Orson Pratt

“ The work of creation was to take the materials that existed from all eternity, that never were created or made out of nothing, to take these self-existent materials and organize them into a world. This is called creation. ”

“ These elements that melt like wax before the presence of the Lord will again be filled with his Spirit and will be renewed, and the earth itself will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the channels of the great deep. ”

“ If we had the process of creation unfolded to us, we should probably find that many of the materials of our globe once existed in a dispersed or scattered form, in a state of chaos, and that the Lord, in collecting them together, brought them from a distance in the solar system, and that in so doing, he took his own time and way, and wrought according to his own laws, for, as far as we are acquainted, the Lord works by law, and why not create by law? ”

“ When the period called the Millennium has passed away, Satan will again be loosed. Now the query arises, Will Satan have power to deceive those who have lived on the earth, and have fallen asleep for a moment, and have received their immortal bodies? ”

“ In the words which I have read, we have perhaps as much revealed in regard to the Millennium, as we will find in any of the revelations which God has given to man. We can understand from these words that a time is to come in which the devil will have no power to tempt the children of men, and this happy period will last for one thousand years. There never has been a period since the creation, but what the devil has had more or less power or influence over the inhabitants of our world. ”

“ After you have been immersed, as this earth was, in the water, and been cleansed and received the remission of your sins, you also have the promise of baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost, by which you are purified, as well justified and sanctified from all your evil affections, and you feel to love God and that which is just and true, and to hate that which is sinful and evil. Why? Because of this sanctifying, purifying principle that comes upon you, by the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost. So must this earth be baptised by fire, it must be cleansed from all sin and impurity. ”

“ The Scriptures say—"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The word "create" does not mean make out of nothing. For instance, when he says—"I created darkness and I created light," what does he do? Does he absolutely form light out of nothing? No, he causes the light that existed from all eternity to shine where darkness existed, and it is light creating light, the same as you, when you attend meeting, lock up your house and blow out the lights. When you return, supposing you say in your own hearts, or to your wife, daughter, or son, "Let there be light." ”

“ When the last trump shall sound, after the thousand years are ended, they shall be changed and caught up. Where are they taken to? Up into the celestial heavens, to those invisible creations that are in space, which have passed through their ordeals, and been sanctified, glorified and made celestial. What will they be caught up for? That they may not pass away, when the earth passes away. What becomes of the wicked, those who were consumed to ashes, who lived before the Millennium? They are called forth by the sound of the last trump, and caught up also to be judged ”

“ Our first parents were not mortal when they were placed on this earth, but they were as immortal as those who are resurrected in the presence of God, Death came into the world by their transgression, they produced mortality ”

“ Imagine one hundred and forty-four thousand High Priests going forth among the nations, and gathering out as many as will come to the Church of the first-born. All that will be done, probably, in the morning of the seventh thousand years. The work is of great magnitude, Latter-day Saints, and we are living almost upon the eve of it. Six thousand years have nearly gone by, the world is getting aged, and Satan has accomplished almost all that the Lord intends that he shall accomplish, before the day of rest. ”

“ Then again, we read in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah that—"There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days; for the child shall die a hundred years old, but the sinner, being a hundred years old, shall be accursed," showing that, when that day shall come, the people will have their lives prolonged on the earth to the age of a tree, growing up to be a hundred years old, then if they sin they shall be accursed, proving that there is a possibility of sinning. ”

“ In order to prove that light did exist long before this world was called forth from the womb of the great waters, long before God said, "Let there be light," so far as this earth was concerned, I will refer you to some discoveries that have been made by philosophers and astronomers of the present day. ”

“ Now, if all the immortal, resurrected Saints are to be here on the earth, and Jesus himself here, where will they, who live and die, and are resurrected during the Millennium, go to when they are caught up? They go away from Jesus, if Jesus is to be here all the time, and they will also go away from the rest of the resurrected Saints, who reign on the earth, if the latter are wholly limited to this earth. ”

“ After Jesus comes with all his Saints with him, and stands on the Mount of Olives, we find that the Lord will require all the nations round about Jerusalem, to go up and worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles, and that there shall be one Lord and his name one. There will be no heathen gods in those days, but during the Millennium he will require all the people to go to Jerusalem, the headquarters on that continent, to worship him. ”

“ According to this new revelation, there is a certain great world, called Kolob, placed near one of the celestial kingdoms, whose diurnal rotation takes place once in a thousand of our years; and that celestial time was measured by those celestial beings, by the rotations of Kolob, hence one day with the Lord was a thousand of our years. If this was the case, the six days of the creation of our earth, the six days during which it was being prepared as a habitation for man, must have been six thousand of our years. ”

“ I do not know of any way except by new revelation, for chronology is so imperfect that many hundreds who have spent their lives and fortunes in studying it, differ from each other in their conclusions. One has one date for the age of the world, and another has another. Let me give to you a few specimens. We will take one of the oldest eras—the Alexandrian—computed by Julius Africanus. In this Alexandrian era, the time from the creation to the birth of Christ is set down at 5,500 years; in the Antioch era, computed by Pannerus, it is set down at 5,493 years ”

“ It will enter into the elements of creation, so that the curse which came in consequence of the fall of man will be removed from the earth, and the elements will be cleansed, not only by fire but by the Spirit of the living God, which will mingle with and purify them. Satan, that arch-deceiver, will be bound, and a seal will be set upon him, and King James' translation of the Scriptures tells us that he will be cast into the bottomless pit. ”

“ This change in the earth is very different from the one I have spoken of, wrought by the baptism of fire. One is a sanctification and cleansing of the earth, the other is a complete dissolution and passing away thereof. When the earth is thus dissolved and passes away, where will it go to? ”

“ This land or hemisphere will be the abiding place of the New Jerusalem for ever and ever.
Now, do you not see that there is a similarity in regard to God's dealings with the earth and with the inhabitants who dwell upon its face? The earth has to undergo a change as well as our bodies. As our bodies may be burned at the stake and the ashes blown to the four winds of heaven, so will the earth be burned and pass away ”

“ It seems then, that if God did, in ancient times, so show forth his power, as to operate upon three men on this American Continent, and one on the Eastern Continent, namely, John the Revelator, so that the power of death could not be exercised over them, that they could tarry and live here on the earth for eighteen hundred or two thousand years, as the case may be, he can perform the same in regard to the Latter-day Saints, that they also shall live ”

“ The earth is to be cleansed by fire; in other words, the elements are to be melted with fervent heat. This is the declaration of several of the prophets. David, in speaking of this period, in one of his psalms, says, the mountains shall melt like wax before the presence of the Lord when he shall come. You know how wax melts when exposed to the influence of heat. So, when the Lord comes, will the elements melt and the mountains flow down at his presence with fervent heat. ”

“ It seems then by this that there will be a chance for the people, during that happy period, to refuse to comply with the commands of the Most High, and thus bring upon themselves speedy destruction, by famine, through the rain being withheld. And in the case of the people of Egypt, where the withholding of rain does not now affect them, they being supplied by water from the Nile, the Lord has prepared a special judgment. If they will not come up to Jerusalem, year by year, we are told that their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their flesh fall from their bones. ”

“ But they will not be deposited in the grave—this is what the Lord has told us—they will be raised again immediately after having fallen asleep, raised again to immortality and eternal life, instead of being buried and seeing corruption. Those persons, therefore, who die under these circumstances, have not the experience of a long absence from their bodies, their spirits are only separated for a moment, as it were, and then they are permitted to come forth in the beauty of immortality and eternal life. ”

“ If it took six days to form a small world like ours, we might certainly suppose that it would require more than one day to form the sun, which contains a quantity of matter sufficient to make some three hundred and fifty-four thousand worlds like this, and whose actual size or magnitude is fourteen hundred thousand times larger than our globe ”

“ When this earth issued from the hands of the Almighty it was intended for an eternal duration; in other words, it was an immortal earth or creation, all things being pronounced very good. But man brought a curse upon the earth, he brought death into the world, he brought a curse upon the waters and upon all the materials of our globe, and hence, as man has to be sanctified and to pass through the several ordeals necessary for that purpose, so does the earth ”

“ There is, however, a declaration made by many religious people, that "God created all things out of nothing." They even teach it in their Sunday schools; but they have never been able to prove any such thing. It is one of those ideas which have got into the minds of people through the teachings of uninspired men. ”

“ There seems to be a very great amount of evil in existence at the present time, for people are being continually stirred up to commit all manner of abomination—robbery, murder, blaspheming the name of the Deity, and the violation of every command that he has ever given. ”

“ In gathering together the materials that were scattered in space, the firmament that I was speaking of seems to have been one of the parts of creation, necessary in the grand process of collecting and condensing the constituents of our globe ”

“ Then God himself will be with them, and he will wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there will be no more sorrow, nor mourning, neither any more death, for the former things will have passed away, and all things will have become new. ”

“ According to the theory which is accepted by some as being true, the planets of our system are supposed to have been originally formed by a rotation on its axis of a nebulous fluid, that was expanded far beyond the bounds of our present solar system ”

“ If he has not given us the age of the world, he has given us that whereby we may know that we live in the generation in which the times of the Gentiles will be fulfilled. He informed us, in the rise of this Church, that that generation should not pass away until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled. ”

“ He makes it out of the materials of the old one. This very earth on which we dwell, whose elements are to be melted and sanctified with fervent heat, in order that the Saints may reign upon it for a thousand years ”