"I have seen the end of this nation and it is terrible.  I will tell you in the name of the Lord that a Secret band will sap the life of this nation."

Moses Thatcher

 
     The Lord tells Nephi, "blessed are they who shall seek to bring forth my Zion at that day" (1 Nephi 13:37).  That "day" is this dispensation in which we live.  We are under covenant with God to...read more here

     In the book of Daniel found within the Old Testament of the Bible, there's a prophecy concerning our day.  The prophesy was given to an ancient king and interpreted by Daniel.  Here are some thoughts on this prophecy.
     The king of ancient Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a "great image" which was made up of differing metals and clay.  This great image, was a representation of the great empires that will arise through the history of the world beginning with the king of Babylon himself.  Eventually, these empires morphed into the ten smaller nations represented by the "great images" ten toes.  During the days when these smaller nations will exercise power in the world, another kingdom will roll forth like a stone cut from a mountain that will roll down and consume the remaining powers that existed.
     "Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter:  and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure."
Daniel 2:45
     President Spencer W. Kimball taught, "Nebuchadnezzar represented the king of kings, a world power, representing the head of gold.  Another kingdom would arise and take over world dominion.  The interpretation included the domination of other kingdoms. Cyrus the great, with his Medes and Persians, would be replaced by the Greek or Macedonian kingdom under Philip and Alexander; and that world power would be replaced by the Roman Empire; and Rome would be replaced by a group of nations of Europe represented by the toes of the image. 

     With the history of the world delineated in brief, now came the real revelation. Daniel said:  “And in the days of these kings [that is, the group of European nations] shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
     This is a revelation concerning the history of the world, when one world power would supersede another until there would be numerous smaller kingdoms to share the control of the earth.
     And it was in the days of these kings that power would not be given to men, but the God of heaven would set up a kingdom—the kingdom of God upon the earth, which should never be destroyed nor left to other people. 
     The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was restored in 1830 after numerous revelations from the divine source; and this is the kingdom, set up by the God of heaven, that would never be destroyed nor superseded, and the stone cut out of the mountain without hands that would become a great mountain and would fill the whole earth.
     The Church was organized. Small it was, with only six members, compared to the stone cut out of the mountain without hands which would break in pieces other nations and which would roll forth and fill the whole earth.
     I know it is true. I know it is divine. I know it is the little stone that was cut out of a mountain without hands. I know it will fill the earth as prophesied and commanded by the Savior Jesus Christ when, in his last moments on earth, he said to his eleven apostles, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”—to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. (See Mark 16:15.)"

We know that the kingdom of God, which is established among us, will continue to spread, increase, and extend, until it covers the earth; and we know that all the plotting, and machinations, and designs, and combinations of men and devils will not be able to stop it in its progress; but as it has begun to roll forth, it's speed will continue to accelerate until it has accomplished all for which it is designed of God, and until the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ, and He shall reign with universal empire over this earth, and to Him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.

John Taylor

When we see the time that we can willingly strike hands and have full fellowship with those who despise the Kingdom of God, know ye then that the Priesthood of the Son of God is out of your possession.  Let us be careful how we make friends with and fellowship unrighteousness, lest the curse of God descends heavily upon us.  I do not say that I see anything of this kind, and I do not want to; and I hope there is no such disposition in any person professing to be a Saint, for as sure as the Lord lives they will be brought into circumstances that will show them in their true colors, and reveal the goats that are among the sheep.

Brigham Young JD 10:273-274

     Not only did the Apostle John teach that Man can become exactly like God (1 John 3:2-3), Paul taught that Men can be "fellow heirs with Christ," and "be glorified with Him," provided they "suffer with Him" (Rom. 8:17, Galatians 4:7).  Christ taught that "he who overcomes...will...sit down with Me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne" (Revelation 3:21).

   Law, within the United States, has moved steadily to enforce a totalitarian and equalitarian principle.  The state is becoming the total institution, comprehending the life and property of man.  The state can confiscate all things to insure its own existence, because the state has implicitly become the basic value.  If the ultimate principle upon which governments depend is equality, then the law will be used to regulate the operation and the organization of the law to create equality.  Equality, though, is a mathematical term.  It is impossible to apply a mathematical abstraction to man.  The concept of equality is closely related to the teachings of Karl Marx.  The consequence is that the people are levelled, stripped of power, to create a state which is not equal to the people but far superior and able to crush them.

     Michael the Archangel (Adam) holds the keys of the resurrection and no being who has not been resurrected possesses the Keys of the Power of Resurrection.  That you have been told often.  Adam therefore was resurrected... Our Father Adam is the man who stands at the gate and holds the Keys of Everlasting Life and Salvation to all His children who have or who ever will come upon the earth.

Brigham Young

     The Wrath of God is being revealed from Heaven upon all Ungodly and Unrighteous men, who in their Wickedness Suppress the truth about God - Because the Reality of God's Being is set Perfectly Clear before the eyes of all - for God has made the Existence of His Being Self-Evident through His Creations.  For ever since the Creation of the Physical World, the Presence of the Invisible Spiritual Creations of God and His Divine Nature have been Manifest unto men by those Beings which He has Brought Forth in the Flesh - for God's Spiritual Creations have Tabernacled and they do Indwell in the Flesh.  Consequently Skeptics are left without excuse - for even as they behold the Flesh, they also see the Divine Nature of the Life Giving Spirit that Dwells within.  Yet notwithstanding this, there are those who will not give Him thanks, or even Acknowledge His Existence.  The thinking of these individuals tends to Futile Speculation - consequently their Stupid Minds are Plunged into Darkness.  For while they Boast that they are Wise, in fact they Prove that they are Utter Fools - for even though they worship themselves in all the Glory of Their Own Image, yet in their minds they have Exchanged their Pedigree.  For rather than believe that they Descended from the Glorified Immortal Father (Acts 17:28-29; Luke 3;38), they claim their descent from Apes, and Four footed Beasts and  Reptiles.
     For this reason God has Abandoned them to their own Vile Cravings, and their Filthy Thoughts make them do Shameful Things, by which they Defile their own bodies between themselves.  For they have ExChanged the Truth about God for a Lie, and they give Reverence and Honor to that which was brought forth by God, and not to Him that brought it forth, and to Whom belongs all Glory and Praise Forevermore - so let it be!  This is why God has Abandoned them to their own Vile Affections.  Why, even their own Women have ExChanged the Natural Use for their sex for that which is Against Nature.  In like manner Men behave in the same way, giving up Natural Relations with Women - and in their Burning Desire, they Run Wild with Lust after other Men, so that they perpetrate Shameful Acts with others of their own sex - and for this they are paid in their own persons, a Fitting Wage for their Perversion.
     Hence we see that inasmuch as they have Refused to Acknowledge God in their lives, that God has Abandoned them to their own Reprobate Minds and Immoral Behavior.  Consequently they are Steeped in every kind of Unrighteousness:  Whoredom, Injustice, Greed and Malice - full of Envy, Murder, Wrangling, Treachery, Hatred and Gossip. They are Backbiters, Hateful towards God, Rude to others, Proud Braggarts and Ingenious in Evil.  They don't even Respect their own Parents.  They are Devoid of Conscience and Break their Promises.  They are without Natural Affection, and in their Dealings with Others they are without Mercy.  They know well enough the Judgments of God: - yet not only do they do such things themselves, but they also applaud others for doing them.  (Romans 1:18-32 - verse 23 has been specially adapted to the tradition and culture of the 21st century)

  In 789 A.D. Charlemagne in his Admonitio Generalis prohibited usury by all people, laymen as well as clerics, ....citing the following authorities: Scripture. 
     In Charlemagne's Capitulary of Nijmegen of March 806 he defines usury in clause 11 as "claiming back more than you give; for instance, if someone has given 10 solidi and asks for more than 10 in return, that is usury.  Clause 16 "lending (foenus) consists in providing something; the loan is fair and just when one demands no more than what he provided."
      Charlemagne imposed heavy fines for usury - the charging of interest on loans.

The whole scriptures plainly teach us that we are the children of that God who framed the world.  God has created man in His own image, upright.  There never was a time such as many of our philosophers speak of, who drift back and back, and come to this theory and that theory, and go back, and back to the time when we were all reptiles.  When was there a time when there was not a God?  But, say they, there must have been a time.  Then you declare to me, do you, that there was a time when there was no time.  And this is the philosophy of a great many of the scientific in this day.  They see the Heavens stretched out, but they comprehend them not.
     No human being has had power to organize his own existence.  Then there is a greater than we.  Are we our own in our bodies?  Are we our own in our spirits?  We are not our own.  We belong to our progenitors - to our Father and our God.
     Let us look round and see whether we can find a father and son in this congregation.  Do we see one an elephant, and the other a hen? No.  Does a father that looks like a human being have a son like an ape, going on all fours?  No; the son looks like his father.  There is an endless variety of distinction in the few features that compose the human face, yet children have in their countenances and general expression of figure and temperament a greater or less likeness of their parents.  You do not see brutes spring from human beings.  Every species is true to its kind.  The children of men are featured alike and walk erect.
     The Bible clearly teaches us that we are the children of the very Being who framed this Earth and peopled it.  Such teachings may be found in hundreds of places in the scriptures, and yet we do not know anything about our Father!  Is it not astonishing?

Brigham Young

   In the late 1990s as web publishing tools open the door for non-technical users to post content, information, and participate in discussion threads, the interactive world of blogging was born.  Prior to this period digital communities took multi-faceted forms including chat-rooms and electronic bulletin boards.  As electronic tools have improved, it has allowed for the production of web articles, images, audio and video files to be systematically organized and posted in a webpage format that can be used by a much larger non-technical populace that are not trained in programming source code and algorithms. Continue reading here...

     "More than a million American women each year resort to illegitimate abortions.  This is one of the most despicable of all sins - to destroy an unborn child to save one from embarrassment or to save one's face or comfort.  An estimated 8,000 women die every year from such consequences."
     "President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., said:  'Our very civilization itself is based upon chastity, the sanctity of marriage, and the holiness of the home.  Destroy these and Christian man becomes a brute."  (CR, Oct, 1938, p. 137)
     "The earth cannot justify nor continue its life without marriage and the family.  Sex without marriage, for all people, young or older, is an abomination to the Lord, and it is most unfortunate that many people have blinded their eyes to these great truths."
      "May we repeat:  Sex perversions of men and women can never replenish the earth and are definitely sin without excuse, and rationalizations are very weak; God will not tolerate it."
     "We deplore the reported million unborn children who will lose their lives in this country this year.  Certainly the women who yield to this ugly sin and the sin which often generated it, and those who assist them, should remember that retribution is sure.  It is sure."
     "We marry for eternity.  We are serious about this.  We become parents and bring wanted children into the world and rear and train them to righteousness."
     "We are aghast at the reports of young people going to surgery to limit their families and the reputed number of parents who encourage this vasectomy.  Remember that the coming of the Lord approaches, and some difficult-to-answer questions will be asked by a divine Judge who will be hard to satisfy with silly explanations and rationalizations.  He will judge justly, you may be sure."
     "God bless you, our beloved people.  Listen to the words of heaven.  God is true.  He is just.  He is a righteous judge, but justice must come before sympathy and forgiveness and mercy.
     Remember, God is in his heavens.  He knew what he was doing when he organized the earth.  He knows what he is doing now.  Those of us who break his commandments will regret and suffer in remorse and pain.  God will not be mocked.  Man has his free agency, it is sure, but remember, God will not be mocked (D&C 63:58)."

Spencer W. Kimball
    
    

Men will sin so that they will be damned spiritually and temporally.  There will be a dissolution of the natural body and of the spirit, and they will go back into their native element, the same as the chemist can go to work and dissolve a five-dollar gold piece, and throw it into a liquid.  Does not that show there can be a dissolution of the natural body and of the spirit?  This is what is called the second death.

Heber C. Kimball
JD vol. 5 page 95

     Immediately afterwards, the storm broke on his followers.  They eventually were driven from their homes and were forced to flee to the wilderness of the West.  They left behind them their temple, which was soon burned, their homes, and many of their most precious possessions.
     Among the precious possessions left behind were the mummies and the priceless papyrus scrolls of Abraham and Joseph, which were left in the custody of a trustee.  Tragically, this trustee allowed these invaluable treasures of antiquity to get out of his hands and when an attempt was made to recover them it was found impossible.  Unsympathetic members of Joseph Smith's family are believed to be the ones who sold the Egyptian relics to one or more museums.
     Two mummies and "part of the records" were traced by Dr. James R. Clark to the St. Louis Museum which is believed to have acquired them between 1851 and 1856.  The two mummies are described in the St. Louis Museum Catalogue of 1859 as a "a female, about forty - the other, that of a boy, about fourteen." However, it seems that the entire contents of the St. Louis Museum were moved to Chicago in 1863 and the Egyptian exhibit became part of the Wood Museum in that city.  The mummies are listed on page 42 of the 1863 catalogue of the Chicago Museum - usually referred to as the Wood Museum - with exactly the same description as that given for them in St. Louis.  There is documented evidence that these two mummies were at the Wood Museum as late as 1869, and it has therefore been assumed that they were destroyed in 1871 when this museum was consumed in the Great Chicago Fire of that year.  If they were not destroyed, no one has been able to locate them since.
     The major question therefore remains, what happened to the other two mummies and the rest of the papyrus records?  Charles Haggerty, an associate researcher with Dr. James R. Clark and the Librarian of the public library at Danville, Illinois, wrote August 29, 1950:  "I have traced the other two mummies and at least one or two bits of papyrus to the Philadelphia Museum.  This was in the same building known as the Philadelphia Arcade in which Michael Chandler exhibited the mummies in 1834 or 35."  Ever since this exciting news reached Brigham Young University the search has been intensified.  Someone, somewhere, probably without even knowing the value of these antiquities, is in possession of these two mummies and what is undoubtedly the oldest scriptural record to be discovered thus far.  The current attempt to locate this material is probably the most important single project in historical research being carried on today.
     The painful disappointment of not having the writings of Joseph to study today is ameliorated by the fact that we know he left a comprehensive record of his experiences in Egypt and also a scriptural history of all the patriarchs who had preceded him.  Someday, in the wisdom of God, we shall have these writings again.

W. Cleon Skousen - The Third Thousand Years pages 179-181

     Significantly, Jesus Christ confirmed both the existence and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah during his earthly ministry.
     The Savior has warned that his second coming will occur (1) just as did the flood in Noah's time and also (2) as the raining of fire and brimstone on Sodom - as a surprise (except to the very faithful).  We would do well, therefore, to ponder the lessons of the past as well as the possible parallels between our own society and the society of Sodom, for Sodom was not just a place, but a way of life.
     A modern prophet, President Spencer W. Kimball, has warned us "...when toleration for sin increases, the outlook is bleak and Sodom and Gomorrah days are certain to return."
     His predecessor, President Harold B. Lee, warned of the growing social acceptance of "that great sin of Sodom and Gomorrah...adultery; and beside this, the equally grievous sin of homosexuality, which seems to be gaining momentum with social acceptance in the Babylon of the world..."

Neal A. Maxwell

     "Is there a single ordinance to be dispensed with? Is there one of the commandments that God has enjoined upon the people, that he will excuse them from obeying?  Not one, no matter how trifling or small in our own estimation.  No matter if we esteem them non-essential, or least or last of all the commandments of the house of God, we are under obligation to observe them."
     "Why have they wandered so far from the path of truth and rectitude?  Because they left the Priesthood and have had no guide, no leader, no means of finding out what is true and what is not true.  It is said the Priesthood was taken from the Church, but it is not so, the Church went from the Priesthood and continued to travel in the wilderness, turned from the commandments of the Lord, and instituted other ordinances."
     "If the candle of the Almighty does not shine from this place, you need not seek for light anywhere else."
     "To know the truth of my testimony he must have the visions and revelations of God for himself.  And when he gets them, and turns aside becoming a traitor to the cause of righteousness, the wrath of God will beat upon him, and the vengeance of the Almighty will be heavy upon him."
     "He will make false prophecies, yet he will do it by the spirit of prophecy; he will feel that he is a prophet and can prophesy, but he does it by another spirit and power than that which was given him of the Lord.  He uses the gift as much as you and I use ours."

Discourses of Brigham Young pgs 82, 107, and 221.

     "Some seem to have forgotten that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” That is the authorized way to raise public awareness and to focus on injustices in the content or administration of the laws...
...a minority of participants and supporters of these protests and the illegal acts that followed them seem to have forgotten that the protests protected by the Constitution are peaceful protests. Protesters have no right to destroy, deface, or steal property or to undermine the government’s legitimate police powers. The Constitution and laws contain no invitation to revolution or anarchy. All of us—police, protesters, supporters, and spectators—should understand the limits of our rights and the importance of our duties to stay within the boundaries of existing law. Abraham Lincoln was right when he said, “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.” Redress of grievances by mobs is redress by illegal means. That is anarchy, a condition that has no effective governance and no formal police, which undermines rather than protects individual rights.

Dallin H. Oaks

Socialism violates the commandments of God.

• Socialists Dictators replace God and demand worship
• Socialism steals the fruit of your labors
• Socialism profanes all days and demands that the worker work on the Sabbath day
• Socialism covets your property
• Socialism creates a graven image of the state to worship
• Socialism kills in the name of our Specie being
• Socialism demands that you spy on your neighbor for the state and bear false witness against your neighbor to a socialist government bureaucracy
• Under a socialist state there is no father or mother.  The state raises children not the family
• Under socialism the family unit is dismantled there is no marriage covenant to commit adultery against
• Socialism profanes the name of God as superstition 

     "I am a real Christian, that is to say a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw.  They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return to earth, would not recognize one feature."

Thomas Jefferson

     "I was in the beginning with the Father, and am the Firstborn."  Is not that "Firstborn" incompatible with the idea of the eternity of the Christ-Intelligence?  Who from the beginning was with God, and was God?  Why "Firstborn"?  It can be no other than this:  That mighty, self-existent, Intelligence, which was the "Word," and was in the beginning with God, the Father, was begotten a spirit; and in the order of our earth, and the spirit intelligences connected and associated with it, was the "firstborn" of the spirits the "firstborn" of many brethren; (Romans 8:29) and the Christ illustrates what takes place with all intelligent entities of the divine human species.  Intelligences are begotten spirits, and these spirits no doubt are more definite personalities, and of greater tangibility, and possessed of higher powers than many suppose them to be.  It is written in Hebrews that God had revealed himself to men through the Son, "who was the bightness of his glory, and the express image of this person...by whom also he made the worlds" (Hebrews 1:2-3).  This making of worlds, was previous to the earth life of the Christ, and hence was a work accomplished when he was a spirit personage, in which spirit life he was the "Firstborn."  See Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:6; Romans 8:29; Acts 17:26-28

B. H. Roberts