Orson Pratt

“ Fear and terror will be upon them. It will have an effect upon many other kings and nobles, more pure in heart, more honest, that are willing to receive the truth; it will have a different effect upon them, so much so, that they will say with Isaiah, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen from thee. And the gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising." ”

“ You may afflict, you may pass laws, you may call upon distant nations to help you, you may shut down the emigration against the Latter-day Saints, you may drive them, you may burn their houses—you may do all this, but they will continue to live and to stretch forth in spite of all the powers beneath the heavens, and become a great people under the Constitution of this great land. We never want to be freed from the Constitution of our country. ”

“ The light will shine so conspicuously from that city, extending to the very heavens, that it will in reality be like unto a city set upon a hill that cannot be hid, and it will have quite a tendency to strike terror to all the nations of the earth. ”

“ Some of these kings and nobles, when they see the light shining forth like the northern lights in the arctic regions, illuminating the whole face of the heavens—when they see this light shining forth long before they reach the city, fear will take hold of them there, says the Psalmist, in the 48th Psalm, they will become weak, and their knees will smite together like the knees of Belshazzar. They will try to haste away from the glory of God and from the power of God, and to get out of the country as soon as possible. ”

“ Now, there are a great many cities in the United States that will not be totally destroyed when the inhabitants are swept off the surface of the earth. Their houses, their desolate cities will still remain unoccupied until Zion in her glory and strength shall enlarge the place of her tents, and stretch forth the curtains of her habitations. That is the destiny of this nation, and the destiny of the Latter-day Saints. ”

“ This shining light will be seen for many miles distant, and the wicked will flee away; they will be fearful lest they be smitten by that power that illuminates the people of God, hence the terror of the Lord will be there. Terror will take hold of the wicked when Zion becomes as fair as the sun and as clear as the moon, and her banners will be terrible to all nations. ”

“ I have no reference to any heaven beyond space, but I have reference to the heaven that the Lord has sanctified and made heaven in other worlds that he has created, consisting of all kinds of materials the same as our world is, and when this world passes through its various ordeals, it, too, by and by, will pass away and die like the body of man and be resuscitated again, a new heaven and a new earth, eternal in its nature. ”

“ It will never go down, it will be a standing miracle by day and by night, from one week to another, month after month, year after year, until the one thousand years shall have rolled away over the heads of the people that dwell on the earth. ”

“ Just as the Latter-day Saints have been now for upwards of forty years driven from place to place before we emigrated to this great mountain desert, persecuted by our enemies, our cities taken from us, our villages taken from us, our farms taken from us, our flocks and herds shot down ”

“ They were people that should be clothed upon with this light that I have been speaking of, this glorious light; the presence of the Lord will be in their midst, and it will radiate over their temples, it will light their city by night and by day. ”

“ One would naturally suppose when we see the present hardness of heart that exists among our enemies, when we see our Elders waylaid, young peaceable boys that are taking their first mission abroad to proclaim the Gospel of the Son of God—when we see them shot down and their murderers tried by a jury and acquitted, and then tried for riot and acquitted of that—one would naturally suppose that a people so hard in their hearts would not be converted to believe even if they should see the power of God manifested. ”

“ At any rate we shall fulfill our part, purchase the land, gather together upon our own purchased land, and we calculate to obey, all the laws of the State of Missouri, and all the laws of the State of Kansas that are constitutional in their nature. But, says one, suppose the people should rise up and say you should not possess the land, what would you do? We would leave the matter in the hands of the Lord, just the same as we did at first when He led us by revelation to where the great central stake of Zion should be built. ”

“ The same Being could preserve the city round about the Temple, hence it is a city that shall never be destroyed nor thrown down from that time henceforth and forever. God will be in the city. He will take care that the building materials suffer nothing from the laws of nature. He will take care that the city is illuminated by His divine power, and especially the Temple, the most sacred of all the Temples, where He will have His throne, where the Twelve Apostles will have their thrones, as the judges of the twelve tribes of Israel ”

“ Because God will be there. So He will be in the temple of Zion on this continent, and by His power, by His laws—which are superior to all those grosser laws of nature—He will preserve both of these cities, one on the western hemisphere, and one on the eastern hemisphere, from any decay whatever. Now, we have it recorded here in this book, in the 31st chapter of Jeremiah, that this city on the eastern continent shall not be thrown down any more forever. It seems, therefore, to be an eternal city, never to be destroyed. ”

“ The new worlds that are thus constructed and quickened by the fullness of the celestial glory will be the heavens where the Gods will dwell, or in other words, those that are made like unto God, when their bodies are changed in all respects like unto His glorious body, changed from materiality and cleansed from sin and redeemed, they will then be immortal and dwell in a heavenly world. ”

“ The Lord will not confine Himself to any one special method to be so many feet long, so many feet wide, and so many places for the Priesthood to stand, but He will construct His Temples in a great variety of ways, and by and by, when the more perfect order shall exist we shall construct them, through the aid of revelation, in accordance with the Temples that exist in yonder heaven. And when I speak of yonder heaven I do not refer to that kind of heaven the sectarian world sings about, beyond the bounds of time and space. ”

“ Go over the area of this whole city, over these northern wards and western wards, and travel and traverse all the different lots and streets, and see if you find many vacant places. Is not the land generally taken up? Is it not generally occupied? Are there many vacant lots, where there are no houses or habitations? Are there many places where there are no fruit trees, no gardens? Are there many streets where there are no ornamental trees no water ditches? ”

“ Because we have a good Constitution that is no sign that the strong arm of the law, founded upon that Constitution, will protect the minority as well as the majority. The politician may suffer the majority to trample upon the rights guaranteed by that Constitution to the minority. ”

“ We then came forth beyond these great rocky chains of mountains, hoping that in the distant desert, where no other people would have thought of locating themselves, we might live undisturbed. We have been greatly prospered in this desert. We have lived here long enough to fulfill a great many of the prophecies that are contained in this good Jewish Bible. But we have not yet got through with fulfilling prophecies. We are designed as a people to fulfill a great many prophecies. We shall move however, as I have already stated, down into that region of country. ”

“ Take men and women. There are general outlines that are common to all, but did you ever see two faces alike among all the millions of the human family? What a great variety, and yet all are constructed in general outline alike—after the image of God. ”

“ We find after we have traveled several days and traversed nearly all the streets of this city, gone for miles each way, that all the lots with some very few exceptions, seem to be occupied, and not only so but some of the lots originally intended only for one family are now split up, divided and subdivided, and contain several habitations in the same lot, and scarcely room enough at that. ”

“ They think we are enthusiastic, they think that this is all nonsense, and I do not know but there may be some of the Latter-day Saints that begin to partake of the same spirit, owing to their assimilating themselves so much to the fashion of the world, that they have lost their strong and powerful faith in that which God has predicted by the mouth of his servants. ”

“ These are the different effects which it will have upon the rulers of the various nations, some believing, some trembling, some humbling themselves and willing to forsake their thrones and their kingdoms and their empires to come and dwell with the people of God, while others more wicked, more corrupt, will not be able to endure it. ”

“ I answer not to assemble the outside world in, nor to assemble the Saints all in one place, but these buildings will be built with a special view to the different orders, or in other words the different quorums or councils of the two Priesthoods that God has ordained on the earth. ”

“ We would scarcely suppose that a work of this great and important magnitude would have been accomplished in so short a time as scarcely one-third of a century, when all this great basin—nearly all with the exception of one or two small portions of the country traversed by Fremont and a few of his followers—was explored and considered an unprofitable desert, considered unfit for the habitation of man, in consequence of the dryness and parched condition of its soil. ”

“ We have stretched forth the gardens of our habitation several hundred miles in the south especially, and one or two hundred miles in the north, into the Territory of Idaho. Utah does not seem sufficient for us, hence we have built many large towns and villages in Idaho. ”

“ But you may say—that is, some of the weak Latter-day Saints may say—that it will cost so much; we will have to purchase all that country sufficiently extensive to give place to all this people. How are you going to obtain means enough to purchase a country large enough for all this people to dwell in? ”

“ Evarts, and he in connection with others of the Cabinet, have published a circular unto the nations of Germany, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, asking their help; "Will you not step forward," say they, "and put a stop to the emigration of the Latter-day Saints. We are afraid they are growing too strong. We are afraid there are too many of them in yonder hills. ”

“ There, however, we expect to build a temple different from all other temples in some respects. It will be built much larger, cover a larger area of ground, far larger than this Tabernacle covers, and this Tabernacle will accommodate from 12,000 to 15,000 people. We expect to build a temple much larger, very much larger, according to the revelation God gave to us forty years ago in regard to that temple. ”

“ He does not make them all of one size, nor does He set them rolling on their axes in the same plane, nor does He construct any in many respects alike there is variation as much as there is in the human form. ”

“ But do you suppose that among these people where such things are carried on in the light of day, where murderers go free and where judges say, "commit murder, commit riots, take the life of the innocent ”