Warnings from the Past (Mark E. Petersen)

In plain, blunt words, then, we are told that whatever nations occupy this land must serve God or die!

The great men of modern America have given us similar warnings, peculiarly enough.

A generation ago, Roger Babson, at that time one of our leading economists, said: “Only religion can prevent democratic rule from developing into mob rule. A nation can prosper only as its citizens are religious, intelligent, capable of service and eager to render it.” And then this great man said, and it is something to which we should give careful attention, “Every great panic we have ever had has been foreshadowed by a general decline in observance of religious principles.”

Abraham Lincoln told the people of his day that America “need fear no danger from without. … If danger were ever to threaten the United States, it will come from within. ‘As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. …’”

Then the great emancipator added this:

“We have grown in numbers, wealth and power. … But we have forgotten God. … It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

It was George Washington, our first president, who said: “… we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained. …” (First inaugural address, April 30, 1789.)

One of the most stern of all warnings came from the great statesman Daniel Webster when he said: “If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no one can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.”

God has revealed that in the last days he would warn the people through the voice of tempests, earthquakes, and seas heaving themselves beyond their bounds. Do we hear his voice now and recognize it?

Mark E. Petersen, April 1971 General Conference

more wisdom from Lincoln

It is difficult to make a man miserable when he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.  Allow me to assure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation.  There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel [and] to brood over the attempted injury.

I never behold them [the heavens filled with stars] that I do not feel I am looking into the face of God.  I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.

I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands; and if He had ever made another class that He intended should do all the work and no eating, He would have made them with hands only and no mouths.

The Lord prefers common-looking people.  That is the reason He makes so many of them.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

truth is truth, regardless of the prevailing public sentiment

If I were to read, much less answer, all the attacks made upon me, this shop might as well close for any other business.  I do the very best I know how–the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end.  If the end brings me out right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything.  If the end brings me out wrong, ten thousand angels swearing I was right would make no difference.


Abraham Lincoln