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.

Purchase: The Book of Mormon and the Constitution by H. Verlan Andersen

I want to congratulate the Sunday School and all of you for participating in this special Education Week program. Since we’ve had the block approach for our Sunday services, it has been just great to get through the necessary exercises. However all of our classes have to be extremely concentrated and there’s no time for a Parley P. Pratt to speak for two hours like they used to do. Everything has to be very condensed and very concentrated, and maybe that’s a good discipline for us anyway.

But these Education Nights are designed especially for a little deeper probe into some aspects of the gospel.

The 1990′s: The Last Decade of the Sixth Seal

As all of you know and realize, beginning with the year 1990 we have probably reached one of the most important benchmarks in world history. This is the great decade that constitutes the last ten years of the sixth seal. The Lord has a tremendous amount of work to accomplish in these ten years.

The secular prognosticators thought that they had the 1980′s all figured out and they were predicting certain things to happen in a certain way. Then suddenly, the Lord’s time-line cut across 1989, turned it upside down, changed everything, and you are in a new world today. The Berlin Wall is down. That was the Lord’s time-line.

You’re going to see the Lord’s time-line cut back and forth all the way across the 1990′s, because he has a lot to do. Many of the things that secular prognosticators have anticipated will not come to pass, because [page 138] the Lord has to get his work done.

So tonight I’m going to mention a few things that are significant as we go into the decade of the 1990′s, with special emphasis on what President Benson has said that we have a responsibility to accomplish.

Prophecies of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Six months before the Berlin Wall came down you could have seen what was coming. You could anticipate it. Six months before that you couldn’t have. A person would have been foolhardy to have predicted eighteen months ago that the Berlin Wall would come down by November 9, 1989. No one would have dared to predict it! But nevertheless, it came down.

The leaders of the Church have been talking about this ever since 1859, as far as I can tell. Orson Pratt was the first one to say that there are some tremendous things that have to be done to change the climate of the Slavic countries and Russia before the gospel can go in, but it is going to go in. 1

In 1 Nephi 14, Nephi had a vision, and he saw our day, as Moroni later did, and he said that we were there: the missionaries were in Russia. We were in China. We were in India. We were in every one of the 168 nations in the world today. 2 This is the decade when we go. Well, as I said, eighteen months ago that was impossible. Then after November it looked plausible, and now, it’s happening!

Apostle Melvin J. Ballard, the father of our present Apostle M. Russell Ballard, spoke at General Conference on April 6, 1930, while I was just getting ready to go on my mission. He said, “I want you to be aware that the Lord is working in Russia.” It was interesting what he said:

“Much as we are disturbed over the tyranny and the oppression that is waged against religion in that land, it is not a new thing, for that has been the order for ages in Russia. But I can see God moving also in preparing the way for other events that are to come.

“The field that has gone to wild oats needs to be plowed, and harrowed, and prepared for new seed. So it will be in Russia. It may seem appalling to us, but it is God breaking up and destroying an older order of things that must pass away. The [page 139] process will be the accomplishment of God’s purposes within a very short period of time, when it happens, which normally may have taken generations.”

Isn’t that something? It happened in three months!

“But that people will come back, for I bear witness that there are thousands of the blood of Israel in that land, and God is preparing the way for them.” 3

The ten tribes disappeared right up in that area, right in the Slavic countries. They don’t know who they are now. We didn’t know who we were. Patriarchs lay their hands on our heads and tell us that we are of the tribe of Ephraim. Imagine that! We’re Israelites. We came out from among the Gentiles, and had ourselves identified. That’s pretty thrilling.

We are those that fought for God, those whom Moses was talking about in Deuteronomy 32. 4 We succeeded and helped Heavenly Father, and were his soldiers in that great war in heaven. We were named Israel there in the pre-mortal existence, which means “soldiers of God.” 5

Is the Church Ready To Go Into Russia?

Now, at the time when we had 20,000 missionaries, President Kimball announced that the Berlin Wall was ready to be brought down by the Lord but the Church wasn’t ready. 6 When we doubled the number of missionaries and reached 40,000, the Berlin Wall came down that year. Now, obviously, the Lord thinks that we are ready.

Jesus said that before the end could come, “This gospel of the kingdom must be preached to every nation, kindred, tongue and people.” 7 That’s why eighteen months ago you would read that passage and say, “Someday….” But suddenly, here it’s 1990 and the time is now! We’re moving in.

A Soviet spokesman was at BYU, as you probably read in the paper, just two weeks ago. While here he told us that they will welcome our missionaries in Russia. In the MTC today, they’re being trained. All of Eastern Europe is now allowing our missionaries to go in, and I won’t be surprised if we see them going into Russia, in quantity, in the not too [page 140] distant future. It really is an exciting time to be alive.

A Spirit of Urgency

Now, among the Brethren there is a spirit of urgency. I don’t know whether you have felt it or noticed it, but there is a spirit of urgency. If you haven’t felt it, just reread some of President Benson’s talks. And it’s in the other Brethren’s talks too. I met one of the Twelve at a wedding reception recently. “Oh,” he said, “Brother Skousen, you won’t believe what the Church is going to do!”

I said, “Yes?”

He said, “But you will!” I could tell he had just come out of some important meeting and he was just bubbling over with enthusiasm.

You know, one of the worst burdens in the world is to keep a secret. It’s a tough thing to do. They say the definition of a secret is something you just tell one person at a time! But the Brethren, they don’t even do that. They’re under very strict discipline.

The Brethren know what Joseph Smith said about this decade that we’re going into. He said, “There will be some more wars. There is going to be a terrible military dictatorship descend on Europe and Asia. When those wars are threatening, everyone will have to flee to Zion.” 8 So we are going to go out there and gather in as much of Israel as we can. We’re going to bring them right back to America. I’m just guesstimating now, but I don’t think we have much more than ten years.

I think you’re going to see the Church drained of womanpower, manpower, and finances as we hit this thing just like a tidal wave. Brother Joseph said, “Ye shall not have time to have gone over the earth until these things begin to come.” 9 That’s urgency. We need to get as many as we can.

The Lord also said, “Prepare yourselves for the ministry to go forth among the Gentiles for the last time, as many as the mouth of the Lord shall name, to bind up the law and seal up the testimony, and to prepare the Saints for the hour of judgement which is to come; that their souls may escape the wrath of God, the desolation of abomination which will then be poured out upon the wicked.” 10

So it’s a desperate hour. It’s a time of going out there and finding our brothers and sisters, because we’ve got them out there. In a moment, [page 141] I’ll indicate to you the way that President Benson suggests that we will be finding our brothers and sisters. And the reason we will have to bring them back to America is in the Doctrine and Covenants:

“And it shall come to pass among the wicked, that every man that will not take his sword against his neighbor must needs flee unto Zion for safety. 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. 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.” 11

We really have got a job on our hands, and this won’t be a time, obviously, to dally. The Lord has been accelerating his program in the Church for forty years. He was building it up before then, but the acceleration in the last forty years is astonishing.

The Phenomenal Growth of the Church

In 1950 we had a little over a million members and 180 stakes. Now we have seven million members and nearly 2,000 stakes. Did you know that 90% of all the stakes created in the Church were all created since 1950? That’s 90%! And 36% of the stakes in the Church were created since 1980. The momentum is going and it is increasing. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we hit twenty million members within the next ten years.

Let me give you a few statistics. A few of you, I notice, are taking notes. So let me give you a few that will show the direction that we are now headed. President Benson has already said, “If you’ll just listen to us now, and follow our leadership, you’ll see this Church get a blessing hitherto unknown in the history of the Church.” 12

I sometimes like to go back to when I was born — I know some of you think it was before the Flood. It was in 1913. We had 431,000 members worldwide. That’s all we had. By 1930 they couldn’t find a thousand elders to send out in the mission field, the most they got was 898. So they began scraping the bottom of the barrel, and our bishop was allowed to send me at the age of seventeen, and Dix W. Price from Mesa, Arizona also went at the age of seventeen.

Being so young, we didn’t even think that we were going to get to be senior companions. We find that age means nothing in the mission [page 142] field. Dix W. Price ended up in charge of the London area, and my assignment was to be in charge of northern Ireland. Why, if you had told me that when I was in the mission home, I’d have been scared spitless!

As of December 1989, we had 41,000 missionaries. We’re shooting for 60,000. I think before the end of the decade is over, we’ll probably have 100,000 in the field.

It’s like Brother A. Theodore Tuttle said. He was at a meeting and he saw a young man twenty years of age. He said, “Why aren’t you on your mission?”

“Oh,” he said, “I don’t want to go on a mission.”

Brother Tuttle said, “What’s that got to do with it?!” In other words, we’re on a roll, and the Church needs us. It needs all of us functioning in our particular area of activity.

We now have three temples that are in the process of being built, and 46 are finished. We’ll probably have 50 temples here before the end of the decade. We’ve doubled the number of temples in the last ten years.

The Church has now divided this entire planet into eighteen regions, covering all 168 nations. The gospel is now being preached, already, in 100 of these nations. So we have about 68 to go, and some of them are big ones — India, China, Russia.

The State of China Today

Deng Xiaoping, China’s present dictator, has a strange combination of characteristics. He was one of those leaders in China who helped wipe out somewhere between 40 and 60 million Chinese in order to set up the big communes and appropriate all their property. When Mao Tse Tung died, Deng took over as a reform leader. It was he who dismantled all of the communes. It was he who invited in foreign capital. It was he who started a great drive toward bringing China back into the mainstream of civilization.

But, a year ago June, something happened for which he had no answer: a million students, on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, were asking for participatory democracy. He didn’t know what to do with them. A Marxist is only trained to do one thing and that is to establish order, and then do whatever he thinks is good for the people. And things were out of order. The whole nation was beginning to say, “Perestroika! Glasnost! Hooray for Gorbachev!” Gorbachev came over and visited, and they practically worshiped him.

Deng panicked, as you know, and mowed down thousands of those [page 143] students and burned their bodies. Now he’s dying, they tell us. We’re told by those who know the situation that Deng Xiaoping represents the end of the old, conservative, Marxist, revolutionary, Leninist sentiment. As soon as he does disappear from the scene, the whole machinery that he set up will be dismantled, and you’ll get reform in China. So I expect that by the time that we’ve gotten into Russia, and gotten ourselves oriented there, China will be opened up.

Membership of the Church Continues To Grow

We’re adding about 500,000 new members to the Church each year, but I don’t think it will be long before we add a million each year.

The Book of Mormon is now translated into 48 languages, which fits the language requirements of 114 nations. Sometimes it’s not the whole Book of Mormon, but all of the salient parts.

We have about 100,000 men and women serving in the Church without compensation, and learning how to govern God’s people. We actually have 100,000 in training, right now, in this Church! No other church duplicates it or comes close to these numbers.

We have about 500,000 young people that are learning about the gospel in the Church Educational System.

Those are just a few statistics to remind us that something rather remarkable is happening.

What Others Are Saying About the Church

This growth is not being missed by other people. I have here a page from one of the very latest textbooks in the California schools. In a section titled “Religious Innovations and Creation of the Mormon Faith” it says:

“What is remarkable about Mormonism is the phenomenal degree to which it has grown since its inception. While most new religions die in almost total obscurity, Mormonism has enjoyed the highest growth rate of any new faith in American history. By 1840, only ten years after Smith and his five followers declared themselves to be the first Mormons, membership in the Mormon church had reached about 30,000.

“Ten years later in 1850, there were 60,000. This doubling of membership took place despite persecution from non-Mormons, a change in leadership following the death of Joseph Smith, and a grueling migration across the plains and Rockies to start a new community in Utah. By 1950, there were over a [page 144] million Mormons, and by 1980, 4.6 million.” And of course now, it’s 7.3 million.

“This means a growth rate of well over 50% for three intervening decades. Such an impressive growth rate was due in part to the custom of young Mormon men, and increasingly young women, volunteering for several years of unpaid missionary work. In 1980, there were 30,000 young Mormons serving as missionaries around the world, converting other young adults to the Mormon faith. By projecting into the future, we see there could very likely be over 250 million Mormons by the next century.”

Of course it will be a lot more than that — that will be during the Millennium!

I have several examples here where other people, in rather commendatory ways, say that it is amazing how the Church is catching on. It gives us a more pleasant climate for the missionaries to go out and preach the gospel when we have that kind of background rather than the misinformation and propaganda that used to go out when I was a boy in school in California.

President Benson and Communism

It is very interesting that Michel Gorbachev came to power in March of 1985. Ezra Taft Benson became President of the Church in November of 1985. Gorbachev had orders to conquer Europe and overcome NATO within about 18 months and he started to do it.

I remember when I used to tell my students about Nephi’s great vision in which he saw the missionaries in Russia 13 and my students would say, “Well, Brother Skousen, we’d have to conquer those people before you could preach in Russia and China.”

I would reply to them, “Well, don’t forget that God can soften the heart of Pharaoh.” When he softens the heart, it reverses itself. Do you remember the brothers of Nephi? Here they were going to kill him and a little while later they were practically worshiping him. 14 It’s amazing! If they let a little of the Spirit of the Lord in, they become different people. Their personalities change and their attitudes change.

Ezra Taft Benson is the foremost spokesman against Communism among all the leaders of the Church. When he became President of the [page 145] Church it was immediately expected that he would really unload on them. He didn’t say a word. So finally somebody went up to him and said, “President Benson, aren’t you going to say anything about Communism?”

“No,” he said, “the Saints have been warned long enough and now the Lord has something more important for us to do.” It wasn’t long before we heard it. He stood up in Conference and said, “I have a vision of the whole Church getting nearer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon. Indeed I have a vision of flooding the earth with the Book of Mormon just like Enoch saw in his vision in Moses 7:62.”

President Benson Pushes

the Book of Mormon Forward

He said, “My beloved Saints, I am now entering my ninetieth year. I do not know fully why God has preserved my life to this age, but I do know this, that for the present hour he has revealed to me the absolute need for us to move the Book of Mormon forward in a marvelous manner. You must help with this burden and with this blessing which he has placed on the whole Church. Even the children of Zion can help if they will just do what they are asked to do.” 15

Why is President Benson so concerned about the Book of Mormon? There are three things he says that the Book of Mormon will help us do in the 1990′s. It is the manual for the three things that we have to do, and much of it will be launched in this decade.

First, President Benson said we must know the Book of Mormon well enough to use it as a missionary vehicle. Most people read the Book of Mormon just enough to get a testimony that it’s true. Then they put it on the shelf and say, “I tell you, it’s true!”

What’s in it? What does it say? If you met a Jewish rabbi, how would you use the Book of Mormon to convert him to the gospel?

You would say, “Rabbi, have you ever had a chance to read Isaiah 53?”

“Well, of course!”

“Who is this person that would be born, and would be killed, and would be resurrected?”

“Does it say that?”

[page 146]

“It’s in your Bible.” Of course, it’s explained in the Book of Mormon. You get it out of the Book of Mormon so you know with confidence what you can tell the rabbi.

“What do you think your ancient prophet Zechariah meant when he said that when your Messiah comes, he will have wounds in his hands and in his feet?” 16

“Does it say that? Where do you think that might be?”

Suddenly you’ve got a vehicle where you can transfer your knowledge from the Book of Mormon over into the Bible, and talk to a rabbi, and astonish him with his own book.

Suppose that you meet a minister — a Baptist minister — and say, “Do you believe the Bible?”

“Oh yes, every word!”

“What do you say about Ezekiel 37 where it says that in addition to the Bible we’ll have another book from the hands of Joseph and they will be two books to go together in the latter days?” 17

“Does it say that?”

“Yes, and we have that book! Would you like to have a copy?”

“Well, yes, I guess I would.” He looks at it, and it says “The Book of Mormon.”

“The Book of Mormon! That can’t be the Lord’s book!”

“Have you ever read it? Do you know anything about it? How do you think the Jews felt when the Christians came with all their new literature? You don’t want to miss knowing about the other book, do you? I’ll give you a copy.” That’s the way we approached a Baptist minister who is just about ready for baptism.

We have to know the Book of Mormon so well that it becomes the tool for the converting of masses of people. We’ve been converting others on a one-on-one basis. But how do you convert a minister and his whole congregation like Wilford Woodruff did? How do you go into communities in Russia and the Slavic countries and convert our fellow Israelites in great quantities?

President Benson says that if we know the Book of Mormon well enough, we can do it. So in my own mind I work out a little scenario. I [page 147] imagine that I am allowed to go into a town where the Russians say the missionaries will be welcome. In fact, I hope that they’re much like the three Russian leaders that recently visited the state of Utah.

The Russians Enjoyed Their Visit to Utah

Oh, they said they liked this state! The man that was interviewing them, a local TV interviewer, tried to depreciate Utah. He said, “This is a religious state. If you want to know how politics are run in a state, you shouldn’t have come here. This is a very religious state and dominated by one religion.”

“Oh,” they said, “that’s what we like about it. Our people want religion, and they want to know” — this is a quote — “what the man upstairs is thinking.”

Well, this interviewer was being driven up the wall. He happens to be anti-Mormon and anti-Utah, and so he was expecting these Russians to really bash the state. It was just the opposite. He said, “Of course we have some problems, you know, in America. We have racism.”

“Oh, racism — that’s universal. You’re doing as good a job here as anybody did.”

“Well, we have air pollution.”

The Russian replied, “You’re talking to a man that was raised in the fumes of a Russian industrial city. You know nothing about air pollution! You’re ignorant of air pollution! Over here in America I like it, and Utah is the best of all. I love the Utah air!” This poor interviewer, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

Anyway, the Russians were very friendly. They talked to our governor, they talked to our state legislature and they were real friends. They were asked why they wanted to come to Utah, because they first went to Washington, D.C., and talked to Congressmen. All that the Congressmen would tell them was what a great job Washington was doing for the States. That’s not what they wanted to hear. They wanted to know: how do you handle a state so it doesn’t want to secede? See, that’s Gorbachev’s main problem. How much freedom do you give them? How do you handle them?

So they weren’t happy and they were asked, “Well, where do you want to go?”

They said, “We want to go to Utah.”

So when they got out here, this interviewer said, “Why did you [page 148] choose Utah?”

“Well,” he said, “some of our people were here with Thiokol, inspecting the armaments, and they were treated better than our inspectors anywhere. Our inspectors like Utah, and they like the people, and they like the way they were treated, and we like the way we’re being treated.”

Preaching to an Audience in Russia

Anyway, President Benson has said, “I want you to know that book well enough so that you can make it a tool for the conversion of masses of people.” As I was saying, I’ve tried to work out a little scenario in my mind: what would I do if I had the responsibility to teach a large audience of Russian people, and I could speak Russian?

It has been unlawful and illegal for the Russian people to have a Bible until just recently. But now they’re being shipped into Russia by the tens of thousands and it’s a matter of status to have a Bible. So that’s where I’d begin.

I’d say, “Folks, I know you’re happy to get your Bibles. I hope all of you have gotten one. If you haven’t, try to get one as soon as you can, because there are things in the Bible that you need to know. I want to see how many Bibles there are in this congregation,” and I’d have them hold them all up.

Then I’d say, “All right. Not as many as I hoped there would be, but all of you who have a Bible now, I want you to turn to page 1,080.” Of course, they don’t know their Bibles yet, so you can’t say, “Turn to Ezekiel.” They don’t know what you are talking about. So you give them the page number, and then you give them verse 16 in Ezekiel 37, and then you say, “Now that’s where a prophet of God in nearly 600 B.C. said that you would get your Bible.”

“He then said, ‘God will also give you the book of your own people, the book of Joseph.’ You may not have known it, but most of you are probably of the blood of Israel since this is right where the ten tribes disappeared. So this message will sound familiar to you. The Bible says 18 that it will sound familiar, it will be like a voice coming up out of the ground, and when it’s translated and published, it will sound familiar.”

“I’ll tell you what this book of Joseph will do. It will give you a wonderful understanding of what’s in the Bible that you may not have known before. It was written by the prophets of God in the Western [page 149] Hemisphere. Isaiah and three or four of the prophets 19 talked about a people that were beyond Africa, over on the American continent.”

“God raised up prophets among them, and they received everything the Jews received. You can get both books. You’ve got the Bible, and if you want the book of Joseph, they’re here for you tonight and they’re free. They’re free. I’ve got a couple trunk-loads here donated by the home wards.”

I’d then say, “I want to now quote a few things about that great book, in your Bible.” I’d give them the page number of Isaiah 29. “This passage tells about the second book coming forth. We have several of the prophets talking about the time when you would get your second great book. And I’ll tell you what else they said, ‘The end is very close.’ It’s very close. As a matter of fact, we only have a short period of peace, and then it’s going to be terrible. There’s going to be the worst, monstrous military dictatorship in the history of the world.” 20

“So here’s my message to you, and I want to bear testimony to you because we don’t have much time left. We are here with your second book, and it will tell you that it’s necessary for you to turn away from those things in your life that you know are not correct, so that you can start living God’s law, and accept a covenant-making baptism. It won’t be a sprinkling, but a baptism by immersion just like Jesus’ baptism was. And then you will be confirmed by the Spirit of God, and you will become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ as it was originally organized on the earth.”

“How many of you used to be Catholics? I want to see your hands. All right, this is the original Christian Catholic church. Over the years it was changed a little. The Lord wanted you to have the real, original Catholic church. It’s back!”

I think that would be a good way to begin.

The Book of Mormon Contains

Principles of Righteous Government

The second thing the Book of Mormon is a manual for, according to President Benson, is to learn the principles of righteous government that we one day will have to teach this country after our present government becomes unraveled. All of you remember the prophecy that our [page 150] Constitution will be on the verge of destruction. 21 We won’t rush forward to save it. The people will come to those who seem to be getting along all right and who seem to have order. They will lean on this people as a staff, and we will lead the Constitution away from the verge of destruction.

I’m a Constitutional lawyer. That prophecy used to scare the wits out of me, because I learned nothing in law school that would be of much help when we came to a time of great distress in this nation and the people would say, “All right now, set us up again. How should we do this?”

I made a wonderful discovery in the Book of Mormon. In Mosiah 29, the king issued a proclamation of independence for the people. It was a declaration of independence for the people, but a proclamation by the king. He said, “You’re free. God has shown me how to set you up the way it was originally designed by God.” Well, what they did was fantastic. The only thing is, what they set up is not in the Book of Mormon, it was in the plates of brass.

So where are we going to find what they set up? Do we know what was in the plates of brass? Most of it. Some of the prophets like Zenoch and Zenos we don’t have. But where are most of books from the plates of brass available to us? In the Bible. Nephi said, “I’m not including that in my plates because I’ve already been told you’ll have it.” 22

So I went diving into God’s revelation in the Bible of how you set up an ideal government. Then to my astonishment I found, from John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, that they already had that in mind. 23 They would have given us that form of government. The people wouldn’t buy it and we got a watered-down version.

Joseph Smith Tries to Amend the Constitution

When Joseph Smith learned for the first time that the Constitution is actually the Millennial form of government, he decided to fix any problems it might have. He said to the Quorum of the Twelve, in early 1844, “Let’s amend the Constitution in any way that we feel is necessary, and then I’ll take it to the Lord.” 24

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So they worked on it, and they couldn’t amend it. They tried to fix it in one place, and it would get unbalanced in another. And so they would try another place. Finally they said to Joseph Smith, “We don’t know enough to amend the Constitution. You try it.”

He worked on it for a week, and finally he went to the Lord and said, “How would you like this Constitution perfected?”

The revelation that came was kind of a reprimand. The Lord said in the revelation, “If I wanted to amend it, I would have told you. You are my spokesman.” 25 Then in Doctrine and Covenants 101 the Lord said, “I established the Constitution. I didn’t do it by ministering of angels. I didn’t do it by laying on of hands. I did it by wise men that I raised up for this very purpose.” 26

And in Doctrine and Covenants 98 he said, “Anything that’s more or less than this is evil. It doesn’t need amending. What you are calling weaknesses is actually the work of wicked men. When the wicked rule, the people mourn.” 27

So Joseph Smith ran for President, and wrote a pamphlet titled Views on the Powers and Policy of the Government. 28 When I read that, I knew I was getting closer to home base. There I found the great things that we will want to be implementing when they start leaning upon us and ask, “Will you restore order?”

The Majesty of God’s Law

So I’ve been working the last twenty years, off and on, on a book that I hope to complete this year — my wife doesn’t believe it, but I really think I can complete it this year — which will be called The Majesty of God’s Law.

If you are approached and asked to establish order for the people, in that book you’ll find the first thing you need to do, the second thing, the third thing — there are about 22 things you need to know. You don’t need to have a Ph.D. in political science to carry this out.

Not only can you restore order, but by establishing those principles, Alma was able to eliminate poverty and crime in five years! 29 If the people are all members of the Church — which of course they won’t be, [page 152] but if they are — then it can be done in one year like Nephi IV did. 30 I’ll tell you, if you want to see the Constitution shiny and brilliant, this is where you find it.

When we are asked to restore the Constitution, we’ll do just what John Adams advocated, what Benjamin Franklin advocated in the Convention, and what Thomas Jefferson tried for ten years to get the state of Virginia to adopt. All they were able to get were a few fragments, so we ended up with a watered-down version.

When I found out that those men had been inspired to set up the original thing that Mosiah did, I got pretty thrilled. So I put all of that together in this book which will be called The Majesty of God’s Law.

I’ve been asked to advise some of those who are getting a master’s certificate in advanced political science, and I’ve been sharing this with them. I recently talked to about fifty very fine scholars from ten different states, representing many faiths. Because I can teach this right out of the Bible, nobody gets nervous about it. But I teach it with confidence because of the Book of Mormon! They are excited about it, just like I’ve become excited about it.

So I wanted you to know that the topic I was assigned to talk on tonight, which is the Book of Mormon and the Constitution, is all there in that wonderful book of scripture. Now, to share with you all that it contains, and how you do it, and those 22 things that you need to know in order to restore what God calls a perfect order of government, well, that takes about a week, which I understand is more than you are allowing tonight!

The Book of Mormon Teaches

How to Set Up a Zion Society

The third thing President Benson said the Book of Mormon is designed to do is to teach us how to set up a Zion society. Three Book of Mormon prophets were able to do this: King Benjamin, 31 Alma the Younger 32 and Nephi IV. 33 Nephi IV was able to make his last almost 200 years before it finally caved in. 34

As Alma discovered, one of the problems of setting up a Zion society [page 153] is that it immediately becomes rich. 35 It isn’t very long before everybody is well-off, and there aren’t any poor people.

Alma also used God’s law to eliminate the criminal element. He said, “I didn’t eliminate criminality, but when they saw what happened to them when they committed crimes, they became more still [that's a quote].” 36 As a chief of police at the time I discovered this I thought, “Now there is something worth studying. I need to know more about that.”

How do you set up a Zion society? Actually, you can’t have a Zion society unless you have a Zion people, and that’s the very foundation of a good Constitutional government. So I am going to talk about that for just a minute as a concluding part of my talk.

Decathlon Mormon Champions

How do you develop Zion people? What I would like to suggest is that we try to become “decathlon Mormons.” What’s a decathlon athlete? He’s a champion of ten sports, and I want you to listen to them: the 100 meter dash, the broad jump, the 16 pound shot-put, the high jump, the 400 meter dash, the 110 meter hurdles, the discus throw, the pole vault, the javelin throw, and the 1,500 meter race. If you’re a champion in all of those ten areas, you’re a decathlon champion — decathlon, which means ten events.

If you can be a champion in ten facets of Mormonism, I think the rest will take care of itself. So for those of you who are taking notes, I’ll run through the list of ten things that seem to be fundamental. In fact, it’s an agenda or an inventory by which we can judge ourselves to see if we are gradually developing Zion people in our families.

Our Savior said, “When I come, about half of the Church will be acceptable to me, or about half of them will be decathlon champions. The others I won’t be too happy with, because they will not have gone on their missions, they will not have done their home teaching, they will not have been paying their tithing and otherwise helping me do my work. But they’ll want to be with me, and they’ll want to say that they are part of my kingdom. I will have to shut the door, and say, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know you.’” 37

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This is in the Doctrine and Covenants, 38 and also the New Testament, 39 where it talks about the ten virgins. The Lord said, “Five of them will be acceptable to me. The others are virgins, they’re good girls, but not good for much.” So he said, “They won’t make it and their lamps will have gone out. They won’t be able to receive me when I come.”

So I want all of you to make it! On a scale of one to ten, I want you to grade yourselves as we go through these ten things that will qualify you to be a decathlon Mormon champion.

1. Get in a “Yes” Mode

The first thing to ask yourself is: “Am I doing what the bishop wants me to do?” This is fundamental to a Zion society. “You need to get in a ‘yes’ mode,” my father used to say. When the bishop asks you to do something, always say yes, and then explain to him why you can’t do it. In other words, you leave it up to him.

Once or twice I’ve had to say to a stake president or somebody that wanted me to do something, “I’ll be glad to do it. What do you want to release me from? Because I now have five jobs in the Church, and I would be dishonest if I told you I could accept any more and do justice to all of them.”

The stake president in this instance was very reasonable, and he said, “Yes, thank you. I didn’t know that. That’s too much.”

Accepting Church Callings Can Bring Blessings

When I was a young fellow, the bishop said, “We have the droopiest bunch of singers in the San Bernardino Ward. We need to get somebody that is like a cheer leader, that will get up there with some pep and get them to sing.” So the superintendent of the Sunday School asked if I would lead the music.

I said, “Yes, but there’s one problem. I don’t know anything about music.”

“Oh,” he said, “it’s easy. Just follow the beat, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. And there’s also another beat, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, which is waltz time. You can do that.” So I got up there, and it wasn’t long before those people were singing! They would sing so heartily that we would have them all stand up, take a big breath and really sing.

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However, the most important part of that assignment was the pianist, a little younger than myself, but a very lovely brunette who had blossomed a little early. She and I had to talk over the program, and it wasn’t very long before we were making beautiful music. She’s now my wife. So the moral of the story is: it pays to say yes!

What Makes a Great Bishop?

I also ought to add one other thing. Do you know what makes a really great bishop? Is it being set apart and ordained by the stake presidency? Does that make a great bishop?

No. The thing that makes a great bishop is when the priests go on missions, and the deacons are in their place, and the teachers are teaching exciting lessons, and everybody is on fire in the ward. Other people are trying to get houses and move into the ward. Everybody is supporting the bishop.

This is what the Lord says in the Doctrine and Covenants, “The ordination comes from above. Your power comes from below. This is also true of myself.” 40 Power in the priesthood comes from those that you supervise who are under your stewardship. So, that number one is very important: “Am I doing what the bishop asks me to do?” That’s what makes a great bishop.

2. Use The Power of Prayer

The next one: “Am I a prayerful person? Am I really a prayerful person?” Don’t be embarrassed if you have to say, “Well, you know, I do it once in a while. We say a blessing on the food once in a while.” I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about reaching a stage where you look forward to talking to Heavenly Father. First by yourself, when you get up, and then with your family around you. At night, your family once again goes to your family “altar” — sometimes it’s the kitchen table that you surround, or you go to the front room where there’s a “postum” table — and you surround that with the family. Then you go to your room and talk to the Lord by yourself.

We need to learn to pray like Baptists. They have learned to do what God wants you to do when you pray. Too often we are inclined to pray in generalities: “Heavenly Father, we thank you for these blessings.” “Keep ‘em coming!” — that’s really the general tenor of it!

But when you watch a Baptist pray, he’ll say, “Oh, Lord our Father. What a beautiful day you’ve given us today. And moisture yesterday. [page 156] The grass is out, the flowers are up, the air is clean. Here is a congregation of thy children that want to thank you for this good and beautiful earth on which we live.” Isn’t that something? That’s the way to pray. Be specific!

What are you really thankful for? That’s the way we should begin our prayers. “Heavenly Father, oh, I’m so thankful for my sweetheart. Bless her with health and strength; she’s having a little difficulty. Bless her. Bless her that we may live together during these golden years for a long time to come.” That’s the way you talk to the Lord.

After you have thanked him for membership in the Church, thank him for all of the things that he has given us. Think of what God has done for you! Be specific. Then ask him for blessings, and once again, what do you really want? Usually, I first pray for those that I’m duty-bound to pray for. I want to pray for President Benson. I love him. I worked right under him in Washington, D.C. I know both of his counselors personally and I love them and I pray for them. I know most of the General Authorities. If you live long enough, that happens! I pray for them.

I pray for our bishop and our stake presidency. I don’t multiply words. I pray for our two missionaries. We’ve got a sweet niece in Hungary. There are only two hundred missionaries in Hungary, and we’ve got a niece who’s one of them. They are already getting baptisms. It’s pretty exciting. I pray for Jered, our grandson, who’s up in Scotland, laboring in President McKay’s old hometown. I pray for him, too.

Sometimes you pray in desperation. You talk to Heavenly Father, and let him know in all earnestness, praying with all your heart, might, mind and strength, “Heavenly Father, if it be thy will, please, spare her life. Please let her remain. Please let us have her to maturity.” We worked for nine years with one of our daughters, and she died two days after her twentieth birthday.

We learned how to pray before the Lord, and how to cry before the Lord. He’d bless her and sustain her just a little bit longer, but she wasn’t to be here forever, and he finally took her. But, oh, she was such a beautiful girl. How we miss her, and how we wanted her to stay if it was the will of the Lord.

So ask yourself, are you a prayerful person? Get used to praying in the morning privately, then with the family, and then pray in the evening with the family, and then privately, and be specific.

3. Follow the Prophet

Now, number three: “Do I follow the counsel of the prophet?” We’ve [page 157] got a great leader. We’ve had a whole series of great leaders. I don’t know of a single prophet we’ve had that was mediocre. They were all marvelous human beings.

Back in the early days of the Church, people used to write to the Brethren for counsel. “Shall I buy the north forty, or do you think a section is enough?” “Do you think I ought to have Jerseys or Holsteins? Or should I have a mix?” Brother Leonard Arrington says that they just found a whole box of letters from the Saints to Brigham Young, with all of his answers. He was kind of the “Dear Abby” of pioneer days!

I thought one was particularly interesting. A woman wrote, “Dear President Young. My husband told me to go to hell. What shall I do?”

President Young wrote back and said, “Dear Sister. Don’t do it! Signed, Brigham Young.”

You remember that President Kimball really began pushing missionary work as the prophet. President Benson is on top of that. He’s also really after us to read the Book of Mormon, and to be scriptorians. I’ll talk about that more in just a minute.

President Benson is also emphasizing the need for us on the Wasatch Front to stop being so proud and trying to keep up with the Joneses. 41 We need to have a sweet and humble spirit. You know, you can try to catch up with the Joneses, but they will just refinance! You never can catch up with the Joneses.

I wish I could say to a number of my friends, “Do what my father told me to do about thirty years ago when he said, ‘Son, enough is enough! Your house is paid for. You’re relatively secure. Now serve!’” We’ve got many people that could afford to do marvelous things in this Church if they would just say to themselves, “Enough is enough!”

When you reach that point, enjoy life! Don’t say, “Well, another million would make it so that I could do that much more good! Think of all the tithing I’d pay!” The next thing you know, you’ve had a heart attack and died. Well, you will do work over on the other side, I guess.

Listen to the counsel of the prophet.

4. Attend the Temple Regularly

The next one: “Do I go to the temple on a regular basis?” The Brethren go every week. We certainly ought to be able to go once a month. I want to tell you, our temples are so crowded now. It is just [page 158] great. Just a few weeks ago you had to wait for a couple of hours to get into a session at the temple. The word got out that the Brethren have made the endowment ceremony one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened to anybody.

My wife and I finally got to attend a session. I’ve been to the temple, of course, scores and scores of times. I never have cried before during an endowment, but when that music started, and I saw the beauty of God’s power, I couldn’t hold back the tears. What a blessing it is to belong to this Church.

For four years, 500 people worked on that production to do it just the way the First Presidency and the Apostles wanted. Did you know about it? Not a whisper. At least I didn’t hear a whisper. Suddenly, there it was. We’ve gone back and taken all our children, a couple at a time. We sit there and marvel. Afterwards in the Celestial Room we visit a little bit, and discuss the changes.

It’s important to know what changes were made, because when the endowment was first given you could do it in one room, divided into four parts. But Brigham Young was told by the prophet to set it up so that there would be additional material put in so that you could bring fifty or a hundred people through. It would give time to handle large numbers. And that’s what they were able to take out, because now we are in one room. It’s beautiful. This is the way the Prophet Joseph and the Quorum of the Twelve received it in the first place. None of the endowment has been changed, but some of the extra that was put in by Brigham Young, under the instructions of Joseph Smith who later approved it, was essentially, shall we say, padding. It’s gone.

Go to the temple. If you don’t have a recommend, say to yourself, “What do I have to do to be a decathlon Mormon champion?” If you’re a decathlon Mormon champion, you’ll get a recommend, guaranteed.

5. Live a Clean and Virtuous Life

Now, the next one is: “Am I living a clean life?” Nobody knows that but you. Not even your spouse or companion knows it; only you do. It was very interesting when Jesus gave the 48 principles of the Sermon on the Mount. He made a great deal of the point that some of his listeners were proud that they hadn’t committed adultery. He said, “I’m going to tell you a new order of the gospel, and this is called the new covenant. Under the new covenant you should not commit adultery in your heart.”

So you haven’t committed the act. But what’s all that pornographic literature doing under the bed? What are those X- and R-rated movies [page 159] doing, that you’ve got all cased up there for your TV when nobody is at home? You will be judged for committing adultery in your heart.

Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly. 42 That’s something everybody has to deal with. The great procreation drive that is in everybody is not something to just be ignored. You can’t ignore it, but you have to deal with it. The Lord says, “You will keep it under control, and honor that power, or else you’ll lose it.” You’ll be resurrected without the capacity to have children — you’ll be a ministering angel. 43 If you want eternal lives, keep yourself clean.

6. Study the Scriptures Daily

The next one is a good one, and this is what President Benson is talking about : “Do I study the scriptures daily?” I know you’re busy, and it’s awfully hard to find time, because there isn’t any. So what you have to do is make some time! I have a little challenge for you. Give yourself a minimum of seven pages of scripture a day, and you’ll get a blessing that I could only tell you about. But a year from now you’d be the one to tell me what a blessing it was.

Read seven pages per day, and don’t just read them, but mark two or three of the words in each verse that will help you remember what that verse is about. For example, a verse says, “There was a great flood.” So I’d underline “great” and “flood.” Do that to each verse, because a marked scripture can be reviewed in about ten seconds per page. I can go down though every verse in my marked Bible, for example, and as I’m looking for something I can say, “No, that’s not it…. That’s not it….” And in ten seconds, I’ve gone over that page. I know that the verse that I am looking for is not on that page. You can do it.

Seven pages a day really isn’t much. What is your profession? Is seven pages of instructions supposed to be overwhelming in your profession? You think nothing of it! It’s necessary reading. So is this! Seven pages a day will take you through the entire Old Testament, the entire New Testament, the entire Book of Mormon, the entire Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price in a year. You can then get a brand-new quad, and start all over again!

If you do that for two or three years — guess what? — you’ll be a rabbi, you brethren. Do you know what a rabbi is? “A master of the scriptures.” I teach the High Priest quorum, and I’ve got them all trying to become rabbis. Most of them are reading seven pages per day, [page 160] marking a couple of words in each verse, so that it will help them remember that verse.

Some of the high priests in the Church think that they’ve graduated out of activity. I say to them, “You must remember the prayer of the old Scotsman who said, ‘Oh Lord, I pray that I shall live as long as I’m alive.’” Think about that for a minute. I look around, and sometimes people are living, but they’re not alive. High priests need to become rabbis.

Everybody should be reading the scriptures every day. I get in about two hours of scripture reading every day. I’ve done that all my life. It takes a long time to devour them. I wish I had four hours to devote to the scriptures. But I squeeze in a little in the morning, a little at noon, a little in the afternoon or whenever I have any spare time. I get into those scriptures, trying to be a good rabbi. Master the scriptures. That’s your calling, brethren and sisters.

We Need to Become Scriptorians

We need to learn a lot more things about the gospel that we don’t know. What chapter in Isaiah tells about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon? Isaiah 29. Where is Isaiah 29 discussed verse-by-verse in the Book of Mormon? Nephi fills in a lot of the details that Isaiah didn’t include. What would you say? 2 Nephi beginning with chapter 25.

Which section tells about the Civil War? Doctrine and Covenants 87. Does it say where it will start? Does it say what countries will be involved? All right. Where does it talk about World War I and World War II? See, you can guess now. Doctrine and Covenants 87. In fact, it lumps them together, and it says “world wars” in the plural.

Where does it say that the slaves will rise up against their masters and overthrow them? Where is that found? It’s not talking about black slaves, but it’s talking about all slaves. Where is that? Doctrine and Covenants 87. Has that happened? Isn’t that amazing? That’s being fulfilled before our very eyes, D&C 87:4!

In D&C 88 the Lord says, “When I fulfill prophecies, you brethren need to sit down and talk about it. Remind yourselves. You’re supposed to know prophecy and its fulfillment, and talk about it, and teach each other.” 44 Where does it say that if the United States does not repent, it will be invaded by Latin America? How do you like that? What would you guess? It’s D&C 87:5.

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The Lord said in 3 Nephi 21 that this invasion doesn’t have to happen. “But if this nation becomes anti-Christ, and wicked, and vicious so that I can’t use it as my launching pad for the great work I have to do, it will come to pass. The remnant of Jacob will be like lions among the sheep.” 45

President McKay used to say that we need to work hard to save this nation. The Lord has promised us the United States will help us build the New Jerusalem if we can get them to repent. It will be a lot easier to have this nation help us than to start from scratch with a nation in ruins. Isaiah 54:3 says that it could be in ruins. That’s kind of ominous, isn’t it? All right. It’s great to know the scriptures! So let’s all get at it. Let’s read all four standard works by this time next year.

Where are the political beliefs of the Church in the scriptures? D&C 134. Which section tells about Jesus preaching to the dead in the spirit world? This is a new one that was just put in the scriptures. That is D&C 138. Where does Jesus describe how terrible it was to go up on that cross? “Just the contemplation of it,” he says, “caused me to sweat drops of blood.” D&C 19.

7. Be a Good Record Keeper by Keeping

a Journal and Taking Notes in Church

The next one is: “Am I a good record keeper like President Benson wants me to be?” 46 How can you tell? Do you make a daily account of your life? What did you do today? Did anything interesting happen? Where did you go today? Who did you hear? What did they say? Have you got a little bit of that in your journal? Is there anything worthwhile in your journal?

Don’t write the other kind like, “Dear Diary, today he smiled at me.” If you use your diary for confessions, that will be the one you burn just before you get married, so that doesn’t do us any good. We want an accounting of your family and what you’re doing.

Are we doing what President Benson said to do? I’m afraid we’re a little slothful. We enjoy hearing the prophet. Brother J. Reuben Clark used to say, “You don’t need new prophets or more prophets. You need listening ears.” So let’s try to do that. And when it means something to us, record it.

When Joseph Smith was alive he said to the Brethren, “When I’m in [page 162] the Spirit, write what I say!” 47 There was one man, the least educated of all the General Authorities, who took it seriously. He worked up a system of shorthand, and the vast majority of the things that we know Joseph Smith said were recorded by Wilford Woodruff. Wasn’t that a blessing? The rest of the Brethren got scraps, but not much. This man is almost the exclusive custodian of the prophet’s teachings, in his shorthand and longhand.

When I was young I complained to my father that I couldn’t remember things well enough. He said, “Well son, your brain is a Danish brain.”

I said, “Is that a handicap?”

“No,” he said, “it’s a normal brain. But you ought to know that it’s like a Danish wooden bowl. First of all, it’s shallow and doesn’t hold much. Number two, things spill out of it very easily. Number three, with the passing of time, it warps!”

“So,” I said, “how do I remember things?”

He said, “Write it down and then review it. Frequency and recency is the key to memory.”

Have you noticed how some people seem to know so much? Guess what? They spent time on it. Let me give you a test. What is six times six? You can remember it right away. What is twelve times twelve? You can remember it right away. What is thirteen times thirteen? The answer is not there so fast.

Whatever you’ve spent time on you can recall instantly. When you haven’t spent the time you’ll say, “Just a second, I’ve got to figure that one out.” Try twenty-one times twenty-one. Or thirty-nine times thirty-nine. We haven’t worked those out yet, have we? That’s memory.

At the university I had a student once say, “Brother Skousen, I hope you don’t make us memorize things like we had to do in high school.”

I said, “Then why did you come to college?”

“I want to learn how to think.”

I said, “With what?”

Most of learning is memory. You hit those scriptures, get them planted in your mind and take notes. You will hear people who went to a meeting say, “Oh, it was so great!”

[page 163]

“What was it about?”

“Well, it was just great. It had a great spirit.”

Someone else will pull out some cards and say, “I learned how to become a decathlon Mormon champion.”

8. Do I Have a Good LDS Home?

Next question: “Can I say that my home is representative of a good Latter-day Saint home?”

How many of us get the Ensign? Okay, nearly everybody. The whole Ensign is magnificent. The last issue we got in May covered April’s General Conference. But on this subject I want you to turn to the last twelve pages if you want to get a thrill. There is the life story of each of the ten new men who were put into the Council of Seventy. And also a summary of our new Relief Society presidency and Sister Hales, the new counselor in the Young Women. I read them all this morning in anticipation of this meeting. I was going to do it later, but I thought I’d do it now.

What great men! They have all been stake presidents. All but one of them has been a mission president. The one from England has not been a mission president. They were all outstanding in their professional lives, but most of them said, “Enough is enough,” and then went out and served the Lord. All have great wives, and three of them were converted to the Church by their wives. Their wives converted a General Authority and didn’t know it.

There’s one from England and one from Brazil. He’s the first black among the General Authorities, Brother Martin. There’s one from Chile, two from Idaho Falls, five from Utah, but nearly all of them from small towns in Utah — Moab, Blanding, that sort of thing. It makes you stop and think. Maybe it’s a little harder to raise a good LDS family in the big city. It’s a challenge.

All of them talk about the importance of family prayer. They talk about the importance of frequent private prayer. Every time that anything important is happening, they ask the Lord for help. They talk about studying the scriptures, vigorously, continuously and consistently, and going to the temple regularly, as often as they can. The Brethren do it to recharge their spiritual batteries every week.

Make the General Authorities

Real for Your Children

Do you try to make the General Authorities come alive as human beings for your children? Do you ever tell them stories about them? Your [page 164] children see them up there in a dark suit, maroon tie and white shirt. They give their talks for twenty minutes and then sit down.

“Who’s that man?”

“Oh, that’s … a … you know … Elder Nelson.”

“Oh, who’s Elder Nelson?”

“One of the world’s greatest heart specialists, that’s who that man was who was just talking to you.” Our children need to know that. These people have got to be somebody besides an Apostle. That’s a great honor, but where is he coming from? Who is he?

I took a little story out of Ezra Taft Benson’s biography because some of my grandchildren thought he was kind of straight-laced, and very serious. 48

“Did he ever smile, Grandpa?”

I said, “Most of the time! But when he’s talking to the Saints, it’s very serious.”

“Yea, it seems like he is always serious.”

“Well,” I said, “Did you know he was one of the greatest basketball players that Utah or Idaho produced? Did you know he was a great basketball player?”

“Oh really? Tell us about it, Grandpa.”

In a championship game between Utah and Idaho, it was just nip-and-tuck. First one team was ahead, and then the other. It came down to one minute left in the game, and Utah was one point ahead. Ezra Taft Benson was the man from the Idaho team that needed to get the ball. He had his father’s name, so they used to call him “T.”

So he tried to get in the open, and of course the other side knew that he must not be allowed to shoot. But he got the ball, and they practically triple-guarded him. He managed to get around them and make a shot, but it missed. So he tried to get clear again, and they batted it around, trying to get it to him. Finally they got it to him, and he tried a shot from the other side, but he missed again.

Only ten seconds were left. Only one basket was needed to win the championship between these two competitive states. So, finally he got in the open, they threw the ball to him quickly, and a big man stood up in [page 165] the audience and yelled, “Hell, T! Put it in!”

It was his father. So he put it in, and Idaho won.

President Benson said, “That’s the first time I ever heard my father swear. I never heard him swear before or after that, so I decided that he really meant it!” You know that story has changed my grandchildren’s attitude toward Ezra Taft Benson. He’s a regular fellow now. And that’s one of the things that we should do — help our children learn about our Church leaders.

9. Pay an Honest Tithing

The next question is: “Do I pay an honest tithing?” When I was a boy, honest tithe payers in a ward were about 10% and the Church went bankrupt. The Lord said, “If you don’t get the Saints to pay their tithing, they won’t be blessed! Neither will the Church!”

So we worked and worked. President Grant worked, President Snow worked and President Joseph F. Smith worked to get us to pay our tithing.

Today it’s finally getting closer to 40-50%. The Lord only promised us five wise virgins, you remember that? Okay. So we need to be up to at least 50% in attendance at sacrament meeting and payment of tithes.

Already the Church is able to look around and see that it can handle almost all of its finances if we’d just pay our tithing. We don’t have to have raffles and special funding. So generous fast offerings and honest tithing is number nine.

10. Live the Word of Wisdom

Then the last one is, “Am I living the Word of Wisdom?” In the fourth verse of Doctrine and Covenants 89, the Lord said that it would be addictive liquids, addictive tobacco, and addictive alcohol that would be the foundation of the great secret combination of the last days.

We are at the point where billions of dollars are going into the hands of the criminals. And it is all because our nation is addicted to alcohol, something you shoot, or something you sniff. Billions of dollars. So the Lord asked us to live the Word of Wisdom so that we can have treasures of knowledge, run and not be weary, and the destroying angel will pass us by. 49

I appreciate being with you tonight. I want to tell you I’m so grateful to Heavenly Father for his scriptures, for the gospel, for my sweet wife [page 166] and family, and for the priesthood. May he bless us in this great decade that lies ahead of us, that we can all be decathlon Mormon champions, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

This article is Part 3 of the Education series. Click here to read Part 1 and Part 2.

Introduction

As I proceeded into my series on education, I became more and more aware that an understanding of the seriousness of the situation we find in the public schools today requires two things:

1. An awareness of latter-day prophets’ counsel in regard to how our children should be educated.

2. An awareness of religious underpinnings of America according to the Founding Fathers, and how they depended on the schools to transmit the religious and moral values on which the constitution was built.

Part 1 and 2 traced and summarized the education in Utah–pointing out the distinct counsel received and rejected by our people to base education on gospel truths and not allow the government to take over curriculum. Now, with W. Cleon Skousen’s permission and blessing I am going to intersperse, in two parts, an exquisite essay that appears as a chapter in Skousen’s book The Making of America: the Substance and Meaning of the Constitution.

This essay is titled, in the book Principle 215–From the First Amendment: Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Readers are referred to the entire book from which this chapter is drawn for more complete understanding of the constitution and the Founding Fathers. Now, I introduce you to a legend in his own right, W. Cleon Skousen. This text can be found beginning on page 675 of his book:

[Referring to the First Amendment] This provision guaranteed to all Americans the RIGHT to enjoy the free exercise of the religion of their choice without the government giving any preference to one “establishment” or denomination over another.

There was some concern among the Founders lest this prohibition give the impression that the government was hostile to religion. They wanted it clearly understood that the universal, self-evident truths of religion were fundamental to the whole structure of the American system. This is such an important aspect of the nation’s original culture that a comprehensive discussion of religion from the Founders’ perspective might prove helpful.

The Role of Religion in the Founding Fathers’ Constitutional Formula

Americans of the twentieth century often fail to realize the supremeimportance which the Founding Fathers originally attached to the role of religion in the unique experiment which they hoped would emerge as the first civilization of a free people in modern times. Many [page 676] Americans also fail to realize that the Founders felt the role of religion would be as important in our own day as it was in theirs.

In 1787, the very year the Constitution was written by the Convention and approved by Congress, that same body of Congress passed the famous Northwest Ordinance. In it they outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territory. They also enunciated the basic rights of citizens in language similar to that which was later incorporated in the Bill of Rights. And they emphasized the essential need to teach religion and morality in the schools. Here is the way they said it:

“Article 3: Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” 3

Notice that formal education was to include among its teaching responsibilities these three important subjects:

1. Religion, which might be defined as “a fundamental system of beliefs concerning man’s origin and relationship to the Creator, the cosmic universe, and his relationship with his fellowmen.”

2. Morality, which may be described as “a standard of behavior distinguishing right from wrong.”

3. Knowledge, which is “an intellectual awareness and understanding of established facts relating to any field of human experience or inquiry, i.e., history, geography, science, etc.” 4

We also notice that “religion and morality” were not required by the Founders as merely an intellectual exercise, but they positively declared their conviction that these were essential ingredients needed for “good government and the happiness of mankind.”

Washington Describes the Founders’ Position

The position set forth in the Northwest Ordinance was reemphasized by President George Washington in his Farewell Address. He wrote:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports….

“And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail to the exclusion of religious principle.

“It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” 5

The Teaching of Religion in Schools Restricted to Universal Fundamentals

Having established that “religion” is the foundation of morality and that both are essential to “good government and the happiness of mankind,” the Founders then set about to exclude the creeds and biases or dissensions of individual denominations so as to make the teaching of religion a unifying cultural adhesive rather than a devisive apparatus.

Jefferson wrote a bill for the “Establishing of Elementary Schools” in Virginia and made this point clear by stating:

“No religious reading, instruction or exercise shall be prescribed or practiced inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.” 6

Obviously, under such restrictions the only religious tenets to be taught in public schools would have to be those which were universally accepted by all faiths and completely fundamental to their premises.

Franklin Describes the Five Fundamentals of “All Sound Religions”

Several of the Founders have left us with a description of their basic religious beliefs, and Benjamin Franklin summarized those which he felt were the “fundamental points in all sound religion.” This is the way he said it in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University:

“Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is in doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion.” 7

The “Fundamental Points” to Be Taught in the Schools

The five points of fundamental religious belief which are to be found in all of the principal religions of the world are those expressed or implied in Franklin’s statement:

1. Recognition and worship of a Creator who made all thing

2. That the Creator has revealed a moral code of behavior for happy living which distinguishes right from wrong.

3. That the Creator holds mankind responsible for the way they treat each other

4. That all mankind live beyond this life.

5. That in the next life individuals are judged for their conduct in this one.

All five of these tenets run through practically all of the Founders’ writings. These are the beliefs which the Founders sometimes referred to as the “religion of America,” and they felt these fundamentals were so important in providing “good government and the happiness of mankind” that they wanted them taught in the public schools along with morality and knowledge.

Statements of the Founders Concerning These Principles

Samuel Adams said these basic beliefs which constitute “the religion of America [are] the religion of all mankind.” 8 In other words, these fundamental beliefs belong to all world faiths and could therefore be

taught without being offensive to any “sect or denomination,” as indicated in the Virginia bill establishing elementary schools.

John Adams called these tenets the “general principles” on which the American civilization had been founded. 9

Thomas Jefferson called these basic beliefs the principles “in which God has united us all.” 10

From these statements it is obvious how significantly the Founders looked upon the fundamental precepts of religion and morality as the cornerstones of a free government. This gives additional importance to the warning of Washington, previously mentioned, when he said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?” 11

Washington issued this solemn warning because in France, shortly before Washington wrote his Farewell Address (1796), the promoters of atheism and amorality had seized control and turned the French Revolution into a shocking bloodbath of wild excesses and violence. Washington never wanted

anything like [page 678] that to happen in the United States. Therefore he had said: “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness [religion and morality].” 12

Alexis de Tocqueville Discovers the Importance of Religion in America

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831 he became so impressed with what he saw that he went home and wrote Democracy in America, one of the most definitive studies on the American culture and constitutional system that had been published up to that time. Concerning religion in America, de Tocqueville said:

“On my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things.” 13

He described the situation as follows:

“Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; … I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion — for who can search the human heart? — but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a c]ass of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.” 14

European Philosophers Turned Out to Be Wrong

In Europe it had been popular to teach that religion and liberty were inimical to each other. De Tocqueville saw the opposite happening in America. He wrote:

“The philosophers of the eighteenth century explained in a very simple manner the gradual decay of religious faith. Religious zeal, said they,must necessarily fail the more generally liberty is established and knowledge diffused. Unfortunately the facts by no means accord with their theory. There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and debasement; while in America, one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world, the people fulfill with fervor all the outward duties of religion.” 15

De Tocqueville Describes the Role of Religion in the Schools

De Tocqueville found that the schools, especially in New England, incorporated the basic tenets of religion right along with history and political science in order to prepare the student for adult life. He wrote:

“In New England every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is taught, moreover, the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of the Constitution. In the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.” 16

De Tocqueville Describes the Role of the American Clergy

Alexis de Tocqueville saw a unique quality of cohesive strength emanating from the clergy of the various churches in America. After noting that all the clergy seemed anxious to maintain “separation of

church and state,” he nevertheless observed [page 679] that collectively they had a great influence on the morals and customs of public life. This indirectly reflected itself in formulating laws and, ultimately, in fixing the moral and political climate of the American commonwealth. As a result, he wrote:

“This led me to examine more attentively than I had hitherto done the station which the American clergy occupy in political society. I learned with surprise that they filled no public appointments; I did not see one of them in the administration, and they are not even represented in the legislative assemblies.” 17

How different this was from Europe, where the clergy belonged to a national church, subsidized by the government. He wrote:

“The unbelievers of Europe attack the Christians as their political opponents rather than as their religious adversaries; they hate the Christian religion as the opinion of a [political] party much more than as an error of belief; and they reject the clergy less because they are the representatives of the Deity than because they are the allies of government.” 18

In America, he noted, the clergy remain politically separated from the government but nevertheless provide a moral stability among the people which permits the government to prosper. In other words, there is a separation of church and state but not a separation of religion and state.

The Clergy Fuel the Flame of Freedom, Stress Morality, and Alert the Citizenry to Dangerous Trends

The role of the churches to perpetuate the social and political culture of the United States provoked the following comment from de Tocqueville:

“The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other….

“I have known of societies formed by Americans to send out ministers of the Gospel into the new Western states, to found schools and church there, lest religion should be allowed to die away in those remote settlements, and the rising states be less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from whom they came.” 19

De Tocqueville discovered that while clergymen felt it would be demeaning to their profession to become involved in partisan politics, they nevertheless believed implicitly in their duty to keep religious

principles and moral values flowing out to the people as the best safeguard for America’s freedom and political security.

In one of de Tocqueville’s most frequently quoted passages, he wrote:

“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” 20

The Founders’ Campaign for Equality of All Religions

One of the most remarkable efforts of the American Founders was their attempt to do something no other nation had ever successfully achieved –provide legal equality for all religions, both Christian [page 680] and non-Christian.

Jefferson and Madison were undoubtedly the foremost among the Founders in pushing through the first “freedom of religion” statutes in Virginia.

Jefferson sought to disestablish the official church of Virginia in 1776, but this effort was not completely successful until ten years later.

Meanwhile, in 1784, Patrick Henry was so enthusiastic about strengthening the whole spectrum of Christian churches that he introduced a bill “Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion.”

It was the intention of this bill to allow each taxpayer to designate “to what society of Christians” his money would go. The funds collected by this means were to make “provision for a minister or teacher of the Gospel … or the providing of places of divine worship [for that denomination], and to none other use whatever.” 21

Madison immediately reacted with his famous Memorial and Remonstrances, in which he proclaimed with the greatest possible energy the principle that the state government should not prefer one religion over another.

Equality of religions was the desired goal. He wrote:

“Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects? … The bill violates that equality which ought to be the basis of every law.” 22

Why the Founders Wanted the Federal Government Excluded from All Problems Relating to Religion and Churches

The Supreme Court has stated on numerous occasions that, to most people, freedom of religion is the most precious of all the inalienable rights, next to life itself. When the United States was founded, there were many Americans who were not enjoying freedom of religion to the fullest possible extent. At least seven of the states had officially established religions or denominations at the time the Constitution was adopted.

These included:

Connecticut (Congregational Church)

New Hampshire (Protestant faith)

Delaware (Christian faith)

New Jersey (Protestant faith)

Maryland (Christian faith)

South Carolina (Protestant faith)

Massachusetts (Congregational Church) 23

Under these circumstances the Founders felt it would have been catastrophic, and might have precipitated civil strife, if the federal government had tried to establish a national policy on religion or

disestablish the denominations which the states had adopted.

Nevertheless, the Founders who were examining this problem were anxious to eventually see complete freedom of all faiths and an equality of all religions, both Christian and non-Christian. How could this be

accomplished without stirring up civil strife?

Justice Story Describes the Founders’ Solution

In his famous Commentaries on the Constitution, Justice Joseph Story of the Supreme Court pointed out why the Founders, as well as the states themselves, felt the federal government should be absolutely excluded from any authority in the field of settling questions on religion. He explained:

“In some of the states, Episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in others, Presbyterians; in others, Congregationalists; [page 681] in others, Quakers; and in others again, there was a close numerical rivalry among contending sects. It was impossible that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy, if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment. The only security was in extirpating the power. But this alone would have been an imperfect security, if it had not been followed by a declaration of the right of the free exercise of religion, and a prohibition (as we have seen) of all religious tests. Thus the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusive to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions.” 24

This is why the First Amendment of the Constitution provides that “Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (Emphasis added.)

Jefferson and Madison Emphasize the Intent of the Founders

It is clear from the writings of the Founders as well as the Commentaries of Justice Story that the First Amendment was designed to eliminate forever the interference of the federal government in any religious matters within the various states. As Madison stated during the Virginia ratifying convention: “There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.” 25

Jefferson took an identical position when he wrote the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798: “It is true, as a general principle, … that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press, [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution…. All lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, and were reserved to the states, or to the people.” 26

The Supreme Court, As Well As Congress, Excluded from Jurisdiction over Religion

In the Kentucky Resolutions, Thomas Jefferson also made it clear that the federal judicial system was likewise prohibited from intermeddling with religious matters within the states. He wrote:

“Special provision has been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution, which expressly declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, … ‘thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others; and that libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals.” 27

Note: the rest of this chapter will be posted here

Footnote references for pp. 675-681 of The Making of America

3. Adler et al., The Annals of America, 3:194-95

4. W. Cleon Skousen, The Five Thousand Year Leap: Twenty-eight Ideas That changed the World (Salt Lake City: Freemen Institute, 1981), p. 76.

5. Adler et al., The Annals of America, 3:612.

6. John William Randolph, ed., Early History of the University of Virginia, as Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell (Richmond: 1856), pp. 96-97.

7. Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, 10:84.

8. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, 3:23.

9. See Bergh, 13:290-94.

10. Ibid., 14:198.

11. Adler et al., The Annals of America, 3:612

12. Ibid.

13 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1:319.

14. Ibid,. p. 316.

15. Ibid., p. 319.

16. Ibid., p. 327.

17. Ibid., p. 320.

18. Ibid., p. 325; emphasis added.

19. Ibid., p. 317.

20. Quoted in Ezra Taft Benson, God, Family, Country: Our Three Great Loyalties (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1975), p. 360.

21. Quoted in Everson v. Board of Education. 330 U.S. 1, 72, 94.

22. William C. Rives and Philip R. Fendall, eds., Letters and Other Writing of James Madison, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1865), 1:163-64.

23. C.B. Kruse, Jr., “The Historical Meaning and Judicial Construction of the Establishment of Religion Clause of the First Amendment.” Washburn Law Journal 2 (Winter 1962): 65, 94-107.

24. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. 3D ed., 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1858) 2:6666-67; emphasis added.

25. Elliot, 3:330.

26. Adler et al., The Annals of America, 4:63.

27. Ibid; emphasis added.

Just across the park from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., is a distinctive structure of white marble with giant pillars on which is inscribed the words, “Equal Justice Under Law.” This is the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Within the labyrinths of this majestic temple of justice, nine men pass judgment on everything from a petition on behalf of a mass-murderer incarcerated in Illinois to a writ of appeal involving billions of dollars in property rights, all of which hang precariously in the balance as the court ponders the application of certain legal technicalities.

Many Americans haven’t the faintest idea of the monumental impact which the solemn pronouncements of this court have on their daily lives.

The Court’s Unique Role as the “Guardian of the American Way”

The American life-style emerged from the aspirations of the early founding fathers to create a new kind of civilization. Beginning with a population of nearly four million human beings, they thought they could contrive a political structure which would provide order and justice but operate under such strict limitations that it could not trample on the freedom and natural rights of the people. The fact that it worked so well and eventually became a citadel of power and prosperity for over two hundred million people was primarily due to a unique political idea — the idea of dividing governmental services according to the function they best served. Never before had a nation deliberately fragmented its sovereign authority and set up a system of checks and balances designed to compel each branch of government to stay in its own back yard. This became known as “the American way.” As Thomas Jefferson said:

“The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one the functions he is competent to (perform)…. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body.”

It was recognized from the beginning that the genius of the American system depended almost entirely on strong local self-government and preventing a strong centralized authority from developing in Washington which would be too powerful to control. It was this danger which almost resulted in several of the States refusing to adopt the Constitution. To reassure them, James Madison, the so-called “father of the Constitution,” wrote:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former (the federal government) will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiations, and foreign commerce…. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

But who would act as the great arbiter or enforcement agency to see that each department of government stayed within its proper boundaries? This delicate and difficult task was assigned to the United States Supreme Court. The judiciary was to make certain that no man or combination of men with the ambitions of a Caesar rose up to seize power.

Thomas Jefferson Saw a Potential Danger

It did occur to Thomas Jefferson, however, that the Court, itself, might someday become the wife of Caesar and use its unique and powerful position of trust to gradually unify all political authority and destroy the very system of separation of powers between the States and the federal government which the highest court in the land was set up to preserve and protect. For nearly a hundred years very few people gave much credence to the warning of Jefferson because the Court functioned with admirable restraint for several generations. However, in this generation more and more Americans (certainly law enforcement officers) have had numerous occasions to recall Jefferson’s words written shortly before his death in 1821:

“It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression … that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one. To this I am opposed; because, when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”

Structure of the Federal Judiciary

Even the founding fathers knew that the unprecedented role of the federal judiciary would have to be developed gradually on the basis of future experience. Consider, for example, the singular fact that never before in history had a legislative body allowed its acts to be reviewed by a court as to their constitutionality. Nevertheless, the notes on the Constitutional Convention reveal that this was contemplated by the founders long before Chief Justice Marshall announced this doctrine from the bench. There were also many other aspects of the federal judiciary which were experimental in nature and therefore the founders described this particular department of government in broad, general terms so that the details could be supplied by Congress as future circumstances dictated. Here is the simple language in the Constitution which refers to the federal judiciary:

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall at stated times, receive for their services a compensation which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. (Article III, Sec. 1)

Several things should be noted in this provision. First of all, the Congress is authorized to organize as many inferior courts as may be necessary. At the present time there are 88 district courts in the 50 states as well as one each for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Territorial courts have been provided for the Canal Zone, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. The United States and its territories have also been divided into 11 judicial circuits where there are courts of appeal so that the vast majority of appeals can be given final disposition at that level without burdening the Supreme Court with any but the most critical cases. In a typical year the Courts of Appeals will handle as many as 5,500 cases and approximately 200 cases are processed by the Supreme Court out of the 2,000 which are submitted. Many cases are also handled by “special courts” such as the Court of Military appeals, the Tax Court, the Court of Claims, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, as well as three quasi-judicial regulatory bodies — the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission.

It is interesting that the Constitution provides no qualification requirements for judges as it does for Senators, Congressmen and the President. One would expect that men of the most prestigious judicial experience would be the only ones considered for appointment to the highest tribunal of the land, but such has not been the case. In fact, as often as not it has been political stature rather than judicial expertise which has brought men to the bench of the Supreme Court. In spite of this risky procedure, however, some of the most brilliant minds to serve on the Supreme Court have been lawyers of political prominence who had no previous judicial experience. Studies show that of the 100 men who have served on the Supreme Court, 40 had no prior judicial experience. In fact, 6 of the 14 Chief Justices had no prior judicial experience.

Rewriting the Constitution by Judicial Interpretation

The Supreme Court has often been in the eye of the hurricane as far as past controversies have been concerned but never so frequently or so long as has been the case in this generation. Without either apology or explanation, the Supreme Court assigned itself a new role — rewriting the Constitution by judicial interpretation to facilitate what the Court considers to be desirable goals in the field of social welfare and social justice.

Scarcely anyone would disagree with the Court as to the aims to be achieved because they represent many of the long-range aspirations of the entire human race. The objection grows out of the fact that the Court became impatient with the normal procedure of gradually working out social and economic problems by the people themselves acting through their legislatures and took upon itself the task of using its power and prestige to force upon the people the will of the majority of the court whether society was in agreement or not. Already it can be demonstrated that many of these “social justice” or “individual rights” cases have done more harm than good and actually delayed the realization of the goals the Court claimed to be seeking. A detailed analysis of many of these cases has been carefully documented in a book called The Warren Revolution by L. Brent Bozell.

The Supreme Court Has Created Three Major Problems In Its New Role

Even if one agrees with the effort of the Court to enter the field of social welfare and social justice, it has to be admitted that several serious problems have emerged as a direct result of this new power thrust which the Supreme Court has employed during the past several decades.

First of all, it has become entirely evident that in many of its most provocative decisions the majority of the Court has abandoned well-established legal and Constitutional principles in order to accommodate the private desires or individual philosophies of those writing the majority opinions. This trend toward government by men rather than by law has made the law on both the federal and State level far less certain than it was in the past. There have been numerous reversals of earlier Supreme Court decisions, completely new and revolutionary interpretations of important provisions of the Constitution, and frequent disregard of judicial precedent and the writings of the founders as to their intent in setting up the national charter. A Constitutional lawyer, Lyman A. Garber, comments extensively on this entire problem in his book, Of Men, and Not of the Law.

A second problem emerging from the reinterpretation and restructuring of many Constitutional principles has been the rapid centralization of power in the federal government at the expense of the States and the individual citizen. Frequently ignoring both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments which undergird the whole concept of “limited government,” the Court has gone ahead to authorize the intervention of the federal government in the private lives of Americans to an alarming extent. Federal authority has been penetrating the exclusively non-federal areas of education, welfare, housing, local streets and highways, health and safety standards, metro government, subsidized industries, small business subsidies, police services, land use and land development, local labor-management problems, to mention only a few. Much of this became possible when the Court authorized Congress to disregard the limitations of the Constitution for the expenditure of funds and treat the welfare clause as a special grant of power to appropriate money for practically any purpose which was deemed to be in the general interest of the people. With all of these new subsidies came new federal controls. As the Court was quick to point out in Wickard v. Filburn, it is the prerogative of the federal government to “regulate that which it subsidizes.”

The third problem arising out of all of this is the discovery that there is no satisfactory check on the Supreme Court by the Congress, the President or the federated States unless they want to go through the complicated process of a Constitutional amendment to correct each error. In earlier years when the Supreme Court operated with greater restraint, this defect was not so apparent, although theoretically it was recognized by some when the Constitution was written and by others soon afterwards. We have already noted Jefferson’s anxiety. Here is another of the same period who signed his name in the press as Brutus and is believed to have been Robert Yates of New York. He wrote:

“It is of great importance to examine with care the nature and extent of the judicial power, because those who are to be rendered totally independent, both of the people and the legislature, both with respect to their offices and salaries. No errors they commit can be corrected…. The only causes for which they can be displaced (are) convictions of treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors…. The power of the judicial will enable them to mold the government into almost any shape they please.”

It is this writer’s opinion that eventually the American people will insist upon a Constitutional amendment to remedy this situation. Certainly it was never intended by the founders that this branch of the government should elevate itself to a point where “judicial review” became “judicial tyranny.” For the sake of the Court itself there needs to be some sort of remedy available when that high tribunal gets so completely out of touch with the people and their desires that it tries to violate the Constitution with impunity and enforce its arbitrary will on the whole nation. A possible solution would be to authorize the decisions of the court to be overturned by a two-thirds majority of the House and the Senate or by resolutions from three-fourths of the State legislatures. Had there been such an amendment in the past, it is unlikely that the Court would have ventured into the deep and dangerous waters where it has been boldly cruising during the past forty years.

Conclusion

Thus we come to the last of the articles in this series. It has been our purpose to examine the roots of the American heritage and the genius of those who created the first free people in modern times. It has also been our purpose to make a modest attempt to point out some of the dangers associated with the trends which seem to be engulfing the nation in many of those very situations about which the founders gave their descendants fair warning. Americans have enjoyed a glorious period of 200 years of independence, prosperity, and power. Wisdom would dictate that the same principles which made the United States such a success in the past would be worth preserving and practicing in the future. The stakes for law enforcement in the outcome of the ideological battles of the future are high. Who will doubt the validity of a recent comment by one of the most respected chiefs of police in the country when he said that the complexities and difficulties of law enforcement have doubled in the past twenty years?

Too often the Constitutional aberrations in which the courts have indulged themselves during recent years have operated to the unilateral advantage of the criminal without adequate regard for the welfare and security of society. Highly technical decisions have released from prison or prevented the prosecution of thousands of vicious criminals who were positively known to be guilty. For much of this, the police have been blamed.

Every law enforcement officer should become a thorough student of the original philosophy undergirding the United States Constitution. We should become avowed advocates of the restoration of those principles which will give us government under law rather than men. We should stand for the original institutes of freedom designed to provide peace for each person’s life, liberty and property. On the local and State level we should resist the lure of federal money with its federal controls. We should strive for professional independence to the greatest possible extent and serve the people without interference from politicians or intimidation by the press. Law enforcement as a profession has a great task before it, and the whole basic foundation for our ultimate success will depend on whether or not we are able to preserve the Constitution of the United States.