Michael's Ancestry
Due to Annecy's many delightful footbridges it is also known as "The Venice of the Alps."
To maintain their true Christian doctrinal faith and escape from religious persecution involving severe torture and violent murders, my early ancestors sought refuge by living secretly in alpine caves under very harsh living conditions where even obtaining food was scarce. During a few generations of time, when the cruel Roman Church persecution of "heretics" was reprieved, my ancestors left their cave homes and built small villages in the fertile valleys near the French Alps.
Annecy, France, with a modern-day population of 25,000, is a small city near the alps built along a canal branching off beautiful Lake Annecy.
Close-up of the walking bridge located at the far distant part of the Annecy Canal in the top photo.
Michael’s Ancestral History
My wife and I have raised eight children, most now married with their own children. We have almost too many great grandchildren to keep track of, and they are all amazing and wonderful personalities. My ancestry on my father’s side places me as a direct descendent of the valiant Vaudois of the northern Italian/French Alps, a family with a noble heritage of Christian faith. The Vaudois (meaning “mountain dwellers”) are considered to be descended from the faithful Christian Saints of Jerusalem—members of the early primitive Church of Jesus Christ.
The reader cannot know the real artist in me without knowing something about this remarkable history which has so greatly impacted my life. This is an unusual and true history that anyone would be proud to be a part of. Therefore I include it as follows in a shortened version which cannot be compressed much more without losing the special impact and significance it has had for my faithful ancestors and for myself.
After Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, religious persecution increased against many Christian church members. Back then, Christ's church members were called "saints," a word used to identify Christ's church members also in numerous passages throughout the Bible. Although far from the truth, these saints of Jerusalem and greater Judea were viewed by Roman governors as a potential growing political power and threat to Roman authority. Therefore, they were soon forced from Jerusalem by Roman decrees under the threat of severe torture and death.
Some Christian saints of Christ's primitive church fled to Pella to live a safer more inconspicuous and secluded life (“pella” means “rock”). In those times Pella was a remote, generally rocky, and somewhat mountainous area containing a flowing spring. It was located about 65 miles north of Jerusalem and about 5 miles west of the Jordan River. However, due to encroaching persecutions, these saints could not even continue there without persecution eventually forcing them out. Succeeding generations gradually left Pella, group by group, in many migrations, periodically relocating westward in countries mostly along the Mediterranean seeking asylum to maintain their Christian religious independence as loyal followers of Christ’s true teachings.
By about 1200 A.D., a branch of these valiant Christians found more permanent refuge by settling in northern Italy in the Italian/French Cottain Alps, also founding some villages below. Now referred to as the Vaudois [vo-dwah], (sometimes later associated with the Huguenots [French protestants]), even in this remote refuge in their own founded villages and alpine strongholds these Christian saints periodically found their lives threatened over many ongoing generations due to the unbelievably relentless oppression of a single powerful so-called Christian church.
By this time in our world’s history, Christ’s true gospel teachings of brotherly love and charity had become ignored by an ever expanding and universally powerful Roman Church who paid mercenaries, or promised them a glorious salvation, for torturing and murdering "heretics." Such "non-believers" they defined as all who would not submit themselves to the Roman Catholic edicts and doctrine and renounce all other contrary religious teachings and beliefs that one might be holding onto as righteous and true.
Papal proclamations, called "bulls," even forbade any citizen to read or own a Bible under penalty of death! Remarkably, these so-called “divine” edicts were enforced by tortures and slaughters instigated by paid mercenaries hired with money, given access to spoils, and/or even for promises of eternal absolution of sin for their terrorizing enforcement.
These unpredictable evil attacks often involved unimaginable horrifying types of severe torture, rape, and murder, and the burning of homes and/or confiscating money and property of the “non-believers” whom they also labeled as devils being carried about by evil spirits.
Pope Clement VIII was the power behind the Roman Church during much of this bloody reign of religious domination and evil oppression of religious conscience.
The Roman Church ordered complete eradication of the Vaudois and Huguenots in periodic episodes of slaughtering, burning, and torturing that involved in a few cases up to ten thousand souls per bloody attack including merciless murders of even their babies and children.
Finally, after 800 years of enduring the Roman Church’s unpredictable episodes of periodic torture and death visited upon not only the Vaudois—a primary group—but also other groups of unyielding Christians who refused to bow to the non-Christian Roman doctrine, a few noble men paved the way to overcome the Roman Church’s corruption with much needed reforms of moral enlightenment. Great minds, including Desiderius Erasmusa, Roger Williams, and George Fox, along with Martin Luther and other brave reformers introduced the new age of unveiled and unpolluted truth that evolved into and became known as the Reformation, gradually bringing to an end the ignorance and inhuman religious persecution of the Mid-evil Times that had for so long suppressed biblical truth and Christian conscience.
Finally, in 1850, within only two generations of the Italian moral reformation that had granted religious freedom, the father in one of these Vaudois families had a rare religious awakening. This was due to his young fourteen year old daughter's dream — an unusually impressive dream that she, Madeleine, described as an experience filled with great spiritual feeling and power. In her dream, as related in detail to her parents the following morning, Madeleine saw specific events involving two missionaries who carried a black book and visited their family. These men taught powerful spiritual truth about God. In her dream, when the black book was opened she felt great heavenly power. The dream was brief, and soon ended. This dream and what it might signify was puzzling to this family that had always refused to affiliate themselves with any church teachings other than those taught from the Bible and also passed down from their forefathers from the days of Christ’s original ancient church which was no longer in existence.
Madeleine’s dream had been all but forgotten, when two years later the dream events began to take place in reality, unfolding exactly as the young girl’s dream had previously revealed. The two missionaries as described in the dream visited them, and were welcomed into their home mainly because they were introduced and recognized exactly as had happened in the dream. The missionaries presented a message concerning a divine restoration of Christ’s original church organization and priesthood authority. The family was amazed and overwhelmed at this unexpected discovery.
Madeleine's father is my third great grandfather, Jean Daniel Malan who lived in a small hamlet near the Agronga River in the Italian region of Piedmont, Italy, called Torre Pellice (meaning rock by rushing water), named partly after the original Pella from where their Jerusalem ancestry originated. The two men in the dream were among the very first Christian missionaries representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to come from America to Italy, a church also referred to by some people as the Mormon Church (Mormon being the name an early prophet of the ancient Americas).
This photograph taken in 1895 shows a street view of part of the village of Torre Pellice which is situated in the foothills of the Cottain Alps near the French border.
Today, the town has a population of about 4,500. In summer months Torre Pellice is a popular and quiet European tourist resort town offering shopping, a marketplace, a few unique shops, and accommodations at a variety of old and new hotels, some available at low budget pricing. There is a highly rated pizzeria and many restaurants. Visitors enjoy tennis courts, horse riding trails, occasional festivals, and winter skiing nearby.
Torre Pellice is located in a valley close to some rugged, but also magnificent alps.
A lovely mountain home on the outskirts of Torre Pellice.
View of the centuries old dwellings mixed in with newer modernized homes and buildings in tody's much larger town of Torre Pellice.
An attractive well kept home in Torre Pellice.
A Farmers Market is enjoyed by many in Torre Pellice.
Numerous old but well maintained buildings still exist in cobblestone street areas of Torre Pellice.
Modern-day roadways are now gradually replacing the cobblestone streets of some parts of Torre Pellice.
The black cover book that the two missionaries carried with them was later discovered to be ancient translated scripture entitled “The Book of Mormon” which, along with the Bible is a second witness of the godly divinity of Jesus Christ. It was not long before the family members received personal confirmations of the divine nature of this missionary message by the witness of the Holy Ghost, the true method of knowing divine truth as taught by their ancestor saints over many generations previous leading back to Christ’s original primitive church of saints.
The Malan family was soon baptized, joining what they assuredly knew to be the true heaven restored Church of Jesus Christ—the church patterned after the true church of their ancient ancestors—the church which also had apostles and prophets who were ordained to act with divine authority by the resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ, Himself. This gospel restoration, originating through the actions of an angel of God with authority from heaven in these latter days, clearly appears to also have been prophesied in the Bible by the apostle John [see Book of Revelation 14:6-7]. Eventually, this ancestral family immigrated to Utah, USA, to be nearer to the home base of the Church.
My mother’s ancestry is English and Danish. My great grandmother emigrated from Denmark to Utah as a young girl due to the desire of her parents to also live among the Latter-day Saints of Utah after having joined this same Church in Denmark.
I have grown up as an active member of the divinely restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well, also unofficially called by some people "the LDS Church" (Latter-day Saints Church). In 1960, at the age of nineteen, I was asked to serve as a full time missionary for more than two years in Denmark. I learned to speak Danish well enough to communicate successfully with the Danish people, and very much enjoyed teaching and baptizing people in this foreign land. I shared all I could about the miraculous divine restoration of true Christianity and the joy that the true gospel of Jesus Christ brings to all who accept the fullness of His divine message.
It is wonderful to know that Christ’s church today has the same organization as His primitive church, with apostles and prophets who govern His church under His direction by priesthood authority and directives from Him. The truth about this restoration of Christ’s true gospel and church organization will be spiritually confirmed to anyone that sincerely repents of sin and asks with a sincere heart and real intent to know the truth of it. This is a loving promise from God. See the biblical Book of James 1:5 and Matthew 7:7-11. Also Book of Mormon, Moroni 10:3-5.
My treasured life values
In spite of being ever impassioned with the opportunities I have had to travel and visit many countries, to teach Jesus Christ’s gospel message as an ordained missionary, and to create sketches and paintings, I consider my Christian heritage, wonderful family, and priceless membership in the Church of Jesus Christ to be even more treasured assets in my life. This is due to the unmistakable spiritual assurance I have been given that all of these earthly things in my life forever link directly into a very real eternal dimension. While on earth, we are given endless opportunities to enrich the spiritual happiness in our lives sufficiently to continue on a much higher spiritual plane in the eternities.
Thank you for taking the time to read about me as an artist and about some of my personal history. I hope you enjoy looking at some of my online paintings, photography, and poetry. Most of all, may God bless your life abundantly!
NOTE: The above content primarily addresses Michael's ancestry. To learn more specifically about the life and artistic interests of the artist, Michael Malan, click on ABOUT THE ARTIST tab.
A few added comments about scripture
Why is the Bible so much like the Book of Mormon?
Mormon is the name of one of the last surviving prophets of the ancient native people of the American continent, a prophet who lived around 400 A.D. These people, whose history we discover from reading about them in the Book of Mormon — some of them surviving into our own era of time and known as native Americans — are a people who became descendants of a Jerusalem prophet named Lehi and his family.
About 600 B.C, this family, in order to escape violence and murder by wicked people, was directed by God to leave Jerusalem and cross an ocean to resettle in the Americas, which were, of course, lands unknown to the rest of the world's civilizations at that early time of history.
Mormon and other early dispensational prophet’s writings of scripture spanned about a thousand years, and are compiled in an abridged record entitled the “Book of Mormon.” This is a book of scripture recorded by prophets over many generations. It was provided to God’s faithful people in this western part of the world in a similar manner as the Bible revelations of scripture were given to God’s children by His prophets in the eastern hemisphere. It is a volume similar to the Bible, but written as inscriptions on thin metal plates. In the Americas, thin metal was used for writing books rather than papyrus.
The book was translated from an ancient Egyptian-like hieroglyphic language (the evolved written language of these people) by the power of God through Joseph Smith, the latter-day prophet that Jesus Christ elected to restore his true Church in the latter times along with its priesthood keys of authority around the year 1830.
Incidentally, it is surprising to many people that the Book of Mormon scripture is filled with inspiring true stories much like the Bible, and this book of ancient scripture has been made available in at least 107 different languages with at least 82 of them entire book translations! The Church now has church organizations, tens of thousands of meeting houses primarily dedicated for Sabbath Day worship, and even beautiful temples similar to the temples God periodically inspired his faithful people to construct anciently. Today, more than 170 beautiful temples have been constructed all paid for by the generous tithes and donations of Christ's church members. These numerous temples are spread among many countries for the blessing of Christ's church member saints throughout the world.
Anciently, Christ’s primitive church was small. Relatively few would listen to Him and follow his teachings which required baptism for a remission of sins and a serious commitment to follow God's commandments. The Bible tells us that Christ’s apostles and others were ordained and sent as missionaries throughout the known world. Christ's apostles visited numerous cities along the Mediterranean seacoast. His disciples set foot in Greece, France, and Italy. Then, in many other nations including as far west as Spain, Britain, and Ireland. In the east, Christ's missionary forces preached in many small nations, also including Syria and Iraq. The people of Northern Africa, Ethiopia, and Egypt were taught of Christ, and some also of India.
The biblical Book of the Acts of the Apostles cites only a few of the many marvelous loving miracles that were done among the people by His anointed servant missionaries after the Savior's crucifixion. His salvation message was sent anciently with spiritual power and baptismal authority into all the world. So it is again today.
In our day, Christ’s Church is still relatively small. Latter-day Saint members of Christ’s restored church of these latter day times throughout the known world now number more than sixteen million members. Many tens of thousands of missionaries are continually ordained with priesthood authority and sent into as many countries of the world as they are allowed to visit, serving full time missions lasting from one to two years or more. The true gospel of Jesus Christ is preached to thousands of God’s children every day, and countless wonderful miracles of blessing take place similar to those which occurred during the Savior’s era.
According to several organizations that survey and rate the most popular books printed and distributed across the globe, the Book of Mormon is currently ranked to be among the top ten most read books on earth, with an estimated 150 million copies that have been sold or distributed up to the year 2017. This represents how much missionary work throughout the world has been done by the thousands of full time missionaries of this church—a testifying effort commanded by Jesus Christ in our day to bring the fullness of His true gospel of ordained authority eventually to all of God’s children throughout the world. This huge number of distributed books does not take into account that this inspiring book of ancient scripture may also be read in its entirety by anyone online free of cost. Click on:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures?lang=eng
Then, at the site, click on Book of Mormon
NOTE: When you click on a listed section or sub-title of the book there will usually
be a few seconds delay to load that content, so be patient.
You may also click on and read the Bible at this same above site at anytime for free! NOTE: As you probably already know, the Bible consists of two parts,
The Old Testament and The New Testament.
At the site, click on and read either one of these two books.
Not surprisingly, the Bible has been rated the number one most published single book, a rating that has long been maintained historically as far back as the time when the printing press first came into regular use and the Bible then began to be provided in an affordable manner to the masses who were then, due to the reformation, becoming much more literate.
Prayerfully reading and studying the Bible and the Book of Mormon provides an indisputable age old and time tested witness of the true gospel teachings of Jesus Christ. They both teach His teachings and commandments. Surely the oldest and most certifiably true history books in the world hold more reliable testimonial evidence of the truth about life, God’s reality, and the spirit of man than anywhere else one can look. This history — also known as scripture truth from God our Eternal Father — unlocks the keys to happiness and wisdom if only we will take the time to read about them and adopt their moral truths into our lives.
The Scriptures Are a True Witness of God's Actual Nature
The Bible and Book of Mormon both witness that God is real—that He is a glorified human being in whose image and likeness we are created, as is clearly witnessed in the Bible's Book of Genesis, and as the Bible states in Moses’ description of seeing God, and also as described by prophets in the Book of Mormon. Yes, Almighty God is a very different being than that false description of Him that was finally formulated after the month long Council of Nicea sponsored by Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D. and derived as the Nicene Creed.
Formulating this creed description mostly involved man’s philosophical reasoning and numerous prominent ecclesial including many of the Church of Rome under the prevailing influence of Emperor Constantine. Strange as it may seem, for long centuries this definition of God was perpetuated with only very minor modifications and is still believed and set forth in most Christian Church creeds of today. God is perfect in love and justice, and He loves all of us on earth who are his spirit children. Jesus Christ, also His Son—in spirit and in the flesh—passed onto us His Father’s full teachings of the true nature of God, teachings that are not even found in any Nicene based creed!
Jesus taught that He does nothing except that which He sees and hears the Father do (John 5:19; 8:38; 8:26-27). Christ “had seen” God the Father do things, and Abraham, Isaiah, Moses, and other prophets also witnessed seeing God and/or speaking with Him. For a few examples: [Adam and Eve] see God walking nearby, Genesis 3:8; Others who saw God: [Abraham] Genesis 12:7; 18:22-33; [Moses] Exodus 33:17-23; [Isaiah] Isaiah 6:1). Moreover, if man was created in the likeness and image of God as explained in Genesis (1:26-27), and if one holds the Bible to be God’s word, then God must have an image in the shape of a body—a glorified human being! The prophet that God chose to restore Christ’s true gospel back to the earth has also seen God and has spoken with Him which is also in agreement with all of the fore-stated scriptures about the true nature of God.
The latter-day prophet, Joseph Smith, witnessed that the Father is a God and is also a man—the Eternal Father of our spirits—possessing power and glory and perfection beyond any mortal description. Christian creeds state that God has no body, no image, and is invisible and unknowable. Some creeds even state “without body, parts, and passions.” But God has a body and passions—He is a God of love! Jesus said, “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” [John 17:3] To those who anciently knew not God and refused to obey Him, God said He would scatter them and they would serve false Gods which "neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell" [Deut. 4:27-28]. False gods are not real almighty glorified personages.
God is not the unknowable mysterious “three persons in one” but “not actually a person” invisible essence that is stated in Christian creeds! The Bible also speaks in many places of God’s love, anger, hate, jealousy, hearing, seeing, etc. It speaks much about God’s passions and bodily likeness to mankind too.
Our Eternal Father gave us rules (commandments) that promise our greatest happiness when we follow them. We cannot resurrect and enter into God’s heavenly kingdom to be with Him if He has no shape or body—if He is no actual being—and Christ cannot sit on a throne at the Father’s right hand (as mentioned in the Bible and ironically even mentioned in most creeds) unless the Father is a real being with a right hand and can sit on a throne.
Jesus Christ’s true gospel teachings which include knowing who God really is and what we need to do to please Him have been revealed in Christ’s restored true church. I believe we should do our utmost to learn all about this amazing true restoration and try our best to always keep and follow God’s commandments which are the essential guidelines that will lead us to achieve our greatest happiness and success both in this life and in the eternal life to come.
End of This Posting