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For years, I’ve claimed to be a proponent of gender equality. I’ve made myself hypersensitive to many injustices connected with women, some of which were real; some I may have perceived. It wasn’t until I started dating my husband two years ago that I really started to grasp the need for gender equality.

We teach writers to “show, don’t tell.” Paul shows, not tells, us how women functioned in early Christianity in Romans 16. This chapter consists of Paul’s comments to people in the church in Rome and gives us an interesting glimpse into the experience of the early followers of Jesus.

Mormons believe that a war in heaven took place before the foundations of the earth over the question of human agency. Unfortunately, LDS thinking around it and the counsels that preceded remain somewhat obscure and over-simplified. Generally, it is thought that Satan’s plan entailed coercion of some sort.

We come to the final narratives of Paul’s trials and journeys in this reading, and, much as I like to live in the past and be immersed in the experiences of biblical missionaries, these old place names and stories of hardships have been launching me forward in my mind to the present day, to those thousands upon thousands of people whose road from Damascus, Syria fills our hearts and sympathies.

I had been to many LDS churches around the world as I traveled. It was always an adventure trying to find the building. But this time I had MOVED… this was to be my home… and it just didn’t feel like it. I looked around and thought, “These are my people?” Well, yes and no.

In the 13th Article of Faith we read, “we believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous…if there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” These Christ-like attributes are ones we should seek and develop as His disciples. Also in this verse, we find the declaration: “we follow the admonition of Paul”. In today’s lesson, the class will review several letters of Paul: Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, where

Note that there was no similar passage regarding bishops’ wives earlier in the chapter, but there are other references to female deacons in the New Testament (see Romans 16:1, the KJV translates “servant” to describe Phoebe, but this is the same word translated as “deacon” in 1 Timothy 3:8 and 12). The author’s advice to these female deacons is that they do not gossip (slander) and that they are completely trustworthy (“faithful in all things”).

I was a newborn mother. My child was beautifully pleasant during the day, but at night he would cry on and off for hours. I was teaching full-time at BYU, and had to leave the house at 6:30am every day. I was dead with fatigue. Every night, my husband and I took turns sitting on the yoga ball, and bouncing while we sang to our son as he cried.

In 1 Peter 3: 1-7, Peter directs faithful wives to “be in subjection to [their] husbands” even if the husband is a nonbeliever for obedient and amiable wives may be able to convert their husbands. Furthermore, wives are not be concerned with their outward appearance but instead focus inward and adorn themselves with “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.”

Some years ago, I watched a piano tuner work on repairing our very old grand piano. It is a wonderful piano of high quality. It has a worn and scratched finish, since it is over 80 years old and was used in a night club for many of those years. This man was an expert tuner and repairman, and it was a pleasure to watch him remove the keyboard, and mechanism, then carefully find a small, intricately carved wooden part which was broken, and work on repairing it.

John was one of the Savior’s original Apostles. He was banished to Patmos for bearing testimony of Jesus Christ. While there, John was visited by an angel and given a revelation that he recorded in letters to the seven branches of the Church in Asia. These letters became the book of Revelation.

“And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey” (Revelation 10:10). So records John the Revelator in the last book of the New Testament. Together with Jeremiah (Jer. 15:16) and Ezekiel (Ez. 3:3) of the Old Testament, and Lehi and Nephi of the Book of Mormon (1Nephi 8), John is invited to eat of the gospel message and he finds it sweet. These prophets taste, hear, see, and internalize the word of God.

Our first lesson of the Old Testament concentrates on Moses 1 found in the Pearl of Great Price. A lot happens in this chapter: Moses speaks with God face-to-face. He learns that he is a son of God and the majesty of the Almighty. God shows Moses the creation of the world and humanity throughout the ages. Moses refutes Satan’s temptations. God declares the salvation and exaltation of humanity to be the Divine’s work and glory.

In Joseph’s prophetic expansion on the story of Abraham’s life, the Lord lays his hands upon Abraham’s eyes and he can see all of creation clearly. (Abraham 3:12) Just as the Lord showed Moses “all the workmanship” of God’s hands (Moses 1:4) and Joseph Smith saw the Father and the Son, these theophanies allowed the recipients to see clearly.

The accounts of the Creation in Moses and Genesis are devoid of woman’s role in this series of events outside of the creation of Eve. Yet, LDS theology tells us that we have a Heavenly Mother and that She was involved in the Creation, that She is “a procreator and parent, a divine person, a co-creator, a co-framer of the plan of salvation, and is involved in this life and the next”[1]. We are taught that “all men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mot