We’ve heard this remarkable choir tonight. They sing with such tremendous power. This choir has become a great national treasure. Its roots reach back 150 years to the pioneer beginnings of these mountain communities. We have had a wonderful time listening to them. I wish they could go on all evening…I would wish particularly. At the conclusion of my remarks, they will sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which has stirred audiences throughout the world.

Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on
He has sounded forth the trumpet that will never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat
O be swift my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet
Our God is marching on
In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free
While God is marching on

This great hymn of hope stirs us now as it did more than a century ago when it was first sung. I promise you, every one of you, that you will be moved in your hearts as you again hear these talented voices singing out these marvelous and eloquent words. These words speak of the theme of this meeting: that theme is recognition of, and trust in the Almighty, who has guided this nation since its inception. I salute Crystal Jolley for the excellent talk she has given.

A news magazine writer asked me the other day during an interview concerning my belief concerning the Constitution of our country. I replied that I felt it was inspired, that both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were brought forth under the inspiration of God to establish and sustain the freedom of the people of this nation. I told him I looked upon the Founding Fathers as men who believed in God, as men who prayed to God, as men who recognized God and wished to do His will. What a singular and remarkable group they were! As I look across the world today, I search in vain for such a group has walked together across the stage of history when this nation was born.

Charles Malek, Secretary General of the United States, once said on this campus, “I respect all men and it is from this respect for none that I say there are no great leaders in the world today. In fact, greatness itself is laughed to scorn. You should not be great today; you should sink yourself into the herd. You should not be distinguished from the crowd; you should simply be one of the many.” He continued, “The commanding voice is lacking, the voice which speaks little but which when it speaks, it speaks with compelling moral authority. This kind of voice is not congenial to this age. The age flattens and levels down every distinction into drab uniformity. Respect for the high, the noble, the great, the rare, the specimen that appears once every hundred or every thousand years is gone. Respect at all is gone. If you ask people whom and what people do respect, the answer is literally nobody and nothing. This is simply an unrespecting age; it is the age of utter mediocrity. To become a leader today, even a mediocre leader, is a most uphill struggle. You are constantly in every way and from every side pulled down. One wonders who of those living today will be remembered a thousand years from now, the way we remember with profound respect Plato and Aristotle, Christ and Paul and Augustine and Aquinas.” He concluded, “If you believe in prayer my friends, and I know that you do, then pray that God send great leaders, especially great leaders of the spirit.”

Just think of a moment of George Washington, of Franklin, of Madison, of the Adams’s, of Thomas Jefferson, and their associates who signed the Declaration of Independence, or participated in the Constitutional Convention. Where in all the world today can even one or two such men be found, let alone the great aggregation that participated in the birth of America?

Can anyone deny that they were raised up unto this very purpose, that working together, they brought forth on this continent an independent nation at the risk of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor? It is my conviction that while we’ve had a few great leaders since then, there has not been before or since, so large a group of talented, able, and dedicated men as those whom we call the Founding Fathers of this nation. For as long as they lived they acknowledged the hand of the Almighty in the affairs of this republic.

We have on our coinage and our currency a national motto. It simply says, In God We Trust. I know of no other nation with such a motto. Other nations use, By the Grace of God, but none other categorically states, In God We Trust. This is the foundation upon which this nation was established: an unequivocal trust in the power of the Almighty to guide and defend us. The hand of God was manifest when the United States of America came into being. It was evident even before then. Before disembarking from the Mayflower, our pilgrim fathers drafted and signed the compact which would become the instrument of their governance, the first such document drafted on this continent. It began with these words, “In the name of God, Amen.” It went on to say that the signers, “by these present, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic.”

When George Washington resigned his commission as General of the Army he wrote, “I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last act of my official life, but commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendents of them to His holy keeping.” As Crystal has reminded us tonight, in his first inaugural address in 1789 he stated, “No people can be bound to acknowledge and ignore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

We posted the colors tonight and stood and gave a pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and the Republic for which it stands. We said, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. That phrase, one nation under God, essentially comes from Abraham Lincoln. In the great Gettysburg address he stated, “This nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.” That phrase was not in the pledge of allegiance that was spoken when I was a boy. Back in those days, all of us in grade school, if the weather permitted, would form at the front steps of the school. The flag would be posted and we would recite together the pledge of allegiance before going into the building for our daily school work. I am grateful for the addition of the words, One Nation Under God. To me, it is tremendously meaningful.

There are those in this nation today who would delete all this reference to Deity. They would take it out of the pledge of allegiance. They would take it from our coinage. They would remove it from any mention in our national life. John Wesley Heele has written, “Gettysburg was the high water mark of the rebellion. It involved the destiny of the union. Realizing this, it was Lincoln who at while battle was being fought was driven to his knees to struggle like Jacob of old, alone with God, until in Lincoln’s own words, “God told me he would give me Gettysburg and I believed Him.” When the news of the victory reached him, he gave to God the glory and set aside a day of national thanksgiving.

When Mrs. Margaret Thatcher was on this campus and I was talking with her, she said, “I cannot understand it; you have the motto, In God We Trust on your coinage and yet you cannot mention the name of Deity in the classrooms of your schools. She wondered, and I wonder about our consistency.

At this meeting tonight, the first verse of our national anthem was sung. We seldom hear the third verse, which include these words,

O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”

As boys who would grow to become citizens of this nation, we repeated the scout oath including these words; On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country. Now that is even being challenged in the courts of the land. According to the Wall Street Journal, the state of New Jersey last year passed a law banishing the mention of God from state courtroom oaths. Following this action by the legislature, a county just decided to ban Bibles for such oaths because, “You know who is mentioned inside.”

Without acknowledgement of deity, without recognition of the Almighty as the ruling power of the universe, the all important element of personal and national accountability shrinks and dies. Are we so arrogant as to believe that we can get along without Him? We see the manifestation of that arrogance in the great host of social problems with which we deal these days: teen pregnancy, abandoned families and broken homes, failure to recognize the property and rights of others, gangs of young people aimlessly cruising the streets of our cities, and many other problems like these have resulted in substantial part at least, from failure to recognize that there is a God to whom someday, each of us must give an accounting.

The wars in which this nation has been involved during this, the most bloody century of all time have resulted from the greed, the avarice, the arrogance, the conceit, and egotism of men in power who sought to enslave and exercise dominion over others. Their very attitude has been totally incompatible with recognition of the Almighty to whom each of us is accountable.

There can be no doubt of the sickness in our society today. We cannot build prisons fast enough to accommodate the need. Humanism has replaced worship in the lives of so many. We are forsaking the Almighty and I fear He is forsaking us. We are closing the door against the God, whose sons and daughters we are. We sang, “My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.” We need to sing again and again the fourth verse of that hymn:

Our Father’s God to Thee, Author of liberty, To Thee we sing
Long may our land be bright, with freedom’s holy light,
Protect us by thy might, Great God our king

Going back to George Washington’s first inaugural speech, he voiced the hope, “that the foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.” He went on to say, “…there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which heaven itself has ordained.” The psalmist of old wrote, “The counsel of the Lord standeth forever. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” Paul the apostle declared, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

I believe we are paying a very high price for our increasing secularism. Jefferson said, “God who gave us life, gave us liberty.” Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are a gift of God?

Lincoln declared, “What constituted the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts; our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirity which prized liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere.”

We go back to the prophetic words of Alexis de Tocqueville, who came here from France as a young man in the early 1800s. After traveling widely he said, “I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors, in her fertile fields and boundless forests, in her rich minds and vast commerce, in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic congress and in her matchless Constitution, but not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and her power. America is great because America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

I am convinced that if we are to continue to have the freedoms which came of the inspiration of the Almighty to our Founding Fathers, we must return to the God who is their true author. We need to worship him in spirit and in truth. We need to acknowledge his all powerful hand. We need to humble ourselves before him and seek his guidance in all that concerns matters of state. Do we believe in the separation of church and state? Of course we do, but that belief does not preclude a petition to the Almighty for wisdom and guidance as we walk through these perilous times.

We celebrate the freedom of our nation. We hold this festival in remembrance of this greatest of all boons and blessings. May we look to him as the author of our liberty. Is it too much to expect that prayer, public and private, be once again established in our national and private lives? Then with a general acknowledgement of the God in whom we put our trust, we may expect a diminution in our social problems, an increase in public and private morality, and a renewed sense of freedom and liberty. I realize that after the choir sings we shall have a benediction on this sacred service to be offered by Senator Bennett, but if you will bear with me, I wish to conclude my remarks with a few words of solemn prayer. I invite all of you to lower your heads and close your eyes.

Oh God, our Eternal Father, thou who presides over the nations and their people, we come unto thee in prayer. We thank thee for this great and sovereign nation of which we are citizens. Touch the minds of those of our Congress that they shall stand tall and independent in defense of the liberty of the people. Bless the chief executive. He is our president. Let thy spirit move upon him to bring to pass those measures which will lift the burdens of government from the backs of the people and keep this nation under God, a citadel of freedom standing as an example to all the world. Bless the Supreme Court of the United States which in recent days has declared unconstitutional a measure designed to secure the religious liberty of the people of this nation. May a way be found under thy divine inspiration to bring to pass another measure which will be sustained by the court. May thy peace rest upon this nation. May we as a people look to thee and live. May the benevolent hand of the almighty protect us from the evil forces of the world. May humanism and secularism bend to an increased knowledge of these our Father and our God. May a spirit of brotherhood spread throughout the land. As we pray to thee, we do so in our manner and respect the prayers of others who speak after their manner. That thou wilt hear us all as we lift our voices in behalf of our beloved nation. Almighty Father, hear us, guide us, protect us, make us both strong and benevolent before the world. Forgive our erring ways. May we turn back to thee in our search for wisdom, for guidance, for direction, we humbly ask in Jesus’ sacred name, Amen.

I intend to speak bluntly. We are living in a period of grave danger. It is fitting that we meet in Philadelphia, the scene of one of history’s most illustrious moments. One hundred ninetytwo years ago, September 17, 1787, thirty-nine men affixed their signatures to a document that formed a government which institutionalized safeguards to protect the freedom of its citizens. Few today appreciate the significance of this American Revolution which indeed, was a revolution for the rights of mankind everywhere.

What happened on that occasion distinguishing this revolution in the annals of time, is that men determined they, the people, were sovereign under God. The Declaration of Independence affirmed the doctrine that man’s most basic rights of life, liberty and property were unalienable. That affirmation rejected the political ideology of the centuries that such rights were subject to a sovereign’s benevolence or whim.

Too few appreciate the fact that we live in one of history’s most exceptional moments, a time of unprecedented freedom. Freedom, as the western world knows it, has been experienced by only a small fraction of the human family at any time. The stark reality of this fact led two distinguished University of Rochester professors to publish this statement during America’s Bicentennial:

Humanity has survived in various states of tyranny for thousands of years. One might even say this is the natural state ofaffairs for man. Future historians may look back and see the period 1776 to 1976 as a brief 200 year accident in the history of man in which real freedom existed for all…

Pause for a moment and ponder our legacy of freedom. Few nations enjoy the freedom to speak, freedom to own or participate in ownership of property and business, freedom to worship, freedom to print, freedom to travel at home or abroad, freedom even to censure public officials, freedom to have the privacy we desire, and freedom of private enterprise, though this latter freedom is greatly threatened by a mentality toward collectivism in recent decades.

But those freedoms are the heritage of the western world!

Today this freedom is being threatened by another revolution, a recurrence of the barbaric practice of political propaganda, human subjugation, and even mass genocide. That system of slavery, Marxism, has imprisoned the bodies and minds of over one billion of the earth’s inhabitants. Consider the contradiction of its ideology -

It proclaims peace, yet leaves in its wake the groans of the dying and the misery of the human family.

It predicts paradise on earth, but has left a trail of carnage, bloodshed, oppression, and depopulated nations -a desolate wilderness. If Communism is paradise, why have half a million Vietnamese fled from paradise?

It promises equality of privileges, but stands in contempt of the human rights of men everywhere.

Equality comes only in death and millions who have coveted Communist equality have prematurely achieved that end. Dictatorship, despotism, and demagoguery are hallmarks of its institutional soul.

George F. Will, a noted columnist, recently wrote that even the French philosophers who, after reading Solzhenitsyn, concluded (better late than never) that the “Gulag is the essence, not an accident, of Communism.”

Yet so many in the West, supposedly enlightened to Communism’s grand design for world domination, accommodate themselves to it, grant apologies for its “excesses,” capitulate to its demands, and permit the free world to become encircled by its tentacles.

Recently the President of the United States congratulated the nation on having overcome its “inordinate fear of Communism.” Perhaps he is right in one sense: there is a complacency toward Communism. But I agree with Andrew Knight, editor of The Economist of London, that the influence of the United States has been diminished in recent years because there is a lack of perception of the problem. (U.S. News and World Report, October IS, 1979, p. 77.)

I ask: Is it inordinate fear of Communism to censure its record of almost total suppression of individual rights, a fact hardly mentioned by an administration whose hallmark was to be for “human rights” of men everywhere?

Is it inordinate fear of Communism to acknowledge 60 million political prisoners in the gulag?

Is it inordinate fear of Communism to recognize the fiendish butchery of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia where perhaps over 2 million died? This is a fact that almost escaped notice in the western press.

Is it inordinate fear of Communism to distrust the Kremlin’s claim that its military build-up is only defensive?

The struggle for freedom is more momentous than a decade ago, yet the conventional wisdom says, “You must learn to live with Communism and give up your ideas of national sovereignty.” Tell that to the millions – yes, the scores of millions – who have met death or imprisonment under the tyranny of Communism! Such would be the death knell of freedom and all we hold dear.

I am a witness to nations and people deprived of their freedom. I was there. I watched the great Iron Curtain drop around nations which formerly had prized their freedom good people. I was aghast as they were written off by the stroke of a pen. I saw Poland abandoned by nations with a heritage of freedom – the United States and Great Britain.

I was in Warsaw in June of 1946. I shared a room with seven other men in the Polonia Hotel, the only hotel even partially intact in the great city of Warsaw. The United States Ambassador, Bliss Lane, had his office in part of the building. He was so saddened that he resigned and wrote the book, I Saw Poland Betrayed. which detailed the failure of the United States and England to keep their promise that the Poles would have a free election after the war.

I was saddened when the United States refused to help at the time of the Hungarian revolution – when Freedom Fighters with bare hands and stones resisted bullets, tanks, and artillery. I confess I was ashamed at the response of my country. Freedom did not die that day (October 23, 1956) for Hungary alone. Hope died for many in other captive nations and has only recently been somewhat revived by courageous men willing to speak out against oppression.

As the Cabinet member assigned to agriculture, there seemed to be little I could do. But I knew we must respond in some way. I urged the President to make a strong, vigorous denunciation of the brutality of the Soviet Union in Hungary. I was asked to draft such a statement which was later released on Human Rights Day. Here is a portion of that statement:

The recent orgy of brutality in Hungary has moved free people everywhere to reactions of horror and revulsion. Our hearts are filled with sorrow. Our deepest sympathy goes out to the courageous, liberty loving people of Hungary.

The Hungarian Massacre repudiates and negates almost every article in the Declaration of Human Rights.

It denies that men are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and that all should act in the spirit of brotherhood. It denies the human right to life, liberty, and security of person.

It denies the principles that no one shall be subjected to torture, or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

It denies that all are equal before the law and entitled to its equal protection.

It denies the right to fair and public hearings by an independent and impartial tribunal.

It denies the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

It denies the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

It denies the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

It denies that no one shall be held in slavery or servitude.

It denies that the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.

It denies the right to leave one’s country or to seek in other countries asylum from persecution.

That these human rights have been so flagrantly repudiated is cause for mourning, national and worldwide.

…Once again the tree of liberty has been watered by the blood of martyrs. The courage and sacrifices of the brave Hungarian people have written anew in crimson the sentiment attributed to Patrick Henry nearly two centuries ago (“Give me liberty or give me death.”)

On this Human Rights Day, it is for each one of us to recognize anew that we are brothers in our Father’s house, and each is truly his brother’s keeper. We cannot shed that responsibility, nor do we want to. Let us resolve on this day that the world shall never forget what tyranny has done in Hungary.

Yes, I have stood face to face with tyranny. I was host to Mr. Nikita Khrushchev for a half-day when he visited the United States. I am not proud of this. I stated my reservation to the President and I still feel it was a mistake to invite this godless despot, dedicated to our destruction, as a state visitor.

Since that day, I have witnessed the Soviet Union spread its abominable ideology throughout the world. Every stratagem is used – trade, war, revolution, violence, hate, and immorality – to accomplish its ends. Since 1939, Europe lost three countries and parts of five others. In Asia, Outer Mongolia, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos are Communist dominated. In Africa, Russia controls Angola and has a military foothold in other countries. In the Mideast, Moscow influences Syria, Iraq, and South Yemen. In Latin America, she has a satellite in Cuba, which in turn exports the Marxist revolution in Africa and Central America.

I sadly confess that I cannot understand how the United States of America can maintain diplomatic relations with a nation determined to bring about our destruction.

I did not believe I would ever see the day when my own nation would be signatory to legitimatizing the Soviet conrol over the so-called captive nations of Eastern Europe but I have. The Helsinki accords were to “open up” the closed Russian society and countries under Soviet domination. There was to be greater freedom of thought, religion, travel, and “human contacts.”

Today we must conclude that the “Spirit of Helsinki” is nothing more than a diplomatic triumph for the Soviet Union, and a solidifying of their domination over the captive nations.

I did not believe I would ever see the day when we would accede to the expulsion of liberty and freedom-loving Taiwan from the United Nations on conditions of granting full participative membership to atheistic Red China – but I have!

I did not expect to see the day when we would ever grant the diplomatic, military and political concessions to Marxist leaders – but I have!

Nor did I ever think we would see the time when the United States would permit a Soviet brigade 90 miles off its shoreline in clear violation of the Monroe Doctrine – but I have!

The Soviet Union is not interested in the freedom and the human rights of all nations. Does the mention of these countries inspire confidence in the Soviets: Mozambique, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Rhodesia, Afghanistan, Cambodia? Everyone of these countries is a symbol of Communist aggression and the contempt of the Soviet Union for the free world and the rights of men everywhere. No one with the interest of freedom for all men will really say that the “detente” process has brought about a relaxation of tension, or has contributed toward the betterment of the world in general.

Now I sincerely believe that the United States and the West have an interest in and obligation to make friends of leaders of free nations. I do not believe that we are obligated, in the interest of peace, to barter away national sovereignty, nor to export technology to a nation that has as its declared purpose the subjugation of free men of all nations. It is a matter of record that the Soviet Union has violated almost every agreement made with the United States.

How has the Soviet Union gained a stranglehold on one-third of the world’s population? Alexander Solzhenitsyn answers: “It was because of a process on the part of Americans which has been in progress for more than 30 years of short-sighted concessions, a process of giving up and giving up, in hope that at some point the wolf will have eaten enough.” His appeal to American leaders is to “stop the senseless process of endless concessions to aggressors, these clever legal arguments for why we should make one concession after another give up more and more and more.” (U.s. News and World Report, July 14, 1975.)

Then in one of the most humiliating requests ever made to leaders of free nations, Solzhenitsyn implored: “When they bury us … please do not send them the shovels … or the latest earthmoving equipment.” (Warning to the West, p. 84.)

How much more humiliation must the West endure before our spine stiffens?

It is a fact that the West has built and sustained a faltering Soviet economy. Were it not for our help, Russia could not feed its own people.

There are many things that the West must do to strengthen its position to effectively retard the onward march of Marxism. Politically, economically and militarily, we stand vulnerable. I am a strong advocate for political, economic and military strength, but these alone, I think, are not the ultimate answer to our problem.

The greatest resource against Communism is spiritual.

There are only two possible sources of man’s rights. Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan or they are granted by government as part of a political plan. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government. I, for one, shall never accept that premise. As the French political economist, Frederick Bastiat, said,

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” (The Law, 1850, p. 6.)

It is my sober conviction that no people can long maintain freedom unless their political institutions are founded in a faith in a Supreme Being and belief in the existence of moral law. This is the foundation of Western civilization. When men reject the premise that God is the source of law, they countenance a political system based on human law. Man thus becomes his own god, and the state the benefactor of privileges. May I illustrate the consequences of these two separate premises.

When you accept the premise that the source of law and man’s rights come from a Supreme Being, you at once recognize the sanctity of the individual, his right to free expression, his right to possession of private property. The dictum that a man’s home is his castle originated in divine law. Since man was created to be free, the only logical form of government is self-government; for acceptance of ruler imposed authority is an implicit repudiation of one’s rights to free expression and ultimate liberty.

The most fundamental unit of self-government is the family, with father and mother instilling fundamental principles and skills in their children. This is the rock foundation of society, and a man’s success will never be greater than what he attains with his own family. Institutions of government were initially established to protect man’s freedom. A repudiation of our heritage is to accept – as so many Western Democracies have accepted – the supremacy of the State over the individual and family, which is the essence of Marxism.

Under self-government, when the civil government and its agencies lose their servant-role, you may know that we have slipped from our spiritual moorings.

What man thinks about God will ultimately decide what he will think, believe and accept about everything else. This is why both reason and religious conviction lead me to accept the divine origin of man’s rights.

The antithesis to this belief is represented by atheistic Marxism. There the State is supreme; man exists to serve the State. Inexorable moral laws are regarded as mythical. Since the State is the source of law, the State is god. The State, therefore, can control one’s family, education, religion, economics, property, and, yes, his very life. The individual is regarded, at best, as an economic resource. Once his usefulness is fulfilled, his life becomes expendable.

Atheism and agnosticism have consequences. When man refuses to recognize God as the source of his rights, he abrogates his right to denounce the State. The State may decide to expropriate his property, or capriciously determine to take his life. How can one take a stand against evil unless he recognizes a source of law higher than man? On what moral grounds can he object? It is a truism that “Men will either be governed by God, or ruled by tyrants.” (William Penn.)

The Communists recognize, even if some in the West do not, that the spiritual foundation is the essence of our strength. This is why they will use any device, resort to any method, expend any resource to discredit and repudiate the moral foundations of Western society. “Under present conditions,” they say, “religion appears to be the main opponent … and, consequently, an atheistic education must be prominent as a constituent part in developing a communist world outlook.” (U.A. Karpovsky, “The Cause of Religious Survival and the Means for its Elimination,” Voprosy Fi/osofli [Problems of Philosophy], No.4, Moscow, April 1964.)

With the trend in the free world moving away from self government to dependence on the state, is there not evidence that the Marxists are successful in developing a communist world outlook?

I ask you delegates to this Freedoms Conference: If we do not accept the existence of a Supreme Being; that God is the source of moral law, what more do we have to offer than Marx? On what basis can we morally resist tyranny?

I say to you with all the fervor of my soul that God intended men to be free. Rebellion against tyranny is a righteous cause. It is an enormous evil for any man to be enslaved to any system contrary to his own will. For that reason men, 200 years ago, pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.

No nation which has kept the commandments of God has ever perished, but I say to you that once freedom is lost, only blood – human blood – will win it back.

Freedom is an eternal, God-given principle. There is no genuine happiness without freedom, nor is there any security or peace without freedom. After traveling in practically all of the free countries of the world and several times behind the Iron Curtain, I say that Marxism is the greatest evil in this world and the greatest threat to all we hold dear.

Of all sad things in the world, the saddest is to see a people who have once known liberty and freedom and then lost it.

I have seen the unquenchable yearning of the human heart for liberty on two unforgettable occasions. These experiences are indelibly etched on the memory of my soul.

I saw this yearning spirit in the faces of many European people, in the aftermath of World War II. It fell my lot, as a Church leader, to be among the first to go into war-torn European countries and distribute food, clothing, and bedding to the suffering members of the Church and others. I saw first-hand entire nations prostrate, flat on their backs economically. I looked into the face of hunger – the pale, the thin, the many dressed in rags, and some barefooted. I saw the refugees, the poor unwanted souls who were driven from their homes to destinations unknown. They came with all their possessions on their backs. I visited some of their homes, shacks where as many as twenty-two people were living in one room – four complete families. I saw some fortunate to get hold of an American magazine and pore over its pages and wonder if what they saw could possibly be true. I saw the struggles on every hand to get to America or England, some legal and others illegal, all in an effort to enjoy freedom and liberty. These were a people who had once known a measure of freedom, but had let it slip away.

The second unforgettable experience was when I was in Russia in 1959. We had been touring seven European countries as a part of the objective of the government of the United States to develop world markets and create good will.

Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Matskevich, the Minister of Agriculture, had promised me that I would be able to visit a Christian Church in Russia. During our stay there, the guides did everything possible to prevent this. Finally, on the way to the airport, before leaving Moscow, I insisted that we go to a Christian Church which I had located. It was only a few minutes out of the way. Reluctantly, we were taken to the church. Our guides had told us that the churches were empty, that no one attended church any more, that religion was the opiate of the people, and that the people had risen above religion.

We arrived at a Baptist Church and found it full to overflowing. We learned that they were holding three services on Sunday and two on weekdays to accommodate the desires of the people. I looked into the faces of the people. Most were middle-aged and older. As the ten members of the America press were being ushered to pews, which were vacated for our unexpected visit, people reached out and grasped for our hands to touch us. They were in misery and yet a light shone through their eyes. Like frightened children they gripped our hands.

Later in the service, I was asked to address the congregation. I spoke to them about God and Jesus Christ, I encouraged them to be unafraid and to pray for peace. I spoke to them about the reality of a resurrection, that this life is only a part of eternity. In closing, I told them that truth would endure, that time was on the side of truth.

I don’t recall all I said, but I do remember being inspired by their rapt faces. As we were about to leave, the whole congregation spontaneously broke into a favorite hymn of my youth, “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.” As we walked down from the platform and the members of the press walked up the aisles, the congregation waved their handkerchiefs in farewell. It seemed all 1500 were waving as we left. Through it all, members of the American press witnessed the event with tear-dimmed eyes.

As we were leaving the church, a young lady Russian guide whispered to my wife, “I am a Christian, too.”

It has been my privilege to speak before many church groups in all parts of the world, but the impact of that experience is almost indescribable. I shall never forget that evening as long as I live. Seldom, have I felt the oneness of mankind and the unquenchable yearning of the human heart for freedom so keenly as at that moment.

Never will I forget this victory of spirit over tyranny, oppression, and ignorance. Never can I doubt the ultimate deliverance of the Russian people.

Today we are in a worldwide battle for the bodies and souls of men. It is a battle between two opposing systems freedom and slavery. The persistent efforts of God-respecting men will determine whether freedom is victorious in our time. A faithless generation will not be equal to the task. Is it not time for us to reevaluate our commitment to the principles which the Marxists fear the most?

I fully believe that we can turn things around if enough men and women in the Free World will have the determination, the morality, and the faith to do so.

Here in the West we hold in our hands the only hope of mankind; and it will be to our shame and disgrace before God and man if we allow that hope to wither and die. May God bless us to be equal to the task.

God has told us, in modern scripture, that the United States Constitution was divinely inspired for the specific purpose of eliminating bondage and the violation of the rights and protection that belong to “all flesh.” (D&C 101:77–80.) If we believe in God and His works, it is up to each one of us to uphold and defend our Constitution, which guarantees our precious freedom. For God states unequivocally: “Let not that which I have appointed be polluted by mine enemies, by the consent of those who call themselves after my name; For this is a very sore and grievous sin against me, and against my people, in consequence of those things which I have decreed and which are soon to be-fall the nations.” (D&C 101:97–98.)

President David O. McKay declared: “No greater immediate responsibility rests upon members of the Church, upon all citizens of this Republic and of neighboring Republics than to protect the freedom vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States.” (Conference Report, April 1950, p. 37.)

As Americans, we have marched a long way down the soul-destroying road of socialism, atheism, and totalitarianism. It is the price we pay when we turn away from God and turn to government to do everything for us. It is the formula by which nations become enslaved by their own leaders.

As England’s Lord Acton so succinctly put it, “Power tends to corrupt—and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (Essays on Freedom and Power, p. 364.)

Increasing numbers of Americans are subscribing to the myth that you can get something for nothing—as long as the government is footing the bill. In fact, they believe it is the duty of government to take care of them, from the womb to the tomb.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything we get from the government, we pay for in debilitating taxes. Everything the government gives to the people, it must first take from the people. This is something few Americans appear to understand.

We tend to forget how America became the greatest, most prosperous, and most powerful nation in the world, blessed with an abundance of everything needed for the good life. It didn’t just happen. It wasn’t an accident. It was all an integral part, I believe, of the divine plan for America. In the early frontier days of this country, a special breed of men and women came here from all over the world, seeking not only opportunity but freedom. They were strong, proud, and fiercely independent. They believed that the surest helping hand was at the end of their own sleeves. They shared one thing in common—an unshakable faith in God and in themselves. And that, without doubt, is the secret of success as viable today as it was yesterday.

With little but raw courage and indomitable purpose, those intrepid pioneers set forth into the unknown by covered wagon, on horseback, and sometimes on foot. The land demanded iron men with steel in their backbones. Nature did the weeding out. But they didn’t whine or bleat because things were tough. They asked no favors from any man. They knew what they were up against, and they accepted the challenge. All they wanted was to be left alone to do what had to be done. They were wrenching a civilization out of the wilderness.

America soon blossomed into a rich, fertile, productive nation. Individual initiative—free enterprise—paid off, and American ingenuity flourished in a climate of freedom. Very soon our technology, our inventiveness, and our business know-how became the envy of the world. America had reached maturity, a giant among nations, a glowing example of free enterprise in action, and a perfect demonstration of what free men can do when they are left alone to do it.

But as those affluent years slipped by, voices were heard in the land, singing the siren songs of socialism. And many Americans tapped their feet to the beat of the music. Politicians were already promising something for nothing, that elusive free lunch. Thus, gradually the people let the government infringe upon their precious freedoms, and the preliminary signs of decay began to appear in our young republic.

A current example of this moral erosion can be seen in the food stamp program today. Originally intended to assist those who were on minimum subsistence by drawing on government surpluses being stored at a cost of a million dollars a day, surpluses that had accumulated by government bungling, this program has burgeoned to the extent that today one of every thirteen Americans is drawing food stamps, and one out of every four has been made eligible, by recent legislation. And who pays for all of this? We do—the taxpayers. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Today, as government becomes increasingly dominant in our affairs, we are becoming more and more like ancient Rome before it crumbled and collapsed. We are choosing bread and circuses instead of facing the challenges that always test a free people. We are no longer the proud leader of the world. We have lost the respect of almost every country, and I know because I’ve traveled in those countries. Through our policies of equivocation and our politics of expediency and appeasement, we have lost respect. We think we are buying world peace. This is not diplomacy, it is national suicide! No wonder we have earned the contempt of our enemies, who are only too happy to take our money, our food, our industrial equipment, and our technical expertise.

Despite what many say and think, the cold war continues today even during this period of detente. One of the main weapons in the cold-war arsenal of our enemies is inflation.

Our economic situation is extremely serious. The facts are harsh and cold. This is a grim topic. But how can one soften the truth? Inflation, like an insidious disease, is weakening us as a nation. We are in this position because we have lost our national pride and our sense of independence and have sacrificed basic economic principles. When we want something, we go crawling to the government instead of doing it ourselves. We have exchanged those God-inspired principles upon which this once mighty nation was built for a mess of shoddy values. No wonder our structures of freedom are cracking.

Many voices in government today are blaming businessmen, the unions, and even the buying public for not practicing thrift and economy in their shopping habits. The blame for inflation must be laid directly at the door of the federal government itself! Inflation is an increase in the nation’s money supply—an increase, to be more exact, in the supply of money and credit. Inflation is not caused by rising prices and wages. To the contrary, rising prices and wages, as any solid economist knows, are the direct result of inflation. It stands to reason that when the money supply is increased, all money automatically becomes less valuable. This includes, of course, our savings. So when our dollars shrink in value, businessmen naturally raise their price tags, and then their employees demand higher wages. You can see how it all becomes a vicious circle.

In a free society such as ours, only the federal government can cause inflation. And the reason it puts more money into circulation is to finance its disastrous policies of deficit spending. As the federal government promotes more and more costly and unnecessary programs, it spends far more than it receives. In order to keep in business, the government has to borrow. To do this, it offers bonds, which are purchased mainly by private banks. Many of these bonds are resold to the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve then issues newly printed paper money—or issues credit to pay for the bonds. Thus, new money is created, the money supply is increased, and the value of all money is reduced.

It is well to remember that continued government deficits cause inflation; inflation is used as an excuse for ineffective price controls; price controls lead to shortages; and artificial shortages inevitably are used as an excuse to implement rationing. When will we learn these basic economic principles?

The prophet Isaiah wrote: “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge.” (Isaiah 5:13.)

It is quite obvious that a lack of knowledge and understanding on the part of Americans regarding the causes of inflation, which threatens our economic survival, could well lead us into captivity.

Americans could halt inflation today by demanding that their government stop increasing the supply of money. It is not that the government does not know how to do it—it doesn’t want to do it. The excuse is that if it stops printing money, the nation will be plunged into a recession or worse—a depression precipitating an unacceptable percentage of unemployment. But the longer we delay sound action, the more it will cost our nation and its people.

Unfortunately, the average American knows very little about the complexities of economics. He leaves that to the “expertise” of those in government. But the tragedy is that the political spendthrifts in government are the ones who are wrecking our economy. They are spending billions of dollars on useless domestic programs and squandering billions more in support of communist governments that are getting “most favored nation” treatment.

The Congress has failed us abysmally in its historic role as watchdog over our national interests. It could and should put the clamps on irresponsible government spending. Unhappily, when a government embarks on a course of inflation, it must accelerate that inflation in order to perpetuate the false stimulating effect.

If the government were genuinely concerned about full employment and real prosperity, it could do much in bringing it about. It could support the proven and successful free market system, the law of supply and demand, where the buying public, not the government, is the deciding factor in what shall be produced and marketed, including energy products. The bureaucrats ignore the lessons of American history that freedom works and that the ability of individuals to come to mutually beneficial agreements is the very essence of a free society.

There is no problem at all about how to stop inflation. The problem is not economic—it’s political.

Our original monetary system as established by the Founding Fathers, and the only one authorized by the Constitution, makes this imperative by the following clause: “No state shall . . . make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” (Article 1, Section 10.)

The government is manipulating our monetary system, and unless we return to fiscal responsibility, we can look forward to a highly dangerous economic crisis.

If we are to beat inflation effectively, four vital steps must be taken:

1. Abolish wage and price controls permanently.
2. Stop all spending in excess of tax receipts and make annual payments on the debt.
3. Abrogate all extravagant and unnecessary government programs.
4. Reestablish the gold and silver standard.

Congress has the power and the responsibility to accomplish these measures. If our representatives and senators persist in shirking their duties in this regard, then we’ll continue on the same course to economic disaster, and we’ll end up with a controlled economy under a totalitarian form of government.

I have seen with my own eyes the end result of continuing inflation. I paid six billion marks for breakfast in Cologne, Germany, in December 1923. That was fifteen cents in American money.

Our spiraling national debt is but one of the danger signs, and is indicative of the culpable negligence of those in the highest echelons of government.

Thomas Jefferson counseled: “To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must take our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.” Indeed, paying our debts, or living within our means, was always one of the sterling characteristics of Americans. We looked upon it as a duty to ourselves as individuals and as children of God. Students of history know that no government in the history of mankind has ever created any wealth. People who work create wealth.

God has prospered this land. Though the United States has only about six percent of the world population and seven percent of the land area, our gross national product is about forty percent of the world total. It exceeds that of all other western European countries combined and is three times greater than that of the entire Far East. (1974 Associated Press Almanac.)

The United States is the most generous nation under heaven. We have put out 25 billion dollars’ worth of food aid around the world—84 percent of the world’s food aid in the past several years.

Some say the free enterprise system is heartless and insensitive to the needs of those less fortunate individuals who are found in any society, no matter how affluent. What about the lame, the sick, and the destitute? Most other countries in the world have attempted to use the power of government to meet this need. Yet, in every case forced charity through government bureaucracies has resulted in the long run in creating more misery, more poverty, and certainly less freedom than when government first stepped in. Charity can be charity only when it is voluntary, and it will be effective only when it is voluntary.

As Henry Grady Weaver wrote in his excellent book The Mainspring of Human Progress, “Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-mass through some pet formula of their own. . . . The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional ‘do-gooders,’ who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others—with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.” (Pp. 40-41.)

By comparison, America traditionally has relied on individual action and voluntary charity. The result is that the United States has fewer cases of genuine hardship per capita than any other country in the entire world or throughout all history. Even during the depression of the 1930s, Americans ate and lived better than most people in other countries do today.

As Americans, citizens of the greatest nation under heaven, we face difficult days. Never since the days of the Civil War has this choice nation faced such a crisis. Throughout history, great civilizations have disappeared. In every case the pattern bears a grim similarity. First comes a decline in spiritual values, then a repudiation of economic and moral principles of integrity and responsibility, followed by the inevitable loss of freedom.

If we are to survive as an independent, sovereign nation, we must, as free Americans, follow sound economic and political policies, uphold and protect our hallowed Constitution, and live to the letter the virtues of frugality, integrity, loyalty, patriotism, and morality. Today, more than ever before, we need God’s influence and guidance in every area of our lives.

America has a spiritual foundation. Her wellsprings are religious. Our crisis is a crisis of faith; our need is for greater spirituality and a return to the basic concepts upon which this nation was established. How much this country needs men with a mandate higher than the ballot box! How much this country needs men in government who acknowledge their debt to the Almighty, men whose lives are a daily witness to the truth of the American motto, “In God We Trust”!

The days ahead are sobering and challenging, and will require the faith, prayers, and loyalty of every American citizen. Our challenge is to keep America strong and free—strong socially, strong economically, and above all, strong spiritually, if our way of life is to endure. Indeed, it is America’s only hope for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

We hope the present generation will continue to be reminded by sermon, song, eulogy, and family traditions of the noble virtues of their pioneer ancestors and to recognize that it was by and through the hand of God that they were delivered from their oppressors and that the settlement in Ephraim’s mountains took place.

Though others have said more eloquently what my tongue or pen could express, I deeply desire to pay reverent tribute to these heroes of the past, to their faithful deeds, their noble lives, and their lasting lessons of courage, faith, self-reliance, stamina, industry, and integrity. All generations have need of these virtues.

We stand today as beneficiaries of their priceless legacy to us, a legacy based on the solid truth that character is the one thing we develop in this world that we take with us into the next.

And what is that legacy?

The pioneers came to the Salt Lake Valley with credentials that spanned the centuries, a bloodline coursing through their veins from illustrious parentage: Abraham and Sarah; Isaac and Rebekah; Jacob and Rachel. Theirs was a bloodline preserved through four centuries of Egyptian captivity; an exile and exodus from the land of their captivity that lasted forty years—a time necessary for a new, less-enslaved generation to develop; and then a settlement in a promised land, which lasted over seven centuries of migrations that brought their sifted lineage into northern Europe and Great Britain.

When the tyranny of European governments disallowed freedom of religious worship, God prepared a new land of promise—the United States of America—where such freedom was eventually guaranteed by an inspired Constitution. Some of the progenitors of the pioneers came before the gospel’s restoration, such as the ancestors of Joseph Smith, but most came following the restoration. They came with a self-identity that led President Brigham Young to exclaim on one occasion, “You understand who we are; we are of the House of Israel, of the royal seed, of the royal blood.” (Journal of Discourses 2:269.)

They came with the faith that God had “set his hand a second time” to restore the house of Israel; that to accomplish His purposes and design, the Church of Jesus Christ had been restored again on the earth through the instrumentality of a latter-day prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr.; and that following the martyrdom, the keys of the priesthood had been continued through Joseph’s ordained successor, Brigham Young. They believed themselves to be God-directed and prophetled. That was the conviction which inspired their sacrifices.

They came with indomitable courage, following incredible suffering and adversity. Who can forget those almost insufferable conditions during their exodus? While they were encamped at Sugar Creek, Iowa, in February 1846, a raging blizzard left twelve inches of snow on the ground. Following that storm, the temperatures fell to twelve degrees below zero. On one of those cold nights nine babies were born. Eliza R. Snow provides this vivid account:

Mothers gave birth to offspring under almost every variety of circumstances imaginable, except those to which they had been accustomed; some in tents, others in wagons—in rainstorms and snowstorms. I heard of one birth which occurred under the rude shelter of a hut, the sides of which were formed of blankets fastened to poles stuck in the ground, with a bark roof through which the rain was dripping. Kind sisters stood holding dishes to catch the water as it fell, thus protecting the newcomer and its mother from a showerbath as the little innocent first entered on the stage of human life; and through faith in the great ruler of events, no harm resulted to either.

Let it be remembered that the mothers of these wilderness-born babies were not savages, accustomed to roam the forest and brave the storm and tempest—those who had never known the comforts and delicacies of civilization and refinement. They were not those who, in the wilds of nature, nursed their offspring amid reeds and rushes, or in the recesses of rocky caverns; most of them were born and educated in the Eastern States—and there embraced the Gospel as taught by Jesus and his Apostles; and, for the sake of their religion, had gathered with the Saints, and under trying circumstances had assisted, by their faith, patience and energies, in making Nauvoo what its name indicates “the beautiful.” There they had lovely homes, decorated with flowers and enriched with choice fruit trees, just beginning to yield plentifully. (Edward W. Tullidge, The Women of Mormondom, pp. 307-9.)

In March of that same year, four hundred wagons set out toward the Rocky Mountains, but now a spring thaw had turned the ruts into a quagmire of mud.

Under these testing conditions Orson Spencer’s wife, a young woman of thirty-five, succumbed to this inclement life, leaving six children under fifteen years of age. Shortly before her passing, she opened her eyes and, seeing her children huddling by her bed, burst into tears, sobbing: “Oh, you dear little children! How I hope you will fall into kind hands when I am gone.”

Not a murmur escaped her lips. . . . The storm was severe, and the wagon covers leaked. Friends held milk pans over her bed to keep her dry. Her daughter states that shortly before her mother departed this life, that she rallied and whispered to her husband: “A heavenly messenger appeared to me tonight and told me that I had done and suffered enough, and that he had now come to convey me to a mansion of gold.”

After kissing each child in turn, she whispered to her husband: “I love you more than ever!—But you must let me go!” It was enough. Orson Spencer sorrowfully dedicated her to her Father in heaven, and a moment later she was gone to her crown of glory. (Carter Grant, The Kingdom of God Restored, Deseret Book Co., 1955, pp. 344-45.)

But all was not sorrow. “We outlived the trying scenes,” wrote John Taylor. “We felt contented and happy—the songs of Zion resounded from wagon to wagon—from tent to tent.” (Millennial Star 8:7.) It was under these conditions that William Clayton penned the verses to “All Is Well,” a poem that became an anthem of faith for the Latter-day Saints.

We’ll find the place which God for us prepared,Far away in the West,Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid;There the Saints will be blessed.We’ll make the air with music ring,Shout praises to our God and King;Above the rest these words we’ll tell—All is well! all is well!—Hymns, no. 13

Little did Brother Clayton realize that his hymn would be sung by the 400-voice Tabernacle Choir before the president of the United States and other dignitaries at the commemoration of our nation’s two hundredth birthday.

The pioneers came west with a devotion, patriotism, and loyalty to the nation that had silently sanctioned their expulsion from their homes and the loss of their possessions. History records no modern parallel to their epic exodus from Nauvoo, so it is little wonder that the situation of these modern Israelites was likened to their ancient ancestors exiled from Egypt. In fact, President Joseph F. Smith said that the pioneer feat of modern Israel exceeded that of their progenitors:

“A wonderful event has occurred in these last days among this people, an event many times more wonderful than the marching of the children of Israel from Egypt to the holy land. It is only a short distance from the River Jordan to the land of Egypt—only a few hundred miles—and yet they wandered about for forty years seeking the goodly land. . . . What has happened in this dispensation? This people have crossed deserts that are beyond comparison with those traversed by the children of Israel. They were not fed by manna it is true, although they were fed with quails in great abundance on at least one occasion, and they performed a journey nearly four times as great as that performed by the children of Israel—which occupied them forty years—in the course of a few months. . . .

“We were led out of bondage by the power of God. The angels of God and the power and presence of the Almighty accompanied us, so much so that notwithstanding the country was covered with sagebrush and crickets, presenting the most forbidding appearance, President Young was enabled to point out where the Temple and city would be built. He said, ‘You may go north and south, east and west, and explore the country all over, but when you have done it, you will come back and say that this is the spot where we are to settle.’” (Journal of Discourses 24:155-56.)

It is ironic that in the course of their exodus, this same government that stood by while they were forcibly expelled from Illinois should now come to them with a request for five hundred able-bodied men to fight in the war with Mexico. So disproportionate, inequitable, and unjust in terms of their numbers and their situation was the request for manpower that President Brigham Young commented later:

“Look . . . at the proportion of the number required of us, compared with that of any other portion of the Republic. A requisition of only thirty thousand from a population of more than twenty millions was all that was wanted, amounting to only one person and a half to a thousand inhabitants. If all other circumstances had been equal, . . . our quota of an equitable requisition would not have exceeded four persons. Instead of this, five hundred must go, thirteen thousand percent above an equal ration.” (Journal of Discourses 2:174.)

But they did comply with the request—an extraordinary example of loyalty to their nation.

And what prompted such loyalty and patriotism? Not fear of reprisal, not servile obedience to their overlords, but a recognition that compliance with this request was the “interposition of that all-wise Being” who was bringing about their deliverance. “Thus,” said Brigham Young, “were we saved from our enemies by complying with their . . . unjust and unparalleled exactions; again proving our loyalty to the Government.” (Ibid.)

During the times of mobbings and persecutions, the revelations of God had prescribed the course of action they should take: importune for redress—at the feet of judges, at the feet of the governor, and at the feet of even the president of the United States. These steps were followed without relief, reparation, or redress. Under these conditions I’m sure they questioned as did Joseph in Liberty Jail: “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place? How long shall thy hand be stayed? . . . O Lord, how long shall [thy people] suffer these wrongs and unlawful oppressions?” (D&C 121:1–3.)

They, who had suffered so much from oppressors, were to see that God takes His own retribution in His own time and in His own way; for as Lincoln said, “Nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishment and . . . may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins. . . .” (A Proclamation by the President of the United States, March 30, 1863.)

While the Saints dwelt securely outside the boundaries of the United States, the nation was engaged in its most costly war in terms of lives lost, a civil war. No doubt these words of the Lord were recalled: “If the President heed [thee] not, then will the Lord arise and come forth out of his hiding place, and in his fury vex the nation.” (D&C 101:89.)

It is a matter of history how truly those words were fulfilled.

Their loyalty to the nation extended not only from patriotism. It came also from a conviction that God had reserved this land for His purpose. It was a choice land above all others. The Constitution of this country had been established “by the hands of wise men whom [God] raised up unto this very purpose,” and they were under divine commandment to maintain that inspired document “for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles.” (D&C 101:80, 77.) And so, when they settled in this western haven, they fashioned a civil government in accord with the Constitution, which, in the hands of good and honorable men, would afford them and others their rights and liberty.

They came, with faith and industry, and carved an Eden out of a desert. Their promised land has become a prosperous valley. Commodious brick homes and apartment dwellings have replaced the log cabins. Luxuriant greenery, gardens, trees, and flowers flourish where once sagebrush and parched soil thrived. A tabernacle and magnificent temple have replaced the Bowery and Endowment House. Elaborate meetinghouses of worship fill the valley. Schools, seminaries, institutes, colleges, trade schools, and a university provide for secular and spiritual education. Stores, banks, factories abound. Truly, we live in the lap of luxury amid an unbounded prosperity, and all this because of the philosophy of self-reliance, initiative, personal industry, and faith in God.

Our forefathers gloried in hard work, but at the same time they drew liberally upon their prodigious spiritual reserves. They did not place their trust “in the arm of flesh.” They were strong and courageous in the Lord, knowing that He was their defense, their refuge, their salvation. Strengthened by this faith, they relied on their cherished independence, their frugality, and honest toil. And history records that even the climate was tempered for their sakes, and their humble untiring efforts made “the desert to blossom as the rose.”

Their faith was renewed by two of Isaiah’s remarkable prophecies concerning the last days—the days in which they knew they were living. In the first of these Isaiah announces: “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” (Isaiah 35:1.) And again: “For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.” (Isaiah 51:3.)

And while their natural eyes saw only their log cabins and immediate surroundings, they envisioned the day when the words of Micah would be fulfilled: “But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” (Micah 4:1–2.)

We have witnessed the fulfillment of these remarkable prophecies. But today, a contrary philosophy has come into the land. It is one that espouses that government benefits should replace the fruits of individual initiative and labor.

Such a philosophy can result only in the shackling of man’s liberties—in the eventual destruction of our freedom. Had the early settlers throughout the land lived by such a philosophy, this glorious nation of ours would be a vast untamed wilderness known only to the Indians who had lived here for centuries before. I earnestly pray that this important lesson of history shall not go unheeded.

Yes, they came to the valleys of the mountains—first a trickle, the advance party on July 21 and 22, and then, on the 24th, the main caravan of 143 men, three women, and two children. The trickle of immigrants was followed by the hundreds, then the thousands, so that by 1869 more than 68,000 Mormon pioneers had crossed the plains. They came with their faith, loyalty, courage, industry, and integrity. Their legacy to us may be summarized in these fitting words by the late President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.:

“God has never worked out his purposes through the pampered victims of ease and luxury and riotous living. Always he has used to meet the great crises in his work, those in whom hardship, privation, and persecution had built characters and wills of iron. God shapes his servants in the forge of adversity; he does not fashion them in the hothouse of ease and luxury.” (Address delivered at dedication of “This Is the Place” monument, July 24, 1947; in Improvement Era 50:573.)

However outmoded some of these standards may be considered today, they are nonetheless enduring truths without which no character worthy of the name can be built. We have respectfully called them pioneers, because they prepared the way for us to follow. May we possess courage to direct our lives in accordance with the enduring values so represented by their lives.

SEVERAL PROPHETS SAW OUR DAY

Here is what the scripture says about Adam.

“And Adam stood up in the midst of the congregation; and, notwithstanding he was bowed down with age, being full of the Holy Ghost, predicted whatsoever should befall his posterity unto the latest generation.”²

Then we read that Enoch knew about the present day when the missionaries would flood the earth with the message of the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the Gospel. The scripture says:

“And righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of the earth. . . to sweep the earth as with’ a flood, to gather out mine elect from the four corners of the earth.” ³

The prophet Isaiah saw our day and wrote a whole chapter about the coining forth of the Book of Mormon and the marvelous work and a wonder that would follow among other things, he said:

“And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned. . . .Wherefore, behold, I [ will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder."⁴

It was Nephi who saw our day in great detail but was forbidden to write about it. The Lord said:

"And the angel said unto me; Behold, one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb... shall see and write the remainder of these things....And the things which thou shall see hereafter thou shalt not write; for the Lord God hath ordained the apostle of the Lamb of God that he should write them.... and I Nephi heard and bear record, that the name of the apostle of the lamb was John." ⁵

NEPHI’S GREAT SECRET

It is a great burden to know what is going to happen in our day and not be able to tell about it. On two different occasions this prophet almost told too much.

The first time was at the end of the book of First Nephi. He was describing the major events leading up to the Second Coming and the ushering in of the Millennium when suddenly he stopped and said:

"I durst not speak further as yet concerning these things." ⁶

This almost sounds as though he hoped he might be able to do it at some future time. In any event he did not write his second book until he was an old man. During the years he had carefully read the writings of Isaiah and quoted thirteen chapters of Isaiah because he knew that prophet had seen the same vision as Lehi, Nephi and Jacob. Nephi therefore let Isaiah relate what each of them had seen. Nevertheless, as Nephi came toward the end of his Second Book of Nephi and began waxing eloquent in proclaiming the doctrine of Christ, he seems to have reached a point where he had something he was especially anxious to record. But he suddenly stopped and said:

"I, Nephi, cannot say more; the Spirit STOPPETH MINE UTTERANCE."⁷

He then goes into mourning because he is fearful the people will not search out the "great knowledge" which he feels is in the scripture but the evil spirit will discourage them from finding it. Nevertheless, he hopes that through prayer the Holy Ghost will reveal it to them. Meanwhile he was forbidden to utter those things he was so anxious to declare openly and plainly. It was reserved to be included in the writings of John .

SO WE TURN TO THE REVELATION OF THE APOSTLE JOHN

The marvelous reve1ation to the Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos is sometimes difficult to analyze because he recorded events which he saw in heaven right along with things which he saw happening on earth. Sometimes it is difficult to tell which sphere is being discussed. For example, he talks about the 144,000 being sealed in their foreheads during the sixth seal ⁸ but seven chapters later he speaks of the 144,000 performing their great mission on earth after the opening of the seventh seal. ⁹

Is this a contradiction?

We have reason to believe that the first reference to the 144,000 during the sixth seal is referring to the selection and sealing up of these choice servants IN THE SPIRIT WORLD before they came into the earth. That there were such foreordinations in the spirit world is described by Alma:

"And this is the manner after which they were ordained - being called and prepared from the FOUNDATION OF TUE WORLD according to the FOREKNOWLEDGE OF GOD. "¹⁰

And we also have the words of Joseph Smith who said:

"Every man who has a calling to minister to the inhabitants of the world was ordained to that very purpose in the Grand Council of heaven before this world was. I suppose that I was ordained to this very office in that Grand Council."¹¹

"Question: What are we to understand by the angel ascending from the east is he to whom is given the seal of the living God over the twelve tribes of Israel

"Answer: If you will receive it this is Elias which was to come to gather together the tribes of Israel and restore all things.

"Question: What TIME are the things spoken of in this chapter to be accomplished?

"Answer: They are to be accomplished in the sixth thousand years or the opening of the SIXTH seal.

"Question: What are we to understand by sealing the one hundred and forty-four thousand out of all the tribes of Israel - twelve thousand out of each tribe? [the opening of the seventh seal and the gathering of the Ten Tribes]?

“Answer: We are to understand that those who are sealed… to administer the everlasting gospel; for they are ordained out of every nation [THE ANGELS to whom is given power over the nations of the earth, and bring as many as will come to the church of the Firstborn." ¹²

"Question: When are the things to be accomplished, which are written in the 9th chapter of Revelation [the cleansing of the earth]? They are to be accomplished after the opening of the SEVENTH seal, before the coming of Christ.”¹³

From these scriptures it is quite clear why we have the foreordination and sealing up of the 144,000 in the spirit world as described in the seventh chapter of Revelation, and a description of the subsequent ministry of the 144,000 among the children of men in Revelation, chapter fourteen.¹⁴

JOHN BEGINS DESCRIBING MODERN TIMES AFTER THE OPENING OF THE SEVENTH SEAL

Now John is ready to transfer his attention from the five chapters outlining the preparations in heaven for the Second Coming and concentrate on the unfolding of these events on earth. All of these events are controlled by the factor of “time.” He therefore defines the period in which these events will occur. John says:

“And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” ¹⁵

This immediately raises four highly significant questions. For example:

#1. According to OUR calendar, when will the seventh seal be opened, and the half-hour of silence begins in heaven?

Until 1582 A.D. our calendar was not at all accurate, but Pope Gregory employed a group of mathematicians and astronomers to restructure the calendar. They set up the new calendar so that it was in perfect harmony or calibration with the sun. To make it completely accurate they had to add one day every four years and that is how we got our “leap year.”

But even with all that restructuring, how are we certain that it is completely accurate? The best answer to that question is in the Doctrine and Covenants. On two occasions the Lord used the Gregorian calendar in such a way that it seemed to clearly imply his approval of it.

In Section 20 the Lord said he wanted the Church established on the sixth day of April because it would be “one thousand eight hundred and thirty years since the coming of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the flesh.” ¹⁶

In the very next section we are told the Church was set up by Joseph Smith under the guidance of the Holy Ghost and then it says:

“Which church was organized and established in the year of your Lord eighteen hundred and thirty, in the fourth month, and on the sixth day of the month which is called April.” ¹⁷

So if our calendar is accurate and apparently approved by the Lord, there is no question about the date of the opening of the seventh seal and the half hour of silence in heaven. It will commence in the year 2000 AD .

#2. Why is there suddenly “silence in heaven” when the SEVENTH seal is opened?

Apparently there is a great deal of furious activity in heaven right up to the time the seventh seal is opened. The Priesthood of this dispensation are required to work at a tremendous pace to get ready for the Second Coming. This was explained to Wilford Woodruff the last time he was allowed to see Joseph Smith in the spirit world. He says:

“Joseph Smith continued visiting myself and others up to a certain time and then it stopped. The last time I saw him was in heaven. In the night vision I saw him at the door of the temple in heaven. He came and spoke to me. He said he could not stop to talk with me because he was in a hurry. The next man I met was Father Smith; he could not talk with me because he was in a hurry. I met a half a dozen brethren who had held high positions on earth and none of them could stop to talk with me because they were in a hurry. I was much astonished. By and by I saw the Prophet again, and I got the privilege to ask him a question. ‘Now,’ said I, ‘I want to know why you’re in a hurry. I have been in a hurry all through my life but I expected my hurry would be over when I got into the kingdom of heaven, if I ever did.’ Joseph said, ‘I will tell you, Brother Woodruff, every dispensation that has had the Priesthood on the earth and has gone into the celestial kingdom, has had a certain amount of work to do to prepare to go to the earth with the Savior when He goes to reign on the earth. Each dispensation has had ample time to do this work. We have not. We are the last dispensation, and so much work has to be done and we need to be in a hurry in order to accomplish it.’ Of course, that was satisfactory with me, but it was a new doctrine to me.” ¹⁸

Joseph Smith made it plain to Wilford Woodruff that the Priesthood of this dispensation are working under a fantastic deadline to teach everyone who has died without the gospel since the apostolic times. This task has to be completed by the time of ‘the opening of the seventh seal when the hosts of heaven will have a new task connected with the final preparation and cleansing of the earth for the Second Coming.

#3. DO WE KNOW WHEN THE HALF HOUR OF SILENCE ENDS?

From a modern revelation we learn when the half hour of silence ends. Here is what the Lord says:

“And there shall be silence in heaven for the space of half an hour, and IMMEDIATELY after shall the curtain of heaven be unfolded, as a scroll is unfolded after it is rolled up, AND THE FACE OF THE LORD SHALL BE UNVEILED; and the saints that are upon the earth, who are alive, shall be quickened and be caught up to meet him.” ¹⁹

Obviously we are talking about the Second Coming. So this tells us when the half hour of silence ends. It is just before the Second Coming.

#4. CAN WE calculate THE ACTUAL DURATION OF TH HOUR OF SILENCE?

Since we know the half hour of silence begins at 2,000 A.D. when the seventh seal is opened and since we know from a modern revelation that the half hour of silence ends with the Second Coming, can we calculate in terms of years the length of time which will elapse between these two monumental events? In other words, can we determine about how long the half hour of silence lasts?

One of the apostles felt that such a calculation was possible. Here is the way Elder Bruce R. McConkie suggested it could be done. After talking about the half hour of silence, he says:

“If the time here mentioned is ‘ Lord’s time’ in which one day is a thousand years, the haft hour would be some twenty-one of our years.”

Elder McConkie reached this conclusion based on the following scriptures:

“A day with the Lord after his manner of reckoning, it being 1000 years according to the time appointed to that [ whereon thou standest."

And again:

"But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that ONE DAY is with the Lord as a THOUSAND YEARS, and a thousand years as one day."

The next step was to divide 1,000 years by 24 to determine what an hour would be according to God’s time. It turned out to be 41.66 years or just under 42 years. This means that a half hour of God’s time would be ? 7 years or nearly 21 years. This would clearly suggest that this is the duration of the half hour of silence in heaven and the period of time when the angels undertake the calamitous preparation of the earth for the Savior’s second coming.

WHAT HAPPENS IN HEAVEN DURING THE HALF HOUR OF SILENCE?

In the next five chapters John tells us of the careful and precise assignment of the angels in heaven so the earth can be cleansed of all wickedness and prepared for the Second Coming.

Here is a brief summary of each of these chapters.

Chapter 8. After the seventh seal is opened, the first four angels receive their assignments to cleanse certain portions of the earth.

Chapter 9. The fifth and sixth angels are assigned their ministry of cleansing the earth but they are not ‘to torment or destroy those who have the "seal of God in their foreheads." (verse 4) This probably refers to those who are under the Lord’s covenant, or members of the church. However, all others will be tormented until they "seek death and shall not find it." (verse 6) But in the end over a third of mankind will be destroyed. (verse 15) During the raging wars over two hundred million men will be under arms. (verse 16) There is an amazingly accurate description of the highly mechanized instruments of war that will be employed. (verses 17-19) Nevertheless, in spite of all this period of turmoil and bloodshed the people not only refuse to repent but become more depraved and debauched than ever. (verse 20-21)

It will be recalled that when Joseph Smith was asked the specific time when the 144,000 would be foreordained and sealed he said: "In the sixth thousand years or the opening of the sixth seal." ²³ but later Joseph Smith was asked, "When are the devastating things to be accomplished which are written in the 9th chapter," he replied: "After the opening of the seventh seal, before the coming of Christ." ²⁴ as we shall see later, the coming of the ten lost tribes and the ministry of the 144,000 to every nation just before the Second Coming, all occur after the opening of the seventh seal.

Chapter 10. The seventh angel (identified in verse 7) holds up a little book whereupon seven thunders roar out a message which John was forbidden to record. (verse 4)

When Joseph Smith was asked what this little book represented, he said:

"We are to understand that it was a mission, and an ordinance, for him to gather the tribes of Israel; behold, this is the Elias, who, as it is written must come and restore all things." ²⁵

During the June Conference of 1831 Joseph Smith revealed that John the Beloved was already among the ten tribes of Israel who had been led away by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, to prepare for their return from the long dispersion. ²⁶

This is not referring to the remnants of Israel scattered among the various nations, but that supremely righteous segment of the Ten Tribes whom Moses said eventually would be gathered in from the "outmost parts of heaven." ²⁷

chapter 11. This is a heavenly vision of the climax to the second worldwide dictatorship. It will culminate in the great battle of Armageddon which we will discuss later.

chapter 12. This chapter provides the background for the fall of Lucifer and his hosts after the war in heaven. John says it was there that the righteous fought against Satan "by their word and their testimony" trying to persuade the confused and uncommitted spirits to support Christ’s gospel plan. In the end, two-thirds rallied behind Jehovah but one-third supported Satan and were cast out into the mortal earth. (verses 7-11)

John depicts the Saints of God as being like "a woman clothed with the sun." (verse 1) John looks back through the centuries and realizes that because of Satan’s persecution of God’s kingdom there would be "a time and times and half a time" (verse 14) when the woman would have to flee into hiding. This would be off and on throughout the 3,500 years incorporated in the dispensation of Joseph, Moses and the apostles. John saw that not until 1,830 A.D. would the woman of the Church of Jesus Christ come forth in all her power and glory. Then John says:

"And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed (God’s servants in the latter days] which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” (verse 17)

It will be appreciated that the previous five chapters are describing the elaborate structure of the angelic forces in heaven to prepare for the mighty contest that will take place on the earth after the opening of the sixth and seventh seals. John wants us to know that during this contest Satan will lay the foundation for two worldwide dictatorships. Now we are ready for Revelation, chapter thirteen.

THE RISE OF THE FIRST WORLDWIDE DICTATORSHIP AS SEEN BY JOHN

Beginning with Revelation, chapter 13, John is talking about event which unfold on the earth after the opening of the seventh seal and the beginning of the half hour of silence in heaven referred to earlier.

John says the first worldwide dictatorship will come into its full dimension of power shortly after the year 2,000 but its beginning will be during the sixth seal. It is not a single dictatorship, but a coalition of nations. Here is how John describes it:

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” ²⁹

The reference to HIS horns and HIS heads demonstrates that these nations were a unified coalition. We do not know why seven heads would have ten horns and ten crowns unless three of these nations had colonial dominions.

John leaves no doubt that this monster rising out of the sea was a Satanicinstitution. Speaking of the monster as a united entity, John says “the dragon” gave him his power and his seat of authority. ³⁰

John describes the figurative symbols used by God, and says this dictatorship had the sinister cunning of a leopard, the feet and claws of a bear, and the teeth and mouth of a lion.

IS THERE ANY MILITARY OR POLITICAL ENTITY THAT SEEMS TO FIT THIS DESCRIPTION?

Since the opening of the seventh seal is upon us, has any military or political entity been emerging which seems to reflect any of these characteristics?

An apostle has warned that there is. For many years J. Reuben Clark, former U.S. Under-Secretary of State and a member of the First Presidency of the LDS Church, had been sounding the alarm.

He first became concerned when President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Treaty on a U.S. cruiser off the coast of Newfoundland in August, 1941. Of course, who might have suspected that this might be the beast John saw rising out of the sea? It was viewed by most people as merely a mutual defense pact

However, World War II changed the whole world landscape and the United States came out of that terrible conflict as the new world leader with the Soviet Union a jealous and frantically obsessed competitor.

There were several reasons why the United States forged into first place as a world leader. To begin with, her Wall Street bankers had invented a virtually unlimited “debt based” economy so – to a large extent – the U.S. generously financed the major part of the Allied war effort. Secondly she had out produced most of the rest of the world in planes, ships, tanks and military supplies. Third, she was far and away the leader in high technology although Russia, by stealing many of America’s top secrets, was not far behind.

World War II ended in 1945, but by 1949, Russia had muscled and maneuvered her way into dominating approximately 1/3 of the entire planet. Europe, Asia and Latin America looked to the United States to prevent further Communist expansion.

Thus it was on April 4, 1948, that the United States, Britain and certain other countries dangerously threatened by the Soviet Union, signed THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY. It provided that if the Soviets attacked ONE member of the treaty it was an attack against ALL. This pact contained a score of blatant violations of the U.S. Constitution, nevertheless, to a large extent the new NATO treaty was popular, but not with J. Reuben Clark.

After he studied the document he gave a thundering warning which was first heard by the Trust Division of the American Bankers Association on August 17, 1949. He said:

“The North Atlantic Treaty, recently passed, is a military alliance pure and simple. It is what our forefathers called an ‘entangling alliance.’” ³¹

This entire speech was filled with fiery quotations from the American Founding Fathers predicting disastrous results if the United States ever allowed itself to be trapped within an international conglomerate of interdependent alliances.

Of course, the North Atlantic Treaty was just the beginning.

THE EVOLUTION OF NATO TOWARD A NEW WORLD ORDER

Nevertheless, the United States – as the principal defense against, the Soviet Union – began to look upon itself as the policeman of the world. Consequently, the State Department managed the next two major wars and they were disastrous. The Korean War has been described as the worst-managed war in the history of the United States and the Vietnam War is the only war the United States ever lost.

As a result of these and other fiascos, Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980. He got the backing of both parties and spent two trillion dollars building America back up to the most powerful nation on earth.

The Soviet Union tried to compete with the United States but finally went bankrupt and in 1989 the whole Soviet Union fell apart. Russia became an isolated, despondent, disorganized non-entity, and the Cold War was over.

Now we go back to John who saw something amazing happen. He says:

“And I saw one of his heads as [if] were wounded to death; and his DEADLY WOUND WAS HEALED: and all the world wondered after the beast.

“And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying Who is like unto the beast? WHO IS ABLE TO MAKE WAR WITH HIM?” ³²

One of the amazing things about the Cold War was the fact that the Soviet Union was crushed into near annihilation. It was completely fragmented and left with only the original, isolated Russia as a wounded remnant of what had been a world super-power. Never had there been such a golden opportunity to require the Soviets to disarm, defuse or destroy her intercontinental ballistic missiles, get her factories converted over to domestic production and launch a massive road construction so her farmers could get the vast food supply from the muddy Russian fields to the central markets. But none of this happened. John saw what did happen.

The United Nations extended a generous helping hand to the Soviet Union – which had previously set out to conquer the world – and used the resources of the free world to begin building her up again. Eventually, this bloody head that was saved by the rest of the UN may prove to be once more the most dangerous facet of the first world dictatorship.

So the coalition of many heads and horns John saw in vision, will continue to strengthen itself until it becomes a world-wide dictatorship of ruthless proportions. It will dominate the whole human race for 3.5 years. This is still future.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER BECOMES A REALITY

The Soviet Union began to desperately urge her former allies to continue the Communist expansion program. On August 2, 1990, the dictator of Iraq – with Soviet encouragement- overran and occupied an oil-rich neighbor, Kuwait. The UN Security Council set a deadline for Saddam Hussein and his forces to retire and when it was ignored, the UN called upon all its members to enforce the UN decree.

George Bush was the new President and he had always favored a New World Order to enforce justice and peace. He looked upon the crisis in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as an ideal opportunity to show what the policeman of the world, acting in the name of the United Nations, could do to give itself credibility. Therefore, without following the requirements of the Constitution, he asked Congress to ratify a UN resolution and the next thing the country knew, half a million Americans were in the PersianGulf War.

A gigantic, massive air attack ended the war after a few days and its success established the precedent J. Reuben Clark had hoped would never happen. From this point on the President the United States as commander in chief would look upon any UN decree as an order to take “police” action. But the Persian Gulf War was the only success so far. It didn’t happen in Somalia, Bosnia, or Yugoslavia.

THE PATTERN IS ESTABLISHED AND JOHN SAW THE FUTURE

“And there was given unto him [of the many kingdoms collectively] a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue FORTY AND TWO MONTHS.” ³³

So the first dictatorship reaches a point where it dominates the world and sustains the ongoing society of immorality, abortion, non-religious education, high crimes and misdemeanors for which even the President could not be impeached even though he was finally forced to confess what he had done, and the House found him guilty of two counts. However, the Senate did not have enough support to convict him because under the 17^th Amendment the Senators had to face a popular election and too many of the Senators felt the President was supported by most of the people so that if they impeached him they might not be re-elected themselves. (Under the original Constitution, Senators were appointed by the state legislatures to protect the Constitution and states rights. This was changed in 1915.)

And so, as John says, it will continue until at some point the first dictatorship will attain a position of absolute power for three-and-a-half years. Then an amazing thing will happen.

THE FIRST DICTATORSHIP WILL MAKE A DEADLY MISTAKE

However, at this point, John saw that the first dictatorship would make a lethal mistake which will eventually wipe it out of existence. Here is what happens:

“And he [beast or dictator] opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.

“And it was given unto him to make WAR AGAINST THE Saints and to OVERCOME them: and power was given him over all mankind, and tongues and nations.” 34

FROM THIS POINT ON, THE FIRST DICTATORSHIP WILL DRIFT INTO OBLIVION

Just as John’s account reaches a point of supreme suspense with the monster declaring war against the Saints – and overcoming them – John tells us the first dictatorship has been obliterated.

But what happened? He doesn’t tell us what happened! He simply closes the account of the first dictatorship with this rather amazing philosophical comment:

“If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” ³⁵

In other words, the first dictatorship has disintegrated into ashes and the faith of the saints is vindicated.

But what brought this about after the first dictatorship turned on the Saints and overpowered them?

Perhaps John left out this vital part of his story so it could be told by his Master. In any event we now have the whole story in the Book of Mormon, and it probably gives us far greater details than John could have provided.

THE RESURRECTED JESUS TELLS WHAT HAPPENS TO THE FIRST DICTATORSHIP

When the resurrected Jesus appeared to his “other sheep” on the American continent in 34 A.D., he talked a lot about America in the latter days. He talked about the Gentiles coming from Europe and setting up the first free people in modern times. He talked about their riches and their power. But he also talked about their wickedness . He said the pure original gospel would be restored among them but unless they embraced it as a people, America would be entirely cleansed of its gentile wickedness and this continent would be largely depopulated.

Here is the way Jesus said it:

“And thus commandeth the Father that I should say unto you: At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall be lifted up in the pride of their hearts above all nations, and above all people of the whole earth, and shall be filled with all manner of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret combinations, and if they shall do all those things, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, behold, saith the Father, I WILL BRING THE FULNES MY GOSPEL FROM AMONG THEM.” ³⁶

BUT HOW WOULD AMERICA BE CLEANSED?

On God’s prophetic time line, the cleansing of America was recognized in heaven as such a monumental watershed in history that God was talking about it with his prophet Micah clear back around 700 B.C. ³⁷ Having already discussed this momentous event with one of his prophets, Jesus therefore quoted Micah to the Nephites. He introduced it by saying:

“And the Father hath commanded me that I should give unto you this land for your inheritance.

“And I say unto you, that if the Gentiles do not repent after the blessing which they shall receive, after they have scattered my people – then shall ye WHO ARE A REMNANT OF THE HOUSE OF Israel go forth among them, and ye shall be in the midst of them who shall be many, and ye shall be among them as a lion among the beasts of the forest, and as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he goeth through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.

“Thy hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off. I will gather my people together as a man gathereth his sheaves into the floor. For I will make my people with whom the Father hath covenanted, yea, I will make thy horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass. And thou shalt beat in pieces many people; and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth. And behold, I am he who doeth it.” 38

WHERE IS THE SEED OF JACOB THAT WILL CONQUER THE FIRST DICTATORSHIP?

The predominantly Lamanite-Nephite nations – which comprise the seed of Jacob today – are not difficult to identify. They are the Latin American nations from Mexico to Argentina.

But what would provoke them to attack the gentile nations which are located primarily in North America? And how would they ever have the military strength to win a decisive victory of a dictatorship that had ruled the whole world for three-and-half years?

As we have already seen, John the Revelator said the first dictatorship would disintegrate right after it commences to “make war with the saints, and overcome them.” ³⁹

But is this the CAUSE of its downfall or merely a COINCIDENCE which occurs incidental to the collapse of the first dictatorship?

During the past twenty years something has been occurring among the Latin American countries which has kindled a violent bitterness toward the United States, although it has received practically no publicity. Here is what happened.

According to Dr. Patrick S.J. Carmack, the massive privately-owned banks which dominate the United Nations World Bank and International Monetary Fund went down to the Latin American countries around 1980 and offered them huge quantities of money on loan. The Latin American countries and their corrupt leaders eagerly accepted the money.

However, they have not been able to pay the interest on these loans, let alone the principal. The banks said they would just add the unpaid interest to the principal and soon these poverty stricken countries found themselves paying vast amounts in COMPOUND INTEREST on huge sums which represented not only the original loan but the accumulated interest they have not been able to pay. This is called COMPOUND INTEREST.

Dr. Carmack points out that the anguish of the Latin American countries is reflected in the fact that between 1980 and 1990 they paid $418 billion in interest on the original loans of 80 billion. ⁴⁰

The bank managers knew from the beginning that these nations would never be able to pay off these huge debts, but they had a scheme to liquidate the debts by exchanging them for valuable national assets of these nations.

Dr. Carmack reports that such a proposal was made during the Fourth World Wilderness Conference in 1987. The plan allows Third World debtors to transfer their debt to the World Conservation Bank which then negotiates with each nation in terms of their national assets (such as undeveloped mining sites, wilderness areas, etc.) until the full indebtedness is liquidated. This scheme has already been implemented in Bolivia, Costa Rica and Ecuador. ⁴¹

The main significance in all of this is the discovery that there are powerful engines of resentment and desperate hatred being generated among the Latin American countries. They are focused on the United States because they feel these financial traps were engineered by the IMF and World Bank under the control of the United States.

Under certain provocative circumstances this is the type of explosive indignation that might generate an uprising. This would be particularly true if the United States was suddenly engulfed in some natural disaster or plague THAT LEFT HER SUDDENLY WEAK.

THE CRASH OF THE FIRST DICTATORSHIP MAY BE FACILITATED BY DIVINE INTERVENTION

In one revelation the Lord mentions some divine intervention which will be operating during the cleansing of America. He says:

“For behold, and lo, vengeance cometh speedily upon the ungodly as the whirlwind; and who shall escape it? The Lord’s scourge shall pass over by night and by day, and the report thereof shall vex all people. It shall not be stayed until the Lord comes.

“Nevertheless, Zion shall escape if she observe to do all things whatsoever I have commanded her.”

“But if she observe not to do whatsoever I have commanded her, I will visit her according to all her works; with sore affliction, with pestilence, with plague, with sword, with vengeance, with devouring fire.” ⁴²

Joseph Smith saw a vision of the cleansing of America and wrote:

“And now I am prepared to say by the authority of Jesus Christ, that not many years shall pass away before the United States shall present such a scene of bloodshed as has not a parallel in the history of our nation; pestilence, hail, famine, and earthquake will sweep the wicked of this generation from off the face of the land to open and prepare the way for the return of the lost tribes of Israel from the north country.” ⁴³

There are three other accounts by those who were allowed to see a vision of what it will be like when the cleansing of America occurs.

The first is the account by John Taylor who was allowed to see the nation in the grip of a terrible scourge which he said would leave whole cities without any life whatever. ⁴⁴

The second is Brigham Young who also saw the terrible plagues and scourges which would make the United States extremely vulnerable to any hostile invasion. ⁴⁵

The third is by Charles D. Evans who describes the nature of the plague which is horrible to contemplate. ⁴⁶

Finally, a modern revelation verifies the reality of this terrible pestilence and it is just as ghastly and abhorrent as that which these three men saw in vision. ⁴⁷

The Lord also says:

“And there shall be men standing in that generation, that shall not pass until they shall see an overflowing scourge; for a desolating sickness shall cover the land.” ⁴⁸

UNDER SUCH CALAMITOUS CONDITIONS HOW COULD THE RIGHTEOUS PROTECT THEMSELVES?

Perhaps the reason Nephi was so anxious to tell us about the things he saw was to assure us that our Heavenly Father would not be unmindful of us. As we have already seen, the Lord said:

“Nevertheless, Zion shall escape if she observe to do all things whatsoever I have commanded her.” ⁴⁹

This is confirmed in another revelation where the Lord says:

“But my disciples shall stand in holy places, and shall not be moved; but among the wicked, men shall lift up their voices and curse God and die…When all these things shall come to pass, ye may know that the promises which have been made unto you will all be fulfilled.” ⁵⁰

As President Heber C. Kimball described these prophecies of the latter days, the people asked him, “What will become of this people?” He replied:

“That will depend, altogether upon our conduct. We have it within our power; God has given it to us to save ourselves from the desolation and calamities that will come upon this nation. How? By doing that which is right… .If we do this, prosperity will be upon the inhabitants…prosperity will be upon the towns and cities erected by this people, the hand of the Lord will be over us to sustain us, and we will spread forth…

“Now we have the choice. It is within our reach… .And on the other hand, we ca n reach forth the hand and partake of wickedness and bring desolation and destruction upon our borders.” ⁵¹

THE LORD WILL DEPEND UPON FOUR GROUPS TO REBUILD AMERICA AFTER THE CLEANSING

There will be a gigantic task to perform after America has been cleansed of her wickedness but the wreckage and ruin of a whole civilization has been left behind.

THE FIRST GROUP

The first group will be the righteous saints whom the Lord has preserved. All these will have been disciplined in Priesthood principles and will have studied God’s law so they will know’ what to do. In very short order, the other groups will lean upon this first group for guidance.

THE SECOND GROUP

The second group will be made up of the members of God’s kingdom from all over the world. After America is cleansed and the clouds of the second dictatorship are beginning to replace the first dictatorship the Saints will be anxious to rally when the Priesthood leaders sound the trumpet and call them to gather to America. The Lord says:

“Yea, the work shall commence among all the dispersed of my people, with the Father, to prepare the way whereby they may come unto me, that they may call on the Father in my name. Yea, and. then shall the work commence, with the Father, among all nations, in preparing the way whereby his people may be gathered home to the land of their inheritance.” ⁵²

And of course for the members of The Church, that’s America! The Lord speaks of these gathering Saints from all over the world in a modern revelation:

“And it shall come to pass that the righteous shall be gathered out from among ALL NATIONS, and shall come to Zion, singing with songs of everlasting joy.” ⁵³

THE THIRD GROUP

The third group to help reconstruct the western hemisphere will be the righteous gentiles who survive the cleansing. This is an interesting group of people. They are of many faiths. They love the Lord, they bow the knee in contemplation of his coming. They admire his Church and love the Saints. But they don’t join the Church. Nevertheless, they want to live under God’s Law and be part of God’s kingdom. The amazing part is that God extends an invitation to the righteous gentiles to be part of the political kingdom of God.

Brigham Young knew that a lot of the Saints would expect the kingdom of God to be only members of the church, but President Young said that is not the way the Lord planned it. Here are his words:

“The Kingdom of God [Those living under God’s Law] consists in correct principles; and it mattereth not what a man’s religious faith is; whether he be a Presbyterian, or a Methodist, or a Baptist, or a Latter-day Saint or ‘Mormon,’ or a Catholic or

Episcopalian, or Mohammedan, or even pagan, or anything else, if he WILL BOW THE KNEE AND WITH HIS tongue CONFESS THAT JESUS IS THE CHRIST, and will support good and wholesome laws for the regulation of society, we hail him as a brother, and will stand by him while he stands by us in these things; for every man’s religious faith is a matter between his own soul and his God alone.” ⁵⁴

THE FOURTH GROUP

Finally, there is the fourth group will help restore the western hemisphere. These are the peacemakers . They are people in other parts of the world who see they are about to be drafted into Prince Gog’s vast, second dictatorship. They may have even heard that he has ambitions to set up an army of 200,000,000. ⁵⁵ So all of these are allowed to flee to America. The Lord says:

“And it shall come to pass among the wicked, that every man that will not take up his sword against his neighbor must needs flee unto Zion for safety.” ⁵⁶

How grateful these peace-loving families will be after Prince Gog gets going with the second dictatorship. The scripture says:

“And there shall be gathered unto it out of every nation under heaven; and it shall be THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT SHALL NOT BE AT WAR ONE WITH ANOTHER.” ⁵⁷

SETTING UP THE NEW ORDER OF THINGS

Once all of these choice groups of people are in place they will set about building the New Jerusalem and setting up ideal Zion cities from one end of the American continent to the other. To accomplish this, the whole structure of government and economics will be changed as well as the adoption of a highly elevated society. Here are the highlights:

1. The people will be organized by families into tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands. The unit of around one hundred families will be called a secular, non-denominational “ward” similar to the Anglo Saxons and ancient Israel.
2. The judges or captains over each unit of ten, fifty, hundred and thousand families, etc. shall be elected each year and will be selectively nominated by the supreme councils and their officers as described in Exodus, chapter 1. This procedure eliminates the need for political parties.
3. The people will be governed by the original inspired Constitution as revealed to the Founding Fathers and endorsed by the Lord in 1834. ⁵⁸
4. Civil and criminal law are to be administered according to the law revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai as set forth principle by principle in chapters three to nine inclusive in the author’s text, The Majesty of God’s Law, Ensign Publishing Company,1996, pp.3
5. The economy will be practiced in harmony with the principles laid down byAdam Smith in 1776, but in the spirit of the Golden Ru1e.
6. The money system will be based on gold and silver with silver as the basic medium of exchange and gold circulating at free market value. Paper money issued by the government will be redeemable in precious metal and have reserves in the vaults for any currency issued. Borrowed money will be based on guaranteed collateral at market value.
7. God’s “law of consecration” will be allowed to operate under the control of God’s kingdom for those who have qualified in the temple and prefer its practice to the system of competitive free enterprise.

AMERICA IS SEALED OFF

While all of these new arrangements are being worked out among the four groups of survivors in America, God will begin to isolate America with what Luke called, “waves roaring.” ⁵⁹ The Lord warned that this would happen. He said:

“Wherefore, the days will come that no flesh shall be safe upon the waters., And it shall be said in days to come that none IS ABLE TO GO UP TO THE LAND OF ZION UPON THE WATERS, but he that is upright in heart. ⁶⁰

This verse would suggest that while America is by violent seas it will be impossible for ordinary people to either fly or sail across the turbulent oceans in an effort to get to Zion or America.

Another scripture implying complete isolation of the western hemisphere is the Lord’s statement we have already quoted which says:

“And there shall be gathered unto it out of every nation under heaven; and it shall be the only people that shall not be at war one with another.” ⁶¹

Joseph Smith warned that when the signal goes out to gather to Zion, the people must not tarry or they may lose their opportunity to even get to Zion. He said:

“The cry is to make haste. The last revelation says, Ye shall not have tine to have gone over the earth [ our missionaries), until these things come. It will come as did the cholera, war, fires and earthquakes; one pestilence after another..

This isolation of the righteous and peace-loving people in America& will be an ideal situation for the building of theNew Jerusalem and setting up numerous Zion cities on the western hemisphere. Concerning America at this particular time, the Lord says:

"...the wicked will not dare come unto it, and it shall be called Zion." ⁶³

THE RISE OF THE SECOND MILITARY DICTATORSHIP

While all of this orderly progress has been occurring in "sealed-off" America something totally evil will have been hovering over the rest of the world. After the collapse of the first military dictatorship, it will immediately allow numerous world leaders with satirical ambitions to begin maneuvering for an opportunity to claw their way to the top and build another world empire. Here is the way Johndescribed what he saw happening:

"And I beheld ANOTHER BEAST COMING UP OUT OF THE EARTH; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake like a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the FIRST beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

"And he doeth great wonders, so he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth, by the means of these miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword and did live.

"And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free or bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark; or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.... and his number is Six hundred three score and six." ⁶⁴

It was the ambition of the second dictatorship to exercise "all the power of the first beast. . .and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed." ⁶⁵

Ezekiel tells us that this second dictatorship was designed to mobilize all the gentile nations of the world under a massive army. But what happens to the heathen nations? (See 3 Nephi 21:21) The leader of this vast army will be known as Gog, prince of the Gentiles. ⁶⁶ As the prophetic story unfolds, we learn that since the fall of the first dictatorship some remarkable things have happened in Israel.

First, the Jews have gathered their people and their wealth from all over the world to the security of Israel. They will have built their capital city of Jerusalem into a magnificent metropolis secured by heavy walls. (Ezekiel, chapters 40-43)

Second, the prophet Zechariah (6:12-13) tells us that a beautiful temple will occupy the heights of Mount Moriah where the "Dome of the Rock" once stood.

We cannot help wondering how all of this can happen.

SOMETHING IMPORTANT MUST RAVE HAPPENED TO THE ARABS DURING THE FIRST WORLD DICTATORSHIP

It will be recalled that ever since 1967 - when the Israeli forces took over Jerusalem - the Jews have wanted to rebuild their temple. But the traditional site for the temple has been occupied since 691 A.D. by a very sacred building of the Moslem faith. This shrine is known as the "Dome of the Rock." It covers the huge threshing floor of Araunah where Abraham is said to have offered Isaac as a sacrifice. It is also the spot where Mohammed says he ascended to heaven on a white horse to commune with the ancient patriarchs and receive the teachings of the Moslem faith.

Once the Jews had occupied Jerusalem in 1967 the Moslems feared the Israelis might destroy their sacred building, but they were assured by the leading rabbis that the Jews would never desecrate the sacred places of other faiths.

The press felt the rabbis were saying: "If God wants his temple on Mount Moriah, he will have to make the necessary arrangements".

By the time of the second dictatorship, Ezekiel indicates this will have been accomplished. None of the prophets tell how it would happen, but several scenarios have been suggested.

WHAT IF THE ARABS LOST CONTROL OF THEIR OIL?

One theory is that the first dictatorship might undertake to confiscate the Arab’s vast treasure of oil. The Soviet Union has proposed this for many years since possession of the Arab oil could be the key to taking over Europe. As late as 1996 this was being proposed by a militant Russian political leader.

It is speculated that if the first world dictatorship undertook to confiscate the Arab oil there would be a mighty resistance and very likely the Dome of the Rock would be destroyed during the struggle. Furthermore, if the Arabs were robbed of their oil, the Moslem influence would be greatly reduced. It is therefore speculated that if the Dome of the Rock were destroyed and Arab influence diminished, there would be virtually no significant resistance to the rebuilding of the Jewish temple.

THE WORLDWIDE GATHERING OF THE JEWS

Ezekiel describes in chapter 34 how scattered and distressed the Jews will be when the Lord reaches out to rescue them. The Lord said to Ezekiel:

‘.. .yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep and seek them out....and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the river, and all the inhabited places of the country.... And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, EVEN MY SERVANT, Davida prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it." ⁶⁷

Many scholars, including the King James translators, thought these passages referred to the Savior. However, as we have just seen in Ezekiel, chapter 34, verses 23 and 24 the Lord specifically refers to this particular David as his "servant."

Joseph Smith referred to this Prince David and said he would replace his great ancestor temporarily because "the throne and kingdom of David is to be taken from him [ancient David] and given to another by the name of David in the last days, raised up out of his lineage.” ⁶⁸

The administration of this outstanding leader apparently will last a long time, clear over to the time when the Ten Tribes return and become one with Judah. ⁶⁹

In Ezekiel, chapter 46, we read how David, the prince, will conduct the services at the temple when they come to worship the Lord, and Jeremiah said:

“For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will break his (Israel’s] yoke from off thy neck and.. .they shall serve the Lord their God MID DAVID THEIR KING, WHOM I SHALL RAISE UP TO THEM.” ⁷⁰

Notice that in all of these passages “David” is identified as a servant of the Lord and not the Lord himself.

Isaiah speaks of this great leader of Israel in the latter days as a “rod” that would come from “the stem of Jesse,” which is Christ, ⁷¹ and in a modern revelation the Lord said:

“Behold, thus saith the Lord, It (the rod) is a servant in the hands of Christ, which is partly a descendant of Jesse as well as of Ephraim, or of the house of Joseph, on whom is laid much power.” ⁷²

There has been some question as to whether this refers to Prince David or Joseph Smith. In either case we have an interesting disclosure by the Lord that this distinguished leader is a mixture of both Juda and Ephraim. It would be amazing to the Jews if David turned out to be partly Ephraim and it certainly would be somewhat surprising to the members of the restored kingdom if Joseph Smith turned out to be part Jewish.

As David the prince gathers the Jews from all over the world to the land of Israel, there will be both wealth and manpower to beautify the city of Jerusalem. We learn later that he will raise up its mighty walls as a defense and then rebuild the temple. ⁷³

For the Jews, this will be their 4th temple. This is the temple seen by Ezekiel in vision and the one to which the Savior will come. The three previous temples – One built by Solomon around 950 B.C., the one built by Zerubbabel around 516 B.C., and the one built by Herod at the time of Christ were all destroyed, and while this fourth temple will be attack fl, it will continue to survive right into the Millennium.

GOG, THE MIGHTY EMPEROR OF THE SECOND WORLD DICTATORSHIP

Ezekiel says the second dictatorship which will arise at this time is headed up by a fierce and ambitious tyrant named Gog the height of his power he will be like the leader of the first dictatorship and consider himself totally invincible, but the Lord said to his prophet:

“Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal and prophesy against him.” ⁷⁴

This happens right at the time the beautiful edifice of the temple is being raised up to crown the heights of Mount Moriah. ⁷⁵ This will be the most elaborate “house of the Lord” ever constructed, and no doubt Prince Gog will have his spies carefully reporting every phase of its construction. Of course, he will be contemptuous of the Jewish belief that this is a holy place – a center of sacred worship. On the contrary, Prince Gog will look upon this temple as a mighty treasure house in which the Jews have stored away their wealth from all over the world.

As the greedy eyes of Gog are focused on the loot he will derive from a raid on Jerusalem, the Lord is saying:

“Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief of princes of Mesheck and Tubal; and I will turn thee back and put hooks into thy jaws and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them, clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords.” ⁷⁶

The Lord had Ezekiel describe precisely what this bloodthirsty tyrant would do:

“Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee.” ⁷⁷

Because the Lord could read Gog’s mind, he said:

“Thou shalt think an evil thought: and thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without wa1ls and having neither bars nor gates, to take spoil, and to take a prey, to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land..” ⁷⁸

GOG LOOKS TOWARD JERUSALEM

It appears that Gog will have conquered all of Europe and Asia before he turns his greedy war machine on the land of Palestine. This man will have established terroristic Gadiantonism and a murder-cult criminal spoils system everywhere but in America. John says:

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” ⁷⁹

It is interesting that the whole earth will be under his domination exept North and South America. As we have mentioned earlier a modern revelation says he would have invaded America except for his fear of the consequences. Gog and his cohorts are quoted in this scripture as saying:

“Let us not go up to battle against Zion, for the inhabitants of Zion are terrible, wherefore we cannot stand.” ⁸⁰

Some of this may have been due to heavenly powers possessed by God’s servants in Zion similar to that which Enoch exhibited during the first thousand years of human history. It says:

“…their enemies came to battle against them; and he (Enoch] spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, even according to his command; and the rivers of water were turned out of their course; and the roar of the lions were heard out of the wilderness; and all nations feared greatly, so powerful was the word of Enoch, and so great was the power of the language which God had given him.” ⁸¹

But in the beginning of the second dictatorship seen by John, the violent Gog and his hordes of ferocious military forces will be spreading their “abomination of desolation” in every direction. ⁸²

JOEL WITNESSES A VISION OF HORROR – THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION

A prophet named Joel – living several centuries before Ezekiel – used two whole chapters to describe the terrifying weapons of modern warfare which Gog would employ to set up his second dictatorship. Joel could scarcely find words to describe what he saw. In fact, until the nuclear age, no generation could have completely comprehended what Joel was trying to describe:

“A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.” ⁸³

Joel felt he was seeing the very ultimate in destructive warfare. He said:

“There hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.” ⁸⁴

Joel did his best to describe what he saw:

“The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run.” ⁸⁵

But these were not like any horses he had ever seen. Notice his bold attempt to describe the strange mobile units which he saw:

“Like the noise of chariots [not of horses] on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble;…they shall run like mighty men [once more the simile changes] they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break ranks: neither shall one thrust another, they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses: and they shall enter in at the window like a thief. The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble.” ⁸⁶

It sounds very much as though the prophet is attempting to describe helicopter gun ships and a modern armored division rumbling across a city with cannon and flame-throwers spreading destruction all around.

THE FAMOUS BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON

But at Jerusalem Gog and his mighty host will come to a sudden halt. It turns out that Prince David has two powerful allies that Gog would have never suspected. He has 2 prophets whom God will raise up among the Jews with powers unlike anything Gog has seen. An angel describes what he sees the two prophets will be able to do:

“If any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.” ⁸⁷

For three-and-a-half years these prophets will hold Gog and these great gentile armies at bay. ⁸⁸

When the prophet Joel saw the predicament in which the Jews would find themselves, he knew there was no human power that could save them. Apparently, even before Joel saw the two prophets demonstrating their powers, Joel pleads with the Jews to begin their fasting and prayer with fervent pleadings that God will intervene and save them. He cried:

“Rend your hearts ⁸⁹ and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God…. Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly; gather the people, sanctify the congregation … let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach.” ⁹⁰

WHY WOULDN’T THE SAINTS IN AMERICA ASSIST THE JEWS?

When we consider all the circumstances it is highly probable that the people in America will have no idea what is happening to the Jews. With the violent storms raging around the western hemisphere ⁹¹ it might be impossible to communicate with the other parts of the world as well prove to be impossible to sail or fly.

Some have suggested that by this time the storms might have subsided, but this does not seem likely since millions would immediately flee to America to escape the cruel dictatorship of Gog and Magog. The Lord says that during this period “no flesh shall be safe upon the waters. And it shall be said. . .that none is able to go up to the land of Zion upon the waters, but he that is upright in heart.” ⁹²

The last phrase implies that the few righteous stragglers who did not get to America before the “roaring seas” took over will be able to reach Zion only by divine intervention. ⁹³

MEANWHILE, THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE TRAGEDIES WILL OCCUR AMONG THE JEWS

In spite of all the prayers and petitions of the Jews, Gog will launch a do-or-die assault on the walls of Jerusalem,- at the height of his stubborn fury his army does succeed in penetrating the strong walls and kill the two prophets. Then they will slaughter the Jews by the thousands as they make their way toward the temple.

The Lord told the prophet Zechariah – who lived a generation after Ezekiel (520 B.C.) – that the invasion of Jerusalem will be terrible indeed. He says:

“And the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity.” ⁹⁴

GOG AND HIS HOSTS WILL CELEBRATE FOR THREE-AND-A-HALF DAYS

At this juncture, Prince Gog will be supremely jubilant. In triumphant glee the dictator will order a brief cease-fire. He wants to hold a victory banquet and spread the news that the prophets who “tormented” them have been overcome and killed. Gog will not permit the bodies of the two prophets to be buried, but orders them left lying in the street while he and his generals celebrate in a drunken orgy for three-and-a-half days. ⁹⁵

But at the end of this period, Gog and his army will have the most shocking surprise of their lives.

The mutilated bodies of the two prophets will suddenly arise up from the ground, fully restored. Then a great voice will be heard from heaven saying, “Come up hither,” and the two prophets will ascend in a cloud as Gog and his hosts watch in amazement. ⁹⁶

THE APPEARANCE OF JESUS CHRIST TO THE JEWS

Then things will really begin to happen.

Jesus will suddenly appear on the Mount of Olives with a great host, and the scripture says he shall “utter his voice an all the ends of the earth shall hear it.” At this point the prophet Zechariah says:

“And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great earth quake; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north and half of it toward the south. And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains….” ⁹⁷

It is interesting that when Jesus makes himself visible to the Jews in the great valley between the separated halves of the Mount of Olives, he withholds his glory . Just as when he appeared after his resurrection to his apostles and others, he came as an ordinary man and had to show them the wounds in his hands and his feet and his side to prove his identity. ⁹⁸

So it will be when he appears to the Jews. Apparently neither he nor the Saints will appear in glory. The Jews will therefore be unafraid and gather round him in jubilant adoration. But they will still not know him. Finally, someone standing nearby will ask in curious wonderment:

“What are these wounds in thine hands and in thy feet?” ⁹⁹

At this point Jesus decides to tell them the rest of the story. Here are his own words:

“Then shall they know that I am the Lord; for I will say unto them: These wounds are the wounds with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. I am he who was lifted up. I am he that was crucified. I am the Son of God.

“And then shall they weep because of their iniquities; then shall they lament because they persecuted their king.” ¹⁰⁰

At last the Jews will know the true identity of their great Messiah. It is none other than Jesus Christ who was slain when he came the first time because they thought he was an impostor. ¹⁰¹

Even while the Jews are in mourning because their ancestors failed to recognize the Savior, they will now try to make it up to him. In a spirit of humble adoration they will lead him to their beautiful temple and enter the holy sanctuary by the eastern gate. The gate will then be closed and never opened again. ¹⁰²

This is purely symbolic, of course, since the apostles learned in their day, that the resurrected Jesus could appear and depart when the gates were closed and the doors were locked. ¹⁰³

For the Jews , this is a supremely joyous time.

THE FATE OF GOG AND HIS HOSTS

Of course, Gog and his hosts will be completely oblivious to the sensational events which are taking place among the Jews who have survived their great crisis. But they will be terribly aware of something else – their own destruction. A tidal wave of devastation will be sweeping down upon them. The Lord had described to Ezekiel what would happen:

“I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone.” ¹⁰⁴

“And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee.” ¹⁰⁵

As with the wicked Gentiles in America, the hosts of Gog are devastated by the power of God. Here is the way Zechariah describes it:

“And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem: their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in the holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.” ¹⁰⁶

MOSLEMS OF OUR OWN DAY WOULD SCARCELY BELIEVE WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT

The prophets were shown that the great events at Jerusalem would be world-wide ‘ . The city of Jerusalem will be rebuilt and millions of people in the surrounding nations will eagerly seek to visit there. The Jewish prophet Zechariah describes it:

“Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord…. In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that GOD IS WITH YOU.” ¹⁰⁷

The converted Christian Jews in Israel will not only make their covenants with their great Messiah through baptism, but they will have radiant testimonies to proclaim to all who come to Jerusalem their witness concerning their newly discovered gospel of salvation. The results of all this will generate a wonderful bonding among the descendants of Abraham. The Arabic nations that surround the Mediterranean and the Moslems of India, China, Russia and elsewhere will thirst for the message of the Jewish Messiah. Isaiah says this great new wave of Christian conversion will bind the Jews to their Moslem cousins:

“The Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt MY PEOPLE, and Assyria THE WORK OF MY BANDS, and Israel MINE INHERITANCE.” ¹⁰⁸

Not only will the Jews and Arabs become united but so will many of the Gentile nations. After Armageddon Zechariah says:

“And it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.

“And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain.” ¹⁰⁹

CLEANSING THE LAND

The tens of thousands of the hosts of Gog who will be slain will be a plague on the land of Israel. For months the people will be laboring by day and by night to bury the dead. Ezekiel writes:

“And it shall stop the noses of the passengers: and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude: and they shall call it The valley of Hamon-gog.

“And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land. Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them….And they shall sever out men of continual employment, passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the to cleanse it: after the end of 7 months shall they search.” ¹¹⁰

THE END OF BLOOD SACRIFICES AT THE TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM

The fourth temple in Jerusalem will be copied after the earlier temples of the Jews and will therefore be designed for blood sacrifices. However, once the Jews have learned that their Messiah has come, the purpose of these blood sacrifices – in anticipation of Christ’s sacrifice – will give them a new perspective. Nevertheless, Joseph Smith indicated that the law of sacrifice will be continued as part of the “restitution of all things” until the sons of Levi have learned how to offer these sacrifices “in righteousness.” ¹¹¹

Such a time was anticipated by John the Baptist when he restored the Aaronic Priesthood and said:

“This (Priesthood of Aaron) shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.” ¹¹²

Malachi indicates that the problem for the Levites is not merely learning the ritual in righteousness but having a corps of humble and righteous Levites who are worthy to perform the ordinances. He says:

“And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years.” 113

When the Lord is fully satisfied that the “offering of Judah and Jerusalem is pleasant unto the Lord,” he will no doubt say to the Priesthood in Jerusalem as he did to the Priesthood among the Nephites:

“And ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood; yea, your sacrifices and your burnt offerings shall be done away, for I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings. And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heartand a contrite spirit.” 114

It will probably be about this time that all of the higher ordinances can be introduced into the holy precincts of the temple in Jerusalem just as they will, be practiced in the beautiful temple in New Jerusalem.

THE UNITING OF EPHRAIM AND JUDAH

In fact, by this time a warm relationship will have developed between the leadership of God’s two great capitals. Both people will be worshipping the same Messiah, both people will have the same ordinances in their temples, both people will now be prepared to finish the final preparation for the Second Coming of the Messiah. As Isaiah predicted:

“The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.”

ONLY TWO MORE GREAT EVENTS TO OCCUR BEFORE THE SECOND COMING

We have now reached a summit on the God’s prophetic time line so that only two major events must occur before the Second Coming.

The first is THE RETURN OF THE 10 tribes which the prophets have been talking about for centuries.

The second is the selecting and sealing of TWELVE THOUSAND OUT OF EACH TRIBE so that these 144,000 consecrated missionaries can scour the earth and seek out any fragments of humanity who still want to accept the gospel. Those who accept the gospel will be baptized, confirmed and sent to America where they can be caught up when the Savior comes. Those who reject the gospel will be sealed up to destruction as described by Malachi:

“For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up; saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.” ¹¹⁶

In a future discussion we will consider these two monumental events and the highlights of the Second Coming.

1. D&C 38:30
2. D&C 107:56
3. D&C 7:62
4. Isaiah 29:11–14
5. Nephi: 14:20-21, 25, 27
6. 1 Nephi 22:29
7. Nephi 32:7
8. Revelation 7:8–4
9. Revelation 14:1–8
10. Alma 13:3
11. History of the Church. vol. vi, p. 364
12. D&C 77: 11
13. D&C 77: 13
14. Revelation 7:3–4 with 14:1-8
15. Revelation 8:1
16. D&C 20:1
17. D&C 21:2–3
18. N. B. Lundwall, Temples of the Most High, 1941, p. 291—292; original source: The Deseret Weekly News, vol. 53, No. 21, November 7, 1896
19. D&C 88:95
20. R. McConkie, The Millennial Messiah (one volume) Deseret Book, 1982, p. 382
21. Abraham 3:4
22. 2 Peter 3:8
23. D&C 77:10
24. D&C 77:13
25. D&C 77:14
26. Essentials of Church History, By Joseph Fielding Smith, 1937 edition, p. 126
27. Deuteronomy 30:4; see also Matthew 24:81; and D&C 138:7 and Pearl of Great Price 45:37
28. Revelation 8:1
29. Revelation 13:1
30. Revelation 13:2
31. Quoted in “Stand Fast by the Constitution” by J. Reuben Clark, p. 85
32. Revelation 13:1–4
33. Revelation 13:5
34. Revelation 13:6–7
35. Revelation 13:9–10
36. 3 Nephi 16:10
37. Micah 5:7–15
38. 3 Nephi 20:14–19
39. Revelation 13:7
40. Patrick R. J. Carmack, The Money Masters, p. 5
41. Patrick R. J. Carmack, The Money Masters, p. 4
42. D&C 97:22–26
43. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 17
44. “Published by Wilford Woodruff in Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, ol. 7, pp. 419-423.
45. 45 Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 8, p. 123
46. 46 The Contributor, an LDS magazine, vol. 15, pp. 638-841
47. 47 D&C 29:17–20
48. 48 D&C 45:31
49. 49 D&C 97:25
50. 50 D&C 45:32’35
51. Journal of Discourses. vol. 12:344
52. 3 Nephi 21:27–28
53. D&C 45:71
54. Millennial Star, vol. 10, March 15, 1848, p. 87; Hyrum Andrus, Doctrines of the Kingdom, Salt Lake City Bookcraft, 1973, p. 396
55. Revelation 9:16
56. D&C 45:68
57. D&C 45:69
58. D&C 101:77:80 and 98:6-10
59. Luke 21:25–26
60. D&C 61:15–16
61. D&C 45:69
62. History of the Church, vol. 3, pp. 390- 391
63. D&C 45:67
64. Revelation 13:11–18
65. Revelation 13:12
66. Ezekiel 38:2
67. Ezekiel 34:6, 11–13, 23–24
68. Doc. History of the Church, vol. 6, p. 253
69. Ezekiel 37:22–24
70. Jeremiah 80:8–9
71. D&C 113:2
72. D&C 113:4
73. Zechariah 6:12–13
74. Ezekiel 38:2
75. Ezekiel, chapters 41-42
76. Ezekiel 38:3–4
77. Ezekiel 38:9
78. Ezekiel 38:10–12
79. Revelation13:16-17
80. D&C 22: 16–17
81. Moses 7:18–14
82. Daniel 11:31
83. 2:2-3
84. Joel 2:2
85. Joel 2:4
86. Joel 2:5–10
87. Revelation 11:5–6
88. Revelation 11:2–3
89. 2 Nephi 2:7
90. Joel 2:13–16
91. Luke 21:24–25
92. D&C 61:15–16
93. D&C 61:15
94. Zechariah 14:2
95. Revelation 11:11–10
96. Revelation 11:11–12
97. Zechariah 14:4
98. This is described in Luke 24:13–16
99. Zechariah 12:10; Doctrine and Covenants 45:49
100. Doctrine and Covenants 45:52–53
101. For details see Skousen, Days of the Living Christ, op. cit. pp. 828-829
102. Ezekiel 44:2
103. John 20:19, 26
104. Ezekiel 28:22
105. Ezekiel 39:2
106. Zechariah 14:12. To compare this with the plague among the wicked Gentiles in America, see Doctrine and Covenants 29:18–19
107. Zechariah 8:22–23
108. Isaiah 19:25
109. Zechariah 14:16–17
110. Ezekiel 39:11–14
111. Teachings of Joseph Smith, pp. 172-173
112. D&C 13:1
113. Malachi 3:3–4
114. 3 Nephi 9:19–20
115. Isaiah 11:13
116. Malachi 4:1

“Freedom-loving men owe a debt of gratitude to Great Britain and those human instruments who provided that first flicker of ‘freedom’s holy light’ to future generations, and which made the restoration of the fullness of the gospel possible.”

In spite of the serious problems facing Great Britain, one cannot step upon that land and tread its walkways without a supreme consciousness of history. The British Isles are saturated with history. The Western world and free men everywhere owe to England a great debt of gratitude for a legacy handed down over the centuries.

Following the great apostasy from the principles and laws of Christ, the world became enslaved in a cloak of darkness. This long night of Christian apostasy placed an oppressive tyranny on the minds of men, which were shackled by chains of false priestly tradition. Before the gospel could shine forth its resplendent light, a flickering flame of religious and political freedom had to commence somewhere. Heaven determined that it begin in England.

The stage had been set premortally. The characters in the drama had been held in reserve to come at appropriate times and intervals to influence the course of events in history.

A great soul was sent to the earth at Wickliff, New Richmond, in Yorkshire, about 1324. His name—John Wycliffe. His voice in later years was raised against the abuses of the church of his day. He was subsequently excommunicated, the most serious offense being that he translated the Bible into the English language. He believed that “the scriptures are the property of the people, and one which no one should be allowed to wrest from them.” As a result of his courageous efforts, England for the first time in history was given a complete version of the scriptures in her native language, though published in manuscript form only. Our perspective shows us that the efforts of Wycliffe brought about the Great Reformation, and he was given the appropriate title “The Morning Star of the Reformation.”

A century later another figure was born in England—William Tyndale. Where Wycliffe’s Bible was only a translation of the Latin into English, Tyndale translated his version from the original Greek. The result was the first printed New Testament in English. Utilizing one of the greatest inventions of man, the printing press, the Tyndale New Testament was printed in Germany, smuggled into England, and made available to the English people. For this, Tyndale was strangled and his body burned at the stake. His last words were “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes,” a prayer that was subsequently answered when King James, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, gave to the world the authorized King James Version of the Bible—the version used to this day by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was this flicker of freedom and the belief that each man had a right to the possession of God’s word that sponsored the Great Reformation in Europe. Speaking of this great movement, and the reformers themselves, President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote: “In preparation for [the restoration of the gospel] the Lord raised up noble men . . . whom we call reformers, and gave them power to break the shackles which bound the people and denied them the sacred right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. . . .

“In the days of greatest spiritual darkness, when evil raged, the Lord raised up honorable men, who rebelled against the tyranny of the [adversary] and his emissaries. . . .” (Doctrines of Salvation, Bookcraft, 1954, 1:174-75. Italics in original.)

President Smith also wrote: “Praise be to the great souls who conducted the Protestant Revolution. They helped to make it possible for the establishment of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early part of the nineteenth century, preparatory to the second coming of the Son of God. For all the good they did we honor them, and they shall receive their reward which shall be great. They were not restorers, but were sent to prepare the way for one who was yet to come with a mission of restoration and everlasting power.” (Essentials in Church History, Deseret Book, 1950, p. 21.)

Religious freedom cannot prosper where political freedom does not exist. Again, history records that the spark which kindled the flame of political liberty among men commenced in Great Britain. Somewhat over a century before Wycliffe’s birth, an event took place in England that opened the door to a recognition of man’s rights by abridging the power of the king. Until then, human rights were looked upon as something a monarch might grant to his subjects. On the soil of Runnymede in the year 1215, the English monarch, King John, formally recognized in writing that he had encroached on man’s sacred rights, and thus one of history’s most influential documents was born, the Great Charter. Since that time this document, also known as the Magna Carta, has become a symbol of man’s freedom.

For man to exercise fully the agency God has granted to him, his God-given natural rights must be recognized and protected. It has only been recognized within the past four hundred years that these rights inherently belong to man. It was historical documents such as the English Petition of Rights and the English Bill of Rights that first recognized the “immemorial rights of Englishmen.” I believe these movements were inspired of the Lord. Later these God-given rights were to become guaranteed by New World documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the American Bill of Rights.

Speaking of the circumstances that brought about the principle of self-government, President Brigham Young said on one occasion: “The King of Great Britain . . . might . . . have been led to . . . aggressive acts, for aught we know, to bring to pass the purposes of God, in thus establishing a new government upon a principle of greater freedom, a basis of self-government allowing the free exercise of religious worship.” (Journal of Discourses 2:170.)

Once a man’s rights became guaranteed by the political institutions that would serve him, the time became propitious for the Prophet Joseph Smith to be sent on the world scene, and for the kingdom of God to be restored by direct divine intervention in the year 1830. A light had burst forth among men again, and it was the fullness of the gospel! (See D&C 45:28.)

Yes, freedom-loving men owe a debt of gratitude to Great Britain and those human instruments who provided that first flicker of “freedom’s holy light” to future generations, and which made the restoration of the fullness of the gospel possible.

The greatest legacy contributed by the British Isles to the kingdom of God is not appreciated or recognized outside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This legacy is the number of valiant souls—veritable defenders of the faith—who came from the United Kingdom to strengthen the Church at a time of its greatest vulnerability. Until 1837, the Church was largely confined to the United States, principally in the states of Ohio and Missouri. Then a crisis came on the infant church. Many began to apostatize, including some of the leading figures. Speaking of this period, the Prophet Joseph Smith wrote:

“At this time the spirit of speculation in lands and property of all kinds, which was so prevalent throughout the whole nation, was taking deep root in the Church. As the fruits of this spirit, evil surmisings, fault-finding, disunion, dissension, and apostasy followed in quick succession, and it seemed as though all the powers of earth and hell were combining their influence in an especial manner to overthrow the Church at once, and make a final end. . . .

“In this state of things, and but a few weeks before the Twelve were expecting to meet in full quorum, . . . God revealed to me that something new must be done for the salvation of His Church.” (History of the Church 2:487-89.)

That “something new” which would be “done for the salvation of His Church” was the bringing of the gospel to the British Isles. President Spencer W. Kimball’s grandfather, Heber C. Kimball, related the circumstances of this revelation in these words: “On Sunday, the 4th day of June, 1837, the Prophet Joseph came to me, while I was seated in front of the stand, above the sacrament table, on the Melchizedek side of the Temple, in Kirtland, and whispering to me, said, ‘Brother Heber, the Spirit of the Lord whispered to me: “Let my servant Heber go to England and proclaim my Gospel, and open the door of salvation to that nation.”‘” (Orson F. Whitney, Life of Heber C. Kimball, Stevens and Wallis, 1945, pp. 103-4.)

So in 1837, four servants of God were called to the British Isles: Elder Heber C. Kimball, Elder Orson Hyde, Elder Willard Richards, and a priest, Joseph Fielding. Others were to follow, including Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff. In 1841 Brigham Young wrote:

“We landed in the spring of 1840, as strangers in a strange land and penniless, but through the mercy of God we have gained many friends, established Churches in almost every noted town and city in the kingdom of Great Britain, baptized between seven and eight thousand, printed 5,000 Books of Mormon, 3,000 Hymn Books, 2,500 [copies] of the Millennial Star, and 50,000 tracts, and emigrated to Zion 1,000 souls, established a permanent shipping agency, which will be a great blessing to the Saints, and have left sown in the hearts of many thousands the seeds of eternal truth, which will bring forth fruit to the honor and glory of God, and yet we have lacked nothing to eat, drink, or wear: in all these things I acknowledge the hand of God.” (Millennial Star 26:7.)

One of the most memorable of these experiences, which illustrates how the Lord had prepared a people to receive His gospel, was recorded by Elder Woodruff. He had been directed by the Spirit to the John Benbow farm in Herefordshire, England, in early 1840. Here are his words:

“When I arose to speak at Brother Benbow’s house, a man entered the door and informed me that he was a constable, and had been sent by the rector of the parish with a warrant to arrest me. I asked him, ‘For what crime?’ He said, ‘For preaching to the people.’ I told him that I, as well as the rector, had a license for preaching the gospel to the people, and that if he would take a chair I would wait upon him after meeting. He took my chair and sat beside me. For an hour and a quarter I preached the first principles of the everlasting gospel. The power of God rested upon me, the spirit filled the house and the people were convinced. At the close of the meeting I opened the door for baptism, and seven offered themselves. Among the number were four preachers and the constable. The latter arose and said, ‘Mr. Woodruff, I would like to be baptized.’ I told him I would like to baptize him. . . .

“The first thirty days after my arrival in Herefordshire, I had baptized forty-five preachers and one hundred and sixty members of the United Brethren, who put into my hands one chapel and forty-five houses, which were licensed according to law to preach in. This opened a wide field of labor, and enabled me to bring into the Church, through the blessings of God, over eighteen hundred souls during eight months, including all of the six hundred United Brethren except one person.” (Matthias F. Cowley, Life of Wilford Woodruff, Deseret News, 1909, pp. 118-19.)

During this period between 1840 and 1846, it is estimated that over 3,300 Saints from Great Britain, at great personal sacrifice, immigrated to Nauvoo in an effort to give their all to the building of the kingdom of God. Among those early stalwart converts from England were such illustrious names as John Taylor, third president of the Church; George Q. Cannon, counselor in the First Presidency; John R. Winder, counselor in the First Presidency; and George Teasdale, apostle.

Since that time, it has been estimated by the Church Genealogical Society that eighty percent of the members of the Church today are descendants or converts from the British Isles. How the Lord has favored that land and that people by the number of the blood of Israel He has placed there!

My purpose in recounting some of this background is to recall the long historic struggle for the recognition of man’s God-given right to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. God has guided significant events in times past to preserve those rights. He has raised up the individuals with the courage and intrepid will to do what needed to be done. All this was for the purpose of laying a foundation so that the gospel and His kingdom could be restored. Our mission today is to see that this gospel reaches every nation, every tongue, and every person. I repeat, this can be done effectively only when man’s basic freedoms are protected and preserved. The gospel can prosper only in an atmosphere of freedom.

Today, there is a great threat to freedom. The Church is prospering and growing, but all over the world the light of freedom is being diminished. A great struggle for the minds of men is now being waged. At issue is whether or not man’s basic inalienable rights of life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness shall be recognized. It is the same struggle over which the war in heaven was waged. In undiminished fury, and with an anxiety that his time is short—and it is—the great adversary to all men is attempting to destroy man’s freedom and to see him totally subjugated. There are evidences of this struggle all about us. A system of slavery, communism, has imprisoned the minds and bodies of over one billion of the earth’s inhabitants. Today, forty-five percent of the people of the world, in sixty-five nations, live under totalitarian dictatorships or forms of government that deny people most or all of their political and religious freedom. We further read and hear about international terrorism where nations are blackmailed and there is no regard for human life.

Even among free nations we see the encroachment of government upon the lives of the citizenry by excessive taxation and regulation, all done under the guise that the people would not willfully or charitably distribute their wealth, so the government must take it from them. We further observe promises by the state of security, whereby men are taken care of from the womb to the tomb rather than earning this security by the “sweat of their brow”; deception in high places, with the justification that “the end justifies the means”; atheism; agnosticism; immorality; and dishonesty. The attendant results of such sin and usurpation of power are a general distrust of government officials; an insatiable, covetous spirit for more and more material wants; personal debt to satisfy this craving; and the disintegration of the family unit.

In 1958 a beloved spiritual leader, and my inspired mission president in Great Britain, delivered an inspiring prayer at the dedication of the London Temple. I quote a short paragraph from that memorable prayer by President David O. McKay:

“Next to life we express gratitude for the gift of free agency. When thou didst create man, thou placed within him part of thine omnipotence and bade him choose for himself. Liberty and conscience thus became a sacred part of human nature. Freedom not only to think, but to speak and to act is a God-given privilege.” (Improvement Era, October 1958, pp. 718-19.)

This heritage of freedom is as precious as life itself. It is truly a God-given gift to us. With it, we are moral agents before God, “accountable for [our] own sins in the day of judgment. Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.” (D&C 101:78-79.)

With the evidence all about them that tyranny is on the increase and that man’s freedoms are ebbing, faithful members of the Church are asking, “What can be done? What can I do?” Of all people, members of the Church must not despair. As God has intervened in our past history, so He may in our present history. His purposes will not be thwarted. His kingdom will not be destroyed or left to another people, “but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.” (Daniel 2:44.) We must remember what our beloved President Spencer W. Kimball has reminded the Church so often: “Nothing is impossible to the Lord!”

To come under the protective and preserving hand of God, it is vital that we keep before us the conditions for such protection. “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34.)

Nephi, who saw our day, pronounced this prophecy: “. . . I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small.

“And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.” (1 Nephi 14:12, 14. Italics added.)

And again, Nephi prophesied: “For the time soon cometh that the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men; for he will not suffer that the wicked shall destroy the righteous. Wherefore, he will preserve the righteous by his power, even if it so be that the fulness of his wrath must come, and the righteous be preserved even unto the destruction of their enemies by fire.” (1 Nephi 22:16-17. Italics added.)

These are the promises of the Lord to all the faithful saints who keep the commandments of God. They need not fear. What can we do to keep the light of freedom alive? Keep the commandments of God. Walk circumspectly before Him. Pay our tithes and fast offerings. Attend our temples. Stay morally clean. Participate in local elections, for the Lord has said, “Honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold.” (D&C 98:10.) Be honest in all our dealings. Faithfully hold our family home evenings. Pray—pray to the God of heaven that He will intervene to preserve our precious freedoms, that His gospel may go to every nation and people. Yes, in the words of the Lord Himself: “Stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come. . . .” (D&C 87:8.) Those “holy places” are our temples, stakes, wards, and homes.

At the time that the gospel was first taken to Great Britain in this dispensation, the elders were directed by the Spirit to go to Preston. A general election was in process. As the elders went into Preston, they were greeted with a spectacle of band and music playing, thousands of men, women, and children parading the streets, and flags flying in every direction. At the moment the coach in which the elders were riding had reached its destination, one of the flags unfurled nearly over their heads. On the flag in large gilt letters was this motto: “Truth will prevail.” The elders took this as an appropriate omen, and cried aloud, “Amen! Thanks be to God, truth will prevail!” I witness to you that certainty: truth will prevail!

God lives. He presides over the destiny of nations and His church. He is close to this church and its prophet. Of this I bear witness.

I love the British Isles and the British people. It was on that soil that I served my first mission. Since then I have had a great love for the people of the British Isles. When the first apostles set foot on that land, they were privileged to see Queen Victoria, who passed by them in royal procession. As she did so, she made a low bow to the brethren. They returned the royal salute, and Heber C. Kimball pronounced this blessing: “God bless you.” As one of God’s servants today, I say, God bless the people of the British Isles. God bless and preserve their families in righteousness. God bless their land and their leaders.

Humbly and gratefully I stand before you this morning, humbled by the responsibility which is mine as I face this choice audience, and grateful for this great and unique institution, founded by a prophet of God.

As an introduction to what I trust the Lord will be pleased to have me say today, I quote a short paragraph from a memorable prayer given at the dedication of the London Temple by President David O. McKay:

Next to life, we express gratitude for the gift of free agency. When thou didst create man, thou placed within him part of thine Omnipotence and bade him choose for himself. Liberty and conscience thus became a sacred part of human nature. Freedom not only to think, but to speak and act, is a God-given privilege. [Improvement Era, October 1958, pp. 718–19]

As a further introduction, I quote from another beloved leader for whom our newest college on this campus is named–President J. Reuben Clark:

The Constitution of the United States is a great and treasured part of my religion. . . . The overturning, or the material changing, or the distortion of any fundamental principle of our constitutional government would thus do violence to my religion. . . . My faith teaches me that the Constitution is an inspired document drawn by the hands of men whom God raised up for that very purpose; that God has given His approval of the Government set up under the Constitution “for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles”: that the constitutional “principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before” the Lord. (D&C 101:77, 98:5.) . . .

So far as my knowledge goes, this is the only government now on the earth to which God has given such an approval. It is His plan for the government of free men. [President J. Reuben Clark, Stand Fast by Our Constitution, pp. 7, 172]

They Poured Out Their Blood

Not too many miles from Boston rests a large boulder on Lexington Green. Inscribed on this rock, which I read again a short time ago, are the words which Captain Parker gave to his minutemen on April 19, 1775, nearly 200 years ago:

Stand your ground, don’t fire unless fired upon,

But if they mean to have a war

Let it begin here.

And it began.

Said Webster, “They poured out their generous blood like water before they knew whether it would fertilize the land of freedom or of bondage.”

But they aroused their fellow Americans. Within one year John Adams faced the body of men who were deliberating on whether to adopt the Declaration of Independence. With the inspiration of heaven resting on him, Adams was said to have declared:

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there’s a Divinity which shapes our ends. . . . Why, then, should we defer the Declaration? . . . You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die Colonists, die slaves, die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold.

Be it so. Be it so.

If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready. . . . But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country.

But whatever may be our fate, be assured . . . that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but it will stand and it will richly compensate for both.

Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its annual return they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude and of joy.

Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, Independence now, and Independence forever. [The Works of Daniel Webster, 4th ed., 1:133–:36]

Yesterday, I read further in the great current volume, Quest of a Hemisphere, by Boyle, published by Western Islands, Boston. I am grateful that we now have again a textbook for our children, grandchildren, and their parents that restores that which has, in many cases, been removed from our histories by wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I love history books that tell history as it was–as the Book of Mormon tells it–with the Lord in the picture guiding and directing the affairs of the righteous, winning their battles for them.

In this new history, we read again, as some of us who are old enough remember reading, the courageous and stirring words against the Navigation Acts, the Stamp Act of 1765, and “taxation without representation.” In this real American history we have the record of Washington, Jefferson, and the record of Samuel Adams of Boston, who organized Committees of Correspondence and groups of young men banded together as Sons of Liberty. We read again the words of James Otis that a law was void if it violated the human rights of man and that a man who is quiet is as secure in his house as a prince in his castle.

Here we read that:

The colonists fought the threat of aggression as much as aggression itself.

With grim determination, they opposed every attempt to rob them of any liberty they had gained.

To the colonists–our benefactors–it was not so much the amount as the principles of taxation (without representation) that the colonists opposed.

Here again in this new history are also the fiery words “give me liberty” of Patrick Henry of Virginia and also his words: “If this be treason, make the most of it.”

John Hancock, George Mason, Paul Revere–John Dickinson and his Letters from a Farmer, “We cannot be happy without being free.”

The British colonies were largely settled by people who had revolted against their living conditions in other lands. They were rebels, in a sense, who had the courage to flee from want and persecution, and face the perils of a wilderness to seek a better form of life. When they found a better way, they fought to keep it. Their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren did not want any monarch to change their way of life. They had plowed their own lands, built their own homes, and made their own clothes. Who was their master? [Donzella Cross Boyle, Quest of a Hemisphere (Boston: Western Islands), p. 113]

Chapter seven closes with a discussion of freedom of the press and these stirring words inspired by Peter Zenger: “The right to print the truth is a necessary part of political. liberty.” And these by the famous lawyer, Andrew Hamilton from Philadelphia: “The loss of liberty, to a generous mind is worse than death. . . . The man who loves his country, prefers its liberty to all other considerations, well knowing that without liberty, life is a misery” (Ibid., p. 84).

Thus, in colonial days, did the people of the colonies stand firmly against any form of dictatorship. Thousands of immigrants came to the settlements along the Atlantic seaboard, with only a vague idea of the freedoms they were seeking, because they had not known many of them. They were pursuing a vision. Freedoms sprouted in a wilderness like flowers on a vacant lot, because each person who came had broken the pattern of life in his old country and he was starting all over again. “Something new” began to grow in the New World–a mere idea. People began to question the right of government to interfere with their freedom to come and go, to buy and sell, to own or lease, to talk or listen, to vote and elect. In other words, people began to think they had the right to govern themselves. Yet, a new nation had to rise in the Western Hemisphere before this idea gained the force of law. ” [Ibid., p. 84]

And so today on Lexington Green, you will see a sacred old monument nearly two hundred years of age that covers the remains of those patriotic minutemen, and on this monument are inscribed these words:

Sacred to liberty and the rights of mankind!!!

The freedom and independence of America

Sealed and defended with the blood of her sons. . . .

Yes, there is much, much more on that old historic monument, including their names.

Yes, their mother Gentiles, as Nephi foresaw 2,367 years before, were gathered together upon the waters and upon the land to battle against them. “And I beheld,” said the prophet Nephi, “that the power of God was with them, and also that the wrath of God was upon all those that were gathered together against them to battle. And I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles that had gone out of captivity were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations” (1 Nephi 13:18–19).

Modern Prophets’ Tribute to the Founding Fathers

With independence won, another body of men assembled, and under the inspiration of heaven they too drafted a document–probably the greatest instrument ever struck off at a given time by the mind of men–the Constitution of the United States.

Said J. Reuben Clark, that great constitutional lawyer:

The framers (of the Constitution) were not political tyros (beginners) flying a political kite to keep in order the henyard, that is, the colonists. They were men widely experienced in affairs of government. . . .

The Constitution was not the work of cloistered, fanatical theorists, but of sober, seasoned, distinguished men of affairs, drawn from various walks of life. They included students of wide reading and great learning in all matters of government. . . .

The Constitution was born, not only of the wisdom and experience of the generation that wrought it, but also out of the wisdom of the long generations that had gone before and which had been transmitted to them through tradition and the pages of history. . . .

These were the horse and buggy days as they have been called in derision; these were the men who traveled in the horsedrawn buggies and on horseback; but these were the men who carried under their hats, as they rode in the buggies and on their horses, a political wisdom garnered from the ages. As giants to pygmies are they when placed alongside our political emigres and their fellow travelers of today, who now traduce them with slighting word and contemptuous phrase. [J. Reuben Clark, Jr.,Church News, November 29, 1952; Stand Fast by Our Constitution, pp. 134–:37]

If there are those who doubt President Clark’s tribute to our Founding Fathers, then hear the words of President Wilford Woodruff:

Those men who laid the foundation of this American government and signed the Declaration of Independence were the best spirits the God of Heaven could find on the face of the earth. They were choice spirits . . . inspired of the Lord.

Everyone of those men that signed the Declaration of Independence, with George Washington, . . . called upon me, as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Temple at St. George two consecutive nights and demanded at my hand that I should go forth and attend to the ordinances of the house of God for them. . . .

Would those spirits have called upon me, as an Elder in Israel, to perform that work if they had not been noble spirits before God? They would not. . . . Said they: “. . . We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God.” [Conference Reports, April 1898, pp. 89–90; Journal of Discourses, 19:229]

Self-Government Involves Self-Control

These two documents–the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States–resting on the bedrock of the love of the Lord and of liberty, became the foundation of our Republic. And from this foundation has come the greatest civilization on the face of the earth.

James Russell Lowell was right when he said: “Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant” (quoted in Prophets, Principles and National Survival, p. 149).

What were those ideas? Well, they were in part incorporated in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. God grant we will all become familiar with both of these documents. And Washington covered them well when he said:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. [George Washington, Farewell Address,September 17, 1796; The Writings of George Washington, Ford Edition, 13:307–:8]

I serve as a member of the Board of Trustees of this great university. One year we invited the late Cecil B. De Mille to speak to our student body and accept an award. I will never forget his words when he stated that men and nations cannot break the Ten Commandments, they can only break themselves upon them.

And he was right. Only a moral and religious people deserves or will defend its freedom.

Edmund Burke stated it well when he said:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites–in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity–in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption–in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. [Edmund Burke, Works, 4:51–52, quoted in Prophets, Principles and National Survival, p. 33]

As Elder Albert E. Bowen put it: “Self-government involves self-control, self-discipline, an acceptance of and the most unremitting obedience to correct principles. . . . No other form of government requires so high a degree of individual morality” (Improvement Era, 41 (1938): 266, quoted in Prophets, Principles and National Survival, p. 128).

A Land Choice Above All Others

I love this great nation of which we are a part. I have traveled and lived abroad just enough to make me appreciate rather fully what we have here. I never return to these shores from abroad, as I have done scores of times, but what I think of the words of Scott:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself has said,

“This is my own, my native land!”

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,

As home his footsteps he hath turned,

From wandering on a foreign strand!

If such there breathe, go, mark him well. . . .

[Sir Walter Scott, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," in The Complete Poetical Works of Scott, Cambridge Edition (Boston:Houghton Mifflin Co. [c.1900]), p. 40]

And then that great poem by Van Dyke, “America for Me”:

‘Tis great to see the Old World and travel up and down

Among the famous palaces and cities of renoun,

To view the crumbly castles and statues of the kings;

But now I think I’ve seen enough of antiquated things.

So it’s home again, and home again, America for me,

I want a ship that’s westward bound, to plow the rolling sea,

To the land of youth and freedom, beyond the ocean bars,

Where the air is full of freedom and the flag is full of stars.

[Henry Van Dyke, "America for Me," in The Best Loved Poems of the American People (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co. [c. 1936]), p. 424]

Yes, I love this nation. To me it is not just another nation, not just a member of the family of nations. It is a great and glorious nation with a divine mission, brought into being under the inspiration of heaven. It is truly a land choice above all others. I thank God for the knowledge which we have regarding the prophetic history and the spiritual foundation of this great land of America.

When I contemplate the great events that have transpired here, going way back to the days when our first parents were placed in the Garden of Eden, and recall that this garden was here in America, that it was here also where Adam met with a body of great high priests at Adam-ondi-Ahman shortly before his death and gave them his final blessing, and that to that same spot he is to return again to meet with the leaders of his people, his children–when I contemplate, my brothers and sisters, that here in this land will be established the New Jerusalem, that here in this land will Zion be built–when I contemplate that prophets of God anciently served here in this land, and that the resurrected Christ appeared to them–and when I contemplate that the greatest of all visions, the coming of God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, to the boy Prophet in our day, took place in this land, my heart fills with gratitude that I am privileged to live here, and that I have the honor and pleasure not only of serving in the Church but also of serving in the government of this great land. I consider it an honor and a privilege.

I am grateful for the Founding Fathers of this land and for the freedom they have vouchsafed to us. I am grateful that they recognized, as great leaders of this nation have always recognized, that the freedom which we enjoy did not originate with the Founding Fathers, that this glorious principle, this great boon of freedom and respect for the dignity of man, came as a gift from the Creator. The Founding Fathers, it is true, with superb genius welded together the safeguards of these freedoms. It was necessary, however, for them to turn to the scriptures, to religion, in order to have their great experiment make sense to them. And so our freedom is God-given. It antedates the Founding Fathers.

I am grateful that the God of heaven saw fit to put his stamp of approval upon the Constitution and to indicate that it had come into being through wise men whom he raised up unto this very purpose. He asked the Saints, even in the dark days of their persecution and hardship, to continue to seek for redress from their enemies “according,” he said, “to the laws and constitution . . . which I have suffered [or caused] to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh” (D&C 101 :77). And then he made this most impressive declaration: “And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood” (Ibid., 101:80).

It is gratifying that the constitutions in many of the other lands of our neighbors in the Americas are patterned very much after this divinely-appointed Constitution, which the God of heaven directed in the founding of this nation. It is not any wonder, therefore, that Joseph Smith, the Prophet–a truly great American–referring to the Constitution, said, “[It] is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God. It is a heavenly banner” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 147).

President Brigham Young declared prophetically,

When the day comes in which the Kingdom of God will bear rule, the flag of the United States will proudly flutter unsullied on the flagstaff of liberty and equal rights, without a spot to sully its fair surface; the glorious flag our fathers have bequeathed to us will then be unfurled to the breeze by those who have power to hoist it aloft and defend its sanctity. [Journal ofDiscourses, 2:317]

But, continuing, President Young asks:

How long will it be before the words of the Prophet Joseph will be fulfilled? He said if the Constitution of the United States were saved at all it must be done by this people. It will not be many years before these words come to pass. [Ibid., 12:204]

These words were spoken April 8, 1868, over one hundred years ago.

Yes, we have a rich heritage, but may I remind you that nations ofttimes sow the seeds of their own destruction even while enjoying unprecedented prosperity, even before reaching the zenith or the peak of their power. I think history clearly indicates that this is often the case. When it appears that all is well, ofttimes the very seeds of destruction are sown, sometimes unwittingly. Most of the great civilizations of the world have not been conquered from without until they have destroyed themselves from within by sowing these seeds of destruction.

It is my conviction that God does now look with favor, and has looked with favor, upon this government, which he established by wise men. It is also my firm conviction that his protective hand is still over the United States of America. I know, too, that if we will keep the commandments of God–live as he has directed, and does now direct, through his prophets–we will continue to have his protecting hand over us. But we must be true to the eternal verities, the great Christian virtues which God has revealed. Then, and only then, will we be safe as a nation and as individuals. God grant that the faithfulness of the Latter-day Saints will provide the balance of power to save this nation in times of crisis.

Let Us Rededicate Ourselves

How many of you heard or saw the statement regarding some of these matters which our living prophet and his counselors gave us recently? It was presented over television and appeared in the Church section of the Deseret News. I quote a part of it. Said the First Presidency,

We urge members of the Church and all Americans to begin now to reflect more intently on the meaning and importance of the Constitution, and of adherence to its principles. . . .

In these challenging days, when there are so many influences which would divert us, there is a need to rededicate ourselves to the lofty principles and practices of our Founding Fathers. [Church News, September 22, 1973, p. 3]

Let us not permit these admonitions of our living prophets to fall on deaf ears. Let us, as they direct, learn the meaning and importance of our God-ordained Constitution. Let us rededicate ourselves to the lofty principles and practices of those wise men whom God raised up to give us our priceless freedom. Our liberties, our salvation, our well-being as a church and as a nation depend upon it. This nation has a spiritual foundation–a prophetic history. Every true Latter-day Saint should love the United States of America–the most generous nation under heaven–the Lord’s base of operations in these last days. May we do all in our power to strengthen and safeguard this base and increase our freedom. This nation will, I feel sure, endure. It is God-ordained for a glorious purpose. We must never forget that the gospel message we bear to the world is to go forth to the world from this nation. And that gospel message can prosper only in an atmosphere of freedom. We must maintain and strengthen our freedom in this blessed land.

I have wished, as did President Franklin D. Richards, that

we could have a goodly number of substantial young men growing up in our midst who would become skilled and mighty in the law, and who could go into any of the courts and set forth the true principles of justice and equity in all cases. We need more of such men. We do not want men to become lawyers, turn infidels and live for nothing but the little money they can make. We want to raise up a corps of young men armed with the spirit of the gospel, clothed with the holy priesthood, who can tell the judges in high places what the law is. [Journal of Discourses, 26:102]

We have allowed our courts, through their anti-prayer, anti-God decisions, to outlaw in the schools the positive belief of the truths contained in the Declaration of Independence, the very foundation of our nation.

I am so grateful for the establishment of our new J. Reuben Clark School of Law here on this campus. Here students can be taught the gospel truths, the eternal truths about laws and government. This school can wield a mighty influence for good throughout this great nation and this sick, messed-up world. It can send forth a group of faithful, courageous Latter-day Saint priesthood-patriots who are both able and anxious to do the Lord’s will concerning our political problems–men who really do understand the true meaning and importance of our Constitution, men who have dedicated themselves to the principles and practices of our Founding Fathers. But let each of us, whether we are in the field of law or not, strive to follow the counsel of our prophet. Therein is safety.

God bless you and all of us, and may God bless America and preserve our divine Constitution and the Republic which he established thereunder, I humbly pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

My beloved brethren and sisters, I was very pleased that you were kind to me as I came in late. I remember Elder Orson F. Whitney, a member of the Twelve who was traveling out to a stake conference years ago by train. He was concentrating on the scriptures as he rode, and he went right by the place where he should have gotten off for the conference. He found himself two or three miles beyond at another town. He got out and hired a livery rig (horse and buggy) to drive him back. The stake president had waited and waited and finally decided he had better start the meeting. As Brother Whitney walked in, the choir was singing “Ye Simple Souls Who Stray.” I would have not been surprised if you had been singing that as I came in.

I had an anxiety about coming here. For thirty-three years I have had the honor and privilege of coming here and enjoying communicating with the students, speaking to them. I have had a fear that sooner or later you would place me in the embarrassing position that an old lady placed a railroad conductor in up in Boise, Idaho. This good woman had never had a ride on a train. Her family were all married and she was on a little, rocky farm, all alone. She wanted to have a ride on a train before she passed on. Her children also wanted her to have that experience, and so it was decided she would take a trip to a distant town and visit some relatives during the holidays. When the time arrived, she came down to Boise all aflutter with excitement. When the train pulled in, her excitement increased. Soon the conductor waved his hand and called, “All aboard.” The old lady got on the train and took her seat. Then the conductor came down the aisle picking up tickets, and she said, “Conductor, I don’t know much about railway trains. Now, I knew what you meant when you called, ‘All aboard,’ but I didn’t know what you meant when you waved your hand.”

The conductor, a rather rough sort of fellow, said, “Oh, that was just my signal for the engineer to get the h– out of here.” It answered her question, but she didn’t like it, and as the conductor went on picking up tickets his conscience began to smite him. He thought that was not a very gentlemanly way to speak to a lovely old lady. So when he finished the car, he went back and began to apologize, but she just waved her hand. Sooner or later I fear this may happen to me if I keep coming to BYU, but I hope it isn’t tonight.

Seriously, I am very, very happy to be here. I appreciate the kind words of introduction by President Fox, this choice music, and this lovely patriotic number by my lovely daughter.

This has been a lovely Sabbath for me. I had the pleasure of conducting a five-hour meeting with my Brethren on the fourth floor of the Temple this morning. Then Sister Benson and I had the opportunity of going to a sacrament meeting in our ward which proved to be a Primary conference. I made the mistake, as they asked me to say a few words, of saying the first time I had ever had an assignment requiring me to appear alone in a song was when I was seven years of age in our ward up in Idaho. I said I sang this song with the encouragement of my mother and the wonderful Primary teacher. The song was “A Mormon Boy,” and I said if I weren’t afraid of losing the audience I would sing it. They pledged they would remain regardless, and so I sang the song. I have had quite an experience today!

Now to come here, and to look into your faces and realize something of your quality, your opportunities, your background, is an inspiration. I am thankful to the Lord for this student body, under the leadership of our great President and under the leadership of these stake presidencies, and the twelve stakes that operate on this campus.

I have been uplifted by this music, and I express appreciation to those who have participated. Their talent has provided, I believe, a rather fitting background and a setting to the remarks which I hope to leave with you this evening. The song “God Bless America” by Irving Berlin was given to the Boy Scouts of America–dedicated to them. All the returns from the sale of the song, which have run into many, many thousands of dollars, are still going to the Boy Scouts of America. Having served on the board for many years, I appreciate this song.

I come to you tonight with a message that has lain close to my heart for a number of years. Because of the nature of it I have committed most of it to writing. Tonight I will speak to you about our beloved republic and the inspired agents whom God raised up to establish the foundation upon which our liberty rests. I will speak to you also about some mischief that has been afoot for a number of years, a mischief that intends to undermine our republic, its founders, and the Church. I address you as students and faculty of this great University; but more importantly, I speak to you as members of the “household of faith,” the Lord’s true church, and remind you of your solemn charge to uphold, sustain, and defend the kingdom of God.

Prophecies About America’s Destiny

The destiny of America was divinely decreed. The events which established our great nation were foreknown to God and revealed to prophets of old. As in an enacted drama, the players who came on the scene were rehearsed and selected for their parts. Their talents, abilities, capacities, and weaknesses were known before they were born.

As one looks back upon what we call our history, there is a telling theme which recurs again and again in this drama. It is that God governs in the affairs of this nation. As the late J. Reuben Clark, Jr., has said, “This is the great motive which runs through our whole history.”

A statement which Harold B. Lee was fond of quoting was this: “The frequent recurrence to fundamentals is essential to perpetuity.”

As one who is vitally concerned about the perpetuity of our liberties, our freedoms, and the principles laid down by the founders of this country, I refer to some fundamentals with which most of you are familiar. To do so, I quote liberally from modern revelation from which I want you to sense this recurring theme that those whom we uphold as prophets of God repeatedly emphasize. This is appropriate this Bicentennial year, particularly.

Unto the prophet Lehi the Lord revealed:

There shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord.

Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever. [2 Nephi 1:6­7]

To the prophet Nephi, son of Lehi, the Lord said: “And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to a land of promise; yea even a land which I have prepared for you; yea, a land which is choice above all other lands” (1 Nephi 2:20). Later Nephi saw this in vision: “And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, and it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters” (1 Nephi 13:12). Though unnamed, the man this passage refers to is Columbus. His own testimony about this epic voyage is recorded in a letter to the Spanish hierarchy and reads as follows: “Our Lord unlocked my mind, sent me upon the sea, and gave me fire for the deed. Those who heard of my enterprise called it foolish, mocked me, and laughed. But who can doubt but that the Holy Ghost inspired me?” (Jacob Wasserman, Columbus: Don Quixote of the Seas [Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1930], pp. 19­20).

Nephi then continues his record:

And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles [the American colonies] and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance. . . .

And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles who had gone forth out of captivity [from Europe] did humble themselves before the Lord; and the power of the Lord was with them. [1 Nephi 13:15, 16]

This refers, of course, to the American colonists.

Nephi then foresaw the great War of Independence. He said:

And I beheld that their mother Gentiles [the British] were gathered together upon the waters, and upon the land also, to battle against them.

And I beheld that the power of God was with them, and also that the wrath of God was upon all those who were gathered together against them to battle.

And I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles that had gone out of captivity were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations. [1 Nephi 13:17­19]

All this was foreseen over twenty-three hundred years before it took place. Nephi’s brother Jacob declared:

But behold, this land, said God, shall be a land of thine inheritance, and the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land.

And this land shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings upon the land, who shall raise up unto the Gentiles.

And I will fortify this land against all other nations.

And he that fighteth against Zion shall perish, saith God.

For he that raiseth up a king against me shall perish, for I, the Lord, the king of heaven, will be their king, and I will be a light unto them forever, that hear my words. [2 Nephi 10:10­14]

America is a choice land, a land reserved for God’s own purposes. America and its inhabitants are under an everlasting decree. The Lord revealed this decree to the brother of Jared. He declared:

And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity.

For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands, wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God. . . .

Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ. [Ether 2:9­10, 12]

Many great events have transpired in this land of destiny. This was the place where Adam dwelt; this was the place where the Garden of Eden was located. It was here that Adam met with a body of great high priests at Adam-ondi-Ahman shortly before his death and gave them his final blessing, and the place to which he will return to meet with the leaders of his people. This was the place of three former civilizations: Adam’s, the Jaredite, and the Nephite. This was also the place where our Heavenly Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to Joseph Smith inaugurating this great and last dispensation.

The Lord has also decreed that this land should be “the place of the New Jerusalem, which should come down out of heaven, . . . the holy sanctuary of the Lord” (Ether 13:3). Here is our nation’s destiny! To serve God’s eternal purposes and to prepare this land and people for America’s eventual destiny, he “established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom [he] raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood” (D&C 101:80).

Inaccuracies of Secular History

No man, however brilliant and perceptive, shall have a complete perspective of our nation’s history without this understanding and conviction. He must be persuaded by God’s truth if he is to obtain a true and complete picture of our nation’s origin and destiny. Secular scholarship, though useful, provides an incomplete and sometimes inaccurate view of our history. The real story of America is one which shows the hand of God in our nation’s beginning.

Why is it that this view of our history is almost lost in classrooms in America? Why is it that one must turn to the writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to find this view implied or stated? The answer may, perhaps, be found in Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation:

We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us. ["A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America," 30 March 1863]

As a nation we have become self-sufficient. This has given birth to a new religion in America which some have called secularism. This is a view of life without the idea that God is in the picture or that He had anything to do with the picture in the first place.

In the first century of our nation’s history, the university was the guardian and the preserver of faith in God. In this present century, the university has become ethically neutral, by and large, agnostic. Our country is now reaping the effects of this agnostic influence. It has cost us an inestimable price. For who can place the price on the worth of a human soul or the cost of the cynicism that many young people have toward our republic and its leaders?

I would have you consider soberly how this secular influence has affected the treatment of our nation’s history in the textbook in the classroom. Today, students are subjected in their textbooks and classroom lectures to a subtle propaganda that there is a “natural” or a rational explanation to all causes and events. Such a position removes the need for a faith in God, or belief in His interposition in the affairs of men. Events are only–and I stress that–only explained from a humanistic frame of reference. At least that’s what they say.

Historians and educational writers who are responsible for this movement are classified as “revisionists.” Their purpose has been and is to create a “new history.” By their own admission, they are more influenced by their own training and other humanistic and scientific disciplines than any religious conviction. This detachment provides them, they say, with an objectivity that the older historians did not have. Many of the older historians, I should point out, were defenders of the patriots and their noble efforts. Feeling no obligation to perpetuate the ideals of the founding fathers, some of the so-called “new historians” have recast a new body of beliefs for their secular faith. Their efforts, in some cases, have resulted in a new interpretation of our nation’s history.

Secular Reinterpretations of American History

May I illustrate a few of these reinterpretations: First, that the American victory in the War of Independence, they say, was only the result of good fortune, ineptitude by the British generals, and the entrance of France into the war. All these facts are evident, but what is significantly left out are additional explanations which could provide the student with a spiritual perspective of our history.

Why is it we do not read in our history of explanations such as this from George Washington? “The success which has hitherto attended our united efforts, we owe to the gracious interposition of heaven, and to that interposition let us gratefully ascribe the praise of victory and the blessings of peace.”

Our second reinterpretation is that the political thought of the founding fathers was the result of borrowed ideas from the eighteenth-century philosophers. Again, it is evident that the founders were men well schooled in the political thought of their times as well as of ancient civilizations, but how does one account for the unity which came out of the impasse among the delegates at the Constitutional Convention? It was at this point that Benjamin Franklin made his great speech. He solemnly counseled:

I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?

We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that “except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this. And I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little, partial, local interest. Our projects will be confounded, and we, ourselves, shall become a reproach and a byword to future ages; and what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.

I therefore make the move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business and that one or more of the clergy in this city be requested to officiate in that service.

Some historians have ignored this dimension because Madison, who reported the Constitutional Convention, said nothing about it. Others report that the motion was not acted on. Another member of the convention, Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey, who also reported it, said the motion was acted on favorably by the convention.

Again, I would ask: Why is it that the references to God’s influence in the noble efforts of the founders of our republic are not mentioned? Listen to the convictions of two of these delegates to the Constitutional Convention. First, Charles Pinckney: “When the great work was done and published, I was struck with amazement. Nothing less than the superintending hand of Providence that so miraculously carried us through the war . . . could have brought it about so complete upon the whole.” Here is another testimony, this from James Madison, sometimes referred to as the “Father of the Constitution”: “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.”

Third, the charge has been made that the founders designed the Constitution primarily to benefit themselves and their “class” (property owners) financially and that the economic motive was their dominant incentive. Such was the thesis of the American historian, Dr. Charles Beard. Yet Madison said: “There was never an assembly of men . . . who were more pure in their motives.” We must remember that these were men who had pledged in many cases their fortunes and their sacred honor.

Shortly after the turn of this century, Charles Beard published his work, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. This book marked the beginning of a trend to defame the motives and integrity of the founders of the Constitution. It also grossly distorted the real intent of the founders by suggesting their motivation was determined by economics–a thesis which had originated with Karl Marx. Beard himself was not a Marxist, but he was socialist in his thinking, and he admitted there was much we could learn from Marx’s ideas. Before his death, Beard recanted his own thesis, but the damage had been done. This began a new trend in educational and intellectual circles in the United States.

Intellectual Trends Defaming the Founding Fathers

Not infrequently this penchant for historical criticism has resulted in the defamation of character of the founding fathers. It is done under the guise of removing the so-called “myths” that surround their background. A favorite target of this defamation has been George Washington, our nation’s most illustrious leader. Some of these so-called “new” historians have questioned his honesty, challenged his military leadership and executive ability, and impuned his moral character.

Others who have taken measure of the man have assessed matters differently. John Lord, author of a well known work of the nineteenth century, Beacon Lights of History, wrote this of Washington:

Washington . . . had . . . a transcendent character. . . . As a man he had his faults, but they were so few, and so small, that they seemed to be but spots upon a sun. These have been forgotten, and as the ages roll on, mankind will see naught but the lustre of his virtues of the greatness of his services. [Beacon Lights of History (New York: Fords, Howard, and Hulbert, 1884), 7:168]

Winston Churchill also estimated Washington thus:

George Washington holds one of the proudest titles that history can bestow. He was the Father of his Nation. Almost alone his staunchness in the War of Independence held the American colonies to their united purpose. . . . He filled his office with dignity and inspired his administration with much of his own wisdom. To his terms as President are due the smooth organization of the Federation Government, the establishment of national credit, and the foundation of foreign policy. [A History of the English Speaking People: The Age of Revolution (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1962), p. 347]

General William Wilbur, author of the commendable little volume entitled The Making of George Washington, which I commend to all, made this appraisal of Washington:

. . . greatness of moral character, forthright honesty, quiet modesty, thoughtful consideration of others, integrity, thoroughness, kindness and generosity.

During the American Revolution and for more than fifty years thereafter, young Americans were inspired to attain these qualities by the vivid recollection of men who had served with George Washington–men who knew him from intimate daily association. As years went by, books, stories, and living personal memories all combined to present this great hero in such a way as to make him an inspiring and potent influence for good.

Unfortunately, the last seventy-five years have produced a marked change. In these years it has come to be standard practice for Washington authors to proclaim it as their purpose to “humanize” the Washington image. Most of them have instead succeeded in belittling him. They have replaced a glorious, inspiring memory with a tawdry, warped picture. [The Making of George Washington, pp. 19, 20, 21]

Elder Mark E. Petersen has recently written a remarkable little book entitled The Great Prologue. It provides the prophetic history to our nation’s history and its founders. The Deseret Book Company has published a Bicentennial edition in paperback. I would heartily recommend that you read and study this book. Within that volume Elder Petersen assesses Washington’s character in these words:

In many respects [Washington] was like Moroni, the noted general of the Book of Mormon who . . . hoisted his banner of liberty. Washington was the personification of honesty, even as Lincoln, with whom he became a supreme example of integrity in public office. He had the true vision of one united nation of separate states with an inspired Constitution to give strength to the whole but with liberty assured to the several units. [The Great Prologue (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1975), pp. 90­91]

And lest these testimonies are not convincing, President Wilford Woodruff said of the founders collectively, and of Washington specifically, the following:

I am going to bear my testimony to this assembly, if I never do it again in my life, that those men who laid the foundation of this American government . . . were the best spirits the God of heaven could find on the face of the earth. These were choice spirits, not wicked men. General Washington and all of the men that labored for the purpose were inspired of the Lord . . . . Everyone of those men that signed the Declaration of Independence with General Washington called upon me as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ in the temple at St. George two consecutive nights and demanded at my hands that I should go forth and attend to the ordinances of the House of God for them. . . .

Brother McAllister baptized me for all of those men, and then I told those brethren that it was their duty to go into the temple and labor until they had got endowments for all of them. They did it. Would these spirits have called on me, as an elder in Israel, to perform this work if they had not been noble spirits before God. They would not. [Conference Report, April 1898, pp. 89, 90]

The temple work for the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence and other founding fathers has been done. All these appeared to Wilford Woodruff when he was president of the St. George Temple. President George Washington was ordained a high priest at that time. You will also be interested to know that, according to Wilford Woodruff’s journal, John Wesley, Benjamin Franklin, and Christopher Columbus were also ordained high priests–by proxy, of course–at that time.

When one casts doubt about the character of these noble sons of God, I believe he or she will have to answer to the God of heaven for it. Yes, with Lincoln I say, “To add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of Washington is . . . impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it shining on.” That is the charge I would leave to people everywhere, faculty, students, others of this and every other university–leave Washington’s name “shining on.”

May no teacher, in the name of scholarship, attempt to blemish Washington’s illustrious character.

If ever this country needed the timeless wisdom of the Father of our Country, it is today. How much our country could benefit by following the wisdom of our country’s first president. Here are a few among many of his maxims:

Let the reigns of government then be braced and held with a steady hand and every violation of the Constitution be reprehended: if defective, let it be amended, but not suffered to be trampeled upon whilst it has an existence.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

The love of my country will be the ruling influence of my conduct.

A good moral character is the first essential in a man. . . . It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned, but virtuous.

Let us unite, therefore, in imploring the Supreme Ruler of nations to spread his holy protection over these United States: to turn the machinations of the wicked to confirming of our constitution: to enable us all at times to root out internal sedition and put invasion to flight: to perpetuate to our country that prosperity which his goodness has already conferred, and to verify the anticipation of this government being a safeguard to human rights.

It would profit all of us as citizens to read again Washington’s Farewell Address to his countrymen. The address is prophetic. I believe it ranks alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

My feeling about this tendency to discredit our founding fathers was well summarized by the late President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., in these words:

These were the horse and buggy days, as they have been called in derision. These were the men who traveled in the horsedrawn buggies and on horseback; but these were the men who carried under their hats, as they rode in their buggies and on their horses, a political wisdom garnered from the ages. As giants to pygmies are they when placed along side our political emigres and their fellow travelers of today who now traduce them with slighting words and contemptuous phrase. [Stand Fast by Our Constitution, pp. 136­37]

Current American Self-Criticism

Today we are almost engulfed by this tide of self-criticism, depreciation, and defamation of those who served our country honorably and with distinction. A most recent victim of the tarnish brush is J. Edgar Hoover. I knew J. Edgar Hoover personally over many years. He was a God-fearing man and one of the most honorable and able men I have ever known in government service. By innuendo, lesser men, whose own motives are questionable, have maligned his motives and good character.

I know the philosophy behind this practice–”to tell it as it is.” All too often those who subscribe to this philosophy are not hampered by too many facts. When will we awaken to the fact that the defamation of our dead heroes only serves to undermine faith in the principles for which they stood, and the institutions which they established? Some have termed this practice as “historical realism” or moderately call it “debunking.” I call it slander and defamation. I repeat, those who are guilty of it in their writing or teaching will answer to a higher tribunal.

It should not, therefore, cause us to be astonished when other nations view the United States as a “faltering democracy.” How long would a basketball team, ranked number one in the polls, remain in that position if the studentbody, the school paper, and supporting faculty constantly pointed out its weaknesses? Soon the team would begin to lack confidence and fail. This is what we have been doing in our blessed country. Our heroes and institutions have been tarnished. We are constantly being reminded of what is wrong in our country, via the press and other media. A recent editorial in the London Daily Telegraph appealed to us:

The United States should know that her European cousins and allies are appalled and disgusted at the present open disarray of her public life. The self-criticism and self-destructive tendencies are running mad with no countervailing force in sight. . . . Please America, for God’s sake, pull yourself together.

It is the job of the historian and educator and church leader to help us as a nation to “pull ourselves together,” to help us regain perspective and vision and the respect of all nations. This will not be done by showing that this is merely a phase through which we are passing. No, it will be done by men who possess a love of country, a vision of our country’s future, and the assurance of her divinely guided destiny.

Humanistic Trends in Church History

This humanistic emphasis on history is not confined only to secular history; there have been and continue to be attempts made to bring this philosophy into our own Church history. Again the emphasis is to underplay revelation and God’s intervention in significant events and to inordinately humanize the prophets of God so that their human frailties become more apparent than their spiritual qualities. It is a state of mind and spirit characterized by one history buff, who asked: “Do you believe the Church has arrived at a sufficient state of maturity where we can begin to tell our real story?”

Implied in that question is the accusation that the Church has not been telling the truth.

Unfortunately, too many of those who have been intellectually gifted become so imbued with criticism that they become disaffected spiritually.

Some of these have attempted to reinterpret Joseph Smith and his revelations; they offer what they call a psychological interpretation of his motives and actions. This interpretation suggests that whether or not Joseph Smith actually saw God, the Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ, or other visions is really unimportant. What matters is that he thought he did. To those who have not sought after or received a testimony of Joseph Smith’s divine calling, he will ever remain what one called “the enigma from Palmyra.”

I recall the prophetic pronouncement made by President George Albert Smith when one of our own apostatized and wrote a biography about the Prophet Joseph Smith. President Smith made this statement before the general conference of the Church. It has been repeated a number of times by President Harold B. Lee and others. I quote:

There have been some who have belittled [Joseph Smith], but I would like to say that those who have done so will be forgotten and their remains will go back to mother earth, . . . and, the odor of their infamy will never die, while the glory and honor and majesty and courage and fidelity manifested by the Prophet Joseph Smith will attach to his name forever. [George Albert Smith, Conference Report, April 1946, p. 182]

No writer can ever accurately portray a prophet of God if he or she does not believe in prophecy. They cannot succeed in writing what they do not have in personal faith. That is why the best biography on Joseph Smith to date was one done by one who knew him and who served the Church as an apostle and member of the First Presidency. I refer to George Q. Cannon’s inspiring work, The Life of Joseph Smith.

Another prophet whom some historians like to humanize is Brigham Young. One writer accuses him of being “an accessory after the fact” to the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre incident. He is sometimes referred to as an autocrat. Another fictionalized version of him is that he was continually groping for a revelation which never came to him. Among many testimonies to the contrary are these. Brigham Young himself declared:

God has shown me that this is the spot to locate this people. . . . We shall build a city and a temple to the Most High God in this place. We will extend our settlements to the east and west, to the north and to the south, and we will build towns and cities by the hundreds and thousands of Saints will gather in from the nations of the earth. This will become a great highway of the nation. Kings and emperors and the noble and wise of the earth will visit us here. [Quoted in Autobiography of James Brown, pp. 119­23]

Wilford Woodruff said this of Brigham Young: “Brigham Young saw the Salt Lake Valley in vision, . . . and . . . the future glory of Zion and Israel, as they would be, planted in the valleys of the mountains.”

More recently, one of our Church educators published what he purports to be a history of the Church’s stand on the question of organic evolution. His thesis challenges the integrity of a prophet of God. He suggests that Joseph Fielding Smith published his work, Man: His Origin and Destiny, against the counsel of the First Presidency and his own Brethren. This writer’s interpretation is not only inaccurate, but it also runs counter to the testimony of Elder Mark E. Petersen, who wrote this foreword to Elder Smith’s book, a book I would encourage all to read. Elder Petersen said:

Some of us [members of the Council of the Twelve] urged [Elder Joseph Fielding Smith] to write a book on the creation of the world and the origin of man. . . . The present volume is the result. It is a most remarkable presentation of material from both sources [science and religion] under discussion. It will fill a great need in the Church and will be particularly invaluable to students who have become confused by the misapplication of information derived from scientific experimentation.

When one understands that the author to whom I alluded is an exponent of the theory of organic evolution, his motive in disparaging President Joseph Fielding Smith becomes apparent. To hold to a private opinion on such matters is one thing, but when one undertakes to publish his views to discredit the work of a prophet, it is a very serious matter.

It is also apparent to all who have the Spirit of God in them that Joseph Fielding Smith’s writings will stand the test of time.

The Profession of History

Tonight I have spoken plainly to you. Lest there be some who get the impression that I am an antagonist to the discipline of history and historians, let me declare my feelings about that noble profession. I love to read history and historical biography. I have great respect for the historian who can put into proper perspective events and people and make history come alive. I believe the maxim that “those who do not understand the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat those errors anew.” I love history books that tell history as it was–as the Book of Mormon tells it–with God in the picture, guiding and directing the affairs of the righteous. I love to read history for its timeless lessons and the inspiration I can gather from the lives of great leaders. I have been privileged to know many in my lifetime who have made history both in the world scene and in the Church.

I suppose there will be some who will suggest that a fireside is neither the time nor the place for these kinds of remarks, that they would be better confined to the closed door of a faculty forum.

My purpose this evening is to help you to discern a trend that has been destructive to the faith of many of our people in our nation’s founders and our country’s divine origin and destiny. My purpose further is to forewarn you about a humanistic emphasis which would tarnish our own Church history and its leaders.

My plea to you tonight is to stir up the gift that is within you. You will recall the Lord told us why we needed to exercise the spiritual gifts he has given us: “Beware lest ye are deceived; and that ye may not be deceived seek ye earnestly the best gifts” (D&C 46:8). If there was ever the need to apply that counsel, it is now. Those gifts of the Spirit are needed to discern truth from error.

This University was built by the consecrated funds of the Church for the purpose that our youth could be taught the truth, both secular and spiritual. That commission places a great responsibility on both teacher and student. Of that unique commission, President Marion G. Romney has said:

The unique commission of the Brigham Young University has always been and now is threefold. First, to help you recognize that there are two sources of learning–one divine, the other human; second, to urge and inspire you students to drink deeply from both sources; and third, to teach and train you to correctly distinguish between the learning of the world and revealed truth, that you may not be deceived in your search.

This unique commission puts peculiar responsibility upon both teachers and students not imposed by any other university on the globe. The teacher at Brigham Young University has an obligation to keep these distinctions clear in his own thinking and in his own heart and to make sure that they are indelibly stamped upon the minds and hearts of his students. The student has the obligation to realize that an acquaintance with the learning of men, as well as a knowledge of the revealed word of God, is essential to the proper discharge of our teaching obligation to the world.

Don’t let anyone persuade you there is anything narrow-minded or provincial or bigoted about this view.

Both the teacher and the student who have been born again, who have been on the mountain top and beheld in vision the mighty mission of this university in saving the souls of men, enjoy here a freedom available in no other university–the freedom to seek learning, both human and divine, “by study and also by faith,” and the freedom to teach without restriction the finite wisdom of men by the glowing light of the infinite wisdom of God, so far as He has revealed it. The spiritually reborn do not have their academic freedom restricted but greatly extended at Brigham Young University.

Equipped with the fruit of an education on this campus, you should continue your quest for truth with the certain knowledge that “the spirit of truth is of God,” with a fixed determination to unceasingly pursue the goal inspired in the promise, “He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things.” (D&C 93:28.) ["Your Quest for Truth," Baccalaureate Services, 30 May 1957]

It is now my privilege as one of the Lord’s witnesses to bear my testimony to you concerning the matters we have been discussing this evening.

I bear witness to you that America’s history was foreknown to God; that His divine intervention and merciful providence have given us both peace and prosperity in this beloved land; that through His omniscience and benevolent design, He selected and sent some of His choicest spirits to lay the foundation of our government. These men were inspired of God to do the work which they accomplished. They were not evil men. Their work was a prologue to the restoration of the gospel and the church of Jesus Christ. It was done in fulfillment of the ancient prophets who declared that this was a promised land, “a land of liberty unto the Gentiles,” and that is us.

I testify to all of you–young and old–that God, our Heavenly Father, and His Son Jesus Christ have visited this land. They appeared in the state of New York to Joseph Smith, Jr. I testify that their appearance was a reality. Since that time the work of God has moved forward under the inspired leadership and prophetic direction of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith, Heber J. Grant, George Albert Smith, David O. McKay, Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, and our prophet today, Spencer W. Kimball. This is the kingdom which Daniel of old saw in vision–a kingdom “which shall never be destroyed: and . . . shall not be left to other people” (Daniel 2:44). This Church and kingdom is on course in fulfilling its prophetic destiny.

I testify that this is the Lord’s church. He presides over it and is close to His servants. He is not an absentee master; of that you can be assured. Yes, you young people are privileged to live in this choice land–a land of Zion–a land reserved for the second coming of our Lord and Savior, and the Lord’s base of operations today. When all these events are finished and written, we will look back and not be astonished to see that the prophecies, ancient and modern, about this land and these events were but our history in reverse. For that is what prophecy is.

May God bless us all to be faithful and true to this vision and to uphold, sustain, and defend this nation, its founders, and the kingdom of God, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Humbly and gratefully I stand before you. I am not here today to tickle your ears, to entertain you. The message I bring is a very serious one. It may not be popular with everyone, but it is the truth–and time is on the side of truth.

Because of the nature of the message , I have committed it to writing, and because our time is limited, I will proceed immediately to the subject, which is “The Book of Mormon Warns America.”

The Book of Mormon

The eighth Article of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reads as follows:

We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.

It is because of our belief in the Book of Mormon, along with the Bible, that we were nicknamed “Mormons.”

The Restoration of the Gospel

On a spring day in the year 1820, in the state of New York, a young boy by the name of Joseph Smith went into a grove of trees on his father’s farm to pray. He needed help. He wanted to join a church, but he was confused as to which one. Seeking an answer, he read one day these words from the Bible:

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. (James 1: 5.)

This Joseph Smith did. In response to his prayer, our Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ appeared to him. Joseph was told to join none of the churches.

Joseph was to learn that Christ established the Church in former days when he was here on earth. Its members were called saints, but because of the wickedness of men, the prophets were taken away from the people and so revelation ceased, the scripture ended and the doctrines and creeds of uninspired men prevailed. As predicted in the scriptures, there was an apostasy.

But, as had also been predicted, the Lord was planning to restore his Church in these latter days, prior to his second coming, and like the former-day Church, his restored Church was to have apostles and prophets and have new revelation and added scripture. And so through Joseph Smith the Lord established The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On the evening of September 21, 1823, an angel to the Prophet Joseph Smith. The angel’s name was Moroni. He was the last of a long line of ancient prophets of two great civilizations who lived here on the American continent centuries ago. The angel told Joseph Smith that a history of these early inhabitants of America was written on metallic plates and lay buried in a hill nearby.

These records covered a period of American history from time of the Tower of Babel until about 421 A. D. Part of these cumulative records engraved and handed down from generation to generation were abridged by Moroni’s father, Mormon. Moroni added some additional writings and then laid the records in the earth where they remained until he delivered them to Joseph Smith. Under the inspiration of God, Joseph Smith translated part of these records which is known today as the Book of Mormon.

Besides Joseph Smith, there were other witnesses who saw the angel and the plates and whose written testimony you will find printed in the front of each copy of the Book of Mormon.

As the Bible is a scriptural account of God’s dealings with his children in the Old World, so also is the Book of Mormon a scriptural account of God’ s dealings with his children in the Americas.

The Book of Mormon is a second witness along with the Bible that Jesus is the Christ. It testifies of Christ’s appearance to the American inhabitants shortly after his resurrection in Jerusalem. It makes plain many of the precious truths of the gospel.

The Prophet Joseph Smith said:

…the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book. (November 28, 1841. Joseph Fielding Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 194.)

The last chapter of the Book of Mormon contains the promise that if a person will read the book, he may then ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if the book is not true, and if he shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, God will manifest the truth of it unto him by the power of Holy Ghost. (Moroni 10:3–7.)

We invite all men to make this test.

America a Land of Promise

One of the great themes of the Book of Mormon is that America is a land of promise – a chosen land. Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, … (Ether 2: 12.)

Two Great Civilizations Destroyed

The Book of Mormon records the rise and fall of two great civilizations. They fell because they failed to serve the God of the land, Jesus Christ. The American Indians are the descendants of that last great civilization.

Fortunately, under the inspiration of the Lord, many of the Book of Mormon prophets realized that the historical account which they were making of their people would eventually come forth in this day and age while our own great civilization was flourishing here in America.

These prophets were anxious to see that the tragedies that befell their ancient American civilizations would not happen to us. It would be well for us to seriously consider their warnings.

A Warning to America

They record that both of their great civilizations were destroyed through the insidious work of a murderous, secret conspiracy whose designs were to get power and gain and to overthrow the freedom of all lands. And then realizing that in our time we would be threatened with a similar conspiracy, the Book of Mormon warns as follows:

Wherefore … it is wisdom in God that these things should be shown unto you, that thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous combinations shall get above you, which are built up to get power and gain–and the work, yea, even work of destruction come upon you, yea, even the sword of the justice of the Eternal God shall fall upon you, to your overthrow and destruction if ye shall suffer these things to be.

Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you; …

For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries; … for it is built up by the devil. (Ether 9:23–25.)

The Threat of Communism

Today, the international, criminal, communist conspiracy fits this Book of Mormon description perfectly, for there is a combination of gangsters who lust for power, who have liquidated some 70 million people, brought one-third of the world’s population under bondage, and who seek to overthrow the freedom of all nations. I have talked face to face to some of these godless leaders, on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

President David O. McKay, whom we sustain as a latter-day prophet and as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has said:

The position of this Church on the subject of communism has never changed. We consider it the greatest satanical threat to peace, prosperity, and the spread of God’s work among men that exists on the face of the earth. (General Conference Address, Priesthood Session, April 9, 1966.)

And then as the Lord commands us in the Book of Mormon to awake to a sense of our awful situation, so President McKay commends and encourages those who are seeking to

… awaken a sleeping and apathetic people to the alarming conditions that are rapidly advancing about us. (Ibid. )

Then President McKay adds:

We wish all of our citizens throughout the land were participating in some type of organized self-education in order that they could better appreciate what is happening and know what they can do about it. (Ibid.)

Supreme Court Decisions

The Book of Mormon points out how these ancient conspirators were able to fill the judgment seats, usurp power, destroy justice, condemn the righteous, and let the guilty and the wicked go unpunished. Do you see any parallel between this and the present-day decisions of our Supreme Court?

President McKay has stated that the Supreme Court is leading this Christian nation down the road to atheism. I believe the court is also leading us down the road to anarchy and atheistic communism. Here is the net effect of a few of their decisions:

Communists can work in our defense plants.

U.S. v. Robel, U.S., 88 S. Ct. 419 (1967)

Communists can teach in our schools.

Slochower v. Board of Education of N,Y, 1350 U,S. 551(1956)

Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957)

Communists can hold offices in labor unions.

U.S. v. Brown, 381 U. S. 437 (1965)

Communists can run for public offices.

Yates, et ., v, U.S., 354 U.S. 298 (1957)

Communists can serve in the merchant marines.

Schneider v. Smith, U.S. , 88 S. Ct. 682 (1968)

Today by court edict a person is allowed to advocate and convince others of the duty and necessity to overthrow the 90vernment by force and violence. (A memorandum on Supreme Court Decisions by G. Edward Griffin, American Opinion, Belmont, Massachusetts.)

The Supreme Court justices would probably have been accused of treason if they had dealt in this manner with the Nazis during World War II. Yet how does one explain the court’s attitude towards the communist conspiracy which is a much greater threat than the Nazis ever were. Perhaps you can understand why the communists have held victory rallies to honor the Supreme Court and its decision.

I have not even covered the areas of how the court is hamstringing the police, destroying property rights, encouraging civil disobedience, undermining state sovereignty, and so forth.

Communism and Serious Charges

And now I come to a passage in the Book of Mormon which gives me great concern about the future of our country because of the way we are helping the communists. The passage reads as follows:

And whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinations I to get power and gain, until they shall spread over the nation, behold f they shall be destroyed; … (Ether 8:22.)

And so the crucial question is, “Has our nation upheld communism so that it could get power and gain?” The tragic answer is, “Yes.” And so, unless we as a people can soon stop and reverse the disastrous course we are taking I then our nation shall be destroyed. For the sad truth is that communism would be insignificant in our country and the world today were it not for the consistent and persistent help which it is continuing to receive from right within our own government.

I know these are serious charges. There is ample evidence.

American Opinion Magazine Articles

Returning a few days ago from a month in Europe and the Middle East, I found in my accumulated mail an advance copy of a courageous, hard­hitting, truthful magazine–a rare thing today–and one not carried by the liberal news agencies on our newsstands. On the title page, the fearless young managing editor, Scott Stanley, Jr., had this in his “Letter to the Readers” :

Dear Reader:

We write in the wake of burning and looting in 168 American cities, at a time when we are at war in Vietnam and our own government is sending raw materials to the arsenal of an enemy killing our soldiers in the field. We write in the midst of an economic crisis described by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board as the most serious since the Depression year of 1931. And, as we write, a leading candidate for the Presidency of the United States has called for openly paying blackmail to the Communists, and for the resignation of J. Edgar Hoover, the anti­Communist Director of the F.B.I.

It is a time when black Marxists call for burning down America, and make a good try at it, and every Presidential candidate – save one – recommends buying off those burning our cities with more of the federal subsidies which are enlarging the inflationary debt about to destroy our entire economy. It is a day in which men who have been chair­man of officially cited Communist Fronts sit even in the Cabinet of the President of the United States and protect the revolutionaries, promote Marxist schemes, and drive America’s back ever closer to the wall. (American Opinion Magazine I June, 1968.)

From his letter transmitting the June issue, I read the last paragraph:

The Constitution surely hangs by a thread. Without God’s help this Republic will fall as certain as it was with His help that it was born. (Ibid.)

From the lead article, which I recommend to all, entitled “Insurrection – Is America Sleeping Through a Civil War?,” I quote from the first page:

America has just endured the most widespread civil uprising in a hundred years – except for the Civil War, the largest in American history….

Arrests totaled well over twenty thousand. Washington, D. C. [and it would do us good if we could go through the streets of Washington, D. C. , now - down 14th Street two blocks from our Mormon chapel - 7th Street in the business section], reported more than a thousand fires set by arsonists. Baltimore between seven and eight hundred, Pittsburgh five hundred, two hundred in Chicago, and so on…

The federal government was itself effectively shut down on Friday afternoon, April fourth, as word of unchecked, marauding mobs ranging freely in the downtown…

All over the world, sophisticated people must have laughed at us uproariously, and a hundred million no doubt lost any faith they ever had in us…

The author, Dr. Susan L. M. Huck, concludes the 25-page article with these words:

Okay, let’s take the gloves off. This insurrection didn’t just happen. It was set-up – just as the assassination of Martin Luther King was a set-up. The Communists and their Black Power fanatics have been working to create just such a situation for years. They even told us what they were planning to do, again and again, as they did it.

This is only the beginning! And, this time the Administration used only seventy thousand troops to stop them. This time our politicians who have tied the hands of our police officers, have, by employing curfews enforced by federal soldiers, put only ten million or so good citizens under house arrest. This time the insurrectionists hit only 168 towns and cities; they killed only forty-three people; and, they set only three thousand or so major fires.

And remember, the Reds and their Black Power troops have promised us that this is only the beginning! Stokley has said that his forces plan to burn down America.

They’re sure going to try.

How do you stop it? It’s very simple. You stop Communist racial agitation; you arrest the leaders for conspiracy to commit murder, arson, and burglary, prove their guilt in a court of law, and lock them up; and, you free the hands of our police so they can prevent rioting and looting and arson by those citizens now convinced by the actions of our “Liberals” that theft, incendiarism, and assault will be tolerated.

Don’t kid yourself. The people who are behind all of this mean to have a civil war. We either stop them now or they will escalate this thing. (Ibid.)

The Law Breakers

Also on my desk as I returned from abroad was the new volume entitled The Law Breakers – America’ s Number One Domestic Problem, by the brilliant young editor of the Indianapolis News, Mr. Stanton Evans. I give you the opening paragraphs:

Americans in this second half of the twentieth century have been told, with some justice, that they never had it so good. By every material standard, ours is the richest society on earth. We have higher personal incomes, more consumer goods, less poverty, and more leisure than any other nation known to history. And our government has set about, through a variety of programs in every field of human effort, to supply deficiencies in the web of comfort.

Yet if in that sense we never had it so good, in another sense we never had it so bad. Or so scared. Precisely as we have achieved our present affluence, precisely as our government has proclaimed its readiness to spread the good things more widely still, the nation is clawed by nameless apprehensions. Richer than any other generation of Americans, we are also more frightened. Blessed with better food, finer clothes, and more expensive cars, we are also haunted by the fear that the enjoyment of these things might be taken from us by marauders who stalk our streets and attack our homes.

The paradox is of the sort suggested by the Pennsylvania Dutch saying, “The faster I run, the behinder I get.” The faster we multiply our material comforts, the greater seems the likelihood of losing them through hoodlum terror. The more our government suggests we are advancing toward utopia, the more we stumble backward toward the jungle. We are a people for whom anything seems possible – except to defend ourselves against primitive evils which the rudest of societies can control.

The people of the United States are fast losing one of their most precious rights – the simple right to move as they please, to      go to church meetings at night, to shop where and when they would like, to take walks near their homes.

A survey conducted by the Crime Commission found that “one-third of a representative sample of all Americans say it is unsafe to walk alone at night in their neighborhoods. Slightly more than one-third say they keep firearms in the house for protection against criminals. Twenty-eight per cent say they keep watchdogs for the same reason.” (Stanton M. Evans and Margaret Moore, The Law Breakers [New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1968], p. 1.)

There is not time for a full outline of this treacherous development.

Communist Penetration of Government

We have mentioned briefly the help which the communists have received from our Supreme Court. Suffice it to say that they have penetrated every major segment of our society, as J. Edgar Hoover has testified – the news media, the schools, the churches, the unions, etc. But their greatest desire and most successful drive has come from their effective penetration of government.

They knew the power, prestige, influence, and finances that would be theirs once they got the machinery of the United States government headed in their direction. And they were right. For let the government of the United States stop helping communism and communists all over the world, and in a short period of time the conspiracy would be in retreat and in due time would collapse.

But we extend the advantage of diplomatic recognition to their puppets when they come to power. We send them billions in foreign aid. We’ve trained their pilots. We ship them wheat. Through cultural and other exchanges, their spies come to America. We supply them know-how. We extend them credit. We buy their goods. Their propaganda goes through our mails at our expense. We’ve helped them in their conquests through secret agreements. Our government does all it can to keep the anti-communists from coming to power in any country.

And once we’ve helped the communists to take over a nation such as China and Cuba, we do all in our power to keep the anti-communists from freeing their land. We even negotiate with these butchers and sign treaties with these criminals who have no respect for treaties. Said President McKay:

I would not deal with a nation which treats another as Russia has treated America. It is a condition which cannot be permitted to exist. (Church News [weekly section of Deseret News], August 6, 1952.)

But it does exist and every day brings in new evidence of the increasing help which our government extends the communists.

A Few Traitors

The vast majority of American citizens and federal employees are loyal to our Republic. But there are a few traitors whose numbers are growing and who are in key positions to influence and help shape government policy. In fact it is becoming increasingly apparent that appointment to high government office today is not hampered by one’s pas t affiliations with communist fronts or one’s ability to follow the communist line. You don’t need to look further than the President’s Cabinet and recent appointments to the Supreme Court to find ample evidence of this fact. (See: “The Unelected,” by Gary Allen, American Opinion, June 1968, p. 81.) Parrot the communist line and you can expect to be glamorized by the liberal news media and pushed to the front. But take a strong anti­communist position and you can expect to be passed over, smeared, and silenced. And this has happened and is happening to too many great and distinguished Americans to be accidental.

Communist Tactics

Now mind you, the communists could not do this all by themselves. They knew that communism would also have to be built by non-communist hands. And so, as in the past, they use, to suit their purpose, the misguided idealist, the political opportunists, the dupes and fellow travelers, and the ignorant and apathetic Americans.

Nor does the communist always deal in totally black instrumentalities – especially when he is trying to come to power. He must deceive. He must produce counterfeits. He must be willing at times to take one step backward – especially when it pacifies people about his past advances and makes it easier for him to take his next two steps forward.

He knows that some of his greatest successes have come with programs which have been sold to the American public as ways to fight the communists but which in reality had the net effect of promoting communism. This has been true of our foreign aid program. Designed, supposedly, to help nations, its overall effect has been to keep socialist governments in business, enhance the communists, discourage free enterprise and demoralize the anti-communists.

Win in Vietnam

Another illustration is the war in Vietnam. We are supposed to be fighting the communists in Vietnam, yet we are helping them everywhere else. Why do we trade with communist countries and supply them the means with which to kill our sons? Why do we build plants for them? We ship them machinery, metals, chemicals, rubber, airborne equipment and many other things for their war machine. In return we get back coffins – hundreds of them per week.

We cancelled a $17 million debt which the Polish communist government owed us on the very day a Polish ship pulled into Haiphong harbor with war materials to kill our men. On one side of Stettin harbor in Poland they unload the wheat we send them and on the other side of the harbor they load their ships with equipment to kill our men in Vietnam.

Why not let our men win in Vietnam? Why handcuff them? In war there is no substitute for victory. We have been pouring tens of billions of dollars into defense for years. Is it possible that we cannot win a war against a third-rate country of 17 million people, smaller than the state of Missouri? Honest and competent military men in whom I have great confidence have stated that we could win the war in six weeks or less.

TRAIN Committees

What can you do, you ask? Listen to the conclusion of a shocking article which every American should read by Wallis W. Wook, Coordinator for TRAIN Committees (TRAIN takes its name from To Restore American Independence Now):

What can one person do? You can try to match the determination of Lieutenant Colonel Wilbur Outlaw of North Carolina. He is a twenty-five-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force. His oldest son, Bill, is now a helicopter pilot in South Vietnam, and in the past nine months has been shot down once and strafed several times. In a recent letter to his family from Vietnam, he urged: “Tell those fools back home that there is a war going on over here and they’d better start doing something about it, either by Signing those petitions or by getting the powers that be (which is probably impossible) to start fighting a war instead of playing Mickey Mouse games. I feel sure that everyone else over here is as tired as I am of being shot at and knowing they can’t do anything about it most of the time.”

As Bill’s father told me: “I spent twenty-five years trying to defend my country; now I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to save it.”

What can you do? You can help protect the lives of your fellow Americans -the 500,000 super-patriots fighting Communism in Vietnam. You can get to work with TRAIN, or on your own, to help stop this treasonous aid and trade with the enemy – and, insist on the removal of the restrictions on our military. If not? Well, if not, mister, go back to sleep. But don’t call yourself an American. (American Opinion, May 1968, p. 14.)

A Personal Letter

What can you do? Hear the pleading warning and counsel of a Mormon elder, an air force captain, in the following letter:

APO San Francisco
26 March 1968

Elder Ezra Taft Benson
of the Council of the Twelve

Dear Sir:

I am an Air Force Captain serving in ______, Republic of Viet Nam. I have a wife and three young sons living in ______ whom I love very deeply and for whom I want to secure the freedom that I have thus far enjoyed. In discussions with members and non-members alike who are caught up in this war, I’ve found a unifying fear concerning the destiny of our country, a fear which I feel confident that you and many Church leaders share. Since this is an election year, and a very crucial year for the future of our nation, I’d like to do more than I am presently doing to further the cause of freedom.

I’ve attached a letter which I’ve prepared intending to express thoughts which our elders must employ with their own [members] if we’re to survive the present challenge to our nation. Certainly I’d like to go into greater detail with them about the communist threat… but what I’ve written may be useful.

As a member of the Armed forces I cannot actively participate in the political destiny of my country; but as an elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I am obligated to watch over the Church and to do what I can to protect the liberty that God has given us. Therefore, I write the accompanying letter, hoping that it might have some use in convincing the priesthood of their pressing obligation to the cause of freedom.

Then he signed his name, and attached this letter, which is addressed to the priesthood of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Dear Brethren:

We in Viet Nam, who are struggling and dying that men and women, you and your loved ones, might maintain the free agency which thousands before us have died to protect, are deeply concerned with the state of our beloved nation…

The news that comes to us from home is disheartening. While we endeavor to assist in securing freedom for a weak and tottering nation, but a nation filled with people desirous of freedom, the greatest nation of all, our homeland, now overflowing with selfish and materialistic millions, is staggering clumsily but steadily toward the clutches of self-imposed slavery. How sincerely we cry to our countrymen in words similar to those of our Master who cried “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,… how often I would have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” (Matthew 23:37–38.)

Dear Brethren, we stand upon the very threshold of calamity…

Brethren, truly our freedom hangs by a thread, and if we wish to keep it then we, the elders of Israel, must now step forward to preserve it.

I am a soldier. I am doing what I can to help. You are free and educated citizens capable of guiding our country’s destiny. How can you do it? Your local political organizations need your support and your participation. Your newspapers need your opinions. Your representatives in your state and national legislatures need your continuing support, interest, and advice… We know only too well the consequences if we fail to meet the challenge before us. It is time to act, to be doers and not hearers only. We plead with you from this the dark side of the earth. Put your shoulders to the wheel and push with your might…

Oppose Communist Aggression

Are there advantages to the communists of our being involved in a long no-win war? Can it eventually be converted into World War III? Can it be used to create bitterness, confusion, and a breakdown in American morale? Can it be used as an excuse to institute greater socialistic controls over the people – to weaken our economy? Can it be used to get the American people to accept peace on almost any terms?

If we really mean to oppose communist aggression, why did we pick distant Vietnam instead of Cuba? We had the Monroe Doctrine before there ever was a U.N. or a SEATO. If our government leaders are really opposed to communism, why don’t they start cleaning them out at home?

Why do they allow the Office of Economic Opportunity to be the means of providing finances and programs for the communist revolutionaries and their allies who plan to ravage and burn down America?

Yes, communism is tightening its strangle hold on America and the world because of the help it is receiving increasingly from right within our own government. Americans are destroying America.

And so I return to the grave warning of the inspired Book of Mormon:

And whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinations, to get power and gain, until they shall spread over the nation, behold they shall be destroyed; … (Ether 8: 22.)

God grant that we may repent, prayerfully study the Book of Mormon, follow the prophet, do our homework, and wake up in time to reverse the tragic course we are following, I humbly pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The international gospel of the Founding Fathers was forecast by Jefferson in 1793. It was voiced by Washington in his Farewell Address in 1796, when he declared we should have “as little political connection as possible with Europe,” because Europe has a “set of primary interests” with which we had “none or a very remote relation,” wherefore “must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concern;…why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” The Monroe Doctrine declaring against the future colonization of the American continent by Europeans, against the extension therein of their political system, against interposition by European powers to control the destinies of the Latin Americas, implemented the principles of the Address. And Jefferson, commenting in 1823 on the Monroe Doctrine, and the complete political separation of Europe and the Americas, solemnly affirmed: “Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe; our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs”

Nor may we overlook that great doctrine of neutrality set up under Washington himself and Jefferson and Hamilton, which was aimed at and brought about the localizing of international armed conflicts, and the preservation , under prescribed rules, of peacetime intercourse between belligerents and nonbelligerents. War was to curse as few people as possible. This has been jettisoned for the concept that every war should involve all nations, making all suffer the ravages of a global war.

Until the last quarter of a century, this gospel of the Fathers was the polar star by which we set our international course. In the first hundred thirty years of our constitutional existence, we had three foreign wars, the first merely the final effort of our Revolution, which made good our independence. During the century that followed we had two foreign wars, neither of considerable magnitude. During the next twenty-three years, we had two global wars. While the gospel of the Fathers guided us we has peace. When we forsook it, two great wars engulfed us.

It is not clear when we began our wandering, nor is it necessary to determine the time. President Theodore Roosevelt was hinting our straying when he uttered the dictum “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” We were to force others to do our bidding. President Wilson had the full departure in mind when he declared: “Everybody’s business is our business.” Since then we have leaped ahead along the anciently forbidden path.

In our course under the new gospel of interference with everything we do not like, we have gone forward and are going forward, as if we possessed all the good of human government, of human economic concept, of human comfort, and of human welfare, all of which we are to impose on the balance of the world,— a concept born of the grossest national egotism. In human affairs no nation can say that all it practices and believes is right, and that all others have that differs from what it has is wrong. Men inflict an unholy tragedy when they proceed on that basis. No man, no society, no people, no nation is wholly right in human affairs; and none is wholly wrong. A fundamental principle of the operation of human society is to live and let live.

Yet, to repeat, we have entered into new fields to impose our will and concepts on others. This means we must use force, and force means war, not peace.

What has our apostasy from peace cost us?

In men, our two recent adventures have cost in casualties, dead, wounded, and missing, 1,402,600, with almost as many saddened and crippled homes.

In money it has cost, in World War I, some $60 odd billions; and World War II cost us some $400 odd billions, including increased civilian help, in total, almost a half a trillion, the great bulk of which we still owe.

In spiritual values it has brought great numbers of our youth and older men to the very depths of desponding atheism. Our whole social structure seems undermined. We are becoming a blaspheming, unchaste, non-Christian, God-less race. Spiritually we seem ripe for another war.

In values of government and law, these wars and the interminglings of men of different concepts of freedom and human rights, have brought into our own system, the despotic principles of European systems, against which the Fathers warned, though they came to us through doors the Fathers did not see. Many and influential persons amongst us, of Alien concepts and sometimes of alien birth, no longer admit that man possesses the inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence and the fundamental precepts of the Constitution. Our courts no longer guarantee these rights and enforce these principles. We have and are aping and adopting the policies and the legal theories of Europe. Colonel House records that when President Wilson hesitated to launch us into the first World War, because he did not know what measures to take to wage the war, he, Colonel House, assured the President that it was simple, all he had to do, said Colonel House, was to do the things Europe had already done. And so we proceeded, and from then till now, we have constantly and more and more adopted European governmental concepts and laws, to the loss of liberty and of the happiness and security of our people.

All this takes us into a situation that places our destinies largely in the hands of those who appear to be urging us towards war, not peace.…

It is time we returned to the political faith and work of the Fathers. It is indispensable that we do so if we are to have peace. I believe in the old faith and the old works, under which we had so much of peace. I am a political isolationist in the full sense of the term and am not fearful in declaring it.

I am a political isolationist because:

I fully believe in the wisdom of the course defined by Washington, Jefferson, and other ancient statesmen. The whole history of America before and since the Revolution proves the truthfulness of their assertions. All during our pre-Revolutionary history we were at war, we were robbed, plundered, and massacred because of European wars in the issues and causes of which we had no concern. History is repeating itself.

I believe American manhood is too valuable to be sacrificed on foreign soil for foreign issues and causes.

I believe that permanent peace will never come into the world from the muzzle of a gun. Guns and bayonets will, in the future as in the past, bring truces, long or short, but never peace that endures.

I believe President Wilson had the true principle when he spoke of the strength and power of the moral force of the world. Moral force in a nation fructifies industry, thrift, good will, neighborliness, and the friendly intercourse of nations, the peace that all men seek; whereas force is barren.

I believe America’s role in the world is not one of force, but is of that same peaceful intent and act that has characterized the history of the country from its birth till the last third of a century.

I believe that moral force is far more potent than physical force in international relations.

I believe that America should again turn to the promotion of the peaceful adjustment of international disputes, which will help us regain the measureless moral force we once possessed, to the regeneration and salvation of the world. We now speak with the strong arm of physical force only; we have no moral force left.

I believe we should once more turn our brains and our resources to the problem, not of killing men, women, and children, combatant and noncombatant, but of bringing to them more of good living and high thinking.

I believe political isolation will bring to us the greatest happiness and prosperity, the greatest temporal achievement not only, but the highest intellectual and spiritual achievement also, the greatest power for good, the strongest force for peace, the greatest blessing to the world.

I am not shaken in my convictions nor frightened by the assertion of many good people and fostered by the communists and “new thoughters,” that the doctrine of the Fathers is outmoded, and that we are in a new world. All the age old forces are still peering out at us, — greed, avarice, ambition, selfishness, the passion to rule, the desire to enslave for the sordid advantage of the enslaver. Not a single wanton face is missing and the visages of some are more hideous than ever. While radar, the radio, the telephone, the airplane have facilitated our talking and visiting with our neighbors, that have not made new beings out of use nor out of them, nor changed either our characters or theirs. We are just as we were, with the possibility of a little more back-fence gossiping and quarreling, and a little more brawling among the children. But the households remain essentially as they were. We still have oceans between us; we live on different continents, under different conditions. We can and should mind our own business and let others do the same.

In my view, our whole international course and policy is basically wrong, and must be changed if peace is to come. Our policy has brought us, and pursued, will continue to bring us, only the hatred of nations now — and we cannot thrive on that, financially or spiritually — and certain war hereafter, with a list of horrors and woes we do not now even surmise. If we really want peace, we must change our course to get it. We must honestly strive for peace and quit sparring for military advantage. We must learn and practice, as a nation and as a world, the divine principles of the Sermon on the Mount. There is no other way.

Someone will, at this point, play the ace question, with that smug finality that always accompanies it, — What would you do?

I frankly answer, I do not know, for I do not know the facts. Furthermore a critic with no authority or power in a situation, and from whom is withheld a knowledge of facts, is under no obligation to propose an alternative. He may rest by pointing out defects in policy.

On the other hand, I say, give us the facts, all of them, hiding nothing, and we shall tell you what to do. As one American citizen, I dare government to give us the facts, all the facts, including what kind of war they think the next war will be, what kind they intend to wage, and how many lives it will cost, including the aged, the infirm, and women and children.

We, the common people, have not been told the facts for years, since long before the last war broke. We are not now being told the facts. We can only surmise. But give us the facts and we will answer. And in our multitude of counsel you will find wisdom.