Orson Pratt

“ Those who have believed, or tried to believe, that the ancient Christians constituted that kingdom, have been at a loss as to how it could exist broken up into a thousand fragments, a thousand different classes of people with as many different faiths clashing one with another. They have said in their hearts—"Is this the kingdom of God, where there is no union?" ”

“ The Old Testament speaks of the day of the Lord, when the sun will be darkened, when the moon and the stars will refuse to shine, when the Lord will punish the wicked for their wickedness, when sinners will be swept from the face of the earth, and when there will be none but the righteous left. ”

“ Who does not know that all new revelation has been discarded, not only by the great mother Church, called the Roman Catholic, but by the Greek Catholics, and also by all her descendants, her daughters, the various Protestant sects? They have all denounced everything in the shape of new revelation. ”

“ If our Government would not receive a man on an old commission given to a person dead and gone, why should it be supposed that the Lord is so inconsistent as to say that Tom, Dick and Harry, and all the world, or part of it, were called to be ministers because a commission was given to eleven men some eighteen hundred years ago? ”

“ They have lifted up their voices in the midst of the British nation, among the Welsh, the Scotch, the Irish, among the Scandinavians of the north, among the Germans, among the French, the Swiss, the Italians, among the Hindostanese and the inhabitants of South Australia and New Zealand, and various islands of the sea; and from the midst of these various peoples a hundred thousand souls have been gathered to these mountains, whence the kingdom of God—the stone cut out of the mountains—is to roll forth, until it fills the whole earth. ”

“ But if we have the liberty in this glorious land of ours, to believe the Bible and the prophecies it contains, have we not also the liberty to tell them from that good Book what is going to take place on the face of the earth? ”

“ Perhaps some may inquire—"Do you believe, then, that the Christian Church has been so overcome that it has not existed on the earth?" That is what we believe, that is one of the principles taught by this people during the last forty-four years of the existence of this Church. Says one—"You have no charity." Yes, we have charity just as far as the Lord God permits us to have charity; but we have not charity sufficient to call darkness light, nor the doctrines and creeds of men the doctrines of heavens. ”

“ There are some few, who have searched the Bible diligently, who have been looking for the kingdom of God to be set up on the earth in the latter times, never to be destroyed. Some have supposed that the kingdom that was built up by the early Christians, some eighteen hundred years ago, was that kingdom predicted by the Prophet Daniel. Others, not being able to reconcile the ideas communicated by Daniel on this subject, have looked forward to a day when there should be, literally, a kingdom established on this earth by the power of God in fulfillment of the prophecy of Daniel. ”

“ It is true that we might be benefited by observing the moral principles taught therein, and being moral, virtuous, upright and just before all men; but to become citizens of the kingdom of God requires divine authority, and therefore it was necessary that we should have something more than a mere history of the Gospel, and that something was, and must be, authority sent down from heaven. ”

“ Did Timothy live in the day of Prophets, and when Prophets could find out in relation to his calling, and lay their hands upon him and set him apart to the work of the ministry unto which God had called him? Yes, and so with all the rest, and no man can take this honor to himself, save he be called of God as was Aaron.
God is a very consistent being; he does not do things at haphazard, but he is very orderly in his work, and everything in his kingdom is consistent and according to law. That is the way the Lord works. He is far more consistent than the political governments of our day ”

“ Every one knows that Jerusalem was in existence before Joshua led the people into the land of Canaan, it was an ancient city among the heathen before it was conquered and taken possession of by the house of Israel. And every one knows that Jerusalem was to be forsaken for a good many centuries before the generation should come that this proclamation should be made, or this highway should be cast up, or the ensign should be raised upon the mountains, when the people should be called a holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, called, sought out, a city not forsaken, etc. ”

“ According to the definitions given by our lexicographers an ensign is a kind of a standard to which people rally and around which they gather. The Lord is going then, to lift up an ensign on the mountains, and it is to be so wonderful in its nature, something of so much importance that not part of the people are required to understand it; but in the language of Isaiah, "all ye inhabitants of the world," all nations, languages and kindreds are required to see, when the Lord lifts up an ensign on the mountains: "When he bloweth a trumpet hear ye." ”

“ It is believed that a day will come, when the wicked among the inhabitants of this globe will be burned as stubble, and when there will be neither root nor branch left of the proud and of them that do wickedly. ”

“ All these modern kingdoms as you now behold them, the Scandinavians, for instance, in the north, and the Germans, Italians, Swiss, French, the Spaniards and Austrians, and all other kingdoms representing Christendom, have grown out of the great Roman Empire, which once had dominion over all these lands, and they were represented by the feet of the image spoken of by the Prophet Daniel. ”

“ Supposing that a man from Great Britain should go to Washington, and should declare to the President of the United States, and to the various authorities of the government there—"I am a minister plenipotentiary, I have authority from the British Government to transact whatever business it may have to transact with the Government of the United States." ”

“ Is there anything said about this desert in prophecy? Yes. You can find many prophecies in Isaiah, David's psalms, and other Prophets, predicting that, about or near the time of the coming of the Lord, "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be made glad for them." That the "desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose; it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing." Isaiah further says that "the Lord shall comfort Zion; he shall comfort all her waste places, he shall make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord ”

“ Because we knew by the Spirit of God that rested upon us, the great work that the Lord our God intended to accomplish herein the midst of the desert. We knew that he would gather his people from the various nations and establish them here in Zion, as a standard or ensign to the nations, that as many as would might gather here before the judgments should come. Read the 11th chapter of Isaiah about this same ensign. ”

“ The fourth great power which bore rule over the world was the great Roman Empire, which was represented by the two legs of the great image which he saw. And as the world grew older this empire was divided, and the various kingdoms which sprang therefrom became so weakened that they were represented, not by iron altogether, but by iron mixed with miry clay. ”

“ Some two hundred millions of the human family professing Christianity, and yet contending one with another about their doctrines and principles, one believing a doctrine and another condemning that doctrine and believing something directly different. ”

“ Let us search these sixty-six books and see if any man that lived in the second century of the Christian era is mentioned therein, or in the third or fourth, or in any succeeding century down to this day. ”