If the congregation will try to be quiet I will endeavor to talk to
them a little in my way.
It is some time since I met with the Saints in this place, not because
I was not desirous to come but because circumstances have controlled
and prevented me. We come here, now, more particularly to attend to a
little affair associated with your Temple. There seems to have been a
little misunderstanding about its construction, and as we have a
Temple Committee and architects for the Church, we thought it best to
have the brethren composing this committee and the architects,
present, that we might confer with them, so that everything pertaining
to this building might be done properly according to order and correct
principles.
Elder Truman O. Angell was sustained at the General Conference as
Architect of the Church, and William H. Folsom and Truman O. Angell,
Jr., as his assistants, and were therefore the proper persons to
consult, in the adjustment of any matters that might be in question.
I speak of this as one of those things in connection with the holy
priesthood, and with the building of this sacred edifice that we are
erecting to the name of the Lord. We found that a slight change had
been made from the original plan, which however is not material, and
there will no difficulty arise therefrom. I thought I would mention
this because people generally like to understand things as they exist.
It is much better to tell things right out as they are than to hear of
whisperings about this and the other thing, which in many instances
are incorrect.
We are pleased to find the pro gress you are making in the
erection of this temple, the energy and zeal that are being displayed
and the liberality that has been manifested by the people of this
temple district.
We are engaged, as has been mentioned by Brother Snow, in a great
work; in the work that prophets and seers have gazed upon and
prophesied of, namely the gathering together of the Lord's elect, the
building of temples for the redemption of the living and the dead; in
the establishment of the kingdom of our God. These things have been
more or less understood according to the power of the spirit and the
light of revelation that has rested upon his prophets ever since the
world began. It is difficult, as has been remarked, for us sometimes
to realize the position we occupy—the relation we sustain to our
heavenly Father—the responsibility that rests upon us, and the various
duties we have to perform in the fulfillment of the purposes of God;
in the interest of a world lying in wickedness; in the building up of
the Zion of our God, in the establishment of righteousness and in
bringing to pass those great and glorious principles which have been
contemplated by the Almighty "before the world rolled into existence
or the morning stars sang together for joy." It is our lot to be
placed upon the earth in this time. It is our lot to have our minds
enlightened by the Spirit, intelligence and revelation that flows from
God. It is our lot to operate and cooperate with God our heavenly
Father—and with his Son Jesus Christ—and with the ancient
patriarchs, apostles and men of God who have lived before; and while
they are operating behind the veil in the interests of humanity in the
fulfillment of the purposes of God and in the establishment of
righteousness upon the earth, we are here to operate with them, that
we and they may act conjointly under the influence and guidance of the
Almighty and the power and Spirit of the living God, in carrying out
the designs of the great Jehovah. This is what we are here for. And it
is necessary that we should comprehend our position; for in the
performance of our duties associated with this work it is not as some
people seem to suppose. We have got something else to do besides
folding our arms and crying "Lullaby baby on the tree top, when the
wind blows the cradle will rock." We have something to do besides
"sitting and singing ourselves away to everlasting bliss." It is our
duty—and God expects it of us, that we should seek unto him for
wisdom, for guidance, for revelation and for a knowledge of his law,
that we may be filled with the Holy Ghost and the power of God and
that we may be enabled to magnify our calling and priesthood and
accomplish that work which God has designed from before the foundation
of the world. It is in reality a labor. We have gone forth, as many
have gone forth to preach the Gospel of life and salvation to a fallen
world. We have gathered in "one of a city and two of a family;" we
have combated the errors of ages and inveighed against the wickedness,
corruptions and strategems of wicked and ungodly men, who have opposed
us on every hand; and we have, with the help of the Lord, succeeded in
gathering out many of the honest in heart from among the different
nations of the earth. And we have come here to carry out the will,
purposes and designs of God. I never supposed that we were to come
here to get rich, to increase in worldly possessions; but we came as
I understand it in accordance with an express command of the
Most High, that we may be taught in the knowledge of God, that we
might come to an understanding of his laws. We are not here to follow
the devices and desires of our own hearts; we are not here to carry
out any particular theory of our own; we are not here to build up any
system of man's creation; but we are here simply to do the will of God
in the establishment of his kingdom on the earth. In many things,
however, we have not lived up to that high and glorious privilege which
has been presented to us; we have been careless and indifferent, and
it seems as though Satan has been permitted to try and tempt us in
every possible way. For a few years past a spirit of greed and
covetousness has run through the land and cursed as with a withering
blight everything it has touched. It is as bad in its effects upon
the mind of man as any pestilence or plague upon the human body. We
have begun to run after the things of the world; our hearts, feelings
and affections, in many instances, have been estranged from God. It is
time that something should transpire to wake us up to a sense of the
position we occupy; it is time we realized how God and angels look
upon men who are absorbed in the things of this world instead of
living up to their professions and the covenants they have made with
him.
We have many of us, however, been doing a good work notwithstanding
these grievous evils. It is true it is not always smooth sailing.
Sometimes we seem when a little difficulty comes along to be struck
with amazement, as though something very extraordinary had happened.
There is nothing very strange about these things. "What are you doing?
What is the position of affairs? What are you going to do? etc." Those
words express the kind of feelings that actuate the minds of the
Latter-day Saints. There has been a war ever since the commencement of
the world to the present time between the powers of light and the
powers of darkness. Adam, we are told, had two sons. One was a
covetous man, a wicked man who did not fear God; the other was a
righteous man who feared God. The wicked son, who was instigated of
the devil, said, I will kill my brother and then I will have his
possessions. He did so and it seems that this kind of feeling existed
until in a short time that influence had so prevailed that wickedness
and corruption made such rapid strides that the world had to be swept
as with a besom of destruction, and only a very few men were left. And
then it seemed necessary that the same spirit and the same power
should continue; and hence a part of this Canaanish seed came through
the flood. Why? That there might still be the two powers—the power of
light and the power of darkness; the power of God and the power of the
devil—that the struggle and warfare among men might still go on, so
that man might be made perfect through suffering. Hence the servants
of God in the different ages of the world have had to combat with the
powers of darkness. John the Revelator speaks of a great company of
people whom he saw arrayed in white, singing a new song. And on his
inquiring as to who they were, he was told that they were they that
had washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
They were they that had come up through much tribulation, therefore
they were next the throne. It is in consonance with the
foreordained plan of the Almighty that a man should pass through
certain trials and difficulties, and be tested in every possible way,
in order to be prepared for an exaltation in the kingdom of God. It
was so with Job. He was peculiarly situated. It seems that the devil
appeared among the sons of God in heaven, as he does on earth very
frequently. When the sons of God were assembled together, the devil
was among them, and he went, as it appears, to instigate a feeling
against Job. The Lord said to him, "Hast thou considered my servant
Job?" "Yes," said he, "I have considered him." The Lord
said that Job
was a perfect and an upright man, etc. "Oh, yes," said he, "I know all
about him. You think that Job is a very good man; but just let me have
a rap at him, and I will show what Job will do." "Well," says the
Lord, "you may try him." He went to work and concentrated the
lightning in one focus and hurled a thunderbolt against his oldest
son's house, where all his children were feasting, and destroyed them.
No sooner had the messenger reported the result of this catastrophe to
Job than the news came that a certain people—I was going to say
"Christians" —had fallen upon his oxen and asses and killed his
servants. They called them in those days Sabeans and Chaldeans and
Hittites, I think; we call them nowadays Baptists, Presbyterians,
Methodists, etc. They called things by different names in different
ages, but they are the same class of people. They went after his
camels, his asses, his goats and all his property that they could lay
their hands on, leaving him helpless and destitute—and he was, it is
said, the richest man of the East. Job, in looking at his changed
situation, summed the whole thing up in these few words: "Naked came I
out of my mother's womb, and naked I shall return thither: the Lord gave
and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."
Well, the devil did not succeed that time; but like the lawyers who
are after the executors, however, I suppose he thought he would take
another shoot—serve some fresh papers. He presented himself before the
Lord the second time. And addressing him the Lord said, "Well, what do
you think about Job now?" He said his efforts had not succeeded very
well as yet; but "skin for skin, all that a man hath will he give for
his life; let me lay my hand upon his body and he will curse thee to
thy face." "Well, I put him into your hands, but do not interfere
with his life." The devil then let loose something like smallpox upon
him—only it was called by a different name in those days—covering him
with boils from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, and he
scraped himself with a potsherd wallowing in ashes. And while he was
in this condition some of his friends came along for the purpose of
sympathizing with him; and after offering a great deal of advice, they
came to the conclusion that Job must have been a very wicked man, or
such a calamity never could have come upon him. And then, to cap the
climax, his wife came along, and in her way says, Job, you are a fool
for putting up with all this; you have suffered enough, and were I you
I would not stand it any longer. I would curse God and die like a man.
Job replied, "You talk like one of the foolish women of old. Have we
not received good at the hands of the Lord, and shall we not also
receive evil? The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away, and blessed be the name of the Lord." And then he looked around and saw
his desolation, stripped of his children and possessions, sick and
weary, deserted by friends, laughed at by enemies and upbraided by his
wife, afflicted with a loathsome disease, lonely, deserted and
desolate, he cried out, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.
The lightning may destroy my offspring, the Sabeans and Chaldeans may
rob me of my possessions, and Satan may be permitted to lay his hand
upon me and smite with this loathsome disease, and although I may be
clothed in sackcloth and have to wallow in ashes, and go down into
the grave, and worms prey upon this body and crawl and revel in my
brain, yet in my flesh shall I see God; I shall see him for myself,
and not for another." Inspired by the spirit of revelation and the
power and light of the Holy Ghost, he could say, I know in whom I have
believed; and although I do not know—and it matters not—where I may go
or where my resting place may be, yet I shall stand in the latter day
upon the earth, and shall behold my Redeemer, whom I shall see for
myself and not for another. This is the kind of religion he had. But
we think it very strange sometimes that we should have a little
bother; we think we ought to go along peaceably, having nothing to
disturb our equanimity, that everything should move smoothly and
pleasantly along until we reach the celestial abode of the Father, to
associate with the gods. Some of us would make curious gods, if such
were to be our lot; but we may rest satisfied that such will not be
our lot. The Lord does not do things in that kind of a way.
When we were traveling abroad preaching to the world, among other
things we predicted was that the world would grow worse and worse,
deceiving and being deceived. Thousands of our Elders have preached
among the nations to the effect that God was having a controversy with
them; that he would arise and shake terribly the earth and vex the
nations sorely. Many of you Elders before me today have proclaimed
these things; and you have told the people that empires would be cast
down and the kingdoms overthrown and the nations wasted away, but that
the work and purposes of God would grow and increase until the
kingdoms of this world should become the kingdoms of our God and his
Christ. Are you astonished, then, that these things should begin to be
fulfilled? Quite a favorite theme has been with many of our elders,
that the "little stone" spoken of in the Scriptures has been cut out
of the mountain without hands, and it is destined to strike the image
whose head was of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of
brass, legs of iron, and feet part of iron and part of clay, upon its
feet, breaking it to pieces; and that the materials, which represent
the various nations of the earth, composing the image should become
like the chaff of a summer's threshingfloor, carried away by the wind
until there was no place found for it. This is exactly as it has been
foretold many thousands of years ago, and you brethren are perfectly
familiar with it from having preached it both to the world and to the
Latter-day Saints. When this little stone, then, as it rolls forth,
strikes the toes of the great image, are you surprised that there
should be a little kicking? You don't like to have your toes trodden
upon any more than anybody else. The fact is, the same great conflict
is going on between the two great powers; the only dif ference is
that we are in much better circumstances than many who lived in
earlier days who had to wander about in sheep- and goatskins, seeking
the dens and caves of rocks as places of retreat and safety. You, my
brethren and sisters, do not look today as though you were pushed to
such extremes, do you? I think it another kind of spectacle. We are an
integral part of this great government of the United States, not a very
large part, but a very small part; and we have assumed a species of
political importance; and every now and then they get after us without
knowing hardly the why or the wherefore. They talk sometimes quite
loudly about our corruptions. Why, as I told them some time ago in
Salt Lake City, in talking about this matter, there is more wickedness
carried on in Washington, where they talk so much about purity, in one
day, than there is in these valleys of the mountains in six months,
the Gentiles and all thrown in. And yet it is quite important that
they should call upon a number of European nations to help them to
correct the morals of two hundred thousand people in these far distant
mountains. What magnanimity! Well, what about it? Not much. But there
is this much about it—that this nation, nor the powers of Europe, nor
any other power, can overturn the Church and Kingdom of God that he
has established on the earth. It will go on in spite of all the powers
of earth and hell. You have heard that prophesied over and over again,
and I will prophesy it again today. And every power that lift its
hand against the kingdom of God will be wasted away: for God will have
a controversy with the nations who oppose his work, and he will manage
them in his own way; he will put a hook in their jaws and will lead
them whithersoever he will. The wrath of man shall praise him, and the
remainder he has said he will restrain. Hence I feel a good deal like
taking the advice of Jesus: "Fear not them which kill the body, but
are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to
destroy both soul and body in hell."
The only fear I have for the Latter-day Saints is that they will not
live their religion. And I call upon you here today to lay aside your
covetousness, your greed and your avarice, and act honorably and just
one with another as your brethren, humble yourselves before God and
seek unto him for his guidance, and he will help you, he will bless
and sustain you, and he will deliver you. And I say unto the
priesthood, be one; for if you are not one you are not of God. No
contention, no strife, no backbiting, no hard words; but let us have
the love of God dwelling and welling up in our hearts, and extending
to all men. But war against evil, corruption and iniquity of every
kind, wherever found; stand firm in upholding and maintaining the
principles of truth as they have been revealed to us, before high
heaven, before all men. We want to be united, and, as Paul says, "Put
on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the
wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
Paul had to maintain the truth as he had received it in the midst of a
crooked and perverse generation; and we have to do the same, and God
will sustain us in our endeavors. But if we are trembly and shaky, our
religion is not worth much to us. We have a few among us who
say, "Oh, don't! You'd better take it easy! Keep quiet! You may offend
the devil, for what I know. We have a few dollars somewhere, and we
are afraid something will disturb them, and the property we have made
will go!" Well, let it go; who cares about it? "Love not the world,
neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world,
the love of the Father is not in him." We ought to be governed by
correct principles and act wisely and consistently, and treat all men
alike. There are a great many who have the idea that there are certain
classes that have rights which do not belong to others. I do not know
of any such people. We are all the freeborn sons of Zion; we all
partake of the holy priesthood, and we all have our rights and
privileges with God. We want to act according to correct principle,
and be governed by the law of God, not one law for one man and another
for another man. But operating together and maintaining one another's
rights upon the pure principles of truth and equity, as they exist in
the bosom of God. When the things spoken of referring to the last days
shall transpire, righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and
faithfulness the girdle of his reins, and it will be as was remarked
by Brother Richards, and as the Prophet Jeremiah foretold: "I will put
my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will
be their God, and they shall be my people." As we adhere to the
principles of law, equality, justice and right, and are governed by
those principles. The man who is governed by the Spirit of God and
lives in the light of revelation, has the law of God written on his
heart and it is engraven in his inward parts. He feels as Jesus did
about these things. It was said to him on a certain occasion, "Behold,
thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with
thee." When he said, referring to his disciples, "Behold my mother and
my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
heaven, the same is my brother, and sister and mother." That is the
kind of feeling. We want to be united in our hearts and feelings:
united to each other; united to the holy priesthood, bound together by
those indissoluble ties that will unite us in time and through
eternity, according to the principles of the everlasting covenant
which we have entered into which reaches beyond the veil.
We have a struggle. Some of the "Amalekites" and Hittites are abroad.
But who cares? Satan works for a little while, and he will work and no
doubt do his utmost as long as he is permitted; and when the time
comes for him to be removed, God will remove him. We may struggle as
we please and do as we please in regard to these things, but we are
all in the hands of God. As has been remarked, it is quite easy for
the Lord to handle us in these mountains. He can send grasshoppers
if he wants to; he can withhold the snows from coming on our mountains
if he wants to, and thus cause drouth in the summer season and he can
send the moths to destroy our fruit; all of which we have more or less
already experienced. In fact he can do with us just as he pleases and
we cannot help ourselves. Our only resource is in him. We want to be
right ourselves in our families, every man with himself. Forsake your
sins, and cleave unto God. Pay your tithings and your offerings and
comply with the laws of God in every particular so that you may
feel that you are acceptable before the Almighty, and then teach your
families the same thing. Humble yourselves as families before God. You
seventies, high priests and elders. Do the same thing as quorums and
seek for the guidance and blessing of the Lord. Have you cheated or
defrauded anybody? If you have, then make things right, and try
forever afterwards to be governed by correct principles. And then let
there be perfect union in all the various quorums and among all the
people; and let us all say in our hearts and lives, whatever the Lord
commands us to do that we will observe and do; and let all Israel do
the same, and the devils then may howl and all hell may boil over, but
God will preserve his people, he will stand as our shield and buckler
and our strong defense.
We have got this kingdom to build up; and it is not a phantom, but a
reality. We have to do it, God expects it at our hands. We have got to
have—now do not tell anybody for it is a great secret; we have got to
have political power. What, will not that be treason? Perhaps so, but
no matter; we have got to go on and progress in these things. We have
got to establish a government upon the principle of righteousness,
justice, truth and equality and not according to the many false
notions that exist among men. And then the day is not far distant when
this nation will be shaken from center to circumference. And now, you
may write it down, any of you, and I will prophesy it in the name of
God. And then will be fulfilled that prediction to be found in one of
the revelations given through the Prophet Joseph Smith. Those who will
not take up their sword to fight against their neighbor must needs
flee to Zion for safety. And they will come, saying, we do not know
anything of the principles of your religion, but we perceive that you
are an honest community; you administer justice and righteousness, and
we want to live with you and receive the protection of your laws, but
as for your religion we will talk about that some other time. Will we
protect such people? Yes, all honorable men. When the people shall
have torn to shreds the Constitution of the United States, the Elders
of Israel will be found holding it up to the nations of the earth and
proclaiming liberty and equal rights to all men, and extending the
hand of fellowship to the oppressed of all nations. This is part of
the program, and as long as we do what is right and fear God, he
will help us and stand by us under all circumstances.
Therefore, Latter-day Saints, fear God; work the works of
righteousness; live your religion; keep the commandments and humble
yourselves before him; be one, and be united with the holy priesthood
and with each other, and I will tell you in the name of God that Zion
will rise and shine and the power of God will rest upon her; and her
glory will be made manifest, and we will rejoice in the fulness of the
blessings of the Gospel of peace; and the work of God will go on and
increase until the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of
our God and his Christ, and every creature in the heaven and on the
earth and under the earth will be heard to say, Blessing, and glory,
and honor and praise and power, might and majesty and dominion be
ascribed to him that sits upon the throne and to the Lamb forever and
ever. Amen.