Grounds for a Great Division

Jesus’ saying that he came to bring “division” on the earth—so much that families would divide against themselves (Luke 12:51–53)—in no way contradicted his most solemn prayer that his disciples might be one in him as he is one in the Father (John 17). It merely affirmed that the truth he personified would act as a stumbling block, even for many who believed in him.

Isaiah sees an emergent division between God’s end-time servants—some making a covenant with death, others a covenant of life (Isaiah 28:14–15; 55:3)—that leads to an everlasting parting of the ways: “My servants shall rejoice indeed, while you shall be dismayed. My servants shall shout indeed, for gladness of heart, while you shall cry out with heartbreak” (Isaiah 65:13–15).

But how did such a disconnect gain a foothold among a covenant people in the first place? The seeds for an outcome that divisive must have been sown earlier. How might two kindred groups end up viewing reality so differently that one would “abhor” and persecute the other (Isaiah 49:7; 66:5). With so many doors to walk through, what could have led it to compromise itself?

A case in point: Could an institution’s investments in Mammon act as a hedge against deception or preclude its abetting the evil designs of conspiring men? Wouldn’t the “unrighteousness” of Mammon—its amoral code and spurious “science”—not leaven the lump until its own narrative parroted it? Could cleansing the inner vessel even be doable at that point without breaking it?

Another case in point: When has the “coming out” of an evil not spawned one even worse, so that a society, becoming desensitized, accepts a “new normal” of abominations looked upon only recently with abhorrence? Didn’t Alma forbid his son to expose the Gadiantons’ “agreements in their secret abominations” lest they “fall into darkness also and be destroyed” (Alma 37:27)?

Doesn’t the recent exposure of such an evil in PsyOp mode, bankrolled by questionable financial sources, reveal similar “agreements” or manner of operation? Can we assume that acquainting the public with this evil isn’t a two-edged sword, whose divisive backlash will lead to policies causing further loss of liberty to which reality Moroni warned us to awaken (Ether 8:24–25)?

Says Isaiah of end-time Babylon’s supremacy: “Secure in your wickedness, you thought, No one discerns me. By your skill and science you were led astray, thinking to yourself, I exist, and there is none besides me! Catastrophe shall overtake you, which you won’t know how to avert by payoffs; disaster will befall you from which you cannot ransom yourself” (Isaiah 47:10–11).

While “following the money” may expose men’s machinations, the destruction of humanity’s agency tops all evil. We have seen in the past how the adversary permits one evil to be unveiled in order to ultimately impose a greater one—creating a crisis and then exploiting it. Shall we fall prey to his ever more sophisticated divisive stratagems, or shall we seek oneness in Christ?