“There are many political issues… Each citizen must therefore decide which issues are most important to him or her at any particular time. Then members should seek inspiration on how to exercise their influence according to their individual priorities. This process will not be easy. It may require changing party support or candidate choices, even from election to election.”
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“…I promise you that as you follow Jesus Christ, you will find sustained peace and true joy. As you keep your covenants with increasing precision, and as you defend the Church and kingdom of God on the earth today, the Lord will bless you with strength and wisdom to accomplish the impossible.”
“We need to foster a fundamental respect for the human dignity of every human soul, regardless of their color, creed, or cause. And we need to work tirelessly to build bridges of understanding rather than creating walls of segregation.”
“I’m not making an argument for the outcome of the election, but I make an argument for the democracy on which our freedoms depend, and we cannot have democracy if we cannot accept outcomes with which we disagree as well as outcomes with which we agree…”
“We cannot afford to become wards of the government, even though we have a legal right to do so. It requires too great a sacrifice in self-respect and in political, temporal, and spiritual independence. Let us work for what we need. Let us be self-reliant and independent. Salvation can be obtained on no other principle. Salvation is an individual matter, and we must work out our own salvation, in temporal as well as in spiritual things.”
“The conflict between individual rights to freely worship God and government attempts to regulate or interfere with religious practices remains today…. If past is prologue, the forces of local, state, and federal governmental power, now freed from the compelling governmental interest test, will increasingly interfere with the free exercise of religion. We fear that the end result will be a serious diminution of the religious freedom guaranteed by the United States Constitution.”
“I stand before the Church this day and raise the warning voice. It is a prophetic voice… For the moment we live in a day of peace and prosperity but it shall not ever be thus… Great trials lie ahead. All of the sorrows and perils of the past are but a foretaste of what is yet to be. And we must prepare ourselves temporally and spiritually… We do not know when the calamities and troubles of the last days will fall upon any of us as individuals or upon bodies of the Saints. The Lord deliberately withholds from us the day and hour of his coming and of the tribulations which shall precede it… He simply tells us to watch and be ready.”
‘…the Lord’s way of caring for the needy is different from the world’s way. The Lord has said, “It must needs be done in mine own way.” …As many prophets have instructed us over the years, the welfare principles of the Church are not simply good ideas; they are revealed truths from God—they are His way of helping the needy.’
It is generally agreed that the most important single function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individual citizens. But, what are those rights? And what is their source? Until these questions are answered, there is little likelihood that we can correctly determine how government can best secure them.
“Christ says no man knoweth the day or the hour when the Son of man cometh. “This is a sweeping argument for sectarianism against Latterdayism Did Christ speak this as a general principle throughout all…
“…though princes and rulers should tell us we shall not worship God only as we are permitted to, that we must accept and abide by popular opinion…may we still trust in Him, and still be found at the post of duty and devotion.”
“I have had a troublesome vision of another great and terrible war that made the war just ended look like a training exercise World War II and people died like flies.”
I relate this from memory, being some months since I heard brother Farnsworth tell it at his residence in Pleasant Grove; but, in the main, it is as he told me, so far as I have related it.
Plagues will come and the wicked must suffer; but the Saints will be preserved by the very principle for which the wicked persecute them, which is present revelation from the Almighty
After seeing these things and gazing once more upon the beautiful city, the following passage of Scripture sounded in my ears : “Out of Zion the perfection of beauty God shineth.”
“While believers and their religious organizations must be good citizens in a time of crisis, never again can we allow government officials to treat the exercise of religion as simply nonessential. Never again must the fundamental right to worship God be trivialized below the ability to buy gasoline.”
“Freedom of religion stands as a bulwark against unlimited government power. It safeguards the right to think for oneself, to believe what one feels to be true, and to exercise moral agency accordingly.”
“…may we be equally committed to freeing the world from the virus of hunger, freeing neighborhoods and nations from the virus of poverty. May we hope for schools where students are taught—not terrified they will be shot—and for the gift of personal dignity for every child of God, unmarred by any form of racial, ethnic, or religious prejudice.”