Pride and Selfishness

I found this quote a few years ago by Neal A. Maxwell¹ who warned about the dangers of pride and selfishness. I had never thought of the fall of the “great and spacious building” in Lehi’s dream as a “gigantic, global collapse”.

I don’t know if this will occur in the next year – or in the next 100 years – given recent events. But it appears that at some point in the future, a global collapse will occur.

Scriptural warnings often couple pride and selfishness. (See, for example, D&C 56:8.) Pride can be characteristic of a whole race and will cause one of the hingepoint happenings in human history. As far as the spread of the gospel is concerned, the time will come when the Lord will take His gospel elsewhere from the proud and resistant Gentiles. He told the Nephites: “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.)

Before the millennial time when the arrogancy of the proud will cease, the Gentiles will be in a circumstance of “great pride, unto boasting, and unto great swelling, envyings, strifes, malice, persecutions, and murders, and all manner of iniquities.” (Helaman 13:22.)

The gigantic, global collapse that is yet to come will not be that of a failing stock market, but the fall of hardened mind-sets and collective pride when it all finally tumbles. Nephi testified: “It came to pass that I saw and bear record, that the great and spacious building was the pride of the world; and it fell, and the fall thereof was exceedingly great. And the angel of the Lord spake unto me again, saying: Thus shall be the destruction of all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, that shall fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” (1 Nephi 11:36.)²

Sources:

1. Elder Neal A. Maxwell served as a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from July 1981 to his death in 2004. He is widely known for his unique gift of speech and writing.↩
2. Maxwell, Neal A. Meek and Lowly. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994. 53.↩

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