The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns the connection between the founding of the United States and the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the earth. The Restoration began when Heavenly Father and Joseph Smith appeared to the boy Joseph Smith in what is known as the First Vision. However, “the Lord had been preparing for His latter-day work of restoration many years in advance.”
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught that the “meticulous preparation and precise timing” of the Lord took place over several centuries as He created the exact conditions of freedom that were essential for the coming forth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“A Promised Land,” Ensign, June 1976, 25).
Holy
scripture records that “after the waters had receded from off the face of this
land it became a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord;
wherefore the Lord would have that all men should serve him who dwell upon the
face thereof.” (Ether 13:2).) Such a special place needed now to be kept apart
from other regions, free from the indiscriminate traveler as well as the
soldier of fortune. To guarantee such sanctity the very surface of the earth
was rent. In response to God’s decree, the great continents separated and the
ocean rushed in to surround them. The promised place was set apart. Without
habitation it waited for the fulfillment of God’s special purposes.
With
care and selectivity, the Lord began almost at once to repeople the promised
land. The Jaredites came first, with stories of the great flood fresh in their
memories and the Lord’s solemn declaration ringing in their ears: “Whoso should
possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should
serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness
of his wrath should come upon them.” (Ether 2:8.)
Despite
such counsel, however, the Jaredite civilization steadily degenerated into a
violent society which forced a man to keep “the hilt of his sword in his right
hand” (Ether 14:2)—until finally he “ate and slept, and prepared for death on
the morrow.” (Ether 15:26.)
But
even as the last light flickered on Jaredite civilization, a bold new sun rose
to illuminate a thousand years of Nephite-Lamanite experience on the same soil.
Despite periods of war and rebellion, these people nevertheless had great
moments of power and purity, including the personal ministry of the resurrected
Christ, who walked and talked and prayed with these New World inhabitants for
three indescribable days. There in the meridian of time the land enjoyed three
generations of peace and perfection, which it would not know again until the
Master’s millennial reign.
But
the lessons of history, if not learned well, are certain to be taught again,
and a lone father with his son lived to see the self-destruction of these
people of promise….
So,
after a thousand years of preparation, the Spirit of God rested upon a young
Italian sailing under the flag of Spain, and, as Nephi had seen in vision, “he
went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in
the promised land.” (1Ne. 13:12.) This “Christian of almost maniacal
devoutness” as Alistair Cooke calls him, this man with the zeal of Galileo, Don
Quixote, and John the Baptist combined, was not to be denied. (Alistair
Cooke, America, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1973, p. 30.) “Our
Lord with provident hand unlocked my mind,” said Columbus, “sent me upon the
seas, and gave me fire for the deed. Those who heard of my enterprise called it
foolish, mocked me, and laughed. But who can doubt but that the Holy Ghost
inspired me?” (Jacob Wasserman, Columbus, Don Quixote of the Seas, New
Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1959, p. 20.) Columbus stood on the captain’s
deck, but the all-seeing eye of the Lord was on the compass, and the hopes of
every dispensation filled the sails. The prophet Nephi had also seen in vision
what followed: colonization, war, and the birth of a new nation.
“And
it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles who had gone forth out
of captivity did humble themselves before the Lord; and the power of the Lord
was with them.
“And
I beheld that their mother Gentiles were gathered together upon the waters, and
upon the land also, to battle against them.
“And
I beheld that the power of God was with them, and also that the wrath of God
was upon all those that were gathered together against them to battle. And I,
Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles that had gone out of captivity were delivered
by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations.” (1
Ne. 13:16–19.)
Once
again, after meticulous preparation and precise timing, the Lord had begun to
build on his promised land a congregation that had compacted to pursue “the
glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.” The cultural freedom
of the Renaissance and religious freedom of the Reformation underscored the
strong sense of personal freedom espoused in the Enlightenment to provide the
ideal attitudes and environments for the beginning of this “first new nation.” …
Neither
Washington nor Paine knew, however, the full import of their work or their
time. Indeed it was a beginning, but it was a beginning of the end. The work of
pilgrims and Puritans, patriots and politicians had been to prepare the way for
prophets of the living God. With what Washington called “the singular
interpositions of Providence” a political path had been prepared that would
allow the “restitution of all things.” (Acts
3:21.) Less than a score of years after the Constitutional Convention had
concluded its work and freedoms of conscience, speech, press, and worship had
been guaranteed in a historic Bill of Rights, the Prophet Joseph Smith was born
in clear, graceful Vermont, home of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys. As
Elder Paul H. Dunn recently declared to a Church-wide audience:
“[Joseph]
grew up toward adolescence just like the new land. He fitted it. He was young,
clean, unspoiled—a lad without a past, kneeling in a grove. This pristine
land—this innocent young man—and thus the Lord reached out and kept his
promise. He established his conditions over centuries; you see, God has time.
His plan made it possible for the holy priesthood and the Church to be restored
upon the earth—the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ—but only in
America. …
“The
purpose of America was to provide a setting wherein that was possible. All else
takes its power from that one great, central purpose.” (Ensign, Nov.
1975, p. 54.)
It
is good that the historical celebration of the United States bicentennial
allows us to focus on a land in which God has done so much of his work. It has
not always looked the same geographically nor has it always been governed the
same politically. But that all seems appropriate since the meaning of America,
in its most theological sense, is something more than borders and boundaries,
something above nativism and nationalism. It is an ideal, a thing of the
spirit. Benjamin Franklin told his colleagues, “Our cause is the cause of all
mankind,” and Patrick Henry spoke much more than he knew when he said America
had “lighted a candle to all the world.” (Henry Steele Commager, “The
Revolution as World Ideal,” Saturday Review, Dec. 13, 1975,
pp. 13–18, 110.) …
A
Frenchman, a contemporary of the colonial Founding Fathers, sketched the
clearest meaning of America for those of other nations. Although the
twenty-year-old Marquis de Lafayette had been ordered by Louis XVI of France to
give up his expedition to aid the rebellious Americans, he defied the command
and embarked for the New World. On board his ship The Victory Lafayette
wrote back to his beautiful and concerned wife, Adrienne: “Out of love for me,
become ‘a good American’. … The welfare of America is closely bound up with the
welfare of all mankind.” (Maurice de la Fuye and Emile Baubeau, The
Apostle of Liberty: A Life of LaFayette, New York: Thomas Yoseloff,
1956, p. 30.) So it has been and so it yet will be. And so it is—but in ways
which only those who embrace the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ can fully
understand or appreciate.
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