GREAT POLLUTIONS
The Prophet Mormon
wrote that the Book of Mormon would come forth in a day when there shall be
great pollutions upon the face of the earth (Mormon 8:31).
This prophecy has literal,
as well as figurative fulfilments. In our modern day, when the Book of Mormon
is being carried forth to the world, we can scarcely watch the evening news, or
read the newspaper without learning of pollution. Conservationists lament the
chemical pollution from toxic wastes in the rivers and oceans of the world, and
almost every large city is turning to extreme measures in order to cut down on
automobile emissions and other sources of pollution. The Environmental Protection
Agency is enforcing more restrictive regulations on American enterprises than ever
before, in an effort to reduce industrial pollution—often at the cost of many
thousands of jobs. Radioactive pollutions from nuclear accidents such as
Chernobyl, and toxic wastes from fifty years of nuclear weapon development, certainly
represent a type of pollution that would fulfill the prophecy of Mormon.
Even more devasting
is the contamination that fills the airwaves and computer networks with
pornography and violence, which pollutes the human mind in the name of “home
entertainment.” Not only have these evils defiled the air, but with the advent
of satellite broadcasting, they have also polluted the heavens and our home.
Priestcrafts in the
Latter-Days
The Book of Mormon
prophecies that the inhabitants of [America] in the latter-days will be a nation
“filled with all manner of . . . priestcrafts” (3 Nephi 16:10). It defines
priestcraft as the practice in which “men preach and set themselves up for a
light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world” (2 Nephi
26:29).
This prophecy is especially
remarkable since, in 1830 there were no multi-millionaire evangelists living in
luxurious mansions supported by mesmerized massages who “praise” them with
monetary gifts. Since then, those who proclaim to preach the gospel can, in a
very literal sense, be seen as “a light unto the world” and can gain the
“praise of the world.” The humble preachers of the 1830 could have been
a light to a small congregation in a small part of the country, but had no
means at their disposal to preach to the world. They may have been able to
reach hundreds in print, but not the billions of the world. Today, satellite-broadcasting
systems have enabled preachers to be “simultaneously” heard the world over.
LYINGS, DECEITS, and
HYPOCRISY
The Book of Mormon
prophesied that in latter-days the gentiles, who would take this land from the
Lamanites, would “be filled with all manner of lyings, and of deceits, and of
mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy . . . “ (1 Nephi 13:14; 3 Nephi 16:10).
An example of the
lying and deceitfulness of the gentiles is the fact that the United states (the
melting pot of the gentile nations) broke scores of treaties and promises with
the Native Americans during the great Western expansion of the 1800’s—robbing them
of their homelands.
An illustration of
the hypocrisy of the gentiles (in a collective sense) is the manner in which US
Government treated the Saints. The US Government denied the Latter-day Saints
constitutional protection against the mob violence that was being unmercifully
poured out upon them by their follow citizens. A few years later, after the
Mormon Battalion had honorably served their country in the longest US military
march in history, the federal government sent a large army of US troops to Utah
to threaten the saints with war. This was done in response to false reports of
a “Mormon Uprising” against the United States government.
MURDERS
The Book of Mormon
also prophesied that the gentiles would be filled with “all manner of . . . .
murders” (3 Nephi 16:10).
Th United states of
America, the gathering place of gentiles from all other nations, inflicted
terrible slaughters and massacres upon the American Indians all across the
continent with the great westward migration, a tragedy which President Brigham
Young rightly called murder. (See, for example, his rebuke against an
apostate Mormon who had filled an Indian in Journal of Discourses, vol.
11, p. 263.)
Many saints were also
murdered in compliance with a corrupt governor’s order. In 1838 Governor
Boggs of Missouri issued an official “extermination order” against the Mormon
people—resulting in such unmerciful slaughter in the Haun’s Mill Massacre,
(History of the Church, vol. 3, p. 175; D&C 135).
Many other murders
were also committed in the name of government-instituted wards. For
example, hundreds of thousands of civilians were unmercifully killed at the dropping
of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. President J. Reuben Clark Jr.
described this as “the crowning savagery of the war.” He added that “the worst
of this autonomic bomb tragedy is that not only did the people of the United
States not rise up in protest against this savagery, not only did not shock us
to read of this wholesale destruction of men, women, and children, and
cripples, but that it actually drew from the nation at large a general approval
of this fiendish butchery.” (See Conference Report [October 1946], pp.
86-88). See also President Brigham Young’s condemnation of war in J.D.,
vol. 7, p . 137.)
Yet another subtler “manner
of murder” is the unholy slaughter of countless millions of innocent children through
abortion—which, is not only considered legal and moral by the gentiles but is
actually subsidized through public taxes.
SECRET COMBINATIONS
The Book of Mormon
prophesies about the formation of “secret combinations.”
The Book of Mormon,
published in 1830, prophesied that in the last days evil men would swear oaths
in secret pacts that would be the cause of death to many people in seeking to “overthrow
the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries,” in the attempt to “get power
and gain” (Ether 8:22-25).
Down through history,
there have always been countries that have attempted to conquer other lands,
but they have not operated within secret combinations in the same manner as was
prophesied in the Book of Mormon. Many passages in the Book of Mormon make
reference to these same types of secret combinations which do not always
overthrow other cities by frontal attacks in formal warfare, but secretly infiltrate
into the government and among the people with “all manner of wickedness” (Ether
8:16). Such are the tactics of Communism, organized crime, Islamic terrorist
organizations, gangs, and the drug cartels.
Who can deny that
since the Book of Mormon was first published, a number of secret combinations
similar to those described in the Book of Mormon have emerged in various parts
of the world. These have caused death, destruction and “all manner of
wickedness” in their unrighteous quest for money and power.
WHOREDOMS
The Book of Mormon
contains a prophecy from the Lord that the gentiles in the land will be filled
with all manner of “whoredoms, and of secret abominations” (3 Nephi 16:10).
In 1830 when the Book
of Mormon was published, no mortal could have known to what great depths of
immorality the people of this nation would eventually fall. In Joseph Smith’s
day only the Lord, and of the prophets with whom He communicated, knew that
adultery and fornication, which were looked upon with abhorrence and disgust by
the majority, would actually become popular and generally accepted among the
future public. No one knew then that the little-known perversion of
homosexuality would, in the future, become tolerated and openly defended as an
acceptable “alternative” lifestyle. No one knew in 1830 what pornography was. Ven
after photography was invented, no one would have believed that peddlers of
smut could have become millionaires in a Christian nation such as America.
Before the telephone was invented, no one thought of obscene phone calls nor “dial-a-porn.”
No one in 1830 could have foreseen that in the future the legalization of
abortion would generate such an upsurge in extra-marital sex.
