Awake And Arise, the BLOG

Delighted at Lawrence M. Vance, columnist of the much beloved LewRockwell.com newsletter, arguably the best subscription one can make to their daily inbox helping them keep abreast of world events, I thought to compose him a quick note, now turned Blog Post. Here goes.

I’m born and raised a Mormon, live here in Utah, and absolutely enjoy reading your articles.

You’re critique of these so-called Christians rings true most forcefully in Utah as well, as there are those Mitt Romney devotee’s who are just as screwed up in their theology as any of the groups you reference, such as: “armchair Christian warrior, Christian Coalition moralist, Religious Right warvangelical, Reich-wing Christian nationalist, theocon Values Voter, Red-State Christian fascist, and God and country Christian bumpkin.”  When in one of the Presidential Debates in 2007, Romney did not reject nuclear bombing of Iran, Mormon’s with any clue of their theology should have been in an uproar.  Unfortunately, most follow along the same path of empire worship as their evangelical critics who claim they aren’t even Christian—and they might just be right!  Warmongers of any stripe cannot be counted as Christian.  Let them not profess so to be.

It’s been fascinating to me to see how ignorance feeds into this propensity to accept propaganda and champion war. When the first Gulf War broke out in 1990, I was in high school. I remember, as a bleating sheep, decrying protestors with signs who had shut down bridges in San Francisco which read “No Blood for Oil.” I, for one,  would have backed my righteous, conservative President, George Herbert Walker Bush, with fervor.  Not then had I known he was the son of a Nazi war profiteer, nor was I quite up to par with his constant invocating the term “New World Order.”

Fortunately, some truth began to take hold in subsequent years. The reading of books, the right kind of books, including the Bible had a great impact.  The highly anti-war Book of Mormon was my greatest teacher on the doctrines of just war—and it is a hated book by many because of it’s very Christ centered, very much anti-war doctrine.  Warmongers are usually not keen on liberty and freedom either.  Ezra Taft Benson, 13th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said this of the Book of Mormon and his own church membership:

“If you use the scriptures as a guide, you know what the Book of Mormon has to say regarding murderous conspiracies in the last day and how we are to awake to our awful situation today (see Ether 8:18–25). I find certain elements in the Church do not like to read the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants so much—they have too much to say about freedom.” (The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p. 81; see also p. 42.)

We would also say, these folks do not like to read or quote from these books of scripture too, because they condemn preemptive war, and always war accept under very narrow circumstances of self defense.

Only now in this last decade have I grasped just how interesting it is to find that not only did Christ not champion all this butchery that many attempt to put in his name, but a history of my own religions leadership at the top have been anti-war, yet the people would have little counsel from such leadership.  And, Christ himself spoke of the sheep fleeing from the good shepherd.  This the warmonger loving sheep in the flock do, they flee the shepherd who condemns their propensity to champion violence, murder, and death.

J. Reuben Clark Jr., is said to have had a major impact on defeating the League of Nations as he was a speech writer for two prominent Senators at the time. He was later Secretary of State and served after that as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, ending in 1933 when he was called into the LDS Church’s First Presidency as a counselor to President Heber J. Grant. In 1937, two years before Hilter invaded Poland, he uttered this prophetic warning, which ticked off the phony warmongering so-called “Christians” within the very church which professed to sustain him as a church leader:

“The power people are now planning another war for you. They have made this depression last many more years than it would have ordinarily lasted. They got stock down to 14 cents on a dollar. They just bought up everything at 14 cents on a dollar, and they’re now ready to make additional billions as they put you through another world war.

“They’re going to have you pay for it. You’re going to be involved in it. You don’t think you’ll get involved, but they’ll say that for the peace of the world, you must come in, and you’ll feel so soft-hearted about it, you’ll come in. It will be just as big a mistake as World War I.”  (The Life of J. Reuben Clark, Jr. September 1, 1992 Delivered at the Grantsville High School, Grantsville, Utah; The works of W. Cleon Skousen. (a Folio Infobase) published by Verity Software)

The foremost statement and quotation to be shared on this theme would be that of the 12th President of the LDS Church, Spencer W. Kimball, who in 1976, the Bicentennial celebratory year of the nation, he spoke out in June of his dismay at not only the nation, but the LDS people particularly:

“When I review the performance of this people…..I am appalled and frightened…..We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord.  When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel – ships, planes, missiles, fortifications – and depend on them for protection and deliverance.  When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-Kingdom of God; we train man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;  That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven’.”  (Spencer W. Kimball, “The False Gods We Worship”, Ensign, June 1976, 3.)

Very much famed LDS Scholar, Hugh Nibley stated of that address, that it was “given the instant deep freeze” by Mormon’s and ignored.  The warmongering prone Latter-day Saints didn’t want to hear condemnation of their worshiping the false god of militarism. They “mentally stoned” their living prophet, something seen again, and again, and again, a chronology of such examples I won’t expand on here.

Back to World War II, The LDS First Presidency knew and expressed dismay that their own membership acted clueless and unable to accept the truth of the facts even from them, as evidenced in this letter, a response from an inquiry of the Secretary to the US Treasury seeking consolation in the alarming trends he saw in the nation. This quoted from H. Verlan Anderson’s “The Great and Abominable Church of the Devil”:

Letter to the U.S. Treasury, September 30, 1941

“…the Church has not found it possible to follow along the lines of the present general tendency in the matter of property rights, taxes, the curtailment of rights and liberties of the people, nor in general the economic policies of what is termed the “New Deal”…

…unless the people of America forsake the sins and the errors, political and otherwise, of which they are now guilty and return to the practice of the great fundamental principles of Christianity, and of Constitutional government, there will be no exaltation for them spiritually, and politically we shall lose our liberty and free institutions…

…We believe that our real threat comes from within and not from without, and it comes from the underlying spirit common to Naziism, Fascism, and Communism, namely the spirit which would array class against class, which would set up a socialistic state of some sort, which would rob the people of the liberties which we possess under the Constitution, and would set up such a reign of terror as exists now in many parts of Europe…

…We confess to you that it has not been possible for us to unify our own people even upon the necessity of such a turning about, and therefore we cannot unfortunately, and we say it regretfully, make any practical suggestion to you as to how the nation can be turned about.”

(Heber J. Grant, also J. Ruben Clark, Jr. and David O. McKay signed as the First Presidency, written during World War II Letter to the U.S. Treasury, September 30, 1941)

And some other fun quotations of church leaders condemning useless war.  Again, these contemporaries of FDR and Truman.

“[Satan] plans to destroy liberty and freedom—economic, political, and religious, and to set up in place thereof the greatest, most widespread, and most complete tyranny that has ever oppressed men. He is working under such perfect disguise that many do not recognize either him or his methods. There is no crime he would not commit, no debauchery he would not set up, no plague he would not send, no heart he would not break, no life he would not take, no soul he would not destroy. He comes as a thief in the night; he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Without their knowing it, the people are being urged down paths that lead only to destruction. Satan never before had so firm a grip on this generation as he has now….

“We condemn the outcome [of the war] which wicked and designing men are now planning; the world-wide establishment and perpetuation of some form of communism on the one side, or some form of Nazism or Fascism on the other. Each of these systems destroys liberty, wipes out free institutions, blots out free agency, stifles free press and free speech, crushes out freedom of religion and conscience. Free peoples cannot and do not survive under these systems.” (CR, Oct. 1942, pp13, 15, Messages of the First Presidency, comp. James R. Clark, vol. 6 (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1975), p. 179.)  (quoted also in The Great and Abominable Church of the Devil by H. Verlan Anderson, p. 157.)

David O. McKay who would later himself lead the church for nearly two decades:

“Today, freedom – political, economic, and individual freedom – lies destroyed or is in the course of being destroyed over great areas of the globe.  And it has been destroyed and is being destroyed in the name of freedom…..A ruthless dialectical battle is being waged against the Christian way of life, against political liberty, against individual freedom, and it is being waged in the name of Freedom.  Black becomes White; Tyranny becomes Freedom; The Forced Labor Camp stands for Liberty; The Slave State is represented as Democracy.  This is the deadly challenge of Communism” [i.e. Fascism, Socialism, etc…] (LDS Church President David O. McKay, Conference Report Oct. 1962, pp. 6–7.)

Then we had the very much beloved Gordon B. Hinckley, 15th President of the Church noted this of the warmongers (most professing Christians and Mormons) who are prone to worship empire, few acknowledging, if American, that their nation with military bases across the globe is indeed an empire by definition:

“We sometimes are prone to glorify the great empires of the past, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and in more recent times, the vast British Empire. But there is a darker side to every one of them. There is a grim and tragic overlay of brutal conquest, of subjugation, of repression,and an astronomical cost in life and treasure.” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “War and Peace,” Ensign, May 2003, 78)

In October of 2006 President Hinckley then said:

“I have walked with reverence through the British cemetery on the outskirts of Rangoon, Burma (now known as Myanmar), and noted the names of hundreds and thousands of young men who came from the villages, towns, and great cities of the British Isles and who gave their lives in hot and distant places…

“All who have lived upon the earth before us are now gone. They have left all behind as they have stepped over the threshold of silent death. As I have visited these various cemeteries I have reflected, first, on the terrible cost of war. What a fruitless thing it so often is, and what a terrible price it exacts.” (BYU devotional, Oct. 31, 2006)

Then again Gordon B. Hinckley:

“I was on a mission in the British Isles more than 70 years ago. Part of the British Empire was still intact. That empire was the most widely extended political family of nations on the face of the earth. It was said that the sun never set on the British Empire. The Union Jack flew around the world.

“Great good came of that empire in many areas. But there was also tremendous suffering. It came as a result of conquest, oppression, war, and conflict. The remains of British soldiers were buried in graves around the earth.

“Now it is all gone…” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “Opening Remarks,” Ensign, Nov 2005, 4) (Italics added.)

Another:

“No one can ever estimate the terrible suffering incident to these wars across the globe. Lives numbered in the millions have been lost. The terrible wounds of war have left bodies maimed and minds destroyed. Families have been left without fathers and mothers. Young people who have been recruited to fight have, in many instances, died while those yet alive have had woven into the very fabric of their natures elements of hatred which will never leave them. The treasure of nations has been wasted and will never be recovered.

“The devastation of war seems so unnecessary and such a terrible waste of human life and national resources.”  (Gordon B. Hinckley, “An Unending Conflict, a Victory Assured,” Ensign, Jun 2007, 4–9)

And so will too be gone the American Empire.  It’s coming to an end.  And one day too, warmongers professing the name of Christ will cease to be as well.  Those that live by the sword surely shall die by the sword and will not be celebrating peace with the Prince of Peace when he comes in glory to usher in that glorious millennial reign when men shall beat their swords into plowshares and will not learn war any more.