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A report from Moroni Day

A report from Moroni Day

Last updated on: September 22, 2026 at 9:14 am by Dan Peterson

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A report from Moroni Day 2026-09-22T09:14:21-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The new/old Provo City Center Temple — the aboveground portion, anyway; much is underground — from the south. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image). The new Scripture Central offices are across the street, nearby.

We’re just back from the annual 21 September Moroni Day celebration that is put on by one of our sister organizations, Scripture Central.

The invocation was given by Elder Lawrence C. Corbridge, an emeritus member of the Seventy. Richard E. Turley, Jr., the former assistant Church historian who is now working on the forthcoming official biography of Joseph Smith, spoke on “Moroni as Joseph Smith’s Mentor.” Lynne Hilton Wilson discussed how Moroni’s mission settled issues raised during the “Second Great Awakening.” Dow Wilson, the organization’s CEO, offered a brief report on “The State of Scripture Central.” The final speaker was Elder Kevin G. Brown of the Seventy, whose inaugural General Conference address in October 2025 (“The Eternal Gift of Testimony”) was extraordinarily and understandably well received. He devoted his remarks tonight to “The Miracle of the Book of Mormon Studies.” Jeannie Welch offered the benediction.

Before and after the program, an open house introduced invited guests to their impressive new digs in downtown Provo, their several recording studios, and etc. A short film about organization was shown between speeches, and a nice solo guitar arrangement of “Beautiful Savior” was included among the presentations.

Scripture Central is doing excellent work and putting up some impressive numbers.

“Emma Smith” (portrayed by Camrey Bagley Fox) prepares to meet with “Brigham Young” for a scene in the Interpreter Foundation’s 2024 movie Six Days in August.

The newest installment of Becoming Brigham is up, as of early this morning: “Why Not Sidney Rigdon — Becoming Brigham, Episode 35.”

You’ve watched it already. Several times. You were so enraptured that you forgot to eat breakfast. In fact, you’ve subscribed to the series. You’re determined to catch up on all of the past episodes that you’ve missed.

Okay. So far, so good. But what now?

Have you called Becoming Brigham to the attention of your extended family? Your neighbors? Your ward members and work colleagues? Have you urged it on perfect strangers standing in line with you at the bank? Have you spoken about it with employees at Burger King and In-and-Out who were patiently waiting to take your order?

Have you convened watch parties for the series at your home and fed vast quantities of pizza to your guests?

Do you regard highway billboards that are devoted to any other subject as visual pollution and a complete waste of space?

Have you created a lawn sign for Becoming Brigham and placed it in your front yard? Have you surreptitiously, in the middle of the night, placed similar lawn signs in the front yards of your neighbors? Have you painted becomingbrigham.com on the side doors and in the rear window of your car?

Have you written to your congressman, rhapsodizing about Becoming Brigham? Do you show up at Colorado State football games carrying a placard calling attention to each new episode? Have you hired a skywriting plane to publicize the series above your community?

The possibilities are endless.

Sunset on the Oregon coast (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I’ve begun to read a book by Mark Anthony that’s entitled The Afterlife Frequency: The Scientific Proof of Spiritual Contact and How That Awareness Will Change Your Life (Novato, CA: The New World Library, 2021). The title of the book didn’t exactly entice me; I’m turned off by vague talk about spirits “vibrating at a different frequency,” and such like, and I tend to dismiss glib invocations of quantum physics by non-physicists as a way to introduce highly speculative suggestions about the afterlife, consciousness, and so on. And Mark Anthony, an attorney and a medium who styles himself “the Psychic Lawyer” and a “Psychic Explorer,” indulges in a lot of that kind of talk. Too much, for my taste, at least as far as I’ve gotten into his book.

What caught my attention was the fact that the foreword to The Afterlife Frequency was written by Gary E. Schwartz, who received his doctorate from Harvard University and who was a professor of psychiatry and psychology at Yale University as well as the director of the Yale Psychophysiology Center and the co-director of the Yale Behavioral Medicine Clinic from 1976 to 1988. He is now retired as Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery and from serving as the director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona. (Dr. Schwartz has tested Mark Anthony under formal research conditions in his lab.) I’ve read some of Dr. Schwartz’s work and I have considerable respect for what I’ve read. The cover of The Afterlife Frequency also features a jacket endorsement from Dr. Jeffrey Long, who has also, in my judgment, done interesting and significant work on near-death experiences and related topics.

I bought The Afterlife Frequency for its reports of seeming encounters with the personalities of deceased individuals, which, thus far, have been fairly few and far between. To this point, he’s included two apparent narratives of his mediumistic successes, at pages 48-53 and 64-68. I’ll note them, and I’ll probably pass the references on in a large collective footnote somewhere, but I won’t base anything weighty upon them. They are weakened by the fact that they’re self-reported and uncorroborated.

I was somewhat more impressed by a case of apparent terminal lucidity — a subject on which I’ve done a bit of reading (there’s relatively little such reading, at this point, to do) and upon which I’ve reported a few times previously here on this blog:

“What is Consciousness?” (5 February 2026)
“From ‘On the Banks of the River Styx'” (30 December 2025)
“On The Way To Its Actual, Its Ancestral, Home” (31 October 2025)
“Some Thoughts On Mind And Brain (And Spirit?” (26 October 2025)
“A “Most Beautiful And Wondrous And Moving Thing”” (20 October 2025)
“Looking Westward” (2 August 2024)
“Brief Notes on “Terminal Lucidity” and Consciousness in Brain-Death” (27 February 2022)
“Terminal Lucidity” (30 September 2017)

Sunset in Luxor, Egypt (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Mark Anthony tells a story on pages 34-38 of The Afterlife Frequency about a German woman who came to America as a war bride after the Second World War. Her husband, a career soldier, was killed in action during the October 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam, leaving her a widow with two children, a girl and a boy, after having just turned forty. In her mid-eighties, she began showing signs of Alzheimer’s.

“The Alzheimer’s progressed. She was disoriented — didn’t even recognize us, thought her grandkids were strangers. Things went from bad to worse, and she was bedridden. Mom was totally non responsive — she lapsed into a coma. . . .

“Dr. Kathy Rose, Mom’s doctor, said her brain was so severely damaged by the Alzheimer’s that she was incapable of speech and would never regain consciousness.” (36)

After about six weeks, the nursing facility notified the two children that their mother was dying and that they should come as soon as possible.

They arrived to find her comatose, as expected, and to be told that her vital signs were slowing.

“Suddenly Mom opened her eyes. . . . We were stunned. All we could say was ‘Mom! We love you!'”

“Give me a hug before I go.” . . .

“Mom looked from side to side at both of us — I mean really looked into our eyes. She knew who we were. Then she looked between us, stared at the foot of her bed, and said ‘Edward! My love! You came!’ And I [Alfred] said, ‘Mom, Daddy’s dead — you’re hallucinating.'”

“I knew she wasn’t,” Kristen cut her brother short and continued. “Mom was still staring toward the foot of the bed, and then she looked a little to the left. Her eyes lit up, and she said, ‘Mutti! Vati! Danke, dass Sie für mich gekommen sind.'”

“At first I thought she’d gone incoherent again and was babbling, but she wasn’t — she was speaking German!” (37)

Shortly thereafter, the widow died.

“I kinda went off a bit on Dr. Rose,” Alfred said. “I wanted to know how this was possible. I mean, Mom had Alzheimer’s. She was brain damaged! She was in a coma! Dr. Rose said she’s never talk again! I asked the doctor how Mom could just wake up, recognize us, and speak coherently in English and then in German! How was this possible?”

“What did the doctor say?” I asked.

“The neurologist stood there staring at Mom’s body and then said, ‘My God. I think we’ve just witnessed terminal lucidity.” (38)

On pages 38-39, the author offers a few reflections on that phenomenon, terminal lucidity.

A final note: Although it is indeed perfectly coherent and completely grammatical German, I doubt that the purported quotation from the widow (“Mutti! Vati! Danke, dass Sie für mich gekommen sind” [Mommy! Daddy! Thank you for coming for me!]) represents a completely accurate memory. Why? Because (a) the narrator expressly says that her German is rusty and (b) it seems extremely unlikely that the woman would use the formal Sie (rather than the familiar du) in addressing her husband and her parents. And that, I confess, does cast at least a little bit of doubt on the story.)

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