r By Jesse FisherrLast time we saw from quotes given by early LDS leaders that Babylon is the false organization of society. Let’s look now at those same brethren’s teachings about Babylon’s fateful future.
For the three decades of the 1850s through the 1870s, the Mormon church leaders taught what John the Revelator saw happening in vision as recorded in the Book of Revelation. John saw and reported what the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had seen before him – that “Babylon the Great” would fall. Let’s look at a single quote taken from each decade.
In February of 1852, Apostle Orson Pratt taught, “By and by the earth becomes corrupted again, and the nations make themselves drunken with the wine of the wrath of great Babylon; but the Lord has reserved the same earth for fire; hence He says by the prophet Malachi, ‘Behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven…’”
More clearly, Elder Wilford Woodruff in May 1867 stated, “The day is not far distant when we shall have to take care of ourselves. Great Babylon is going to fall, judgment is coming on the wicked, the Lord is about to pour upon the nations of the earth the great calamities which He has spoken of by the mouths of His prophets; and no power can stay these things.”
Then in January of 1870, President Brigham Young started out the decade teaching that “…by and by Babylon will fall. What will be the result? The merchants will stand and look at one another worse than they do in this city. No man will buy their merchandise; and they will look here and there for a customer; but there will be no one to buy their merchandise, and the cry will be, ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen!’ Is this day coming? Yes; just as sure as we are now living. We are hastening it with all possible speed, as fast as time and circumstances will admit, when it will be said, ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen!’”
What’s even more interesting about what they taught is what they said we should do to prepare for Babylon’s collapse – and that preparation was not spiritual, but economic!
In the very next sentence, Brother Brigham asks, “Are you going to prepare for it? We say we are the people of God and are building up the kingdom of God. We say we are gathered out of the nations to establish Zion. Let us prove it by our works, and we will then manufacture that which we wear.”
Wait! Prepare for Babylon’s fall by making their own clothing?! Yes! Over and over during those three decades, early LDS leaders taught that the Saints needed to achieve independence from Babylon’s economy because God’s prophets had warned it would fall. How are we doing on that account?
Maybe we should take seriously the Lord’s statement in D&C 64:24, “I will not spare any that remain in Babylon.”
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