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“A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.”

“A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.”

Last updated on: August 22, 2026 at 7:08 pm by Dan Peterson

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“A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” 2026-08-22T19:08:39-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Joseph Smith (Paul Wuthrich) and Martin Harris (Lincoln Hoppe), at work on the translation of the Book of Mormon in a scene from the Interpreter Foundation’s 2021 theatrical film, Witnesses.

Newly posted today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Conversations with Interpreter: Spencer Kraus: Transliteration in the Book of Mormon and Other Translations”

This episode of Conversations with Interpreter explores Spencer Kraus’s article, “A Closer Look at Transliteration in Divine Translations.” Kraus picks up the question about transliterated words like ziff in the Book of Mormon. Because the Book of Mormon was translated by “the gift and power of God,” it can raise questions about why words like this appear in the Book of Mormon. Kraus convincingly argues that the distribution and types of words that appear in the Book of Mormon are in continuity with transliteration patterns in other ancient texts. As part of this we talk about the implications of Kraus’s research for understanding the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s translation project in general. Spencer Kraus’s article was originally published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship and is available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/a-closer-look-at-transliterations-in-divine-translations.

Also, don’t miss the thirtieth installment of Becoming Brigham: DID BRIGHAM YOUNG BELIEVE IN EDUCATING WOMEN?—Episode 30. And here’s the 46-second teaser for Episode 31, which will go up on Monday: “TRAILER for Ep. 31—Lives of Their Own? The Wives of Brigham Young”

An invitation to tomorrow’s “Free Speech Rally” in downtown Los Angeles

Early last week, I began to see announcements of a “Christian Crusaders” rally to be held in Dearborn, Michigan, a city located near Detroit that is well known for its large Arab and Muslim population. I was intending to comment on the rally, but last week was a very busy time for me — not only because of BYU Education Week but for family reasons — and I didn’t get around to it.

This morning, though, I learned that a similar rally is to take place tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon in front of the Islamic Center of Southern California. I hadn’t realized that Los Angeles (more or less my home territory after growing up in the Los Angeles suburb of San Gabriel and earning my Ph.D. at UCLA) had fallen to Islamic forces and needed to be retaken, nor that free speech there was endangered by a Muslim theocracy.

This made me curious about how things had gone down in Dearborn, and I found this:

“22 arrested during planned ‘Christian Crusader March’ in Dearborn: Dearborn police report numerous arrests during protest”

Prominently involved in the Dearborn event was a man named Jake Lang, who is shown (in the news video at the link above) wearing what seems a military haircut and military fatigues. He attended a meeting of the Dearborn city council but was escorted out when he began to rip up a copy of the Qur’an. Before leaving, though, he is shown in the video yelling “We will have our way! Come blood or sweat, we will have our way!”

Adolf Hitler with Hermann Göring (front left), in Nuremberg in 1928. They are surrounded by members of the Nazi Party’s “Sturmabteilung” (SA), the so-called “stormtroopers” or “brownshirts,” whose principal task was to rough up and intimidate opponents and to provide security at Party rallies. (Please note the phony military attire.) Mr. Hitler would be elected chancellor of Germany in the elections of 1933. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Jake Lang has an interesting history, thus far.

He participated in the 6 January 2021 attack on the United States Capitol, during which, among other things, he evidently assaulted Capitol police officers with a baseball bat. He served four years in prison for that, but continued to operate while incarcerated:. (See this article, dated 12 June 2024, from Wired: “A January 6 Rioter Is Leading an Armed National Militia From Prison: As the US election approaches, Edward “Jake” Lang says that the militia will focus on potential “civil unrest” around the vote and will be ready to activate at a moment’s notice.”)

On the very first day of President Donald J. Trump’s second term in the White House, Jake Lang received a presidential pardon.

Although born to a Jewish mother, Lang has publicly renounced any and all ties to Judaism and Israel, and has posted video footage of himself burning a copy of the Talmud as well as a book promoting Christian Zionism — in addition, of course, to the Qur’an. (A note to my fellow Latter-day Saints: We are Christian Zionists, of a kind, and we have been Christian Zionists since at least the time of Joseph Smith and Orson Hyde.)

On 4 January 2026, Lang staged a demonstration outside the headquarters of the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC in Washington, D.C., during which he threw chocolate coins (likely a reference to Hanukkah gelt) and gave a Nazi salute. “White people in America,” he prophesied at the same event, “you will be replaced, and your children will be Black Muslims if you don’t stand up now” and vowed that “White Christian men are not gonna sit around while you turn our children into a bunch of nigger lovers.” He has also called for Islam to be banned from the United States.

(For more detail regarding Jake Lang’s valuable contributions to America and the world, see his Wikipedia entry. See also this news item from earlier this morning: “Jake Lang rally in Minneapolis draws some clashes with counter-protesters.” Especially touching is the report that he was “convicted of directing racial slurs at an 8-year-old girl with autism at a Rochester playground.” Another leader of the Dearborn event was Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, from Detroit.)

Martin Niemöller in 1952(Wikimedia Commons)

You’re probably familiar with a famous passage from the anti-Nazi German pastor Dr. Martin Niemöller. It circulates in various slightly different forms, but here is the original German language version of it, as it is preserved by the Martin-Niemöller-Haus Berlin-Dahlem:

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Juden einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.

Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

And here is a reasonably close translation of that German text into English:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I kept quiet; I wasn’t a communist.

When they came for the trade unionists, I kept quiet;
I wasn’t a trade unionist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I kept quiet;
I wasn’t a social democrat.

When they locked up the Jews, I kept quiet;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to protest.

The Islamic Center of Southern California, at 434 Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

I’ve spoken at the Islamic Center of Southern California. It’s where my friend Salam al-Marayati worships. If I were in Southern California this weekend, I would be there at the Center — but in solidarity with the Muslims of Los Angeles, and not as a participant in the “Free Speech Rally.”

I hope (and I expect) that no believing, practicing Latter-day Saints will participate in tomorrow’s demonstration — and not merely because we have better ways to spend the Sabbath.

We believe that the conflict in heaven, before the world was, centered on the freedom of choice, on religious liberty. Our eleventh Article of Faith reads as follows:

We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.

Religious freedom is a basic bedrock principle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (see here, for example). Leaders of the Church have spoken extensively about it and continue to do so. And it is a major focus of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University.

But let’s not be naïve about this: For us, it’s not only a matter of principle. Latter-day Saints have historically been and continue to be an unpopular religious minority in the United States and elsewhere. Guarantees of religious liberty are foundational to our faith, but they are also in our urgent self-interest: After they’ve come for the Muslims and the Jews, they will most assuredly come for us.

Elijah and his servant atop Mount Carmel (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Are Jake Lang and the “Christian Crusaders” a major threat at this time? No. Probably not. And maybe they never will be. But neither were Hitler and his Nationalsozialisten in the Germany of the 1920s. I never forget the story of Elijah up on Mount Carmel, as recorded in 1 Kings 18:

43 And [Elijah] said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.

44 And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down that the rain stop thee not.

45 And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel.

“Eternal vigilance,” as the saying goes, “is the price of liberty.”

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