Book of Mormon Revealed: The Great Restoration or the Great Fabrication

The Mormons will teach that the world ended up in a dark apostasy after the last apostle of Christ died. They will tell you that during this time that the book of Mormon was also tainted. Because of this according to their belief was Joseph Smith was going to be the light that was going to bring everyone out the apostasy by building the true church of Christ.

The book of Mormon will slight the other churches based on that they do not teach the true word of Jesus. Now according to Joseph one of his biggest callings was to bring forth the priesthood of Aronic and Melchizedek. This makes for an interesting study to further research just what is the concept of the priesthood coming back into the church.

Now standing on what Joseph Smith has written the concept is that the priesthood is the ultimate power for God to deal with man in anything that pertains to salvation. It is through man apparently that God saves souls which means that without priesthood then all men would be lost. One might take a close look at the priesthood here and see as they are patting themselves on the back for their righteousness giving them their authority and to give no credit or grace to the Holy Spirit.

One of the witnesses to the book of Mormon who was David Witmer claims that the idea to create a new priesthood was actually given up by one of the other followers. This new priesthood idea didn\’t come into line until after the church had been in operation for two years. At that time 2000 followers had already been baptized into the church and not by what they would recognize as their priest.

David Witmer confronts Joseph Smith saying that Joseph actually changed the revelations only to support the error of the president of their organization themselves. Further to this it has been repeatedly pointed out that when Joseph was picking and choosing what suited him from the Holy Bible that he neglected to take a close look at Hebrews. This is where it distinctly tells one that God sent his son who is the one and only eternal high priest. It is obvious but that Joseph Smith pays no credence to what does not benefit him.

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Khmer Culture At Its Best

Starting with the Amok, the Cambodian delicacy, the dance, music, lifestyle and all other aspects of Cambodian life have deep cultural roots. The country’s strong and varied cultural inheritance dates back to many centuries and a major part of it is guided by religious principles, inspired from Hinduism and Buddhism.

These major religions made their impact during the initial period of the Khmer Empire, centuries ago. This was when the Sanskrit language and other cultural nuances from India made their entry, which also includes the way Cambodians fold their hands in greeting. It was not only India but also China and Thailand that proved to be major influences on Cambodia.

Khmer culture strongly defines every aspect of living, such as child birth, death, childhood, marriage, divorce, food, dance, music and literature. It is based on hierarchy and the level of respect a person gets depends on their age; the older they are the higher the status. It is a patriarchal society where the father is the head of the family and one of the most noticeable things about Khmer culture is the fashion of the Cambodian people, which is dependant on the social status and caste of a person.

Cambodians believe in God as well as the spirits. They have several religious ceremonies and rituals in existence. They have a strong belief that childbirth is the time when the spirits can harm the mother and her newborn child; although, it is considered to be a happy occasion. Another belief is that a women turns into an evil spirit if she dies in childbirth. For Cambodians, death is not a time to grieve, as the dead person is said to enjoy a better life after death.

A quintessential flavoring of Khmer food is the strong smelling fish paste used in curries. Fruit is considered a mark of abundance. One of the favorites of the Cambodians is Teuk Tnaot, a liquid from the sugar palms; however, it is not taken with meals. Khmer culture respects guests, and they are served first along with the men.

Their rich music, dance and visual arts have been around ever since the beginning, but they were only given high importance during the Angkor period. One of the most popular music ensembles is the Pinpeat, which uses wind and percussion instruments. The rich melodies from this ensemble are said to flow deep into the heart. Other music categories include the Phleng kar and Mahori as well as the secular entertainment music. The classical dancers use their hands and feet to express different emotions. It was during the 20th century that modern art made its entry.

While the Khmer culture flourished until the–th century; the Khmer rouge era saw the devastation of the culture, but the pieces have long been picked up, and the rich Khmer traditions of science, art, architecture and spirituality again resonate throughout Cambodia, an exotic region located at the crossroads of India and China.

Read more Khmer articles about Cambodia at KhmerArticles.com

categories: Khmer Culture,Cambodia,Culture,Society,Religion,Travel,Reference,Education

Guidelines On The Value Of Giving

A new innovation is transforming many lives in the villages of India by bringing light where there used to be darkness.

The New York Times published an article titled, \”Husk Power for India\”. Electricity, which is prevalent in the lives of many in developed nations, is a pure luxury in remote areas of developing ones. What was once fed to animals now is used to generate electricity – rice husks.

Growing up in rural Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to sit in the dark. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the skills to make a lifelong idea come alive. He led the development of his electricity equipment that generates power from rice husks and other farming waste and now he sells it to villages across India.

Sinha is what could be called a social entrepreneur because he feels business is a solution to key social issues. \”Business leaders must realise that the world\’s poor need investments more than handouts,\” he says, adding, \”these are customers, not victims.\”

The article inspired me to think about giving in a different way leading me to ask myself, \”what is the most effective form of giving?\” Is it education, commercial activity or disaster relief? There are so many ways to make a difference. One way of giving can seem more effective or sustainable than other ways depending on the way it is expressed, looked at or implemented.

I then came to delineate there were eight segments to giving as a way to see this. So, let me chart out the eight differences; which in effect are often \’stages\’ of giving as well.

Stage one: Urgency – rescuing and supporting others who are struck by natural disaster, epidemic diseases or other uncontrollable circumstances.

Stage two: Relief – providing relief from long-standing hunger, poverty, diseases, handicaps or discrimination which otherwise would continue or worsened because of the lack of information, education or resources.

Stage three: Remedying and defense – internally, bodily and psychologically. Many people carry injuries that may be invisible but could be severely confining their lives. Giving the remedy to release the buried trauma creates better facilities for them while giving proper protection gives them a sense of defense.

Stage four: Education – giving better education, information and skill training to create empowered and creative solutions to resource generation while supporting individuals to discover their unique talent to thrive.

Phase five: Innovative investment – giving a helping hand, cash or material to those who have the ability to make a change. This gets weighed many times as the materials increase and is passed on to several others who again create more out of the chances given.

Phase six: Maintainability – working collectively involving the people in the local surroundings, creating maintainable society – ecologically and communally.

Phase seven: Empowerment – enabling and motivating the people to release their true ability and power to make a change. In this group of sharing, the aim of giving changes from \’giving to the people who want\’ to \’giving people a chance to give to others\’ and to the society.

Stage eight: Loving – just doing whatever we feel to do to love and care for others. No strategy or expected outcome exists in this stage of giving. \’Giving\’ does not even exist here in the traditional sense of the word, as there is no sense of possession or judgment or desire to change anything. This is where we do not even have to think about anything, we give as a part of our own joyful experience.

What we also see is that at each of these eight phases of sharing there are many things that the giver gets in return.

One: Sense of connection

Two: Sense of comfort

Three: respite from hurt (our own)

Four: Thankfulness for our own ideas, gifts and conditions

Five: Long-term sense of contribution and satisfaction for our own life

Six: Better ambience for our own life and for the lives of others we treasure and revere

Seven: Soul fulfilling inspiration and dedication to our own purpose

Eight: Love

Sharing has many stages and sensations based upon the donor and getter. And the \’phases\’ do not detail which one is of more importance than the other. All are mandatory.

I was gifted with an experience early in 2008 while travelling with a group of dedicated entrepreneurs through India to see how we could be more effective in our giving. I was blessed to have one particular experience that made me think about what \’effective giving\’ really meant.

We were travelling in a small town one day. Four of us had just called a taxi to take us to another nearby town. We dealt with the driver cautiously as our hotel staff had forewarned us about the possible swindle when they see that we were not local.

We chose to stop in front of the local train station for a short interval en route to the town. While the others went to use restrooms, I struck up a conversation with the driver of the taxi, standing nearby. With his limited English vocabulary and a smiling face that showed his black front teeth to advantage, he told me that he lived in the outskirts of the town and that he had a young wife and two kids who attended the local school – I began to feel a relationship with him.

I patted him on the back for having an affectionate family and told him that I also had two kids of the same age as his. When the others came back the driver instantly asked us to come to his house for food. I thought it was just a formality he wanted to convey at first. However, after leaving us at the centre of the town, he was particular that he would wait for us till we were done with our traveling around the town. And he actually did. I was in fact quite taken aback to see him still standing by the side of the road next to his taxi even after an hour. We hopped back into the taxi and he whizzed off up the road to where his home was.

When we reached there we were really quite taken aback to see how he was living. It was more or less similar (if not worse) to the standard of people dwelling in slums we had visited before. From the gleaming new taxi he was driving, who could have thought this

As he reached the narrow open street in between shanties that were made with rough concrete blocks and mud walls, we felt guilty about accepting his invitation. For a brief moment I was nonplussed. \”How could I accept the hospitality of this man who didn\’t seem to have anything at all and I didn\’t even bring any gift that could be a help to his family\”, I told myself.

As we went inside his house, we saw a vessel and a small stove on the floor. His timid young wife raised her head in surprise and withdrew into the small store room (a cupboard size) adjacent to it. As I took in the scene, I saw the neighbours residing next door giving her a few cups across the broken down concrete fence. The young couple did not even have sufficient teacups in their house. There was a single room fitted with one single bed and a pretty old galvanised box near it.

The driver hastily drew out three hand-woven mats from the trunk and spread them out on whatever little space there was on the mud floor and put one on the bed.

Steaming cups of tea and hot snacks arrived soon. Both his kids as well as kids from the neighbouring houses came to see us and remained at the doorway. The six of us could just squeeze into the tiny room. I was curious to know where his children were sleeping. I thought maybe they had another space somewhere. To my astonishment, he just pointed at the chest and said with his happy smile that it was their bed.

He cheerfully informed us that he was a dancing expert of the area and pointed at the medals displayed on the recess above his bed. Bent on showing us his dancing skills he at once ran outside. From some place music started coming into the tiny room. He has no arrangement for music in the house, it was flowing in from outside. I wondered where it came from till I saw him bringing his taxi in reverse to the back wall of his house with the doors open and music flowing in from the high volume car radio!

The time moved fast (with his dancing and the many more cups of tea that followed) and very soon it was time to thank them for their great warmth and courtesy and make our move. As we got ready to leave and express our gratitude to him and his wife, he pulled out the best of all the rugs he had, and just gave it to us. It was one of the very few things he owned. It was impossible to believe that he was offering it to us.

We all courteously begged off his gift and moved out waving goodbye to all the people waving back at us. We got real baffled about the whole affair. Should we have paid them something as they surely had only too little money? Should we have consented to take the cherished gift he made us?

As I was thinking about this awe-inspiring experience after a few days, I considered our begging off his gift. He looked crest-fallen that we didn\’t accept the gift. It wasn\’t only the rejecting of the gift that remained in my mind.

I realised that the sense of discomfort I felt was actually coming from perceiving him as less fortunate. I was thinking that I couldn\’t possibly take anything from someone who had so little.

But did he really have nothing much? Maybe he had much more – many more.

Maybe the greatest gift we could have given him then was to receive his gift in total respect and gratitude.

All acts of giving and receiving are necessary for us to fill our world with abundance and fulfillment equally for both giver and receiver. We can start doing this instead of judging and justifying one over another. The pure act of giving and receiving requires no further explanation.

Manoj Sinha\’s words echo in my mind once again, \”these are customers, not victims.\” I can imagine the smiling faces of the villagers who are now proud to have electricity in their villages and the children who now can read books and learn in their homes at night.

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categories: charity,marketing,giving money,giving with business,business giving,charity giving,religion,giving,BOGO

Making A Difference With B1G1 Transactional Giving

B1G1/BOGO (Buy One Give One) joins businesses with charitable cause right around the world so that every business sale makes a significant difference somehow, somewhere, every second, every day. And it does much more than that. It adds a powerful marketing ‘engine’ building your own magnetism.

Michael Porter, probably the world’s most respected business strategist says this: “I used to see this area of corporate social philanthropy as the last thing on my agenda 10 years ago, but now I agree that social and economic issues are intertwined. Corporate philanthropy – or corporate social responsibility – is becoming an ever more important field for business. Today’s companies ought to invest in corporate social responsibility as part of their business strategy to become more competitive.”

Everyone we share with about Buy 1 GIVE 1 gets it in a heart beat. It’s an idea that totally resonates and makes sense. And it’s an idea whose time has come.

You can step up to make a continuing difference and literally play a significant part, not just in leaving a legacy, but also in transforming our world. It could be the best business and personal choice you’ve ever made. After all you will leave a legacy the question is : will it be one of consumption or one of choice.

Bill Gates has become central to this idea, calling for ‘Creative Capitalism’ in response to the vital question, he shares in TIME Magazine:

“How can we most effectively spread the benefits of capitalism and the huge improvements in quality of life it can provide to people who have been left out?”

Buy1GIVE1 is about Sharing the Joy of Giving; and giving, results from having gratitude for what we have.

Just remember – you don’t ‘get’ giving till you get giving.

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categories: charity,religion,marketing,advertising,business,philanthropy,csr,corporate responsibility,charity giving,BOGO

How Funeral Services Work

The demise of a loved one is a harrowing experience, and planning their funeral can be very painful. However, you have to admit the loss that you have suffered and be ready for making proper funeral service arrangements to remember the deceased. You can get the help you need in making the preparations from any funeral home, but you should bear certain things in mind before proceeding.

The dead person’s life and beliefs are expressed in the funeral and thus, it is necessary to conduct it properly. Most funeral homes are willing to make slight alterations in their standard method of funeral services for including certain cultural or religious preferences of the departed and of his or her family members.

The first stage is the visitation, which can take place for a few hours or could extend for a few days. In this, family members and acquaintances get together in memory of the dead person. The second stage is formal funeral services in any location like a church, a chapel, a mortuary or at some other place that had a special value for the deceased person. However, you should ensure that you have called for a funeral coach, if the venue of the funeral is at some distance.

After this service, the gatherers generally move to the cemetery to participate in the graveside service. This can be managed by a clergyman or any close relative of the deceased, depending on the family’s preference. You will need to consider various aspects, including who will lead the service, the type of flowers you would require, and if you want a photo or any other items owned by the deceased to be exhibited.

The final phase of the proceedings is the burial, and the site for it can be any spot as per the choice of the family members or of the deceased person. The burial can take place on a family plot or a cemetery, or if the deceased had wished for a cremation, the ashes can be scattered at a proper location.

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categories: Buddhist,casket,funeral services,funeral,religion,spirituality,business,undertakers

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