Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
New, from the Interpreter Foundation!

New, from the Interpreter Foundation!

Last updated on: December 1, 2022 at 5:44 pm by Dan Peterson

New, from the Interpreter Foundation! 2022-12-01T17:44:19-07:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Christmas at the Hamilton New Zealand Temple (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I’m pleased to announce two new items that have appeared on the website of the Interpreter Foundation. The first was created by Alan Sikes. It will be, I think, a very helpful resource for many people:

“Introducing the General Conference, Improvement Era, and Journal of Discourses Bibliography Collections”

Have you ever had questions like the following, while preparing a talk or article or when just curious:

[Question] Are there General Conference talks mentioning “many mansions”?
[Answer] There have been 79 General Conference talks that include this specific phrase, the first in a 1921 talk by Elder David A. Smith of the Presiding Bishopric, as reported in Conference Report: 92nd Semi-Annual Conference October 1921, pg. 141 and the latest in a talk by President Dallin H. Oaks titled “Divine Love in the Father’s Plan,” delivered at the Sunday Afternoon Session of the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 2022.

The phrase was also used in 25 talks included in the Journal of Discourses, including one by Joseph Smith: “Character and Being of God—Creation—Salvation of the Dead—The Unpardonable Sin—Resurrection—Baptism of the Spirit, Etc,” delivered at the Conference held near the Temple, in Nauvoo, April 6, 1844 after the death of Elder King Follett.

[Question] When were airplanes first mentioned in General Conference?
[Answer] The first mention of ‘airplane’ was in a talk by Elder John A. Widtsoe in the October, 1926 Conference and the latest was by Elder Dale G. Renlund in the October, 2022 Conference. There are a total of 160 mentions of ‘airplane,’ with only 9 of them by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf!

The first mention of airplanes in the Improvement Era was in an article by Dr. Joseph M. Tanner titled “Problems of the Age: Dealing with Religious, Social and Economic Questions and their Solution. A Study for the Quorums and Classes of the Melchizedek Priesthood” in the April, 1918 magazine.

[Question] What was the first talk given by President Russell M. Nelson in General Conference?
[Answer] In the Priesthood Session of the October, 1968 Conference, then Elder Russell M. Nelson, President of the Bonneville Stake, spoke on “Placing Our Homes in Order.” Since then he has spoken 108 times in General Conferences.

All of these questions were answered using three new collections that have been added to the Interpreter Foundation Bibliography database at https://interpreterfoundation.org/bibliographies/:

General Conference – Indexing the April, 1880 Conference and all of the Conferences since October, 1897. Access is provided to:

Transcripts of talks from 1942 through 2022

Audio recordings of each session from 1936 through 1970 and of each talk from 1971 through 2022

Videos of talks from 1971 through 2022 plus a few videos from earlier Conferences

PDF and image versions of the Conference Reports from 1880 through 2011

Content searches of all of the indexed Conferences

Journal of Discourses – Indexing all 26 Volumes, which were published between 1854 and 1886 and the 1,438 sermons by Presidents Brigham Young and John Taylor, “Their Counselors, The Twelve Apostles, and Others.” Access is provided to:

All of the individual talks (on BYUs Scripture Citation Index page, https://scriptures.byu.edu/)

Text, image, and PDF copies of each Volume

Content searches

Improvement Era – Indexing all issues from November, 1897 (Vol. 1, Issue 1) through December, 1970 (Vol. 73, Issue 12). Access is provided to:

The image and PDF version of each issue on archive.org.

Content searches

These collections join our six other bibliography collections:

Hugh W. Nibley

The Book of Moses

Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS)

The Interpreter Foundation (both Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship and the many articles and other media on the Interpreter website)

BYU Studies (all issues)

Book of Mormon Central KnoWhys

For all of these collections (as well as the complete bibliography database), we provide indexes sorted by Title, Author and Chronologically, as well as Topical and Scriptural indexes for some of them. Except in a few cases, we do not store the documents on our site but instead provide links to the documents in any available media formats wherever they are located on the internet.

In addition, there are Basic and Advanced search capabilities, both within specific collections and for the entire database, providing answers to questons like those above. Advanced searches allow searching specific fields (author, title, content, a range of dates, etc) and also allow the use of boolean operators (quotes, plus and minus signs, etc) to more exactly find the citations you are looking for.

We’d appreciate your comments with any additional sources for these collections, suggestions of other collections to add, additional features you’d like to see, and any errors you encounter.

If you find such bibliographies useful and of value, I hope that you’ll consider at contributing at least a small donation to support the work of the Interpreter Foundation. These things are made available to you at no charge.

A photo taken in December 2013, in Melbourne, Australia
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Interpreter Radio Show — November 20, 2022

In this episode, our hosts Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Martin Tanner introduce our new show format. Each show will be divided into a number of segments that may vary from week to week. One segment will provide information that will supplement the study of the Come, Follow Me lesson material for 2023 and will be called “The New Testament in Context.” Another segment will provide evidences in support of the Church, or responses to criticisms of the Church and will be called “Advocacy of the Restored Gospel.” As a starting point, this segment will use the new Institute manual entitled “Answering My Gospel Questions.” Finally, there will be a segment of general discussion that may include comments on recent Interpreter Foundation publications or activities.

You can listen to or download the non-Come, Follow Me portions of the November 20th broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. These three audio tracks will also be included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast):

The “New Testament in Context” portion of this show will be posted on December 20, the week before the beginning of the first Come, Follow Me lesson for the 2023 year.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Journal of Discourses

Kris Frederickson

Kristine Frederickson

Previous Post

November 30, 2022

Some Ways to Light the World

Next Post

December 2, 2022 "Generational Curses and Inheritance in the Book of Abraham"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Christian denomination is known for wearing plain clothing and avoiding modern technology?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Baptists Presbyterians Amish Lutherans