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Sunday, August 7, 2022

Vipers IV: Slippery Treasures and Shaky Ground

 Previously: Vipers III: Transformers and the Star of Remphan


The powers that be control the world economy. We labor under a monetary Ponzi scheme headquartered from the Federal Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The FED inflates the money supply by simply creating fake money on a computer, the IMF uses SDR's (Special Drawing Rights), which are reserve assets from a "basket" of "artificial" currencies and commodities which member countries can use as a "claim to currency." As in the words of Dumb and Dumber's Lloyd Christmas, "that's as good as money sir, those are IOUs." 

SDR's are not based upon gold and silver, but rather on a specific currency's relative value to other currencies, which means the entire world economy is based on nothing and is essentially a house of cards. Actually it is based on electricity. Last winter I wrote about that in my post entitled Mystery Babylon Part III: Ignorance and Fear. The electrical energy model is how the powers that be have kept the American money machine rolling on this long. This is the reason we have never had hyperinflation like Weimer Germany or Zimbabwe. They inflate just enough to maintain the wealth gap between the social classes. That is between the 1% and the rest of us. 

But something is different this time. The perfect storm is brewing. The combination of the Biden Administration shutting down domestic oil production, the sanctions on Russia, the tariffs on China, the aftermath of Covid shut-downs, rising food and gas prices, and the housing market's impending decline, could be the beginning of a financial crisis that will make the Great Depression seem like a walk in the park. The FED has been busy with QE (quantitative easing) infinity since 2008, the last time the real economy caught up to the fake one, and is finally raising interest rates to slow the economic fury that it created in the first place. It's all a big game, and you, my friends, are the losers. The cards are stacked against you, even though the deck doesn't exist at all. None of it is real. It's just a dog and pony show designed to trick you into believing in and propping up their fake financial system. 

But it is the generation of vipers, the royal bloodlines, the "illumined" ones, who control monetary policy and bankers, and I believe that they are deliberately attempting to destroy the dollar so they can introduce the "one-world" digital currency that will usher in the Anti-Christ and the mark of the beast. I could be wrong, but it certainly seems like things are headed that direction. There has been a lot of noise about something called the “Great Reset" since the Covid shut-downs two years ago. Funny how statists and globalists love to call things "great." The great war, the great depression, the great recession, and now the great reset. Believe me there will be nothing great about it. It is merely an opportunity for the globalists to capitalize on the current crisis, which they created in the first place. In fact, these megalomaniacs even admit their plans. Rahm Emanuel, is one such sociopath who uttered this phrase in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis:
You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. (Source)
Emanuel was President Obama's Chief of Staff at the time. He has since been the mayor of Chicago and is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Japan. Ya, he's a globalist, and a leftist, and an elite. What he is admitting to is the government ratcheting effect that was pointed out by libertarian scholar Robert Higgs. In Higgs' classic book, Crisis and Leviathan, he describes the relationship between crises and increased government intervention in the private sector. With every crisis, be it war or economic depression, the government slowly tightens its ratchet, until eventually the economy implodes under the pressure. The Great Reset might be that implosion. 

The term Great Reset was popularized by another sociopath, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the Orwellian World Economic Forum (WEF). Schwab has been at this a long time. The forerunner to the WEF was called the European Management Forum, and was his 1971 brainchild. He wrote a book called Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering, in which he introduced a capitalist system that he would later call "stakeholder capitalism," but trust me, there is nothing capitalistic about it. Stakeholder capitalism replaces shareholder capitalism, the old system in which corporations are beholden to those who actually own them. But in stakeholder capitalism, you have other interested parties outside of the shareholders, like customers, employees, suppliers, and local communities. The word community is another way of saying government, and Schwab's idea of community spans to public-private partnerships, government policy, non-profit organizations, and global financial and governing institutions. Including organizations like the UN, the IMF, the WEF, UNISEF, the WHO, etc. 

They preface the stakeholder idea with the word ethical, as if it is pointing the way toward a more moral system. But historically, partnerships between government and private corporations have been anything but moral and ethical. The Italians had a word for this system, it's called fascism. Other names for it are corporatism and cronyism. What do you think happens to all those ma and pa shops that can't afford to comply with regulations or aren’t favored by these governing "communities"? I'll make it simple for you: they disappear, along with competition, low prices, high quality products and services, and consumer choices. Stakeholder capitalism is the end of capitalism. 

In the 1960s a leftist scholar named Gabriel Kolko wrote a book called The Triumph of Conservatism, in which he coined the term "regulatory capture." To prove his point he wrote another book called Railroads and Regulations, in which he showed historically how the burgeoning railroad industry was agitating for its own regulation to weed out competitors. I found Kolko's books by reading Murray Rothbard's The Progressive Era, a comprehensive treatise on the damage done by sycophants like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and the banksters who backed them. He makes the point that cartels can only be successful when they are enforced by government regulation or fiat. A cartel in a free market never stays intact. Some member is always tempted to undersell or undercut the cartel because of the opportunity to increase revenue. In the railroad industry this was done through discounts or rebates for heavy shippers, and the first thing the big railroads wanted to abolish through regulation was, you guessed it, rebates and discounts. The idea behind regulation was to keep prices high and competition low. It was never about consumer safety, satisfaction, or service. 

The Federal Reserve is also a cartel. It started as a group of private bankers who lobbied Senator Nelson Aldridge in 1913 to pass a law forming a government-protected banking cartel. G. Edward Griffin's book, The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, catalogs the story of its inception. In terms of "regulatory capture," the FED eliminated banking competition by granting itself a monopoly on the issuance of money, becoming the lender of last resort, and subjecting all banks to regulations under its purview. The common goal of both the railroad and banking cartels was to keep prices artificially high. That was accomplished by squeezing out competition through forcing compliance to high-cost regulations. Those who can't afford to comply go away, and so do free markets. Of course, this is all claimed to be done for the "common good" and for "ethics" and "higher morality" etc. But it's all nonsense. What is really happening is that some are benefitting at the expense of others. And a cartel as big as the Federal Reserve benefits at the expense of everyone. 

When government gets involved in business, some corporations are favored and others are not. It's like picking winners and losers before the game starts. Just consider FDR's New Deal legislation passed under the guise of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. During a time when people were and jobless starving in America, big agriculture lobbied the government to keep prices artificially high by passing a law ordering the deliberate destruction of crops and livestock (6 million pigs and millions of acres of grain). When demand is high and you decrease the supply what happens? You can learn this in any economics 101 course. Prices go up. So during the Great Depression people who already couldn't afford to buy food had to pay higher prices for less of it. But FDR is credited in the history books for "getting us out of the Great depression." Do you see how this works? The “heroes” are not heroes at all. They are merely Gadianton robbers helping out their buddies. The Book of Mormon tells it how it really is:
And seeing the people in a state of such awful wickedness, and those Gadianton robbers filling the judgment seats--having usurped the power and authority of the land; laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before him; doing no justice unto the children of men;

Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the world, and, moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills-- (Helaman 7:4-5) 

As you can see clearly from history, economic fascism has been the norm since the turn of the 20th Century. Klaus Schwab's Great Reset will be more of the same. A whole lot more. It will be fascism on stilts. It won't just be about keeping prices artificially high. It will be about using corporations to control the masses. Stakeholders will ensure that a "good" corporation has a high social credit score, is environmentally conscious, is woke, is "essential" in the wake of the pandemic, and is fully compliant with CDC vaccination recommendations for its employees. Corporations will become more about "social justice" than selling goods and services. Non-woke corporations will lose stakeholder support, and could face the prospect of being squeezed out of the market. The new "winners" will support and push agendas like UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, health protocols from the WHO, the LBGT agenda, critical race theory, gun control, and social justice warrior groups like BLM and Antifa. Can you see where this is going? 

Now add one more element into the mix: Big Tech. 

Giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and their subsidiaries have been selling your browsing data to the highest bidder. Notice they all flourished through the pandemic while restaurants and other small businesses were dying off like flies. They used the precedent of the plandemic to censure you, making sure that anything that you post on their platform is government approved and "fact checked." Can you see what's going on here? The government is getting corporations to do its dirty work. We are headed for a corporatocracy. This is the real goal of the Great Reset. They have to get you ready for the coming technology that will merge you with IA and the cloud. We are about to "transcend" as a race. Being human alone will simply not be good enough anymore. I found an interesting article about the Great Reset written by an author named Michael Rectenwald. He recently wrote a book called Google Archipelago, comparing big tech to the Gulag Archipelago nightmare authored by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Turns out they are not that different. Here is his chilling statement in reference to IA and the future of humanity:

As if the economic and governmental resets were not dramatic enough, the technological reset reads like a dystopian science fiction model. It is based on the Fourth Industrial Revolution--or 4-IR for short. The first, second, and third industrial revolutions were the mechanical, electrical, and digital revolutions. The 4-IR marks the convergence of existing and emerging fields, including Big Data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum computing, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. The foreseen result will be the merging of the physical, digital, and biological worlds, which presents a challenge to the ontologies by which we understand ourselves and the world, including the definition of being a human being. 

There is nothing original about this. Transhumanists and Singularitarians (prophets of technological singularity) such as Ray Kurzweil forecasted these and other revolutionary developments long ago. What's different about the globalists' vision of 4-IR is the attempt to harness it to the ends of the Great Reset.

If already existing 4-IR developments are any indication of the future, then the claim that it will contribute to human happiness is false. These developments include internet algorithms that feed users prescribed news and advertisements and downrank or exclude banned content; algorithms that censor social media content and consign "dangerous" individuals and organizations to digital gulags; "keywords warrants" based on search engine inputs; apps that track and trace COVID violations and report offenders to the police; robot police with scanners to identify and round up the unvaccinated and other dissidents; and smart cities where residents are digital entities to be monitored, surveilled, and recorded, and where data on their every move is collected, collated, stored, and attached to a digital identity and a social credit score. 

In short, 4-IR technologies subject human beings to a kind of technological management that makes surveillance by the NSA look like child's play. Schwab goes so far as to cheer developments that aim to connect human brains directly to the cloud for the sake of "data mining" our thoughts and memories. If successful, this would constitute a technological mastery over decision-making that would threaten human autonomy and undermine free will. 

The 4-IR seeks to accelerate the merging of humans and machines, resulting in a world in which all information, including genetic information, is shared, and every action, thought, and motivation is known, predicted, and possibly precluded. Unless taken out of the hands of corporate-socialist technocrats, the 4-IR will eventually lead to a virtual and inescapable prison of body and mind. (Michael Rectenwald, What is the Great Reset, Imprimis (December 2021, Volume 50, Issue 12) 

The words thought crime and the movie Minority Report come to mind. Can we imagine such a dystopian nightmare? Will God let things get this far before He intervenes? Was this part of the "corruption" of all flesh that transpired during the days of Noah? It's hard to say. But fortunately we have been given a typology of future destruction in the Book of Mormon. It provides a road map of how events might play out, and I think I might have an idea where we might be on that timeline. 

Nephi and the Sealing Power

Nephi, son of Helaman, was so trusted by the Lord that he was given the sealing power. There is much more to this power than most of us were taught in the corporate ChurchTM. We tend to think of it as the power to seal husbands and wives, children, and dead ancestors to each other in the afterlife. But the truth is that only God can seal those relationships by the Holy Spirit of Promise. According to the Book of Mormon and the JST translation of the Old Testament, the sealing power has much more to do control of the elements. According to JST Genesis 14, the order after the Son of God, or the Melchizedek priesthood, is also the sealing power, and these are the things it can do:
For God having sworn unto Enoch and unto his seed with an oath by himself; that every one being ordained after this order and calling should have power, by faith, to break mountains, to divide the sea, to dry up waters, to turn them out of their course; 

To put at defiance the armies of nations, to divide the earth, to break every brand, to stand in the presence of God; to do all things according to his will, according to his command, subdue principalities and powers; and this by the will of the Son of God which was from before the foundation of the world. (JST Genesis 14:30-31) 

In the Book of Mormon the requirements for one to obtain this power are set out. First of all, Nephi never asked the Lord to give him this power, the Lord just decided to bestow it upon him. Asking for it would involve some type of ambition, which seems improper when we're dealing with power over the elements and over the lives of others. Those few who obtain it must be meek and lowly of heart. Here is what the Lord said about Nephi:

Blessed art thou, Nephi, for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou has with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou has not feared them, and has not sought thine own life, but has sought my will, and to keep my commandments. (Helaman 10:4)

Nephi has sought the will of God, and put his own life and his own will on hold to serve the Lord. He has declared the word with "unwearyingness" and has not feared losing his own life. He has offered up his sacrifice of a broken heart and contrite spirit and proved himself to the Lord. In modern terms that would be tantamount to giving up your job, business, reputation, security, time, hobbies, money, and possibly even your family to serve God. Not many are willing to do this. Especially when those they are preaching to might try to kill them. This is not a light thing. Nephi has sacrificed everything for the Lord. That is why he qualifies to receive this power. Not only that, but his personality is such that when given this great power he still chooses mercy over justice, which I will explain in a moment. For now, here is how the Lord Himself describes this power:

Behold, thou art Nephi, and I am God. Behold, I declare it unto thee in the presence of mine angels, that ye shall have power over this people, and shall smite the earth with famine, and with pestilence, and destruction, according to the wickedness of this people. 

Behold, I give unto you power, that whatsoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and thus shall ye have power among this people. 

And thus, if ye shall say unto this temple it shall be rent it twain, it shall be done. And thus, if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou cast down and become smooth, it shall be done. And behold, if ye shall say that God shall smite this people, it shall come to pass. (Helaman 10:6-10) 

After the Lord declares this to Nephi, He commands him to go and warn the people that they will be smitten with destruction if they do not repent. What were they guilty of? The very same things we are doing in America today: building up secret combinations, partaking of their spoils, coming down to believe in their secret works, destroying the laws of the land, destroying freedom, rejecting Christ, etc. The word "smitten" comes from the root word smite, which means to attack, strike, or injure. The judgment that was suppose to come to these Nephites was war. But Nephi chose the higher road of mercy and asked the Lord to replace the war with a famine (Helaman 11:4). Many of them still died, but the majority of them, when they saw they were about to perish, began to remember the Lord and repent. Then, when Nephi saw that the people were repenting, he asked the Lord to turn away His fierce anger and send rain. And Nephi's prayer was answered. 

Just pause for a moment and wrap your mind around this. Nephi, a mortal man, was able to convince Almighty God to change His mind about war, to turn away His anger, and to send rains on the earth to curtail the famine. Can you imagine the Lord trusting a person this much? This reveals a bit of the personality of God. He wants to share his power with us. He wants to trust us with massive amounts of power. He had vetted Nephi and proved him to receive this power, as He had also done with Moses, Enoch, Elijah, Melchizedek, and others. This following verse reveals how the Lord knew that Nephi would not abuse this power:

And now, because thou has done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless these forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yea, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will. (Helaman 10:5, Emphasis added)

God knew Nephi would not ask for anything contrary to His will. That is exactly why the sealing power was bestowed upon him. So what is my point in all of this? God needs servants like Nephi to convince His children to repent. He does this for us. He is just waiting for us to repent and turn to Him. Note how the text describes how the Nephites repented. They did two things that qualified them for deliverance from the famine: one, they "swept away the band of Gadianton from amongst them," and two, they were humble (Helaman 11:10-11). I believe this account was included in scripture to show how God tries to reclaim His children. We need to be humbled.

In the next chapter Mormon inserts his own commentary, and in the first few verses you can really feel his angst. He is describing human nature and man he is really nailing us. As you read his words try to put yourself in this category. Try to humble yourself and realize that he is describing you and me. This is just how we are:

And thus we can behold how false, and also the unsteadiness of the hearts of the children of men; yea, we can see that the Lord in his great infinite goodness doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him. 

Yea, and we may see at the very time when he doth prosper his people, yea, in the increase of their fields, their flocks and their herds, and in gold, and in silver, and in all manner of precious things of every kind and art; sparing their lives, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies that they should not declare wars against them; yea, in fine, doing all things for the welfare and happiness of his people; yea, then is the time that they do harden their hearts, and do forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One--yea, and this because of their ease, and their exceedingly great prosperity. 

And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him. (Helaman 12:1-3, Emphasis added) 

And there you have it. This is us. If God does not bring the hammer down we simply won't repent. We get too comfortable with our ease, with our prosperity, with our traditions, with our, dare I say, religion. We think that we are the ones who are drumming up all our prosperity, peace, and happiness. We work hard to have money, we pray hard to have peace, we go to church and that is what is bringing all these blessings. Utter nonsense. God is the one sustaining us from moment to moment, even our very breath as king Benjamin said. And He sustains both the wicked and the righteous. And if you keep reading Helaman 12, you'll find that Mormon continues his rant. He ends by parroting the words as king Benjamin, saying that we are less than the dust of the earth. But why? Have you ever thought about what it really means to be less than the dust of the earth? Mormon actually explains what it means in the verse below:

O how great is the nothingness of the children of men; yea, even they are less than the dust of the earth. For behold, the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither, to the dividing asunder, at the command of our great and everlasting God. (Helaman 12:7-8) 

The dust of the earth actually obeys the commands of God. But we don't. There it is. 

We obey God until He blesses us with prosperity, and then we forget about Him, and He has to find a way to humble us to get us back on track, and the cycle goes on and one. You can see this cycle, the Nephite pride cycle, repeated over and over again in the Book of Mormon. God is trying to tell you something. He is trying to wake you up. He is literally shaking you. But most of His children are in a deep sleep. Oblivious to the existence of secret combinations, infatuated with religious leadership, and prone to trust authority by following "the wise and thoughtful recommendations of medical experts and government leaders." 

In fact, many of us don't even realize that we are not keeping the commandments of God. We confuse them with the rules and requirements of our perspective religious institutions. The "commandments" of the institution become our gods. We rationalize that as long as we are checking off our boxes we are pleasing God and on the path. But this is a great deception that lulls us into carnal security. In God's kingdom there are no boxes to check. There is just Christ, the keeper of the gate, who is waiting for us to ask and to knock. And once we finally do, He gives us “commandments not a few.” In addition to the societal commandments He gave to Moses, there are personal ones that flow to servants like Nephi. This is what it means to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. This is what it means to endure to the end. It is not enough to simply follow the rules of an institution. That will never bear fruit. We have to learn to receive personal commandments from God Himself. He wants to prepare you for the future, and I mean the distant future eons from now when we can eventually become exactly as Christ is. Joseph Smith taught in the Lectures on Faith that in order for a man to be saved he must be precisely as Christ is; Christ being the great prototype of the saved man. And how can we ever learn to be like Him if we don't know Him? This is why Jesus had such disdain for the religious leaders of his day. They were attempting a bait and switch. They were placing themselves in the position of the keeper of the gate, they were shutting up the kingdom of God to those who were deceived by them. The same thing is happening today. 

Nephi's personal commandments came with great responsibility. Obviously he had ascended far up Jacob's ladder prior to receiving the sealing power. We are all at different levels on that ladder. For some of us today these personal commandments might come in the form of starting a blog, writing a book, starting a podcast or a YouTube channel, organizing conferences, writing papers, making a documentary film, attending a fellowship, or creating a website. For others following the Lord may involve more ominous consequences. He may ask you to give up your reputation, to sacrifice your career, to be excommunicated from your religion, to be shunned by your friends and family, or in the case of one friend of mine, to be prosecuted by the government in a trial for simply standing up for personal liberty. They took everything from him, including his home, but he and his wife laid it all on the line for the Lord. And now they are facing the prospect of prison time. Read their story herehere and here. Please pray for them. 

But everything God does and asks us to do is for a wise purpose, far beyond our comprehension. Small tasks like a blog, a book, or a podcast may help to wake someone up to our "awful situation," but those who sacrifice everything for God and put all things on the altar before Him are the ones He uses to accomplish great things. The scriptures are full of examples. Lehi gave up his comfortable life and riches to live in tents. Alma gave up the judgement seat to preach the gospel. The sons of Mosiah gave up their right to the kingdom to risk their lives preaching to the Lamanites. Ether lived in a cave to avoid being killed, and Moroni wandered alone for years. But because these servants made these sacrifices, we have the Book of Mormon today. We have an account of how God deals with His children, and what He asks them to do. I won't sugar coat this. God asks us to do extremely hard things. Joseph Smith wrote about this in Liberty Jail in the midst of suffering and anguish. Remember the Lord’s gentle rebuttal to Joseph’s petition for deliverance?:

The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he? (D&C 122:8)

The harder the trial the sweeter the fruit. We will perhaps never know what fruit our sacrifices will bear in the future. We will never know who might read our blog, or our books, or listen to our podcasts, or seek us out because of a ruined reputation, or attend our conferences, watch our documentary, or find our YouTube channel. And those who lay it all on the line, like Nephi, may also never know the fruit that comes of it. But there will be fruit. The Book of Mormon and the Restoration are the fruit of Joseph's sacrifices and sufferings, the New Testament record is the fruit of the ancient apostles sacrifices, the promised land of Israel was the fruit of Moses sacrifice, and the promised land of America was Lehi's. For those of you who are suffering now, there will be fruit. God's purposes will roll on, and because of the sacrifices of some even now the heavens are open again. And my friend that I mentioned earlier, just might be the catalyst that unveils the unholy alliance between powerful religious institutions and secret combinations. God plans on revealing all of their secret works and secret parts. This is all part of His plan to sweep the earth with truth prior to His coming again. This is truly a fascinating time to be alive. 

Samuel the Lamanite and Slippery Treasures

Samuel was the epitome of what I consider a rogue prophet. He literally came out of nowhere, appearing mysteriously out of the woodwork. Worse yet, he was a Lamanite, whom the Nephites were prone to dismiss out of hand on racial terms. It would've been like the sending a Samaritan to preach to the Jews or a Muslim to preach to modern Americans. This is God's sense of humor and irony at work. Only the humble will listen to rogue prophets, the vast majority will dismiss them based on their lack of credentials and perceived "inferior" social status. 

Samuel was called to Zarahemla, the capital city of the Nephites. If you are into studying Book of Mormon geography, according to the heartland model espoused by Wayne May, Rod Meldrum, and others, Zarahemla was in Iowa, across the Mississippi river (or the Nephite name the river Sidon) and directly west of Nauvoo. Joseph Smith actually alluded to Zarahemla's location, and the Nauvoo temple was supposed to be built directly across the river from where the ancient Nephite temple had been. Watch this lecture from Wayne to find out all the juicy details about the temple site:


Knowing that Zarahemla was in Iowa gives Samuel's prophecy increased significance for us, the Gentiles who inhabit this promised land. Nauvoo being across the river from Zarahemla represents a mirror image of the Nephite civilization. We are connected to them and they are connected to us. We are making the same mistakes they made, and we are fast approaching the time when we will be swept off this land as they were. The Nephites speak to us from the dust. Have you ever thought about what that really means? Besides the obvious implication that these people are dead and have decomposed in the dust, there is a deeper meaning staring us right in the face. They speak to us from the dust because we share the same dust. This is why the work May and Meldrum are doing in the heartland model is so important. The very nation we have built our cities and strongholds on was once home to the cities and strongholds of the Nephites. Whether we like it or not, we are intimately connected to them because of the land. This land, America, is the promised land and choice land described by Nephite prophets. Here is what Moroni said about this land:
And he had sworn in his wrath unto the brother of Jared, that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness of his wrath should come upon them.  

And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity. 

For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God. And it is not until the fulness of iniquity among the children of the land, that they are swept off. 

And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles, that ye may know the decrees of God--that ye may repent, and not continue in your iniquities until the fulness come, that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done. 

Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written. (Ether 2: 8-12, Emphasis added) 

I'm not sure how Moroni could make it any more obvious. This land, the land upon which I and most of you readers are standing, is the promised land given to the Nephites. He even calls us out by name, calling us Gentiles, in case we missed the point. And having this knowledge that we are the people the Book of Mormon is calling out to repentance, should make us take Samuel's prophecy much more serious. In fact, we should liken and apply every word of it to us, because after all, the Nephites are dead, it does them no good now. 

The dust of the Nephite civilization cleared centuries ago, but it settled on the surface of America, falling like snow into every nook and cranny of this diverse geographical wonder. Forensic traces of our fallen predecessors are everywhere, like a vast crime scene where new evidence is being discovered in exponential waves. And reading Samuel's words is like peering into an alternate dimension where we can see a mirror image of ourselves. There we find our collective doppelganger, vying for our attention as we carelessly ignore it. 

And with that imagery in mind, let's get into Samuel.  

Samuel prophesied "whatsoever things the Lord put into his heart" to the Nephites in Zarahemla. This was off the cuff and unrehearsed. The Spirit told Samuel what to say. I will touch on the main points of the prophecy, but keep in mind that these Nephites were not irreligious, they perceived themselves as God's people. And many probably thought to themselves, "why should we listen to this backwards, heathen Lamanite? We already have the truth, we already have our true church.”

Now imagine this scenario: you have grown up in the LDS Church, you're faithful in your callings, you sustain the brethren, you attend church regularly, you hold a temple recommend, and you believe you're on the straight and narrow path. Suddenly a man emerges from the lower margins of society, he doesn't call himself a prophet but he begins systematically attacking all of your religious paradigms and sacred cows. He is actively speaking, writing, and publishing his messages for free on social media, YouTube, and other platforms. He declares that God has commanded him to say these things. He says your church president is a wolf in sheep's clothing, a practitioner of priestcraft, a freemason, and a co-conspirator with the Pope and his Jesuit priests. He even calls him a Luciferian. Worse yet, he declares that your founding prophet, Joseph Smith, was the only inspired president of the church, and that all others after him were impostors and in apostacy. He asserts that your church, the institution you equate with God, is just like all other churches, and he uses the Book of Mormon to prove it, the very book that you thought distinguishes your church from all others. And finally, he asserts that if you don't repent as a people you will be destroyed by God. You are immediately offended and incensed at his rambling. You believe he is off his rocker, and in apostacy. You think to yourself, "I have no reason to repent, I hold a temple recommend, I sustain the brethren, I'm active in my ward, I magnify my calling, I've already confessed my major sins to the bishop, I'm clean before the Lord." 

You are delighted when the man is excommunicated, publicly humiliated, and shunned by faithful members of the Church. Secretly, you wish more ill will on him. You wish he would just disappear and go away, but because of his excommunication, his message gains more momentum, and more members of the Church who are questioning things are intrigued by what he is saying. This angers you even more, and deep down in the recesses of your subconscious mind, you wish him dead. You wish that God would turn into that harsh deity of the Old Testament, the punisher, and deal with this "evil" man. You rationalize that he is guilty of capital punishment, that his sins are worthy of death, and that the blood of Christ could never atone for him. He is past forgiveness, therefore, it's no crime to have him killed. After all, he is attacking the "Lord's Church," and destroying the faith of many innocent saints who you perceive to be weak in that faith. And down the slippery slope you go. 

What I have just described is likely how these Nephites viewed Samuel the Lamanite. A rogue nobody saying incredibly harsh things about them. He wasted no time warning them of their impending destruction:

The sword of justice hangeth over this people... yea, heavy, destruction awaiteth this people... and nothing can save them save it be repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. (Helaman 13:5-6)

Samuel declared that this destruction would come in 400 years from that time, which it did, ending the Nephite civilization for good. But this was in 6 BC, and by the year 34 AD, forty years later, most of the remaining elder Nephites and their progeny were killed in the natural disasters that accompanied the visitation of Christ in 3rd Nephi chapter 8. In a way, his prophecy was two-fold, predicting two different instances of destruction. But it was even more than that. Because about ten years after Samuel appeared on the scene, the Nephites find themselves immersed in a battle with the Gadiantons, and from that point on destruction was all that was on the Nephite horizon. Shortly after that the government collapsed and the people split up into tribes and factions, but the Gadiantons were alive and well until Christ covered them up with fire, mountains, mudslides, tempests, and bodies of water.

The next major point Samuel made was an important one for our day. There is an unwritten tradition in the LDS Church that nonmembers do not have access to the Holy Ghost. Oh sure they have the Spirit of Christ, but the gift of the Holy Ghost is only available to confirmed members of the Church. However, God does not follow foolish tradition, and when wickedness reaches a certain point He withdraws His Spirit altogether. How ironic that God withdraws His Spirit from the very people who believe they are the only haves who have it. Not only that, but He takes away His word from them as well. Just like we have God's word in the Book of Mormon and other standard works today, the Nephites had the brass plates and must've thought themselves more righteous than the Lamanites. And although a people can have God's revealed word in their hands, He can take away their understanding of it, He can take away that small portion of the gospel that they think they understand:

Therefore, thus saith the Lord: Because of the hardness of the hearts of the people of the Nephites, except they repent I will take away my word from them, and I will withdraw my Spirit from them, and I will suffer them no longer, and I will turn the hearts of their brethren against them. (Helaman 13:8)

Notice the last two lines. God says He will no longer suffer them. Another word for suffer is to "bear" and another way of expressing that line is that God is no longer willing to "put up with" them. He won't protect them from the Lamanites any longer. How many of us realize that it is not the U.S. military that protects America? It is God protecting this land, despite the fact that the wars our government has waged have been immoral and unconstitutional. The only reason this land has not been taken over by a foreign superpower is because of the promises made by God on the land in the Book of Mormon. As soon as we stop serving the God of this land, who is Jesus Christ, His promises are gone and we will be left to ourselves to be swept off. However, God's promises will still be on the this land, and He will give it to another people. The Book of Mormon says that those people will be the remnant of Jacob (See 3 Nephi 21:22)

As you can see, we are already standing on shaky ground. Samuel has explained to the Nephites, and to us, their mirror-image doppelgangers, that God has taken away His Spirit, His word, and His protection, and that destruction is soon imminent. Are we paying attention yet? Are we taking God seriously? Because things are about to get real. 

Next Samuel drives home another astounding point: the only reason we have not been destroyed yet is because of the few righteous among us. The righteous are not who we think they are. They are not the rich and powerful, famous, adored, worshipped, and emulated, leaders of religions. They are not the dutiful and dogmatic religious types who feign obedience to the rules and leaders of institutions. They are the humble followers of Christ, who have repented by turning their hearts to Him, and have cast away their idols of riches, who have forsaken their graven images, and who have considered themselves fools before Him. They are spread out over the entire earth and they are seeking to know Him. Pay close attention to the words of Samuel below, he gives us clues as to what it means to be ripened for destruction:

Yea, who unto this great city of Zarahemla; for behold, it is because of those who are righteous that it is saved; yea, wo unto this great city, for I perceive, saith the Lord, that there are many, yea, even the more part of this great city, that will harden their hearts against me, saith the Lord.

But blessed are they who will repent, for them I will spare. But behold, if it were not for the righteous who are in this great city, behold, I would cause that fire should come down out of heaven and destroy it.

Be behold, it is for the righteous' sake that it is spared. But behold, the time cometh, saith the Lord, that when ye shall cast out the righteous from among you, than shall ye be ripe for destruction... (Helaman 13:12-14, Emphasis added) 

And how are the righteous cast out from among he wicked? They excommunicate them from their churches, they shun them, they persecute them, they cast them into prison for saying the wrong things, or not paying taxes. They ostracize them from society if they don't get a certain vaccine, or think a certain way, and at worst they simply kill them. We have already begun to see this phenomenon in the LDS Church, who excommunicate anyone who attempts to challenge the official narrative of church history, but it will get much worse. Government and religion, who work together secretly now, will appear to join forces in the public eye, to round up and cast out the righteous, but they will call them dissidents. Only with the force and backing of government can people be exiled, imprisoned, or executed. And it only makes sense when societies begin doing this that they are "ripe for destruction," because at that point all vestiges of justice, liberty, and freedom are gone. God has to wipe the slate clean and start over. His plan cannot be implemented in a milieu of such gross tyranny. He is bound by the promises on the land to destroy such a people and give another group a chance. 

Now we come to the curse that God put on the Nephites. They could not hide up their treasures in the earth without losing them. Why? Because their hearts were set upon their riches:

And it shall come to pass, saith the Lord of Hosts, yea, our great and true God, that whoso shall hide up treasures in the earth shall find them no more, because of the great curse of the land, save he be a righteous man and shall hide it up unto the Lord.

For I will, saith the Lord, that they shall hide up their treasures unto me; and cursed be they who hide not their treasures unto me; for none hideth up their treasures unto me save it be the righteous; and he that hideth not up his treasures unto me, cursed is he, and also the treasure, and none shall redeem it because of the curse of the land.  

And the day shall come that they shall hide up their treasures, because they have set their hearts upon riches; and because they have set their hearts upon their riches, and will hide up their treasures when they shall flee before their enemies; because they will not hide them up unto me, cursed be they and also their treasures; and in that day shall they be smitten, saith the Lord. (Helaman 13:18-20) 

How do we apply this to us today? The modern curse on the land is the curse of inflation. It is the most egregious tax of all, because it is hidden in plain sight. We cannot see it because we don't study the history of money and banking. We don't understand that gold and silver are real money, not the fake paper that is printed in government minting presses. Now-a-days they don't print much of it, most of it is created in a computer ledger and conjured out of thin air. It makes everything we own and want to buy slippery. We can't hold onto the value of things we already own. Our houses go up in monetary value, but when we sell them the profits don't go far on the next house. We put away money in our 401ks, but that money buys less when we retire. We "hide up" money in the stock market, in our savings account, in cryptocurrency, in real estate, or in business ventures, but because the economy is a house of cards based on debt and inflation, none of these investments are solid or secure. For most of us, wealth, financial freedom, and security are just out of reach. Inflation ensures that the carrot is dangled close enough to keep us working for it but just out of the clutches of our grasp. Yet, because our hearts are set upon riches, we keep struggling for the goods that never come. We keep believing in and propping up the system, dreaming of the chance to strike it rich. Instead of consecrating our gains to the Lord and to the poor, we hide up everything for ourselves.

There was a time when Church leaders encouraged members to get food storage for future uncertain times. Although that time has passed, there are scores of Mormons who took that counsel to heart and prepared for economic turmoil. There are millions of preppers in myriad religious groups across the country that have also prepared. Who knows how much cash, gold, silver, guns, ammo, food, alcohol, coffee, cigarettes, and other provisions are buried, stockpiled, stored, and stashed by these preppers across the country. There is nothing wrong with this, it's a good idea... but it won't save you. The same curse that God put on the Nephites may be put upon us after the advent of total economic collapse, and these provisions may never be found. The only thing that will save us is learning how to follow the Spirit. Like Joseph the step-father of Jesus, we may be awakened in the middle of the night by the Spirit telling us to leave everything behind, including food storage, and get the hell out of Dodge. Like Nephi, we may be led "not knowing beforehand the things which we should do," and the Spirit may prompt us to give away our food storage, or begin an arduous trek across jagged mountains, or to hide in our crawl spaces or attics. It may tells us who we should join up with, who we should trust, who we should help, or who will help us. The foolish virgins in the New Testament parable were foolish because they were not spiritually prepared, the lack of oil in their lamps did not represent a physical substance. They had not learned to follow Christ and His Spirit, although they may have had their two-year supply of food. 

Hard times are coming, and if you put your trust in your food storage, then food storage is all you have. If you put your trust in guns, then guns are all you have. If you live by the sword, you may die by the sword. Trust me, I love guns, I have plenty of them. I have some food storage. I have some silver. I have some crypto, but these things won't get me through the tribulation or lead me to Zion. In fact, scriptural history teaches us that sometimes God's people have been led away from bondage, slavery, or tyranny, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The children of Israel were provided manna, water, and healing from God, all they had to do was trust Him. Lehi left all his treasure behind in Jerusalem, and was led by the Liahona, not knowing where it would lead him from day to day. When the time comes for gathering, God will use miracles like He did with His ancient people. Why do you need guns when God can "set at defiance the armies of nations"? Why do you need food when God can rain down manna from heaven? And what good is gold and silver when you leave Babylon behind to gather to Zion? I'm not saying that we shouldn't store food and provisions for hard times, we would be wise to prepare every needful thing, I'm just saying not to trust in them. Remember, it all belongs to God, and He will prompt you to use it for His ends and purposes. It we try to use it for our own ends, it will become slippery to us, just as it did to our ancient Nephite counterparts. If we're going to stockpile gold, guns, food, and provisions, it is best to "hide them up unto the Lord," otherwise we have no promise that we will have them in our time of need. 

The next thing Samuel accuses the Nephites of hits a little too close to home, in fact, it's a direct bull's eye on our society. I'm talking about the human tendency to put mortal men on a pedestal who deceive us, but shun those who tell the truth. No one likes to hear about it when they screw up. No one likes criticism, or to be told that they believe in a bunch of lies, or that they are outright deceived. We love to hear our leaders, in both government and religion, speak smooth things to us. We love to hear how awesome we are, how righteous we are, how hard-working we are, and how deserving we are of God's providence and blessings. We love to hear that we are a special people, even a peculiar people, and that God has chosen us because we made "better" choices in the pre-existence, that there was a reason we were born into the Church, and into America, the land of the free. Of course, such a belief presupposes that those born in other lands and into other religions were not so righteous before they came to earth. They were "fence-sitters," and not valiant to Heavenly Father and Jesus. I literally heard this nonsense growing up in the Church, in sacrament talks and especially at Firesides. And I believed it. They told us that our generation (I'm 43 years old to give you an idea of the timeframe) were the most righteous and valiant spirits in the pre-mortal realm, and that God saved us for the last days because of how stalwart we were. There is another name for this, it is called flattery, and it is what Satan uses to deceive us. God does not flatter us, He humbles us. There is no such thing as the "most righteous generation," each generation is the same, that is why apostacy is the norm and not the exception. 

It is true that some spirits were more valiant than others, as Abraham explained about the "noble and great" ones. But trust me, the noble and great ones are not most of us. They were people like Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Moses, Abraham, Elijah and others. Spirits who had advanced up Jacob's ladder in previous cycles before this earth and who came here to help us move up that ladder. Alma explains this very clearly in Alma 13. It is nothing but pure hubris to associate ourselves with such men, merely because we belong to a certain religion and were born in a certain country. I had to repent of this belief when I came to my senses after a faith crisis about a decade ago. True prophets don't use flattery. They just tell the truth, and that truth can be hard to take, as it was for Nephi's brothers, who also thought they were righteous. This is why true prophets are shunned, ignored, persecuted, hunted, and even killed by religious people. They just can't stand to be told that they are lacking and need to repent. But God can't work with people who think they are already saved, and who assume they don't need to learn anymore or suffer anymore for His sake. Joseph Smith was a true prophet, he did not speak smooth things, just consider this sobering statement from the Lectures on Faith: 

It is vain for persons to fancy to themselves that they are heirs with those, or can be heirs with them, who have offered their all in sacrifice, and by this means obtained faith in God and favor with him so as to obtain eternal life, unless they in like manner offer him the same sacrifice, and through that sacrifice obtain the knowledge that they are accepted of him. (Lecture 6:8)

Let's get back to what Samuel said to the Nephites. He nails us in almost every regard. We do this very same thing in the Church today. We love when our general authorities get up in conference and tells us how great we are, and how successful the Church is, how it's growing and how temples are dotting the earth. We love to hear them lie to us to by saying all we have to do is follow them and check off the boxes on our list to be saved: go to church, follow the prophet, get a recommend and serve in the temple, magnify your calling, etc. But when someone emerges from the substrata of society, and starts calling these beloved prophets and apostles wolves, and points out the 100 billion dollar empire they are running, and challenges the official narrative of church history, and lambasts the foolish traditions we have all grown up with, we hate them. We can't stand them. We call them evil. We want the leaders to discipline them, to cast them out, to punish them. We want them to shut up and go away. Here is what Samuel said, and it should give us great pause:

Yea, wo unto this people, because of this time which has arrived, that ye do cast out the prophets, and do mock them, and cast stones at them, and do slay them, and do all manner of iniquity to them, even as they did of old time. 

And now when ye talk, ye say: If our days had been in the days of our fathers of old, we would have have slain the prophets; we would not have stoned them, and cast them out. 

Behold ye are worse than they; for as the Lord liveth, if a prophet come among you and declareth unto you the word of the Lord, which testifieth of your sins and iniquities, ye are angry with him, and cast him out and seek all manner of ways to destroy him; yea, you will say that he is a false prophet, and that he is a sinner, and of the devil, because he testifieth that your deeds are evil.  

 But behold, if a man shall come among you and shall say: Do this, and there is no iniquity; do that and ye shall not suffer; yea, he will say: Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your own eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth--and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a prophet. 

Yea, ye will lift him up, and ye will give unto him of your substance; ye will give unto him of your gold, and of your silver, and ye will clothe him with costly apparel; and because he speaketh flattering words unto you, and he saith that all is well, then ye will not find fault with him.

O ye wicked and ye perverse generation; ye hardened and ye stiffnecked people, how long will ye suppose that the Lord will suffer you? Yea, how long will ye suffer yourselves to be led by foolish and blind guides? Yea, how long will ye choose darkness rather than light? (Helaman 13:24-29) 

Samuel nailed us. Not only are we not the most righteous generation reserved for the last days, we are a "wicked and perverse generation," who are "led by foolish and blind guides." Can you imagine a modern Samuel getting up in general conference, turning around and pointing at President Nelson, calling him a "foolish and blind guide"? He would be escorted out of the building by security. But God is calling us out in this verse. It is the same as if a modern Samuel were speaking directly to us. As if he were literally on a wall in Salt Lake city declaring the very same things. We "lift up" the Church leaders, we feed them with catered dinners, we fly them in first class seats, we cloth them in costly suits, and we adore them as they speak lying and flattering words to us over expensive pulpits. We must wake up, and ask ourselves how long the Lord will suffer us, the modern Gentiles, with our churches built up to get gain and glory of the world. 

As if this hasn't been brutal enough, Samuel is not quite off his soap box. He tells the Nephites what they will say to themselves after their destruction is made sure and their desolation has already come. In the days of their poverty they will lament that they could not hold onto their treasures. They will regret that they had not repented and had cast out and stoned the prophets. They will say to themselves:

Behold, we are surrounded by demons, yea, we are encircled about by angels of him who hath sought to destroy our souls. Behold, our iniquities are great. O Lord, canst thou not turn away thine anger from us? (Helaman 13:37)

But Samuel says it will all be in vain. They have "procrastinated the day of their salvation until it is everlastingly too late." They have "sought all of the days of their lives for that which they could not obtain." They "have sought for happiness in doing iniquity." This is what we do. The next house, the next job, the next promotion, the next business venture, the next marriage, the next car, these are things we think bring us happiness. But happiness can never be found in Babylon. Seeking for such things leaves a void in our soul. We were meant for higher things. Happiness is only found in Christ. The purpose of this life is to “level up" in eternity. To climb up Jacob's ladder, to step by step became as Christ is, however long that takes. That is why when we follow Him all hell breaks loose on us. It is supposed to be that way. If it were not, there would be no reward. We have to sacrifice all earthly things to gain anything in heaven. Unfortunately, this is just the way it is. God is trying our souls. God is seeing what we're made of. This is why we came down here.  

Some final thoughts. The last verse in Helaman 13 is a window into the dimension where the Nephites once existed. It reads the same whether it is addressed to them or to us. It needs no clarification or differentiation. Samuel simply addresses the "people of the land," well, my friends, that is us. We live upon the same land the Nephites once dwelt upon. And the final sentence of that verse should be sobering to say the least. He is talking to us:

O ye people of the land, that ye would hear my words! And I pray that the anger of the Lord be turned away from you, and that ye would repent and be saved. (Verse 39)

Yes, the Lord is angry with us. Yes, we need to repent. We have desecrated this promised land. We are systemically rejecting the God of this land, who is Jesus Christ. We have allowed secret combinations to get above us, to reign over us, to control our monetary system, and to create the welfare/warfare state that makes slaves out of us. We have elevated our religious and political demagogs to a God-like status. As if they were the builders of an immaterial tower of Babel that we think allows us to ascend to heaven. But those leaders hedge up and damn our way. They are our stumbling blocks, not our saviors. They darken our minds and ruffle our spirits. They leave a great void in us, a deep longing for something more, for something real. A longing that can only be satisfied by Christ and His gospel, where we can learn the peaceable things of the kingdom. The gospel is supposed to be delicious to us, it's supposed to be exiting, exhilarating, life-altering, and spiritually salvific. Science has proven that when we learn something new, neurons fire in our brains in ways they haven't fired before, releasing a torrent of endorphins and other hormones that create a feeling of euphoria. The scriptures call that joy, and it's experienced when we learn new spiritual concepts and apply them by living them; by obedience to God as He reveals things to us. The scriptures are nothing but a urim and thumin, a window that allows us to peek into what heaven is and the requirements to get there. This is why you can read the same verse or chapter over and over again and learn something new every time.

The feeling of joy that God intends us to experience can never be felt listening to conference talks that regurgitate past platitudes, dogmas, or the philosophies of men. It will never be felt by reading a hand book and following the rules of men, or by being guilted and gaslighted by leaders who claim we are not doing enough for their church. Or who discourage us from studying history or looking into the deep "mysteries." Our minds are a gift from God, and they are capable of containing limitless knowledge, and because they are eternal they will never be full. There is no cap on what we can learn. There is no end to God's knowledge. God intends us to stretch our minds "as high as the utmost heavens," to "contemplate the darkest abyss" and the "broad expanse of eternity." We "must commune with God." To do that, we must cast off the "low," "mean," and "vulgar" meetings we have been subjected to in our various religious institutions. We must cast off the shackles that conspiring men would put on us, and free our minds from their manipulating spiritual and physical bondage. 

All we have to do is wake up, and religious and political leaders lose all their power. Remember the movie A Bug’s Life? They are terrified of us. We are a sleeping giant. 

The words of Isaiah come to mind. Although he is describing those who will fight against mount Zion, the same words can be applied to those of us who attempt to be spiritually fed by imposters and wolves in sheep's clothing:

Yea, it shall be unto them even as unto a hungry man who dreameth, and behold, he eateth, but he awaketh and his soul is empty; or like unto a thirsty man who dreameth, and behold, he drinketh, but he awaketh, and behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite... (JST Isaiah 29:8)

In contrast here are the words of Jesus that he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well:

But whosever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14)

Which water do you choose? To drink from the diluted and contaminated trough of men, or the pure and abundant well waters of God? 

In the coming days, weeks, months, and years, many of us will have to face hard choices. Do we follow men or do we follow God? Do we trust in the Spirit that will lead us around not knowing what we're about to do? Or do we trust in men's programs of rules, regulations, and carnal security? Do we accept the coming transhumanist revolution, the merging of our bodies with artificial intelligence, the social credit program and the issuance of digital currency, and ultimately, the mark of the beast? How many of us will have the faith necessary to withstand the mark, even in the face of not being able to buy food, or worse yet, to be killed by the government for refusing it? We can take some comfort in the fact that God won't allow them to kill all of us. Remember the Nephites who actually listened to Samuel and believed in the sign that he said would come signifying Christ's birth? They were all rounded up to be executed, but God sent the sign and they were spared at the last minute (See 3 Nephi 1). 

All of Satan's programs for the last days will fail. God will not let him win, although it may seem so for a short time. Sometime before or during the tribulation society and government will collapse. The generation of vipers are trying to establish "order out of chaos" (a euphemism for tyranny out of chaos). But John tells us that Babylon, the "great city," will come to nought in one hour, it will be "thrown down, and shall be found no more at all" (Revelations 18:16-21). 

God will not allow the vipers to establish their one-world dystopia, at least not for very long. But there will be violence and chaos, civil war, fratricide, rapine, and a scene of carnage more bloody than you could ever imagine or even thought possible. God will eventually give this land to the remnant of Jacob, and our only choice will be between repenting and joining them in building up the city of Zion, or facing a violent world on our own. None of this is set in stone, we can still repent and turn it around. But if the history of the Book of Mormon is any indication of the future of America, it is not looking good. Zion will be the only place on earth where there will be peace, and it is better to prepare yourself to live there than to put any more effort in saving Babylon; we are almost past the point of no return. 

In closing, I recommend a blog series written by Adrian Larsen on his website called totheremnant. It is a seven-part series on the concept of destruction, and it is mind blowing. Start with this one. His take on the coming destruction is interesting, there are dark days ahead but we can find hope and peace in Christ. 

Ancient Temples II: A Gothic Castle in Logan

  Previously: Saint George and the Dragon Welcome readers to Ancient Temples part II, where we'll explore the official story of Utah...