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