Where do we imagine current societal trends will take us if left unchecked? Have we passed a point of no return? Will any people of God remain who won’t fall prey to sodomite ideologies, foolhardy economics, criminal politics, and watered down religion? When leaders abolish the “traditional ways” (Isaiah 3:12) that made this nation great, where should people go?
While such issues provoke responses of “fear mongering” and “alarmist” from “all is well in Zion” circles, doesn’t the admonition, “If ye are prepared ye shall not fear,” suggest there will be “they that are wise and have received the truth, and have taken the Holy Spirit for their guide,” while others are “hewn down and cast into the fire” (Doctrine & Covenants 38:30; 45:57)?
In a day when Gadianton types are “filling the judgment–seats—having usurped the power and authority of the land; laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before him; doing no justice unto the children of men; condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money;
“And moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the world, and, moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills,” are not these signs of a people “ripening for an everlasting destruction” (Helaman 6:39–40; 7:4–6)?
Says Isaiah of end-time America, “The ministers of Zoan have been foolish, the officials of Noph deluded; the heads of state have led Egypt astray. Jehovah has permeated them with a spirit of confusion; they have misled Egypt in all that it does, causing it to stagger like a drunkard into his vomit. And there shall be nothing the Egyptians can do about it” (Isaiah 19:13–15).
Combine these conditions with a deliberate attempt to “overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries” (Ether 8:25) that is now underway, and the only recourse for those who love God is to learn how he proposes to deliver his people. If they didn’t learn it in the time of peace, then there remains a small window in which to more fully prepare for that day:
“When the day cometh that the wrath of God is poured out upon the mother of harlots, which is the great and abominable church of all the earth, whose founder is the devil, then, at that day, the work of the Father shall commence, in preparing the way for the fulfilling of his covenants, which he hath made to his people who are of the house of Israel” (1 Nephi 14:5–7, 17).
For those who accomplish the great and marvelous “work” of the house of Israel’s restoration, it constitutes a way of escape from the “everlasting destruction” then enveloping the world. But it will additionally “land their souls . . . at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob . . . to go out no more” (Helaman 3:30).
