"The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done."
At times the cause for truth can feel overwhelming and uncertain. In truth, the path to God is not a smooth one, nor does it carry us forth on its own like an airport flat escalator. God expects more of us and we should reach for more if we wish to become like Him. Contrary to the ignorant, the road to discipleship is not easy for we are told that we must suffer our own cross and "bear the shame of the world." (Jacob 1:8) Ease does not make a man great just as a smooth sea cannot make a skillful mariner. In these troubled times, when the world appears half-empty, we must consider the brotherhood of the Lord in the famous hymn, Onward, Christian Soldiers. One can only imagine the uninspiring tone and lack of fervency from the same song if it was called Fleeing, Christian Soldiers or Backward, Christian Soldiers! As I will point out later on, this is the sad case of many burned out "Contrarians" who begin to question their fealty to the Savior and His cause out of added deference to the magnetic, collective delusion of the crowd. Only through Christ can we cultivate a strong inner compass and character whose inner mooring can direct us through the storms of tyranny. As we resist the pressures of the world and act on our own internal judgments rather than the mores of the mob, we will be victorious and qualify ourselves for true discipleship. An excerpt from Onward, Christian Soldiers:
"Hell's foundations quiver at the sight of praise;
Brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise."
Elder Neal A. Maxwell declared: "Those of us who are already believers need to make of our discipleship a lean and trim thing, for these times require it. What the living Church must do to fulfill the purposes of the living God will take all that we have, for these are not casual times. Rather, these are times in which there will be culminating events of staggering proportions, so in the midst of such convergence we must pull ourselves together. Jesus' brief stumbling while carrying the cross is a reminder as to how close to the very edge of our strength God stretches us at times."
But time is always on the side of truth and we can rest assured that those who reject the facts in favor of theory will one day know, just as Esau, that their mess of pottage did not really satisfy nor leave them wanting for more. Still consumed with the bitter taste of sin, they cannot wash their mouths out with fuller's soap, but must first pass through the refiner's fire of Christ's atonement to be purged and purified of their corruptible ways. Only then, will the sinner more definitively turn against sin and remember once more, as Elder Neal A. Maxwell exclaimed, that "there really is a God, that there really is a Savior, Jesus Christ, that there really is impending immortality for all men, that there really will be a judgment with genuine personal accountability, and that there really is a purpose in life and a divine plan of happiness for man." Here we will also gain greater perspective and power through the 'spartanizing of our souls' to be upright and fearless on the path of truth, a way where we must always keep our balance. "For straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)
Our enemies, both in the physical and spiritual realm, continually seek our destruction and collective misery. Their subtle process of assimilation from culture to crudity weakens our second estate from thinker to reactionary, caution to impulse, freedom to bondage, and life to death. Their strategy is to depress our resolve and make us question who we really are through their own siren song of popularity, wealth, and prestige; as if what we owned defined who we really were! Not being settled within their own soul, and impressed by words and images, many betray themselves for the salivary gland of Pavlov's dog, which foams and froths to the bell of determined response, turning them self-less. Now turned in their beliefs, the once valiant contrarians yield to impulse and undergo a transformation to the collective mind, changing the hero to a coward.
Is it possible then to oppose anything when the opposition seems so futile? Absolutely! Can one person really make a difference? Yes! It takes but one rock to create ripples in water; the first of which signifies our families, then our neighbors, followed by the community, city, and then the state before spreading throughout the entire nation. Remember that it is we the people who constitute the water.
Like the cybernetic race in Star Trek known as the Borg, deniers of liberty and righteousness make the same claim that 'resistance is futile.' In their collective network, each "drone" follows in kind to the next one and so on at the cost of individual liberty and personal sovereignty. The resultant 'undifferentiated ego mass' then swells under the false pretense of perfection, inspiring it to consume and control any and all that pass by it. Similarly, on the narrow road towards discipleship lie many pitstops with flashing lights and neon signs, outlining the shapes of tempters who beckon for the burned out individual to come and rest in their hollow dwellings. Lamentably, many lose sight of the one true mark and fall by the wayside where they are quickly overcome by the moving crowd, or interconnected collective, beneath whose murmuring cries they fall quickly into submission, losing themselves in the process within the same mass of uninterrupted noise. Induced to groupthink, the conscious personality swiftly vanishes; will and discernment are lost; and the unconscious qualities that make man beastly obtain the upper hand as grains of sand are stirred up at will in the wind. "Though Satan postures as a nonconformist," wrote Elder Neal A. Maxwell in his powerful book 'Things As They Really Are,' "my, how the adversary likes his lemmings to line up and march - toward self-destruction - to the most conforming cadence caller of them all!" Yet remarkably, many still leap to surrender their agency, marching in step to the false greeting of hosannas by wolves in sheep's clothing. May we live like the early Pioneer leaders who, as President J. Reuben Clark once confidently described:
"Upright men they were, and fearless, unmindful of what men thought or said of them, if they were in their line of duty. Calumny, slander, derision, scorn left them unmoved, if they were treading the straight and narrow way. Uncaring they were of men's blame and censure, if the Lord approved them. Unswayed they were by the promise of men, to wander from the path of truth. Endowed by the spirit of discernment, they knew when kind words were mere courtesy, and when they betokened honest interest. They moved neither to the right nor to the left form the path of truth to court the good favor of men."
"Hell's foundations quiver at the sight of praise;
Brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise."
Elder Neal A. Maxwell declared: "Those of us who are already believers need to make of our discipleship a lean and trim thing, for these times require it. What the living Church must do to fulfill the purposes of the living God will take all that we have, for these are not casual times. Rather, these are times in which there will be culminating events of staggering proportions, so in the midst of such convergence we must pull ourselves together. Jesus' brief stumbling while carrying the cross is a reminder as to how close to the very edge of our strength God stretches us at times."
But time is always on the side of truth and we can rest assured that those who reject the facts in favor of theory will one day know, just as Esau, that their mess of pottage did not really satisfy nor leave them wanting for more. Still consumed with the bitter taste of sin, they cannot wash their mouths out with fuller's soap, but must first pass through the refiner's fire of Christ's atonement to be purged and purified of their corruptible ways. Only then, will the sinner more definitively turn against sin and remember once more, as Elder Neal A. Maxwell exclaimed, that "there really is a God, that there really is a Savior, Jesus Christ, that there really is impending immortality for all men, that there really will be a judgment with genuine personal accountability, and that there really is a purpose in life and a divine plan of happiness for man." Here we will also gain greater perspective and power through the 'spartanizing of our souls' to be upright and fearless on the path of truth, a way where we must always keep our balance. "For straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)
Our enemies, both in the physical and spiritual realm, continually seek our destruction and collective misery. Their subtle process of assimilation from culture to crudity weakens our second estate from thinker to reactionary, caution to impulse, freedom to bondage, and life to death. Their strategy is to depress our resolve and make us question who we really are through their own siren song of popularity, wealth, and prestige; as if what we owned defined who we really were! Not being settled within their own soul, and impressed by words and images, many betray themselves for the salivary gland of Pavlov's dog, which foams and froths to the bell of determined response, turning them self-less. Now turned in their beliefs, the once valiant contrarians yield to impulse and undergo a transformation to the collective mind, changing the hero to a coward.
Is it possible then to oppose anything when the opposition seems so futile? Absolutely! Can one person really make a difference? Yes! It takes but one rock to create ripples in water; the first of which signifies our families, then our neighbors, followed by the community, city, and then the state before spreading throughout the entire nation. Remember that it is we the people who constitute the water.
Like the cybernetic race in Star Trek known as the Borg, deniers of liberty and righteousness make the same claim that 'resistance is futile.' In their collective network, each "drone" follows in kind to the next one and so on at the cost of individual liberty and personal sovereignty. The resultant 'undifferentiated ego mass' then swells under the false pretense of perfection, inspiring it to consume and control any and all that pass by it. Similarly, on the narrow road towards discipleship lie many pitstops with flashing lights and neon signs, outlining the shapes of tempters who beckon for the burned out individual to come and rest in their hollow dwellings. Lamentably, many lose sight of the one true mark and fall by the wayside where they are quickly overcome by the moving crowd, or interconnected collective, beneath whose murmuring cries they fall quickly into submission, losing themselves in the process within the same mass of uninterrupted noise. Induced to groupthink, the conscious personality swiftly vanishes; will and discernment are lost; and the unconscious qualities that make man beastly obtain the upper hand as grains of sand are stirred up at will in the wind. "Though Satan postures as a nonconformist," wrote Elder Neal A. Maxwell in his powerful book 'Things As They Really Are,' "my, how the adversary likes his lemmings to line up and march - toward self-destruction - to the most conforming cadence caller of them all!" Yet remarkably, many still leap to surrender their agency, marching in step to the false greeting of hosannas by wolves in sheep's clothing. May we live like the early Pioneer leaders who, as President J. Reuben Clark once confidently described:
"Upright men they were, and fearless, unmindful of what men thought or said of them, if they were in their line of duty. Calumny, slander, derision, scorn left them unmoved, if they were treading the straight and narrow way. Uncaring they were of men's blame and censure, if the Lord approved them. Unswayed they were by the promise of men, to wander from the path of truth. Endowed by the spirit of discernment, they knew when kind words were mere courtesy, and when they betokened honest interest. They moved neither to the right nor to the left form the path of truth to court the good favor of men."
Our mandate remains clear: "To concentrate all our influence to make popular that which is sound and good, and unpopular that which is unsound." We need to not only bear testimony of the truth, but to organize what we know so we can communicate it powerfully and quickly to others. It was Peter who said:
"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts; and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you..." (1 Peter 3:15)
By so doing, we will be more fit to inspire confidence in those who hear us and the things we teach. The media machine will accuse people like you and me of trying to divide the people whilst in every other area they encourage dissent as being healthy. Hypocrites. By far the greatest danger to good sense, good citizenship, and the good life is a slavish subjection to tides and trends. When confronted with the truth, just as the money-mongering Jews were in the temple, these empty wells break down completely, reduced in rank to their truer forms as dust moving hither and thither beneath the spirited arm of Virtue. Such fools make great voters and willing slaves.
We need to be rigorous in our challenging of the status quo and the dogmatism of disbelievers just as Christ did so passionately throughout his ministry. In truth, "the history of liberty is the history of resistance." We know that in the end God's goodness and power will trump evil. Therefore, man's resistance to God is, by the same definition, futile. For as Neal A. Maxwell solemnly stated,
"And, if you sense that one day every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, why not do so now? For in the coming of that collective confession, it will mean much less to kneel down when it is no longer possible to stand up!" (Neal A. Maxwell, “Why Not Now?” Ensign, Nov. 1974)
So how will we know if we are being deceived? Ask yourself: Are your better angels being awakened, or your worse ones? If we choose to put our faith in the arm of flesh and allow the secret combinations of Gadianton, whose father is the devil, to flourish and spread across our nation, to claim the sovereignty of all things under the heavens, even of our own personal freedoms, then we are no different than the honeybee, in whose crowded structure the cacophony of buzzing refuses all remembrances of the self; to be governed instead by the collective mind of a tyrannical mass.
Long live the fighters
We need to be rigorous in our challenging of the status quo and the dogmatism of disbelievers just as Christ did so passionately throughout his ministry. In truth, "the history of liberty is the history of resistance." We know that in the end God's goodness and power will trump evil. Therefore, man's resistance to God is, by the same definition, futile. For as Neal A. Maxwell solemnly stated,
"And, if you sense that one day every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, why not do so now? For in the coming of that collective confession, it will mean much less to kneel down when it is no longer possible to stand up!" (Neal A. Maxwell, “Why Not Now?” Ensign, Nov. 1974)
So how will we know if we are being deceived? Ask yourself: Are your better angels being awakened, or your worse ones? If we choose to put our faith in the arm of flesh and allow the secret combinations of Gadianton, whose father is the devil, to flourish and spread across our nation, to claim the sovereignty of all things under the heavens, even of our own personal freedoms, then we are no different than the honeybee, in whose crowded structure the cacophony of buzzing refuses all remembrances of the self; to be governed instead by the collective mind of a tyrannical mass.
Long live the fighters
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