In a poetic plea for help, an Italian Latter-day Saint leader called for a national fast to begin Wednesday and invited all who love Italy to join in fasting and prayer for it as COVID-19 spreads across the northern part of the country.
The Area Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints responsible for Italy, Elder Alessandro Dini-Ciacci sent the request to Italy’s president and national media before the government shut down travel for all of Italy’s 60 million people late Monday. The prime minister announced a countrywide ban on all public meetings, the BBC reported, in a country that has more cases of the coronavirus than any country but China.
“It may seem to some that our faith is a small thing against the greatness of the enemy of these days, the Goliath we all have come to know as the COVID-19 coronavirus,” the church leader wrote in Italian. “But the Scriptures remind us that David, with means the world would regard as improbable, ‘with a slingshot and with a stone ... smote the Philistine.’” He provided a translation to the Deseret News.
I'm led to believe that the prayer and fasting works better for the under 70's and people without underlying respiratory conditions, especially if paired with taking personal hygiene seriously. What a shame he didn't see this coming and call for a preemptive fast. Why didn't he call for prayer and fasting for the Chinese two or three months ago?
It will be interesting if this Church Leader claims the prayer and fasting were what swung it rather than the complete travel and gathering ban imposed by the Italian government.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
At least the DN acknowledges that fasting won't be effective in stopping anything like a deadly virus when it opened the article with "In a poetic plea for help."
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
OMG, the people of Italy LIVE in the LAND of Olive Oil. Just Concencrate all the Olive Trees and the Power of the Penishood will do the rest.
Revelation 2:17 . . give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. Thank Google GOD for her son eBay, you can now have life eternal with laser engraving. . oh, and a seer stone and save 10% of your life's earning as a bonus. See you in Mormon man god Heaven Bitches!!. Bring on the Virgins
SuperDell wrote:Missionaries will return home and give testimony of how the Fast miraculously stopped the virus. How their Priesthood protected them and the members.
God provided this scourge just so the kids can come home and tell more tall tales.
Ya gotta admit, that's a pretty doggone impressive agenda!
Dr CamNC4Me
"Dr. Peterson and his Callithumpian cabal of BYU idiots have been marginalized by their own inevitable irrelevancy defending a fraud."
I really like this idea of fasting. At worst, fasting does nothing except have some possible health benefits for the participants. At best, some Mormons stop coronavirus dead in its tracks and become heros of the entire world! It’s a win-win all the way around. However, just to cover all the bases, I’m going to eat a couple of donuts tomorrow just in case the creator of the universe requires donut eating to help fight the plague of coronavirus. On a certain level it makes me feel good inside to know that I’m possibly helping out too.
Finn the human wrote:I really like this idea of fasting. At worst, fasting does nothing except have some possible health benefits for the participants. At best, some Mormons stop coronavirus dead in its tracks and become heros of the entire world! It’s a win-win all the way around. However, just to cover all the bases, I’m going to eat a couple of donuts tomorrow just in case the creator of the universe requires donut eating to help fight the plague of coronavirus. On a certain level it makes me feel good inside to know that I’m possibly helping out too.
There seems to be plenty of fasters, so I’ll assist you in the donut eating.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Measures every member can take against coronavirus:
1) fast. 2) pay a generous tithe: as markets tumble, buffer the Church's position at the expense of your family's well-being. 3) make the Church the beneficiary to your estate in the event your faith not to be healed from coronavirus prevails.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
It's too bad prophets are relegated to the poetic mode rather than the traditional prophetic mode of speech. It could be a simple lack of faith on the prophets' parts, so its nothing too serious that they can't handle. All is well in Zion, even if the world is going to pot.
Dr CamNC4Me
"Dr. Peterson and his Callithumpian cabal of BYU idiots have been marginalized by their own inevitable irrelevancy defending a fraud."
