About JA Benson

Joanna entered the world as a BYU baby. Continuing family tradition, she graduated BYU with a degree in Elementary Education and taught for several years. Growing up in Salt Lake County, her favorite childhood hobbies were visiting cemeteries and eavesdropping on adult conversations. Her ancestral DNA is multi-ethnic and she is Mormon pioneer stock on every familial line. Joanna resides in the Southeastern USA with her five children ranging in age from 8 to 24. Her husband passed away in 2009. She is an avid reader and a student of history. Her current intellectual obsession is Sephardic Jewish history, influence and genealogy. She served as a board member for her local chapter of Families with Children from China. She is the author of “DNA Mormons?” Summer Sunstone 2007 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/04/dna-mormons/ and “Becoming Hong Mei`s Mother” in the Winter Sunstone 2009 http://theredbrickstore.com/sunstone/becoming-hong-meis-mother/.

Friday Forum: Doctrine & Covenants 107:27 “Unanimous Decisions”

Posted on September 24, 2009 by JA Benson

Discuss Doctrine and Covenants 107:27

And every decision made by either of these quorums must be by the ^aunanimous voice of the same; that is, every member in each quorum must be agreed to its decisions, in order to make their decisions of the same power or validity one with the other—

Comments? Anyone?

Friday Forum: Doctrine and Covenants 132:4-6 “If Ye Abide Not That Covenant, Then Are Ye Damned”

Posted on September 17, 2009 by JA Benson

Discuss D&C 132:4-6

damned

3 Therefore, ^aprepare thy heart to receive and ^bobey the instructions which I am about to give unto you; for all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same.

4 For behold, I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting ^acovenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye ^bdamned; for no one can ^creject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory.

5 For all who will have a ^ablessing at my hands shall abide the ^blaw which was appointed for that blessing, and the conditions thereof, as were instituted from before the foundation of the world.

6 And as pertaining to the new and ^aeverlasting covenant, it was instituted for the fulness of my ^bglory; and he that receiveth a fulness thereof must and shall abide the law, or he shall be damned, saith the Lord God.

Comments? Anyone?

Part V LDS and the Sephardic Connection: Seeding the Protestant Reformation

Posted on September 16, 2009 by JA Benson

“The displaced Jews, like so many tiny floating seeds from a milkweed pod, landed on fertile ground in Holland, France, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland, and England, where they grew into the Protestant Reformation.”- Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Yates

Elizabeth C. Hirschman, Ph.D at Rutgers University, and Donald N. Yates, Ph.D., owner and founder of DNA Testing Systems, have written a fascinating book entitled When Scotland Was Jewish: DNA Evidence, Archeology, Analysis of Migrations, and Public and Family Records Show Twelfth Century Semitic Roots. In chapter Ten The Religions of Scotland: Did Presbyterianism Have Crypto-Jewish Origins, Hirschman and Yates reveal the evolution from Catholicism to Protestantism as influenced by the Sephardim.

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