Orson Pratt

“ Who are God's people? Those who obey the everlasting Gospel which the angel brings by authority. "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities;" and now, you who are Saints, you who have obeyed the Gospel restored by the angel, come out of her, for the Lord is going to punish great Babylon. ”

“ Their souls will be as a watered garden, and they will not sorrow any more at all, as they have been doing during the twenty-five hundred long years they have dwelt in the Arctic regions. They will come, and the Lord will be before their camp, he will utter his voice before that great army, and he will lead them forth as he led Israel in ancient days. This long chain of Rocky Mountains, that extends from the cold regions of the north away into South America, will feel the power of God, and will tremble before the hosts of Israel as they come to sing on the heights of Zion. ”

“ If our hearts are pure as their hearts are pure, if we have received and obeyed the truth, and have been sanctified by it, shall we not have boldness in that day? Or shall we hang down our heads, and shrink with shame, before the face of Him who sits upon his throne. ”

“ If any man hurt them, they shall have power to bring upon that man, nation or army, the various plagues that are there written. They will have power to smite the earth with plague and famine, and to turn the rivers of water into blood. And when they have fulfilled their prophecy, then the nations that have been lying before Jerusalem so long, waiting for an opportunity to destroy the city, will succeed in killing these two Prophets, and their bodies, says John's revelations, will lie in the streets of Jerusalem three days and a half after they are killed. ”

“ Or will he let the world pass on in blindness and darkness without any signs of the times, without any warning voice, without any inspired man sent of God to wake them up from their condition, and to prepare the way for his coming? ”

“ We shall roll down from the mountains, and though we may be considered but a little stone cut out of the mountains without human ingenuity, without mankind under-taking to carry on this work of their own accord, the time will come when God will cause the stone of the mountains to roll, and then it will roll down and build up the central city of Zion, and that, too, long before this gathering from the distant nations shall cease. ”

“ If we have received the truth we shall look upon the face of our Redeemer with all the joy that we look upon the face of a kind and benevolent parent here on the earth. There will be no fear, no shrinking, but we shall feel that he is indeed our Redeemer and that we are his sons and his daughters, and that, having obeyed his doctrine, we are prepared to associate with him and to dwell in his presence. ”

“ Are the inhabitants of heaven to be made one with the inhabitants of the earth that are in Christ? Yes. The dispensation of the fullness of times is to bring about one of the grandest events that our earth has ever experienced—the union of all things in Christ, both in heaven and upon earth. Are the Saints in Christ? As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, consequently if you are in Christ, if you live in the dispensation of the fullness of times, you will be required to take part in this great and grand gathering together of those who are on the earth. ”

“ These events are looked for by most of the Christian world, indeed we may say that all the Christian world, who do not spiritualize the Scriptures, are looking for events similar to those here described. They believe, according to the New Testament, that there is a time-fixed in the mind of the Almighty, when the heavens shall be parted as a scroll is parted when it is rolled up, and that the heavens, invisible to us now, will be unveiled before the eyes of all people; that the armies of heaven, the spirits of just men made perfect, through obedience to the law of God, will be revealed ”

“ One of the means which God will use to prepare the way before his second coming, is to send angels from heaven with a proclamation, not to benefit a few individuals, not for one nation alone, but to all the inhabitants of our globe, and that too before he comes. ”

“ We shall be very glad, in the day when the heavenly hosts are revealed to men, to take them by the hand and to sit down with them, as Jesus has said—"Many shall come from the east and from the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." ”

“ They are to be punished with having the fountains and rivers turned into blood, and the waters of the great ocean are to become as the blood of a dead man, and every living thing that is therein will die; and one of the last plagues and judgments that will be poured out upon her will be devouring fire, and she will sink as a millstone, and her name will be blotted from under heaven and all that are connected with her. ”

“ The Jews dispersed among the Gentiles will not come and sing in the height of Zion, or but very few of them, they will go to Jerusalem. Some of them will believe in the true Messiah, and thousands of the more righteous, whose fathers did not consent to the shedding of the blood of the Son of God, will receive the Gospel before they gather from among the nations. Many of them, however, will not receive the Gospel, but seeing that others are going to Jerusalem they will go also ”

“ At the present time there are some nations who will not permit any religion to be proclaimed within their borders except that which is established by law. When God shall cast down thrones, which he will soon do; when he shall overturn kingdoms and empires, which time is very near at hand, then other governments will be formed more favorable to religious liberty, and the missionaries of this Church will visit those nations. ”

“ We have found out the place where Jesus will descend, and we have found out who comes with him. Now we enquire will he remain on the earth after he thus descends? Yes, he will remain on this earth as literally and personally as he went around in ancient times, and taught the people from house to house and synagogue to synagogue. And in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name one. There will not be any heathen gods, for there will be no heathens ”

“ Every nation excepting the literal descendants of Israel. We, the Latter-day Saints, are Gentiles; in other words, we have come from among the Gentile nations, though many of as may have the blood of Israel within our veins. ”

“ Spain, which for centuries has persecuted everything but the established religion, where countless martyrs have been tortured and put to death by the so-called "Holy Inquisition," is at present forming a constitution which proposes to grant a large share of religious liberty. ”

“ We also believe, and so do the inhabitants of the Christian world at large, that there will be an audible sound of a trump—the trump of the archangel—in the heavens at the time this grand scenery is opened to mankind ”

“ Enquires one—"Do you really think that we poor mortals, frail as we are with all our imperfections, that have come because of the fall, are going to associate with those high and exalted beings that dwell in the presence of God in the eternal worlds? ”

“ When God has called out the righteous, when the warning voice has been sufficiently proclaimed among these Gentile nations, and the Lord says "It is enough," he will also say to his servants—"O, ye, my servants, come home, come out from the midst of these Gentile nations, where you have labored and borne testimony for so long a period; come out from among them, for they are not worthy; they do lint receive the message that I have sent forth, they do not repent of their sins; come out from their midst, their times are fulfilled. ”

“ However, the age in which that great event will take place is very clearly revealed in both the Old and the New Testament. That age is to be characterized by certain events, predicted by the inspired writers, which are unmistakable in their nature, and which can be easily understood by all, both learned and unlearned. ”

“ Already we find greater religious liberty advocated in the northern portions of Europe where formerly imprisonment was the penalty of declaring any other religious doctrine than that which was permitted by their laws. Austria, that great Roman Catholic power, containing thirty-one millions of Catholics, is increasing in religious liberty. ”

“ Those who have been waiting so long and anxiously for this to take place, will no doubt send gifts one to another, and if the telegraph wires are not destroyed, they will telegraph to the uttermost parts of the earth that they have succeeded in killing the two men who had so long tormented them with plagues, turning the waters onto blood, etc. ”

“ And so great will be the power of God that will then be made manifest, that the mountain will divide asunder, half going towards the south, and half towards the north, producing a great valley going east and west, from the walls of Jerusalem eastward. ”

“ A stream will break out from under the threshold of the Temple, says the Prophet, and it will run eastward, and will probably pass directly through the deep valley made by the parting of the Mount of Olives. ”