As humanity grows increasingly hedonistic, unforeseen calamities take effect. There is no stopping them because that is God’s universal law: what goes around comes around. No mantras proclaiming a nation’s becoming great again can reverse its collective guilt without that nation’s wholesale return to the one who made that nation great in the first place. Wars, plagues, fires, earthquakes, droughts, famines, and floods become the new reality. The people of Nineveh understood that when they repented in sackcloth at Jonah’s preaching.
Isaiah catalogues this downward trend: “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own view! Woe to those who are valiant at drinking wine and champions at mixing liquor! [Woe to those] who acquit the guilty for a bribe but deny justice to the innocent! As a blazing fire consumes stubble, and as dry weeds wane before the flame, so shall their roots decay away and their blossoms fly up like dust. For they have despised the law of Jehovah of Hosts and reviled the words of the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 5:21–24).
Isaiah foresees destruction by fire: “Take heed what I have done, you who are far off; you who are near, be apprised of my might! The sinners in Zion are struck with fear; the godless are in the grip of trembling: Who among us can live through the devouring fire? Who among us can abide eternal burning? They who conduct themselves righteously and are honest in word, who disdain extortion and stay their hand from taking bribes, who stop their ears at the mention of murder, who shut their eyes at the sight of wickedness” (Isaiah 33:13–15).
Nephi saw it: “Behold, in the last days, or in the days of the Gentiles—yea, behold all the nations of the Gentiles and also the Jews, both those who shall come upon this land and those who shall be upon other lands, yea, even upon all the lands of the earth, behold, they will be drunken with iniquity and all manner of abominations—and when that day shall come they shall be visited of the Lord of Hosts, with thunder and with earthquake, and with a great noise, and with storm, and with tempest, and with the flame of devouring fire” (2 Nephi 27:1–2).
Preaching will be different: “After your testimony cometh the testimony of earthquakes, that shall cause groanings in the midst of her, and men shall fall upon the ground and shall not be able to stand. And also cometh the testimony of the voice of thunderings, and the voice of lightnings, and the voice of tempests, and the voice of the waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds. And all things shall be in commotion; and surely, men’s hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people” (Doctrine & Covenants 88:89–91).
“It shall come in a day when the blood of saints shall cry unto the Lord, because of secret combinations and the works of darkness. Yea, it shall come in a day when the power of God shall be denied, and churches become defiled and be lifted up in the pride of their hearts; yea, even in a day when leaders of churches and teachers shall rise in the pride of their hearts, even to the envying of them who belong to their churches. Yea, it shall come in a day when there shall be heard of fires, and tempests, and vapors of smoke in foreign lands” Mormon 8:27–29).
