Orson Pratt

“ Is it to be before the earth dies? This is a representation of the baptism that is received by man after he has been baptized in water; for he is then to be baptized with fire and the Holy Ghost, and all his sins entirely done away: so the earth will be baptized with fire, and wickedness swept away from its face, so that the glory of God shall cover it. As the waters cover the great deep, so will the earth be overwhelmed and immersed in the glory of God, and His Spirit be poured out upon all flesh, before the earth dies. ”

“ We have been talking about the funeral sermon of the earth; the earth is to wax old like a garment and pass away. I have already proved to you the redemption of man, and how he will become immortal and eternal; now let us look after his inheritance; we will see if he is to be lifted up in space, without any inheritance to stand upon, without any land upon which to raise manna for eating, or flax for the spinning and making of fine robes and other wearing apparel. ”

“ If we partake of the elements, death is there in all its forms and varieties; and when we desire to rejoice, sorrow is there, mingling itself in every cup; and woe, and wretchedness, and misery, seem to be our present doom.
There is something, however, in man, that is constantly reaching forward after happiness, after life, after pleasure, after something to satisfy the longing desire that dwells within his bosom. ”

“ Not immediately, for that would frustrate His designs: when the body has got back into the dust, and after man has suffered sufficiently long for the original sin, He then brings him forth to enjoy all the bloom of immortality; He tells Death to trouble him no more; He wipes away all tears from his eyes, for he is prepared to live for ever, and gaze upon His glory, and dwell in His presence.
This great Redeemer is stronger than Death, more powerful than that direful monster who has come into the world, and laid siege to all the inhabitants thereof; He will banish it out of this creation. ”

“ This is our heaven, and we have the title to it by promise, and it will be redeemed through the faith and prayers of the Saints, and we shall get a title from God to a portion of it as our inheritance.
O ye farmers, when you sleep in the grave, don't be afraid that your agricultural pursuits are forever at an end; don't be fearful that you will never get any more landed property; but if you be Saints, be of good cheer, for when you come up in the morning of the resurrection, behold! there is a new earth made, wherein dwells righteousness, and blessed are ye, for ye shall inhabit it. ”

“ If the penalty of the original sin be the eternal separation of body and spirit, how can justice have all its demands, and mercy be shown to the transgressor? There is a way, and how? It is by the introduction of His Only Begotten Son, the Son of His own bosom, the first-born of every creature, holding the birthright over every creation He has made, and holding the keys of salvation over millions of worlds like this; he has a right to come forth and suffer the penalty of death for the fallen sons and daughters of man. ”

“ Have you ever seen a man that has escaped from the first death? or who had any prospect of it? No; you cannot find a remedy to hinder him from going down to his grave. Has there been any escape for any individual for 6000 years past? Now, if the Lord has been punctual to make every man, woman, and child, suffer the penalty of the first transgression, why should you suppose that you can stand in His presence, and behold the glory of His power, and have everlasting life and happiness, when He has told you that you should be banished therefrom, that the second death should be inflicted upon you? ”

“ And when a farmer has cultivated his farm, and raised numerous children, so that the space is beginning to be too strait for them, he will say, "My sons, yonder is plenty of matter, go and organize a world, and people it; and you shall have laws to govern you, and you shall understand and comprehend through your experience the same things that we know." And thus it will be one eternal round, and one continual increase; and the government will be placed under those that are crowned as kings and Priests in the presence of God. ”

“ What good would a crown do a man who is miserable and wretched? Many persons have worn crowns in this life; tyrants have had crowns of diamonds and gold; but what benefit are they? None at all, except to a being who has made himself perfectly happy by his obedience. But what are we to understand by this crown of righteousness, which is to be given to the Saints? We understand that it is actually to be a crown of glory; that they are to be kings in reality. John speaks in the first chapter of his Revelations to the Churches in his day, and represents the Saints to be Kings and Priests ”

“ What! the earth and the heavens to die? Yes, the material heavens and earth must all undergo this change which we call death; and if so, the earth must be alive as well as we. The earth was so constructed that it was capable of existing as a living being to all eternity, with all the swarms of animals, fowls, and fishes that were first placed upon the face thereof. But how can it be proved that man was an immortal being? ”

“ Do you suppose that we shall get up out of the grave, male and female, and that we shall not have the same kind of affections, and endearments, and enjoyments that we have here? The same pure feelings of love that exist in the bosoms of the male and female in this world, will exist with seven-fold intensity in the next world, governed by the law of God; there will be no corruptions nor infringements upon one another's rights. Will not a man have his own family? ”

“ The waters were assuaged; the earth came forth clothed with innocence, like the new-born child, having been baptized or born again from the ocean flood; and thus the old earth was buried with all its deeds, and arose to newness of life, its sins being washed away, even as man has to be immersed in water to wash away his own personal sins. ”

“ Cannot some of the wise medical men of the age—some of the great physicians and doctors of the day, who have studied medicine all their life—can they not imagine up something new, that will relieve the posterity of Adam from this awful calamity? ”

“ It was the Being who made man, that made him immortal and eternal, that Being whose bosom is filled with mercy, as well as justice, that exercises both attributes, and shows to all creation that He is a merciful God, as well as a God of justice ”

“ The earth will not be annihilated, any more than our bodies are after being burned. Every chemist knows that the weight of a thing is not diminished by burning it. The present order of things must be done away, and, as the apostle John says, all things must become new; and he tells us the time when: it is to be after the millennium. The passing away is equivalent to death, and all things being made new is equivalent to the resurrection. Is the new earth to be. made precisely like this earth? No; but as this earth was, before sin entered into it ”

“ But could He not give a commandment, without affixing a penalty? He could not: it would be folly, even worse than folly, for God to give a law to an intelligent being, without affixing a penalty to it if it were broken. Why? Because all intelligent beings would discard the very idea of a law being given, which might be broken at pleasure, without the individuals breaking it being punished for their transgression. They would say—"Where is the principle of justice in the giver of the law? It is not there: we do not reverence Him nor His law; justice does not have an existence in His bosom ”

“ We will pass over that; suffice it to say, that death does not wrench it from them; for they are to be kings, not for a day, or for this short life, but they are to remain to all eternity kings; having their thrones, and acting in the duties belonging to their kingly office. Compared with this, what are all the little, petty kingdoms of this earth worth? They are not worth one snap of the finger. The kings of the world exercise a certain authority over the nations—over their subjects, issuing laws, and framing governments, and controlling them ”

“ This is the promise to them that fall asleep in Jesus.
When our spirits leave these bodies, will they be happy? Not perfectly so. Why? Because the spirit is absent from the body; it cannot be perfectly happy while a part of the man is lying in the earth. How can the happiness be complete when only a part of the redemption is accomplished? You cannot be perfectly happy until you get a new house. ”

“ The Latter-day Saints were driven from one possession to another, until they were driven beyond the pale of civilization into the deserts, where it was supposed they would die, and that would be the last of them; but behold, they have a firm hold upon the promise that the meek shall inherit the earth, when they come here with immortal bodies capable of enjoying the earth. True, we can have plenty of the things of this life in their cursed condition ”

“ I care not where you place them; you may take any of the celestial worlds, and place millions of beings there that are dead to righteousness, and how long will it be before they make a perfect hell of it? They would make a hell of any heaven the Lord ever made. It is the second death—the penalty attached to the commandment given to the posterity of Adam, viz., "You shall cease to do evil; for if you cease to do evil, you shall be redeemed from Adam's transgression, and brought back into my presence ”

“ Let the man to whom all the beauties of light have been displayed, and who has never been in darkness, be in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, deprived of his natural sight; what a change this would be to him ”

“ By and bye the earth becomes corrupted again, and the nations make themselves drunken with the wine of the wrath of great Babylon; but the Lord has reserved the same earth for fire; hence He says by the prophet Malachi, "Behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, &c." A complete purification is again to come upon the earth, and that too, by the more powerful element of fire; and the wicked will be burned as stubble. ”

“ Where there is pain, where there is sickness, where there is sorrow, and where there is death, this saying can not be understood in its literal sense; things cannot be very good where something very evil reigns and has universal dominion.
We are, therefore, constrained to believe, that in the first formation of our globe, as far as the Mosaic history gives us information, everything was perfect in its formation ”

“ There are things in nature that would be evil without a commandment: if there were no commandment, it would be evil for you to murder an innocent being, and your own conscience would tell you it was an evil thing, It is an evil for any individual to injure another, or to infringe upon the rights of another, independent of any revealed law ”

“ So with Adam previous to partaking of this fruit; good could not be described to him, because he never had experienced the opposite. As to undertaking to explain to him what evil was, you might as well have undertaken to explain, to a being that never had, for one moment, had his eyes closed to the light, what darkness is. The tree of knowledge of good and evil was placed there that man might gain certain information he never could have gained otherwise ”

“ Brandreth recommended his medicine for all kinds of diseases, and even it was said that steam-boats were propelled by its power; but it made no man immortal; it did not save one man; and it is doubtful in the extreme—it is certain, that no man in this mortality has ever discovered that medicine which will relieve us from these awful effects transmitted from father Adam to this present time, There is a remedy, but it is not to be found in the catalogue of the inventions of man; it is not to be found in the bowels of the earth, or dug out of any mines ”

“ Suppose now that out of the vast amount of the population of this earth, one in a hundred should receive the law of meekness, and be entitled to receive an inheritance upon the new earth; how much land would they receive? We answer, they would receive over 150 acres, which would be quite enough to raise manna, and to build some habitations upon, and some splendid mansions; it would be large enough to raise flax to make robes of, and to have beautiful orchards of fruit trees ”

“ We do not believe that everything has got to be limited to this little space of time in this world; but the Saints will be doing a work that will be adapted to beings that are the sons of God in the fullest sense of the word, that are precisely like their Father; and if so, they will be like Gods, and will hold dominion under that Being who is the Lord of lords ”

“ In another place he speaks of those who are dead—about their singing a new song: "And they sung a new song, saying," Thou "hast redeemed us Oh God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation, and hast made us unto our God kings and priests." ”

“ But if the Lord had not constructed it upon a simple plan, adapted to the capacities of all men, they might have had some excuse; but as it is, they have none: all you have got to do is to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, turn away from your sins, cease to do evil, saying, "Father, I will cease from this time henceforth to sin,. and will work the works of righteousness; I will try to do good all the days of my life ”