What Will Our Society Look Like Before The Second Coming? Are We There Yet? Are We Getting Close?

The following is taken from the book America in the Last Days.

Though the Book of Mormon warns us against following foolishand blind guides, we can only recognize these guides if we understand the Constitution as it was endorsed by the Lord in 1833. In Doctrine and Covenants section 98, the Lord instructs Joseph Smith:

From these verses, we see that the Lord endorsed the Constitution as an inspired document as it stood in 1833. Because there has been a multitude of changes to it since then, and it is up to us to discover “whatsoever is more or less than this,” it is the purpose of this book to explore the changes that have been made to the Constitution and to our system of government built around it to see if those changes are  not only by the Spirit but also by the letter of the Constitution given to us by our forefathers and endorsed by the Lord. The Lord tells us in Helaman 15 that we must be “firm and steadfast in the faith, and in the thing wherewith they have been made free” (verse 8).

So, let’s look into our “awful situation” and see where we, as a people, have gone wrong; where we have allowed the Constitution to become convoluted. This will help ourselves to remove from ourselves any guilt for ignorantly sinning, and better prepare us to receive the Lord when He comes in glory. The format I will use in this book is one where I try to say very little but provide you with the understanding, meaning, and intention of our Founding Fathers through direct quotations from them on each of the subjects we explore.

In a society like ours, based upon the concept that the individual is sovereign with inalienable, God-given rights, and that individual citizens have formed a government to protect those rights, it is required that a document—a constitution—specify the limits on the powers granted to the government. Just as a government is created to limit the actions of individual citizens, there must be limits placed upon the government as well. In the United States this has been accomplished with the Constitution. The limits were made by defining the areas that the government could operate in, and also where it could place limits on the sovereign individuals who created it.

Each of us has inalienable, God-given rights. Each of us is equal in the possession of those rights, and therefore, each of us should be  equal in our treatment by law and the government that we created. The right to life, the right to liberty (meaning the ability to choose how we will spend the time of our life and what we will do with our talents to support ourselves and our family), and the right to own and control property are possessed by each individual by virtue of their independent life.

To protect these rights, we enter into society and sustain institutions that provide protection against those who stand ready to take advantage of the weak and unaware. But in so doing, we must give up something: we don’t get something for nothing. What we give up is a portion of our property through taxes to support the government. We do not, however, give up a portion of our rights when we allow others—our representatives—to decide how our rights will be protected and what portion of our property we will have to relinquish for this protection. Our representatives cannot place limits on our rights or abuse the powers given to them by passing laws contrary to our individual, inalienable rights.

THOMAS JEFFERSON: "Justice is the fundamental law of society; . . . the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime; abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest, breaks up the foundations of society."

Since the creation of a government is such a dangerous proposition, and so many attempts in the past have ended in tyranny or anarchy, people throughout history have looked for better ways to enable such institutions without destroying their inalienable rights in the process.The best system yet devised is that of the United States Constitution, which balances the power of the majority against the inalienable rights of the individual.

EZRA TAFT BENSON: The function of government is to protect life, liberty, and property, and anything more or less than this is usurpation and oppression.

What the Lord, through His inspired agents, originally created for us was a federal government composed of state governments with all their sovereign powers, and a national government with very limited and restricted powers designed to accomplish only what the states could not do for themselves. We often think of the government in Washington, D.C., as the federal government, but it is only a small part of the system created. It was created to protect the states and the nation from foreign invasion, provide diplomatic intercourse for the states as a whole, provide a uniform set of weights and measures for the nation, and ensure the holding of regular interstate commerce and the interstate waterways between the states, and more. It was determined that all other powers not specifically given to the national government would be held by the state. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized this:

"As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution . . . such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare, and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere."

The preface of Doctrine and Covenants section 98 informs us that the revelation was received through the Prophet Joseph Smith in Kirtland, Ohio, on August 6, 1833. With this revelation, the Lord endorsed the US Constitution as it was at that time. Since there have been many amendments to the Constitution, and many other changes made to our national government since 1833, we are required to evaluate those changes to determine if they are “more or less than” (D&C 98:7) the original intent of what was given to us by the “hands of wise men whom [the Lord] raised up unto this very purpose” (D&C 101:80). If we, as a people, are looking for political prophets to help shape our political views, we know to look to the Founding Fathers.

The purpose of this work is to convey the results of my thirty-five-year investigation into the original intent of the Constitution, which was endorsed by the Lord in 1833, and to compare the current understanding and interpretation of the Constitution to the understanding of the Founding Fathers who created it.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments!

The following is taken from the book America in the Last Days by Morris Harmor.

** The following was taken from America in the Last Days. The opinions and views expressed herein belong solely to Morris Harmor and do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of Cedar Fort, Inc.