The following post has been a labor of love over several years. By the time I finished it was 17 pages in a Google Doc. With no real way to cut it down and an acknowledgement that no one is likely to read a 17 page blog post I'm cutting it up to publish it in several parts (7 in total) in order to make it more likely that you'll reach the end. 😉
Part 3 can be read here: Remembering the Covenant: Modern Prophets
This is Part 4: General Apostasy.
Keep Your Eyes Open
Remembering that we’ve identified the Gentiles in the prophecy contained in 3 Nephi 16 as comprising primarily the people of the United States of America (if you’re a bit hazy on this please see Part 2 and Part 3), let’s see what the Lord’s message to us is:
And thus commandeth the Father that I should say unto you: At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, and shall be lifted up in the pride of their hearts above all nations, and above all the people of the whole earth, and shall be filled with all manner of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret abominations; and if they shall do all those things, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, behold, saith the Father, I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them.
3 Nephi 16:10
Does this sound familiar? Doesn’t this sound very much like the state of the United States today – or at least very much in the direction it is descending quite rapidly? They are the Gentiles (or the descendants of those Gentiles) who came to this land and scattered the remnants of Israel in Lehi’s promised land. They are those Gentiles who came to this land, some of them believing in Jesus Christ and seeking a place to worship Him freely, many of them not. They are they through whom the fullness of the gospel was restored. They are also they who began taking this revealed truth into all the world to share it with the house of Israel for the purpose of restoring Israel to the faith that Jesus is their Messiah. They are they who in recent decades have lifted themselves up in the pride of their hearts, holding themselves to be the best, most important nation “above all other nations,” in the world. And they are they who are even now riddled with “lyings, . . . deceits, . . . hypocrisy, . . . whoredoms, and . . . secret abominations,” and who are in many ways systematically rejecting from all facets of their society the revealed truth they brought to the world – from issues on marriage and gender identity to belief in God and an acceptance of absolute morality. And in it’s place they have turned to other “religions” and worshiping “other gods” by embracing, promoting, and encouraging lifestyles of all kinds which are contrary to the standards our Heavenly Father has set for us and for our happiness and by placing more importance and worth on the people and things of this world and their doctrine than they do on believing in and following Jesus and His Father. (See also Jacob 5:30-32)
General Apostasy and New Religions
Not wanting to turn this into a history lesson with assumptions and assertions that I can’t actually support with facts that I’ve researched or experienced, let me state simply that enough research has been done and released to show the steady decline of American religious observance and belief in God since at least the time of WWII. In their place we have instituted other gods and other religions like science, secularism, politics, and the worship of self.
If we look critically at the nation today (and other western nations from which the United States were initially populated for that matter), the most common religion among youth and young adults is popular culture and entertainment with their foundational doctrines of moral relativism, equality for all, and general permissiveness.
Then there’s science – or perhaps better said, the science community. Some of the leading and most prominent thinkers in the community preach that we ought to replace our faith in God with a faith in science. Many go to great lengths to use their particular favored branch of science to undermine and attempt to abolish faith in God and belief in His existence. Many in the rising generation use names such as Darwin, Hitchens, Dawkins, Hawking, and many others as the explanation behind why they cannot believe God exists and instead put their trust either in themselves or in science – and this without realizing that there are plenty of other people (people such as John Lennox from Oxford University) who provide legitimate counter arguments to the faith destroying ideas of leading atheistic thinkers in science.
Politics and its doctrines of political correctness, anti-discrimination, and protection of human rights is another rising and powerful religion in the US impacting people of all generations. Don’t get me wrong – kindness, respect, decency, and protecting basic human rights from those who would abuse them for their own gain are all important things. But each of these three doctrines has also been used to legalize practices contrary to the commandments of God and to keep God’s righteousness from being a pillar of governance within our society.
Furthermore, politicians are often the worst practitioners of priestcrafts in our day, frequently presenting themselves as savior figures to the nation or state they wish to represent or govern. And the people grovel to them – even occasionally worship them – in exchange for favors, blessings, and social perks. These political leaders use all kinds of tactics – including many of the dangers Jesus mentions in verse 10 above – in order to build careers out of stirring up loyalties, creating factions, and causing contention to the point that we might need to consider removing “United” from the name of our country.
Recent history has shown many of these political leaders (including the most recent presidents and presidential candidates) to be hypocrites and liars as their secret acts are brought to public light. For some this is career ending, but for others the public doesn’t seem concerned enough to make a change and those politicians carry on as before, in some cases garnering even more loyalty and support than before. Left unchecked it is not impossible that their priestcrafts could lead the United States to a second civil war, this one far worse and more devastating than the last since the enemy will be our neighbor across the street or even someone living in the same house as us instead of a group of people sequestered in a completely isolated part of the country.
Added to our worship of celebrities and political figures there are many other people attempting to remove all sense of true religion from politics and our legal code. The divide between those who use their Christian, Judaic, Islamic, or other religiously based faith to inform their politics and policy making and those who are emphatically demanding that all sense of religion be removed from the public and political arenas is growing stronger and getting ever wider.
There also seems to be a simultaneous call for a loosening of moral standards defined in our legal code which somehow seem unfair, prejudiced, bigoted, too restrictive, unnecessary, or discriminatory. The combination of these two movements is leading to a society whose moral compass is based more on personal opinion and whims in a particular moment, fear of becoming an outcast, and the momentary gratification of personal desires than on a true sense of right and wrong given to us from the Moral Center of the universe.
If we honestly consider what is happening in the US right now, between eradicating religion from politics, working to loosen the morality of the legal code, and the rise of popular culture and political correctness as foundations for our moral compass, the general moral state of the nation truly seems to be inching – or perhaps miling – ever nearer to the circumstances described by the Savior in verse 10. We should not be surprised then to see a ubiquitous decline of church attendance and actively practicing membership for all faiths – not just our own. As a result of our society abandoning God’s instructions and standards it is only a matter of time before the Lord takes His revealed truth from us completely – just as He promised He would.
No Surprise Here
As concerning as the loss of revealed truth from our society is, we should not be so surprised at its moral decline. The Book of Mormon was written for us in our day as a warning and a guide for how to navigate the circumstances we face. We are no different and no better than the Nephites who eventually declined so far that they recognized that their laws had all become corrupt (Helaman 4:21-22, 5:2). In spite of this recognition there is no record of them doing anything to restore the law to its uncorrupted state, and in the chapters that follow we find out that their entire society crumbled to pieces because they could no longer be governed by the law in its original form or any variation thereafter. We are destined to do the same unless we begin to repent.
Our laws are becoming corrupt. As our society continues to embrace the “new religions” with their seductive doctrines described above, we allow Satan to have more and more power over us. Under his influence the laws by which we are governed are slipping further and further away from God’s truth and standards and we have a responsibility to work to bring them back.
But although we have a duty and responsibility as followers of Christ to try and restore their purity (see Moroni 9:4-6) they are not likely to change back for at least two reasons. The first is that there are quite simply too many of us who do not wish to be governed by more pure or stricter standards. And the second is that we are likely too close to the Savior’s second coming – for just as the Lord came to visit the Nephites not many years after they recognized the corruption of their law, so too in our day He is preparing the world for His second coming. In other words, in the days prior to the Savior’s return it is not unlikely that our nations will be in a state of complete disrepair as were the Nephites when He came the first time. It is, therefore, likely a giant conflict of interests and an enormous losing battle to on the one hand pray for the Savior to return while simultaneously trying to fix the corruption of our laws and government. We should still try anyway.
To be continued in Part 5: Personal Apostasy . . .
This is the end of Part 4: General Apostasy.
A Russty Follower of Christ 