Latter-day Saints who are sensible and sensitive are keenly aware of the folly of being alarmist and shrill about the dangers and evils that surround us in the Last Days.
It is annoying and even counter-productive to insistently sound an alarm over minor matters and on the things of lesser importance.
At the same time it is good and necessary to have a dialogue together on things of deep interest and pertinence, especially when they affect all of us. This is one of those times.
We are in the Last Days. By any measure of interpretation the words and warnings of prophets ancient and modern are clearly unfolding before our eyes. The weather and natural phenomena, the distress among nations, political upheaval and the brazen actions of secret combinations high and low all attest to this. It is imperative for us to watch and be vigilant:---
"Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
"Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober."
As we discussed in our youth Sunday School class last week, "sober" means able to think seriously about important matters.
"For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
"But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
"For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ."
Solid, sterling, sober words, Paul. Thank you.
Last night I finished reading a novel, One Second After, about the effects across America of a small nuclear device detonated some 200 miles overhead to produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The result was destruction of the electrical grid for the whole country.
Vehicles built since the 1980s that relied on computerized electrical systems would not start nor run. Food supplies, therefore, were brought to a standstill. Cold storage for food and medicines was likewise rendered impotent. Phone service and communications of all kinds ceased, except for primitive and inadequate methods. Transportation ground to a halt. The hero in the novel drove his mother-in-law's old Edsel, but pumping gas was not possible in any usual way.
The book was well written, sensitive and provocative, family- and community-centered, but necessarily brutal and compelling in its description of the tribal instincts to eat and survive, including cannibalism, that surfaced among people and towns. I was deeply impressed and affected by it, by its message and its sensitive, human treatment of the theme.
Less than two weeks ago, separate and independent of the novel, The Heritage Foundation, defender and educator on the Constitution and civic matters in the nation, issued a short article on the matter of EMP and its possible effects:
"It sounds like something out of a movie. A nuclear weapon detonates at high altitude, generating a burst of electromagnetic energy that devastates the United States---destroying electronics, collapsing communications, halting transportation, and shutting down all electrical power. Unfortunately, the threat of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strike is all too real, and it's time America's leaders wake up to the reality."
Their brief article goes on to detail the total loss of our present lifestyle. It also makes this point: a nuclear weapon is not the only way it could occur. Unusually powerful solar activity could produce the same catastrophe.
Elder McConkie has commented on certain verses in the Apocalypse---the Book of Revelation--- as depicting "nuclear holocaust, which surely must come." He has also written at length on the prophecies of the Last Days, most clearly in The Millennial Messiah.
In the novel I read, the scenario was plausible, realistic, credible. The hero was religious . . . a widower with a young family, . . . a college professor, ex-military, a patriot, . . . and a good family man. The final chapter describes the community's rescue --- after a full year of isolation, and attack from desperate tribal groups --- by a military company whose column of vehicles flew the Stars and Stripes. The final sentence of the book, however, reads:
"The world had changed forever, the America they knew . . . never to return."
As I say, provocative . . . and plausible. Not mere alarmist fiction.
So . . . what of the prophecies? What is the real story? Do we have any clues, any help on that front?
The prophets have said that all the wars and calamities we have experienced throughout history will appear as a child's game compared with what is coming. Again, this is not designed to depress or alarm or destroy hope. But it is well to know something of the realities ahead. Something that can be a sure anchor for our faith and survival, whether in life or in death.
We do well to take heed. To watch, and be sober.
In The Millennial Messiah, Elder McConkie has this paragraph:
"As to the coming end of all nations and the final triumph of Israel [as a people---us, the House of Israel---and as a nation], we should make a brief comment. Many of the present nations of the earth will be here, flourishing, fighting, struggling for a place in the sun, when the Lord comes. It is our firm conviction as a people that the stars and stripes will be waving triumphantly in the breeze, as a symbol of the greatness and stability of the United States of America, when the Lord comes. This nation was established to be the Lord's base of operations in this final gospel dispensation. From it the gospel is to go to every other nation and people. The greater its influence among the nations of the world [take note, Mr President], the more rapidly the gospel spreads. But the Lord has told us that all nations, the United States included, shall cease to be when He comes. These are His words:
"'With the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations' (D&C 87:6.)"
Can you see the value of the scriptures, and of the prophets?
Can you see the need for the real story of how history will play out?
Can you see, in light of all the above, the importance of the election in fourteen months?
Can you read between the lines?
Again, feel free to share this, if you sense any value in it. Pass it on to others.
I wish I knew how to persuade you to engage in a shared discussion of these and other vital things. We get precious little comment or feedback on any of this. Which is strange to me.
God bless you.
Warmest regards,
Steve
P.S. Again, we have omitted references and sources on purpose. Contact me if you would like to go deeper.
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