Thomas wrote:Who told you the elders would save the constitution?
The devil knows that if the elders of Israel should ever wake up, they could step forth and help preserve freedom and extend the gospel. Therefore the devil has concentrated, and to a large extent successfully, in neutralizing much of the priesthood. He has reduced them to sleeping giants. His arguments are clever….
[Says the devil]: “Don’t do anything in the fight for freedom until the Church sets up its own specific program to save the Constitution.” This brings us right back to the scripture…to those slothful servants who will not do anything until they are “compelled in all things” [D&C 58:26]. Maybe the Lord will never set up a specific church program for the purpose of saving the Constitution. Perhaps if he set one up at this time it might split the Church asunder, and perhaps he does not want that to happen yet for not all the wheat and tares are fully ripe….
[H]ave we elders been warned? Yes, we have. And have we elders been given the guidelines? Yes indeed, we have. And besides, if the Church should ever inaugurate a program [to save the Constitution], who do you think would be in the forefront to get it moving? It would not be those who were sitting on the sidelines prior to that time or those who were appeasing the enemy. It would be those choice spirits who, not waiting to be “commanded in all things,” used their own free will, the counsel of the prophets, and the Spirit of the Lord as guidelines and who entered the battle “in a good cause” and brought to pass much righteousness in freedom’s cause….
Brethren, if we had done our homework and were faithful, we could step forward at this time and help save this country. The fact that most of us are unprepared to do it is an indictment we will have to bear. The longer we wait, the heavier the chains, the deeper the blood, the more the persecution, and the less we can carry out our God-given mandate and worldwide mission. The war in heaven
is raging on the earth today. Are you being neutralized in the battle?
(April 1965, General Conference)
For years we have heard of the role the elders could play in saving the Constitution from total destruction. But how can the elders be expected to save it if they have not studied it and are not sure if it is being destroyed or what is destroying it?...
Now it is not so much a case of a man giving up all his other duties to fight for freedom, as it is a case of a man getting his life in balance so he can discharge all of his God-given responsibilities. And of all these responsibilities President McKay has said that we have “no greater immediate responsibility” than “to protect the freedom vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States.” There is no excuse that can compensate for the loss of liberty.
(October 25, 1966, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year)
You must keep your honor. You cannot yet speak officially for the country, but you can become informed. You can speak your mind. You may think you can do little about the national economy or the actions of our government and the moral weakness all about us, but we must all remember that the Lord has placed great responsibilities upon the elders of Israel in the preservation of our Constitution.
(February 11, 1979; from an address given at a Young Adult Fireside, Logan, Utah)
When the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they will have to call for the “Mormon” elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it.
(February 18, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 2:182)
It is said that brother Joseph in his lifetime declared that the Elders of this Church should step forth at a particular time when the Constitution should be in danger, and rescue it, and save it. This may be so; but I do not recollect that he said exactly so. I believe he said something like this—that the time would come when the Constitution and the country would be in danger of an overthrow; and said he, [“]If the Constitution be saved at all, it will be by the Elders of this Church.[”] I believe this is about the language, as nearly as I can recollect it. The question is whether it will be saved at all, or not.
(January 3, 1858, Journal of Discourses, 6:152)
Need we be surprised that they should trample under foot the Constitution of the United States? No; Joseph Smith told us that they would do it. Many around me here knew long ago that they would do this thing and further knew that the last people that should be found to rally around that sacred instrument and save it from the grasp of unrighteous men would be the Elders of Israel! When, therefore, we see these things progressing need we be astonished? I do not think we need be.
(October 6, 1879, Journal of Discourses, 20:318)
[They] will tear away one plank of liberty after another, until the whole fabric will totter and fall; and many other nations will be cast down and empires destroyed; and this nation will have to suffer as others will. And it will be as Joseph Smith once said, “When all others forsake the Constitution, the Elders of this Church will rally around the standard and save its tattered shreds.” We will come to its rescue and proclaim liberty to all men.
(November 30, 1879, Journal of Discourses, 20:357)
The day is not far distant when this nation will be shaken from centre to circumference. And now, you may write it down, any of you, and I will prophesy it in the name of God. And then will be fulfilled that prediction to be found in one of the revelations given through the Prophet Joseph Smith. Those who will not take up their sword to fight against their neighbor must needs flee to Zion for safety…. When the people shall have torn to shreds the Constitution of the United States the Elders of Israel will be found holding it up to the nations of the earth and proclaiming liberty and equal rights to all men, and extending the hand of fellowship to the oppressed of all nations. This is part of the programme, and as long as we do what is right and fear God, he will help us and stand by us under all circumstances.
(August 31, 1879, Journal of Discourses, 21:8)
The Prophet Joseph Smith said that “The Constitution of the United States was given by the inspiration of God.” But good, virtuous and holy principles may be perverted by corrupt and wicked men. The Lord was opposed by Satan, Jesus had his Judas, and this nation abounds with traitors who ignore that sacred palladium of liberty and seek to trample it under foot. Joseph Smith said they would do so, and that when deserted by all, the elders of Israel would rally around its shattered fragments and save and preserve it inviolate.
(April 9, 1879, Journal of Discourses, 21:31)
f the people of this nation are so blind and infatuated as to trample under foot the Constitution and other safeguards provided for the liberties of man, we do not propose to assist them in their suicidal and traitorous enterprises; for we have been told by Joseph Smith that when the people of this nation would trample upon the Constitution, the Elders of this Church would rally round the flag and defend it. (October 19, 1884, Journal of Discourses, 25:349-50)
And while other men are seeking to trample the Constitution under foot, we will try to maintain it. We have prophecies something like this somewhere; that the time would come when this nation would do as they are now doing—that is, they would trample under foot the Constitution and institutions of the nation, and the Elders of this Church would rally around the standard and maintain those principles which were introduced for the freedom and protection of men. We expect to do that, and to maintain all correct principle. (February 1, 1885, Journal of Discourses, 26:156)
We have been told repeatedly—I have heard it ever since I came into the Church almost—that the time would come when that Constitution would be in danger, and it would be the privilege and the duty of the men of God in the Church of Christ to stand up for the Constitution and help to maintain it and preserve it from being trampled under foot. (October 1912, General Conference)
The elders will remember that years ago we used to repeat that it was predicted by the Prophet Joseph Smith that the time would come when even the very Constitution of our country would be in danger, and the elders of this Church would arise in the might and the power of the Holy priesthood and bear the standard of liberty aloft, and save, or help to save, this country, from the evils of oppression and tyranny and bloodshed. (April 1918, General Conference)
I quote the words of Eliza R. Snow: “I heard the Prophet Joseph Smith say ‘that the time would come when this nation would so far depart from its original purity, its glory, and its love of freedom and the protection of civil and religious rights, that the Constitution of our country would hang, as it were, by a thread.’ He also said that this people, the sons of Zion, would rise up and save the Constitution and bear it off triumphantly.” (between January 1 and June 24, 1945, as quoted in Decisions for Successful Living, 209)
It was Joseph Smith who has been quoted as having said that the time would come when the Constitution would hang as by a thread and at that time when it was thus in jeopardy, the elders of this Church would step forth and save it from destruction. (October 1952, General Conference)
Concerning the United States, the Lord revealed to his prophets that its greatest threat would be a vast, world-wide “secret combination” which would not only threaten the United States but seek to “overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries.”... In connection with the attack on the United States, the Lord told his prophet there would be an attempt to overthrow the country by destroying the Constitution. Joseph Smith predicted that the time would come when the Constitution would hang, as it were, by a thread, and at that time “this people will step forth and save it from the threatened destruction.” It is my conviction that the elders of Israel, widely spread over the nation, will at that crucial time successfully rally the righteous of our country and provide the necessary balance of strength to save the institutions of constitutional government. (October 1961, General Conference)
The Prophet Joseph Smith said the time would come when the Constitution would hang, as it were, by a thread. Modern-day prophets for the past several decades have been warning us that we have been rapidly moving in that direction. Fortunately, the Prophet Joseph Smith saw the part the elders of Israel would play in this crisis. Will there be some of us who won’t care about saving the Constitution, others who will be blinded by the craftiness of men, and some who will knowingly be working to destroy it? He who has ears to hear and eyes to see can discern by the Spirit and through the words of God’s mouthpiece that our liberties are being taken. (April 1963, General Conference)
The Prophet Joseph Smith declared it will be the elders of Israel who will step forward to help save the Constitution, not the Church. (April 1965, General Conference)
The elders of this church have a prophetic mission yet to perform so far as the Constitution is concerned. In a discourse by Joseph Smith on July 19, 1840, he said:
Even this nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground, and when the Constitution is upon the brink of ruin, this people will be the staff upon which the nation shall lean, and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction. Now, how are the elders going to prepare for that mission? How are they going to know what the Constitution is so they will know when it is on the brink of ruin? (May 1975, New Era, 19)
Thank God for the Constitution that made it possible for the Lord to establish his church and base of operations here in the United States for these last days. And may God bless the elders of Israel that when, as President John Taylor said, “the people shall have torn to shreds the Constitution of the United States, the Elders of Israel will be found holding it up to the nations of earth and proclaiming liberty.” (May 1975, New Era, 19)
We will sustain the government in its administration, and be true to it, and maintain this position right along. And when division, strife, trouble and contention arise, we will try to still the troubled waters, and act in all honesty as true friends to the government; and when war shall exist among them, and there is no one found to sustain the remnants of liberty that may be left, the Elders of Israel will rally round
the standard of freedom and proclaim liberty to all the world. (April 1880, General Conference)
When the people shall have torn to shreds the Constitution of the United States the Elders of Israel will be found holding it up to the nations of the earth and proclaiming liberty and equal rights to all men, and extending the hand of fellowship to the oppressed of all nations. This is part of the programme, and as long as we do what is right and fear God, he will help us and stand by us under all circumstances. (August 31, 1879, Journal of Discourses, 21:8)
I heard the prophet say, “The time will come when the Government of these United States will be so nearly overthrown through its own corruption, that the Constitution will hang as it were, by a single hair, and the Latter-day Saints—the Elders of Israel—will step forward to its rescue and save it.” (July 24, 1871, Journal History of the Church, 4)
This is who told me. Any more questions?