smile and laugh a bit at young toddlers learning to walk, nobody seriously teases and mocks them for their lack of ability. We all know that with practice and with a bit of experience they will learn to walk, eventually run, and some will even become so proficient that they can accomplish amazing athletic feats. The toddler learning to walk seems to have a great desire to figure it out — they try and try again.\nThat desire to believe — that willingness to keep trying even when you feel unsteady — is exactly the right starting place. Now let me give you something to hold onto while you find your footing.\nAn intellectual testimony of Jesus can be just as important as a spiritual testimony of Jesus. Both kinds of testimonies together will give you the ability to have unshakable faith.\nThere are those who say that there was never a man named Jesus who lived in Israel in the first century AD. You can look it up, but even non-believing historians say that there is no doubt that there was a historical figure named Jesus. No serious person in 2026 believes that Jesus was a completely made-up character. The question then becomes: how do we know that the man we call Jesus was who we claim him to be? We can answer that by looking at the words of Jesus himself in the four gospels.\nWe can find the explanation in C.S. Lewis\u0026rsquo; book Mere Christianity, in which he wrote a chapter called \u0026ldquo;The Shocking Alternative.\u0026rdquo; In that chapter he outlines a trilemma — related to the word dilemma, a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between alternatives. In this case, when talking about Jesus, the options given to us regarding what kind of being He was are these: Lord, lunatic, or liar.\nLewis writes:\nGod selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was — that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process. Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.\nThe claim to forgive sins is particularly striking. Lewis continues:\nWe can all understand how a man forgives offenses against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men\u0026rsquo;s toes and stealing other men\u0026rsquo;s money? Yet this is what Jesus did. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.\nAnd here is the conclusion Lewis drives toward:\nI am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don\u0026rsquo;t accept His claim to be God.\u0026rdquo; That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.\nYou have now been given something just as useful as spiritual witness — though that witness will come in time. You have been given a reason. And one definition of faith that I think captures something true and important is this: acting in accordance with what you already have sufficient reason to believe.1 By that measure, you now have everything you need to take the next step. Not a leap into the dark. A step onto ground that holds.\nBut what do I know? I don\u0026rsquo;t know, Jack.\nRob Smith, Upward Thought (2024). This definition is explored in depth at upwardthought.org.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;","href":"https://jackribbun.com/posts/intellectual-witness/","kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":"2026-02-25T00:00:00Z","objectID":"4633b21f2dc0d07239fab96d70d7042d","publishDate":"2026-02-25T00:00:00Z","section":"posts","tags":[],"title":"An Intellectual Witness of Jesus Christ","type":"posts"},{"content":"If you have ever been to a historic site, a national park, or a shopping mall (do people still go to shopping malls?) you have probably seen a map with a marker showing your location at the site. The map usually shows in large letters: \u0026ldquo;You are here\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s to help orient you regarding your current position in relation to your surroundings.\nI think in religion we often look at our surroundings and see a mental map in our head that says, \u0026ldquo;You are here\u0026rdquo;. There is an assumption that every step along the way to where we are was in the correct direction. If we are \u0026ldquo;here\u0026rdquo;, then we are exactly where we were supposed to be. But are we? Is it possible that steps in the wrong direction were made from time to time? Is it possible that at least some of those missteps were reinforced instead of corrected? I think so. In fact, I think it\u0026rsquo;s more likely than not that we\u0026rsquo;ve made mistakes in doctrine along the way. Entropy, drift, apostasy \u0026ndash; whatever you want to call it is the default state of the universe.\nI think we\u0026rsquo;ve had some of that drift in Mormonism. I think we\u0026rsquo;ve lost a bit of what I think Joseph Smith was trying to do. I think what he was trying to do and what the scriptures detail is more mind-expanding than we realize. I don\u0026rsquo;t blame anyone for the drift \u0026ndash; it takes constant effort to maintain a course. But I do think it\u0026rsquo;s worth asking: Is \u0026ldquo;here\u0026rdquo; where we\u0026rsquo;re supposed to be?\nOver the coming posts, I want to explore what Joseph actually taught. I want to understand what lit the fire in my ancestors\u0026rsquo; souls\u0026ndash;what made them leave everything to follow Joseph into the wilderness.\nAs an aside,\nAs I was pondering and preparing this post, I woke up this morning with this song repeating in my head. At first glance, it\u0026rsquo;s just a catchy tune from the 90s. Then, I searched the real story behind it - an elderly couple with dementia, trying to get back to a place they once knew, found dead hundreds of miles off course. The contrast is striking: a song that romanticizes not knowing \u0026ldquo;The Way\u0026rdquo;, based on a story where not knowing the way led to tragedy. That\u0026rsquo;s where we are right now. We think we\u0026rsquo;re on a highway paved in gold, heading toward eternal summer. We\u0026rsquo;re actually lost. And we don\u0026rsquo;t even know it.\u0026quot;\nThe start of the video is a bit weird so I queued it up to a relevant spot\nThey made up their minds And they started packing They left before the sun came up that day An exit to eternal summer slacking But where were they going without ever knowing the way? They drank up the wine And they got to talking They now had more important things to say And when the car broke down They started walking Where were they going without ever knowing the way? Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold And it\u0026rsquo;s always summer They\u0026rsquo;ll never get cold They\u0026rsquo;ll never get hungry They\u0026rsquo;ll never get old and gray You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere They won\u0026rsquo;t make it home But they really don\u0026rsquo;t care They wanted the highway They\u0026rsquo;re happier there today, today Their children woke up And they couldn\u0026rsquo;t find \u0026rsquo;em They left before the sun came up that day They just drove off and left it all behind \u0026rsquo;em But where were they going without ever knowing the way? Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold And it\u0026rsquo;s always summer They\u0026rsquo;ll never get cold They\u0026rsquo;ll never get hungry They\u0026rsquo;ll never get old and gray You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere They won\u0026rsquo;t make it home But they really don\u0026rsquo;t care They wanted the highway They\u0026rsquo;re happier there today, today Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold And it\u0026rsquo;s always summer They\u0026rsquo;ll never get cold They\u0026rsquo;ll never get hungry They\u0026rsquo;ll never get old and gray You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere They won\u0026rsquo;t make it home But they really don\u0026rsquo;t care They wanted the highway They\u0026rsquo;re happier there today, today \u0026ndash; Fastball lyrics to \u0026ldquo;The Way\u0026rdquo;, 1998\nBut what do I know? I don\u0026rsquo;t know, Jack.","href":"https://jackribbun.com/posts/you-are-here/","kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":"2025-11-28T00:00:00Z","objectID":"5171cdf94caf79b5cb12fe09779dc61c","publishDate":"2025-11-28T00:00:00Z","section":"posts","tags":[],"title":"You Are Here","type":"posts"}]