Joseph Smith survives today as one of nineteenth-­century America's most controversial religious figures. He claimed visions of angels, dictated a lost record of the ancient inhabitants of the New World, announced new revelations from heaven, and restored what he believed was an ancient yet more complete form of Christianity, over which he presided as prophet, seer, and revelator until his death in 1844. A child of impoverished Yankees, raised in rural New England and New York, Smith grew up in a hardscrabble frontier culture that embraced a spectrum of competing folkways, religious fervor, and intellectual thought. He was both a product of his times and a syncretic innovator of a compelling vision for God's people. Perhaps more importantly, he was the self-proclaimed herald of Christ's imminent return, called by the Father to reveal the fullness of the Christian gospel for the last time. As prize-winning historian Richard S. Van Wagoner narrates the first twenty-five years of Smith's life, the young seer struggled with his family through a series of roller-­coaster hardships, eventually securing work as a scryer of lost treasure and money digger. In the wake of successive failures, including run-ins with the law, Smith's glass-­looking activities gave way to more religiously oriented pursuits, especially after a heavenly messenger showed him the location of buried golden plates containing a pre-Columbian story of the Americas and charged him with the record's decipherment and publication. Smith also learned, following another extraordinary vision, that his sins had been remitted, that humanity was in a state of apostasy, and that Jesus would soon return to the earth. After eloping with Emma Hale, much to her skeptical father's chagrin, the couple settled down to complete work on what would appear for sale in early 1830 as the Book of Mormon. By this time, Smith had begun to shoulder more fully the prophet's mantle, issuing proclamations in God's own voice, and on April 6, 1830, organized the Church of Christ, known today as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "I treat the early years of the Mormon prophet as I would approach an archaeological dig," Van Wagoner explains. "The deepest levels, those deposited first and least contaminated by subsequent accumulates, are of primary interest in my pursuit of the historical Joseph. Mindful of the prophet's controversial reputation, I try to remain sensitive to the impact that some of the more problematic elements of his behavior may have on believers. But truth is often best evidenced in the detail." Van Wagoner's meticulously researched study offers more detail than any previously published biography of Smith, and provides what may be the most culturally nuanced analysis ever attempted of the early years of the American prophet.

GOD ENCOUNTERS ARE FOR EVERYONE! Every sincere seeker of the Lord can have God encounters! Journey with James and Michal Ann Goll as they share how they discovered a lifestyle of God encounters. You will enjoy a new depth of fellowship with God as you find yourself enjoying a new and refreshing intimacy with your Lord; an intimacy that brings the most powerful deliverance and healing in your life. You will see how God's tangible presence will: Free you from guilt Free you from bitterness and fear Heal you from pain of the past Open your heart to hear and respond to God like never before. Jim and Michal Ann Goll are seasoned prophets, recognized internationally for their work. Their exhaustive research on this topic, endlessly backed up by Scripture, is evident throughout this book. God Encounters is an excellent primer on how to move into deeper realms of the prophetic and supernatural as well how to reap the benefits of God encounters.

The Seer’s Curse is the debut novel from a promising young author. Evocative, captivating and endearing with multi-generational relevance. Although set in a fantasy world, it is relevant for today as it deals with friendship, acceptance and self-discovery. The Seer’s Curse is a beautifully crafted fantasy novel about friendship, acceptance and self-discovery with fresh and inspiring myths woven throughout the fabric of this heart-warming and touching tale. Although written for children aged nine and over, it has an ageless relevance that appeals to all. When Orleigh, daughter of the village leader, is born in the wrong place and without her mother to guide her, only the Seer is aware that she has been separated from her fate. Having manipulated the villagers to believe that Orleigh is cursed, the Seer arranges for Orleigh to be taken and offered to the Earth God, Teymos. Yet still fate is not restored. Years later, when Orleigh’s childhood friend Piprin discovers that Orleigh might still be alive, he resolves to rescue her and to return her to the Land of Mortals. Guided by the Seer and the myths of his childhood, Piprin sets out on a quest to the Land of Gods, where mortals like him are forbidden.

Sibeal has always known that she is destined for a spiritual life, and is committed to it with all her heart. The only thing left for her to do before she enters the nemetons is to spend the summer visiting her sisters, Muirrin and Clodagh, on the northern island of Inis Eala. But Sibeal has barely set foot on the island before a freak storm out at sea sinks a ship before her eyes. In spite of frantic efforts, only three survivors are fished alive from the water, and one of them, a man Sibeal names Ardal, clings to life by the merest thread. Life continues on the island, as it must, and Sibeal befriends Ardal as he begins to regain his health. But it becomes clear there is something unusual about the three shipwrecked strangers. Why won't the beautiful Svala speak? And what is it that the gravely ill Ardal can't remember - or won't tell? When a visiting warrior is found dead at the bottom of a cliff, and an attempt is made on Ardal's life, Sibeal finds herself a pawn in a deadly game. The truth will be far more astonishing than she could ever have believed - and the consequences for Sibeal unimaginable.

The rational part of man, being divine, knows. The irrational part, so-called reason, speculates. Swedenborg was natural-born seer, not an initiated adept. But his interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis is the same as that of the Hermetic philosophers. Eugenius Philalethes had never attained “the highest pyrotechny,” but he defined the “philosopher’s stone” spiritually, as Triune Unity. Man is also a “stone,” physically, the effect of Divine Cause which is the Universal Solvent. The great sages of antiquity, those of the mediæval ages, and the mystical writers of our more recent times, were all Hermetists. Truth is known but to the few; the rest, unwilling to withdraw the veil from their own hearts, imagine it blinding the eyes of their neighbour. Instead of saying that God “made” man after His own image, we ought in truth to say that man anthropomorphises God, i.e., he imagines “God” after his own image. The subject of the Hermetic art is man, and the object of the art is the perfection of man. Sympathy is the offspring of light, and antipathy is a shadow from the abyss of darkness, says the Paracelsian physician. Elementals are the spirits of the four elements of the terrestrial world. Forms come and pass but the ideas that created them and the material which gave them objective existence remain. Privation is not considered in Aristotelean philosophy as a principle in the composition of bodies, but as an external property in their production; for production is a change by which the matter passes from the shape it has not, to that which it assumes.