Verse 4: I saw
among the nations of the Gentiles the formation of a great church…
Marxism is a system,
and it was formed among nations of the gentiles, specifically in Germany and
France. Marx was not the originator of all the ideas in what we call Marxism,
but he was the first to systematize those ideas and make them into an
action-oriented movement.
Verse 5: Behold
the formation of a church which is most abominable above all other churches,
which slayeth the saints of God, yea, and tortureth them and bindeth them down,
and yoketh them with a yoke of iron, and bringeth them down into captivity.
Here we read that
persecution of saints, the followers of Christ, is another key characteristic
of the Great and Abominable Church. There is probably no belief system in
modern history that has been a greater source of violent persecution of
followers of Christ throughout the world than Marxism and all of its branches.
. . .
Verses 7-8: And
I also saw gold, and silver, and silks, and scarlets, and fine-twined linen,
and all manner of precious clothing; and I saw many harlots. And the angel
spake unto me, saying: Behold the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the
scarlets, and the fine-twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the
harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church.
Marxist movements
typically claim to represent the common worker, the lower classes, the
vulnerable in society. But in observable Marxist reality, we see a constant
tendency for leaders of Marxist movements to amass power and resources to
themselves, and destroy the lower classes of society. Some of the most notable
concentrations of Marxist activity are on the campuses of universities with
massive layers of administration and extraordinary financial endowments of
donor funding.
In modern-day
America, wealthy progressive cities are the locations of the great
concentrations of people living in extreme economic class inequality and those
cities tend to be led by Marxist-leaning politicians.
Verse 26: And
after they go forth by the hand of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, from the Jews
unto the Gentiles, thou seest the formation of that great and abominable
church, which is most abominable above all other churches; for behold, they have
taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most
precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away.
To take away plain
and precious parts of the gospel is often imagined to be a process of changing
scripture in ways that obscure God’s intended meanings. But another way to
think of this passage is to understand how critical readings of scripture
remove God from the text entirely. We have mentioned Bruno Bauer and other
figures who attacked the bible using their critical tools, and reinterpreted it
to remove any notions of miracles up to and including the resurrection of Christ.
Critical scholarship of scripture devastates communities of faith by
undermining people’s confidence in the witnesses of God that we find in
scriptural texts. Much of the field of critical scholarship has its origins in
Germany during the time of Marx, and Marx had plenty of exposure to critical
approaches to the Bible. (Dan Ellsworth, Marxism: A Latter-day Saint
Perspective [Eremos Books, 2024], 139, 140-41)
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