The sincerest form of flattery

I follow the LDS Church's official Twitter account, and a few days ago they sent out this message: "Having a hard time with personal scripture study? Try thinking about the scriptures from a new perspective," and there was a link embedded at the end of the tweet.

Naturally, I assumed it was a link to my blog, since that is kind of the point of these Sunday School posts (which, for the last several months, have been the only posts I've put up). Alas, my egotism was misguided in this case; the link led to this video, which is pretty good and very worth watching, even though the portrayal of Moroni hypothetically being killed by Apocalypto Lamanites before successfully hiding the plates was admittedly a little strange.



Whether or not any curriculum developers within the Church are aware of my blog (I'm going to keep flattering myself that they are), there are some similarities in how we try to encourage members to prepare for Gospel Doctrine class each week. For example, in each of these posts, I link to the online student study guide material for the upcoming lesson. I don't actually look at the online version much, because I use a printed copy in my personal study. But I've recently noticed that the online guide includes links to additional resources--General Conference talks and videos and such. Sound familiar? I wonder where they got that idea?

Check out this week's lesson, which covers the book of Joshua. There are a number of helpful links in the right-hand column; I particularly recommend President Eyring's talk. (Interestingly, the actual online lesson material--the one for instructors--also includes additional resources, but they're different than the links in the study guide.)

Obviously, I need to keep up with the Joneses. So here are my supplementary videos for the book of Joshua. The most famous story in that book of scripture is the fall of the walls of Jericho. Naturally, I'm going to use that story as an excuse to show the man I rated as my favorite pro wrestler of the last 25 years, whose finishing move is called--you guessed it--the Walls of Jericho.



But there are other interesting stories in Joshua. Before sacking Jericho, the children of Israel had to cross the River Jordan. They did so in miraculous fashion--the water parted, just as Moses did with the Red Sea, helping everyone to know that, even though Moses was now gone, the Lord was still with them and Joshua was their new leader.

The next city attacked by Israel after Jericho was Ai, a much smaller town. Because of the wickedness of one man, what should have been an easy rout turned into an embarrassing defeat (see Joshua 7). You might be asking yourselves, "is there one video clip that perfectly encapsulates both 'crossing over Jordan' and getting embarrassed by a seemingly overmatched adversary named 'AI'?" Well, have I got an "Answer" for you...



Try thinking about the scriptures from a new perspective, indeed. See you in class.