by Delisa Hargrove, cross-posted from LDS Blogs
In much of the northern hemisphere, September begins a season where many transformations occur. Leaves change colors and fall from the trees. Many plants and flowers lose their vibrant leaves and petals and become dormant. The morning chatter of birds gives way to wind’s blustery chatter. Warm weather turns to chill. These transformations are an important natural part of the seasonal cycle.
During the Halloween season, playful, temporary transformations occur, too, as children and adults transform into superheroes, or witches, or dinosaurs, or a host of other individuals or things. “Who do you want to be?” Costume and makeup complete the transformation. And for a season, we expect to see people transformed into something they’re really not.
Transforming Themselves into the Apostles of Christ
I thought about various kinds of transformations as I read Paul’s warning voice in 2 Corinthians 11:13-14.
For such are , deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for himself is transformed into an of light.
Tad R. Callister was serving in the Presidency of the Seventy and as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy when he was called as Sunday School general president. He has served in a number of Church callings including full-time missionary in the Eastern Atlantic States Mission, bishop, stake president, regional representative, mission president, and Area Seventy.
Jasmin is the Web Architect and Content Manager for Book of Mormon Central. She administrates all the web properties of Book of Mormon Central and provides computer support for our users. She also serves as their chief Graphic Designer and the Peer Review Coordinator for the publication of KnoWhys. She enjoys creating new ways to visualize the Book of Mormon and enjoys managing Book of Mormon Central’s volunteers.
Huh? How could that be? I knew I’d just unplugged the phone.
Don Bradley is a writer, editor, and researcher specializing in early Mormon history. Don recently performed an internship with the Joseph Smith Papers Project and is completing his thesis, on the earliest Mormon conceptions of the New Jerusalem, toward an M.A. in History at Utah State University. He has published on the translation of the Book of Mormon, plural marriage before Nauvoo, and Joseph Smith’s “grand fundamental principles of Mormonism” and plans to publish an extensive analysis, co-authored with Mark Ashurst-McGee, on the Kinderhook plates. Don’s first book was The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Missing Contents of the Book of Mormon (being published soon).
Matthew McBride is the Director of Publications for the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is the author of A House for the Most High: The Story of the Original Nauvoo Temple, co-editor of Revelations in Context: The Stories behind the Sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, and a contributor to Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days. He and his wife Mary and their four children live in American Fork, Utah.
Spencer W. McBride is a historian of early American history. He earned his PhD in history at Louisiana State University and is a historian and documentary editor at the Joseph Smith Papers Project. An expert in the intersections of religion and American politics, he is the author of Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America (University of Virginia Press, 2017). He is currently writing a book on Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign (under contract with Oxford University Press).
For more than thirty years, Randall Proctor Spackman has pursued an avocational interest in the chronological texts of the Book of Mormon. Limited aspects of his work with these texts have been published as a FARMS Preliminary Report and in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies and The FARMS Review. Since 2010, he has maintained 
Elder Craig C. Christensen was sustained as a General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on October 5, 2002. At the time of his call he was serving as a member of the Fifth Quorum of the Seventy in the Utah South Area.