“We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel — ships, planes, missiles, fortifications — and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching [to love your enemies].”—LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball, 1976

D&C 98:13 And whoso layeth down his life in my cause, for my name’s sake, shall find it again, even life eternal.
14 Therefore, be not afraid of your enemies, for I have decreed in my heart, saith the Lord, that I will prove you in all things, whether you will abide in my covenant, even unto death, that you may be found worthy.
15 For if ye will not abide in my covenant ye are not worthy of me.
16 Therefore, renounce war and proclaim peace, and seek diligently to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children…

The entirety of D&C 98 is extremely important to study and ponder. It is a yardstick of where your heart is right now, especially in light of the conflict happening right now in the Middle East. People are angry. Christians are picking sides, forgetting Jesus Christ’s admonition to love your enemies and to be peacemakers. You might not be as Christian as you think if Jesus Christ’s words in His sermon on the mount offend you or if D&C 98 brings out the cynic and unbeliever in you. Maybe you’re not the believer that you think you are after all. Consider this former Hezbollah soldier’s testimony of being confronted by Jesus Christ similar to Apostle Paul’s confrontation. He was a devout Muslim teenager who would have walked on land mines for Allah that attempted to travel to the United States to convert Americans to his cause when he was caught and put in a Malaysian jail with multiple falsified passports. After watching his two videos, you might be able to gauge whether your heart is soft in comparison to his:

Pray for peace! Pray for souls in the Middle East to be preserved and to be saved! Proclaim peace! Say it loudly for your neighbors to hear! Pray for the descendants of Isaac and the descendants of his brother Ishmael to be reconciled with one another and rejoice with their father Abraham!

My life is spent in continual supplication and communion with my Savior. I eat, drink, and sleep prayer. Last night as I was preparing to sleep, I pleaded with God to give me a scripture to read and ponder. As I began to fall asleep, I heard, “Ezekiel 33.” The only reason I share it publicly because it is relevant to everyone around me right now. I share it in the spirit of love and urgency.

1 Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,

2 Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman:

3 If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;

4 Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.

5 He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.

6 But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.

7 ¶ So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.

8 When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.

9 Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.

10 Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?

11 Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?

12 Therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of thy people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression: as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sinneth.

13 When I shall say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousnesses shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it.

14 Again, when I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right;

15 If the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die.

16 None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him: he hath done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live.

17 ¶ Yet the children of thy people say, The way of the Lord is not equal: but as for them, their way is not equal.

18 When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, he shall even die thereby.

19 But if the wicked turn from his wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby.

20 ¶ Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. O ye house of Israel, I will judge you every one after his ways.

21 ¶ And it came to pass in the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, in the fifth day of the month, that one that had escaped out of Jerusalem came unto me, saying, The city is smitten.

22 Now the hand of the Lord was upon me in the evening, afore he that was escaped came; and had opened my mouth, until he came to me in the morning; and my mouth was opened, and I was no more dumb.

23 Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,

24 Son of man, they that inhabit those wastes of the land of Israel speak, saying, Abraham was one, and he inherited the land: but we are many; the land is given us for inheritance.

25 Wherefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Ye eat with the blood, and lift up your eyes toward your idols, and shed blood: and shall ye possess the land?

26 Ye stand upon your sword, ye work abomination, and ye defile every one his neighbour’s wife: and shall ye possess the land?

27 Say thou thus unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; As I live, surely they that are in the wastes shall fall by the sword, and him that is in the open field will I give to the beasts to be devoured, and they that be in the forts and in the caves shall die of the pestilence.

28 For I will lay the land most desolate, and the pomp of her strength shall cease; and the mountains of Israel shall be desolate, that none shall pass through.

29 Then shall they know that I am the Lord, when I have laid the land most desolate because of all their abominations which they have committed.

30 ¶ Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord.

31 And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness.

32 And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.

33 And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.

By request, the following is a sermon I gave today in church:

Before the US Constitution was drafted and ratified, the American Colonies necessarily seceded from Great Britain.

–In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

This Declaration of Independence, which officially broke all political ties between the American colonies and Great Britain, expounded the ideas and principles behind a just and fair government, and the Constitution which arose afterwards outlined how this government would and should function. These two documents including the Bill of Rights formed the bedrock foundation of the American charters of freedom. The stage was set. The Lord’s preparations provided a cradle of liberty for the labors necessary to redeem Zion. Just 63 years later, however, on March 20, 1839, Joseph Smith wrote an epistle to the church while he was falsely imprisoned in the jail at Liberty, Missouri. The following is an excerpt which is found in D&C Section 123 which reads:

7 It is an imperative duty that we owe to God, to angels, with whom we shall be brought to stand, and also to ourselves, to our wives and children, who have been made to bow down with grief, sorrow, and care, under the most damning hand of murder, tyranny, and oppression, supported and urged on and upheld by the influence of that spirit which hath so strongly riveted the creeds of the fathers, who have inherited lies, upon the hearts of the children, and filled the world with confusion, and has been growing stronger and stronger, and is now the very mainspring of all corruption, and the whole earth groans under the weight of its iniquity. 8 It is an iron yoke, it is a strong band; they are the very handcuffs, and chains, and shackles, and fetters of hell. 9 Therefore it is an imperative duty that we owe, not only to our own wives and children, but to the widows and fatherless, whose husbands and fathers have been murdered under its iron hand; 10 Which dark and blackening deeds are enough to make hell itself shudder, and to stand aghast and pale, and the hands of the very devil to tremble and palsy. 11 And also it is an imperative duty that we owe to all the rising generation, and to all the pure in heart—12 For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it—13 Therefore, that we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven—14 These should then be attended to with great earnestness. 15 Let no man count them as small things; for there is much which lieth in futurity, pertaining to the saints, which depends upon these things. 16 You know, brethren, that a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm, by being kept workways with the wind and the waves.

Brothers and Sisters, that ship has been off course now for over 200 years. In his farewell address, on September 17, 1796, exactly 227 years ago, today, George Washington, declared in part the following:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion…

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise People to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the Public Councils and enfeeble the Public administration. It agitates the Community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country, are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

Three years later, in June 1799, Jonathan Trumbull Jr., the governor of Connecticut who had served as Washington’s military secretary during the Revolution, wrote to urge him to run for a third term as president. “The line between Parties,” Washington wrote Trumbull, had become “so clearly drawn” that politicians would “regard neither truth nor decency; attacking every character, without respect to persons – Public or Private, – who happen to differ from themselves in Politics.” Washington wrote that, even if he were willing to run for president again, as a Federalist, “I am thoroughly convinced I should not draw a single vote from the Anti-federal side.” For Washington, the nation’s political parties had soured discourse and created a climate in which, as he predicted in his 1796 farewell address, “unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” Referring to the Democratic-Republicans, Washington wrote, “Let that party set up a broomstick, and call it a true son of Liberty, a Democrat, or give it any other epithet that will suit their purpose, and it will command their votes in toto!”

By Joseph Smith’s day, rather than cooperate to maintain their rights of liberty, Americans had entrenched themselves in “partisan politics,” or in other words, “party politics” where people strongly aligned themselves with one political party in ideological opposition to another political party, often leading to ideological rigidity and the polarization of the people. Joseph Smith had planned to take the saints Westward outside the United States where they could establish the laws of God in order to redeem Zion. During his United Sates presidential candidacy on a third party platform (which by the way he agreed to only in order to preserve the liberty of the oppressed, to free slaves, and to provide redress for the Saints who had been persecuted time after time), Joseph had looked to California or Oregon for the sake of their safety. To survey the West, a party of twenty-five was to follow the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico, press on to the Pacific, and then head north for Oregon, their mission to locate sites for large settlements. Lyman Wight and George Miller, writing from the Mormons’ Wisconsin logging camp at Black River Falls, proposed a move to Texas. The Twelve sent a delegate to confer with Sam Houston, who assured them of a welcome in a region starved for inhabitants.

The persecution had become so bad that the Lord told Joseph to leave for the Rocky Mountains which he did. He returned shortly after complaints and accusations that he was forsaking the church, being called a coward at one point to which he declared, “If my life is of no value to my friends it is of none to myself.” He returned like a lamb to the slaughter. Before he was murdered, he told the saints of their future travels to the Great Salt Lake. He said, “You will build cities to the North and to the South, and to the East and to the West; and you will become a great and wealthy people in that land. But the United States will not receive you with the laws which God desires you to live, and you will have to go where the Nephites lost their power. They worked the United Order for 166 years, and the Saints have got to become proficient in the laws of God before they can meet the Lord Jesus Christ, or even the city of Enoch.”

In D&C 105 we read: 1 Verily I say unto you who have assembled yourselves together that you may learn my will concerning the redemption of mine afflicted people—2 Behold, I say unto you, were it not for the transgressions of my people, speaking concerning the church and not individuals, they might have been redeemed even now. 3 But behold, they have not learned to be obedient to the things which I required at their hands, but are full of all manner of evil, and do not impart of their substance, as becometh saints, to the poor and afflicted among them; 4 And are not united according to the union required by the law of the celestial kingdom; 5 And Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom; otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself. 6 And my people must needs be chastened until they learn obedience, if it must needs be, by the things which they suffer.

In the end, rather than heed the Lord and head west, Joseph heeded his wife, his friends, and his enemies who pretended to be his friends, and delivered himself to ravening wolves, becoming the first United Sates presidential candidate to be assassinated. The church, in effect, forfeited its opportunity to be redeemed which by definition is to be brought back into Christ’s presence which Enoch and his city had done before being received by Christ as a Zion people. Returning to Joseph Smith’s analogy of a very large ship, there comes a point where even the least discerning of people can see how irreversibly off course we are. No amount of voting or legislating will facilitate a course correction while those who act in secret chambers who have usurped control are determined to sink the ship. They can only make preparations to abandon ship before it runs aground or sinks into the depths of an abyss. Thus the right of secession has always been an integral part of any freedom loving people and our founding fathers knew all too well the importance of dissolving the political bands which connected them to their tyrannical and despotic rulers. The right of secession was fundamental in our founding fathers’ philosophy in order to form a more perfect Union.

But the US does not take kindly to a secession. Abraham Lincoln undemocratically demonstrated this fact. I devoted an entire chapter to explaining the details revolving around the agricultural South suffering from the autocratic exploits of the industrial North beginning with the 1828 Tariff of Abominations along with President Lincoln’s unconstitutional acts in my book By A Thread which I will not discuss here for the sake of brevity. However, citations prove and it’s a historical fact that hundreds of newspapers and editorials in the North supported the right of the southern states to secede despite Lincoln’s belief to the contrary. The Civil War historically seems to have revolved around the issue of slavery, but if slavery had truly been the primary issue of war, President Lincoln could have ended slavery as many other countries had already done through peaceful compensated emancipation, which Joseph Smith had previously proposed during his own presidential candidacy. But Lincoln repeatedly declared or wrote that he had no interest in freeing slaves or that he cared for slaves. He did not need to wage war against the South in order to free slaves, but he did need to wage war in order to strip them of their right to secede. And given the enormous costs of the war, including 620,000 military deaths, thousands of civilian deaths in the Southern states, hundreds of thousands of men crippled for life, the near destruction of the nearly 40 percent of the nation’s economy, and the direct costs of the war itself, most Americans would likely have chosen compensated emancipation, which would have cost them a tiny, almost trivial, fraction of the cost of the alternative: total war. President Lincoln never seriously offered the nation the opportunity to choose. He has been called Honest Abe, The Liberator, The Great Emancipator, and more. But the Great Centralizer is a much more apt description of his legacy due to his Federalist philosophy of commerce, industry and profiteering through a nationalized banking system along with oppressive taxes and corporate subsidies. He may have saved the Union geographically, but he effectively destroyed the principle of voluntary association of states and the decentralized form of government favored by America’s founding fathers. His willful violations of the United States Constitution have produced lasting effects that are still felt today.

As Joseph Smith prophesied, the pioneer saints indeed migrated west and settled down in the Salt Lake Valley where we find ourselves today along the Rocky Mountains. Today’s Republican Party had its roots in Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Party favoring commerce and industry with close ties to Britain while today’s Democratic Party was Thomas Jefferson’s original Republican Party favoring agriculture and self-sufficiency. By the way, Jefferson’s philosophy much more closely resembled the form of government proposed by King Mosiah and established by the Nephites under his righteous rule. And now, we find ourselves oppressed under the very political parties that George Washington warned about where cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men under foreign influences have usurped for themselves the reins of government and where people continue to vote for false messiahs who make promises that they seldom keep.

And now the field is white again already to harvest. The wheat and the tares are all maturing together, each bearing fruits whether good or evil. The time is arriving for a Zion people to secede from Babylon. As Isaiah declared, “Come out from Babylon!” and as Zechariah exclaimed, “Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon.” Or as Joseph Smith proclaimed, “Wherefore, prepare ye, prepare ye, O my people; sanctify yourselves; gather ye together, O ye people of my church, upon the land of Zion, all you that have not been commanded to tarry. Go ye out from Babylon. Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord.”

But let us not be like Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapters four and five who attempted to dwell with a Zion people through their deceit and then gave up the ghost and were buried for withholding what they ought to have consecrated. This is a very important lesson to learn and one that must be learned now. The Lord will not be mocked. Neither will He suffer that the laws of the celestial kingdom be broken by people who desire to dwell with Him in Zion while their hearts are still embracing Babylon. While we dwell in this Telestial world, the Lord allows the scaffolding to remain intact which supports us in our sins without giving up the ghost for disobeying celestial laws as Ananias and Sapphira did when they were welcomed by Peter to live a higher law with the fledgling community of the Lord’s true believers, but when our Savior Jesus Christ returns in glory and that scaffolding is removed, this Telestial world will be consumed and only those who can abide the fire of His glory will remain because they are already living His celestial laws in their lives.

The only other thing I feel impressed to say is to beware of the mark of the beast. Babylon is enticing you and will continually entice you to voluntarily pay obeisance to her. There are many in the church who are looking for the mark of the beast. Though none seem to get what that will be exactly, some are getting closer in their guesstimates. The mark of the beast will indeed be a specific thing. However, it does not come out of nowhere. Those with eyes to see recognize that it is merely the last step on a path that began some time ago. Unfortunately, many who are watching for the mark of the beast-heeding the warning of the terminal nature of the choice to accept it-are already on the path to accepting it. They don’t realize that by complying with unconstitutional mandates in whatever form, or whether they choose to remain silent when it is their duty as watchmen to warn their fellow man, or to protect their own livelihoods under threats of cancellation in all its forms rather than preserving their integrity and their standing before God through discernment, personal revelation, and obedience, having an intimate relationship with the Lord, they are already on the path to taking the mark of the beast. They are even now conforming to the presently available previews of the future situation. The future situation will be much more difficult to avoid than these things are now. For those who cannot or will not do the right thing now, it is extraordinarily unlikely that they will do the right thing later, especially when their choices become severely limited or they end up having no choice at all.

Come out from Babylon, brothers and sisters! Be not subordinate to her. God will have a free people-a Zion people-who love Him and whom He loves. Let us repent as a people and come unto Christ with a full purpose of heart. Become pure in heart, unalloyed by all the dross, chaff, and impurities of this world that seem to shine in our eyes but are instead the chains of hell. All that glitters is not gold.

Amen.