Pride

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Pravda on American Capitalism

June 11, 2009 in Capitalism by Greg | 6 comments

Thanks to Beetlebabeee at Beetle Blogger, I came across the article below in Pravda on the downfall of American capitalism.¹. Here is a Russian’s perspective on America’s slide toward Marxism:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

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Beetlebabee. “Yes We Can Be – A Communist Nation”. 4 June 2009. Beetle Blogger. 11 June 2009.↩

Sodom and Gomorrah

March 5, 2009 in Religion by Greg | 3 comments

A number of years ago, I attended a class taught by a former member of the Seventy in which he mentioned the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. He made particular reference to the following scripture in Ezekiel, and then stated something to the effect that when the prophets and apostles of this dispensation have discussed this topic, they have most often emphasized the latter part of this scripture:

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49).

Recently, I was talking to a colleague who suggested a similar idea. Then, the other day I picked up a copy of Approaching Zion and read the following:

Abraham was preeminently a fair dealer. The Abraham literature includes the Old Testament, which also makes it clear that the people he dealt with were scoundrels–mean and inhospitable. The nature of their economy is fully set forth: their one guiding principle was the maximizing of profits. After the flood, the Jewish writings explain, the people were haunted by an understandable feeling of insecurity. To overcome it, they undertook tremendous engineering projects and became very knowledgeable in fire, flood, earthquake, and other potential disasters. A great economic boom and commercial expansion enabled them to undertake all kinds of engineering projects for controlling a dangerous nature. But the Lord fooled them by altering the course of nature and creation. And the Nimrod legends are full of the great scientific understanding of Abraham’s day of which a good deal is made in the time of Enoch. The people had a great deal of sophistication and know-how. It was a world of unrest and insecurity, and the people were mean and short-tempered. But Abraham’s Canaan didn’t offer escape for long. The fabulous prosperity of the cities of the plain turned them into little Babylons. The record describes their ways of doing things, how they dealt with all strangers, taking away possessions by force; then the wrath of the Lord came upon them.

Sodom and Gomorrah »»

Prop 8 and Neal A. Maxwell

December 5, 2008 in Government by Greg | 1 comment

During the course of debate leading up to Prop 8, an email containing a reference to a talk by Neal A. Maxwell made its rounds among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and others. Many felt this talk which was given in 1978 – “Meeting the Challenges of Today” - was prophetic given the debate over Proposition 8. Perhaps one of the reasons many felt that Elder Maxwell’s talk adumbrative is because his message is directly applicable to the present debate.

Here is an excerpt of Elder Maxwell’s talk from which Seth Adam Smith’s masterful video was taken:

Discipleship includes good citizenship; and in this connection, if you are careful students of the statements of the modern prophets, you will have noticed that with rare exceptions–especially when the First Presidency has spoken out–the concerns expressed have been over moral issues, not issues between political parties. The declarations are about principles, not people, and causes, not candidates. On occasions, at other levels in the Church, a few have not been so discreet, so wise, or so inspired.

But make no mistake about it, brothers and sisters; in the months and years ahead, events will require of each member that he or she decide whether or not he or she will follow the First Presidency. Members will find it more difficult to halt longer between two opinions (see 1 Kings 18:21).

President Marion G. Romney said, many years ago, that he had “never hesitated to follow the counsel of the Authorities of the Church even though it crossed my social, professional, or political life” (CR, April 1941, p. 123). This is a hard doctrine, but it is a particularly vital doctrine in a society which is becoming more wicked. In short, brothers and sisters, not being ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ includes not being ashamed of the prophets of Jesus Christ.

We are now entering a period of incredible ironies. Let us cite but one of these ironies which is yet in its subtle stages: we shall see in our time a maximum if indirect effort made to establish irreligion as the state religion. It is actually a new form of paganism that uses the carefully preserved and cultivated freedoms of Western civilization to shrink freedom even as it rejects the value essence of our rich Judeo-Christian heritage.

Prop 8 and Neal A. Maxwell »»

Pride and Selfishness

October 20, 2008 in Religion by Greg | No comments

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:

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.↩
Maxwell, Neal A. Meek and Lowly. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994. 53.↩