Topic: Responsibility, Matches 82 quotes.

Divine Principle of Free Agency

I appeal to every Latter-day Saint to accept the divine principle of free agency and to adopt it in his life. I appeal to you to remember this principle when you are confronted by organizations and groups and movements in this country, which are now arising and assuming great power. Before you become engulfed in them, measure their practices and their purposes by the measuring rod of free agency, and you remember that God said it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another. Remember, also, what Richard Evans told you yesterday, that it is not right that we should be commanded in all things, and don’t you allow yourself to be commanded in all things by any group or agency. You preserve the free agency that God has given to you, because if you don’t you will suffer all the days of your life.

You remember that you are to be true to the Constitution of the United States. I appeal to you to accept as the word of God, the declaration that appears in the revelation in section one hundred one of the D&C, wherein the Lord says he did raise up men and inspired them to write the Constitution. I appeal to you, every one, to be true to the trust that God has placed in you, to preach the gospel throughout the world, as has been declared here today. But remember that you cannot preach that gospel without freedom of speech, and you cannot publish that gospel without freedom of the press, and you cannot gather together in congregations without freedom of assembly, and you cannot worship the Lord your God according to the dictates of your own conscience without freedom of religion. And remember that every time you give up any of your freedoms, whether it be to some economic or political group, or to any other group, you jeopardize these four freedoms of which I have spoken.

I appeal to you to accept as the word of God that which I have quoted to you which says that you, the elders of Israel, are justified by God in defending your constitutional privileges. I appeal to you to be true to your one hundred thousand sons who have fought for liberty, to the eight thousand of your sons who have been wounded and bled in battle. Do not betray the five thousand Latter-day Saint boys who died that freedom might live. Remember that you have a responsibility to preserve freedom in America. Remember always the glorious prayer that is written into the last stanza of “America” which was sung so beautifully this morning by the Tabernacle choir.

Our father’s God! to thee,
Author of liberty,
To thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light!
Protect us by thy might
Great God, our King.

I pray that we may have the courage and the wisdom to accept the truth, that the truth may keep us free, and I ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Source: Elder Mark E. Petersen
General Conference, April 1946

Topics: Free Agency; Responsibility

Joseph Smith’s concept of government and law was divinely enlightened. Government was instituted by Almighty God, and the Constitution of the United States was written by men inspired of God to bring just civic life to the world, for there is a sacredness of citizenship which we all should know. It requires the faithful use of political rights. He saw the wrong of slavery and advocated that the government buy the slaves from their masters, and give them the opportunity to develop their own lives adapted to them. What a tragedy this could have averted. There must be a revival of civic pride in America, a keener respect for law and order. All the written laws in the world cannot bring back that fine old love of justice and the ways of God. There must be the spirit of consecration, of self-discipline, of devotion to the righteous teachings of God. Far back in the ages, Isaiah, six hundred years before the Savior of mankind came, wrote: “Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may entr in.” (Isaiah 26:2.) There is a conscience of nations as there is of individuals. We had once a national conscience, as expressed by the Puritans, Quakers, and the many other religious devotees who settled these shores. They knew moral integrity, moral purpose, moral restraint.

Source: President Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1945

Topics: Citizenship; Morality; Responsibility; Virtue

From my childhood days I have understood that we believe absolutely that the constitution of our country is an inspired instrument and that God directed those who created it and those who defended the independence of this nation. Concerning this matter it is my frequent pleasure to quote the statement by Joseph Smith, regarding the Constitution:

The Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God. It is a heavenly banner; it is, to all those who are privileged with the sweets of liberty, like the cooling shades and refreshing waters of a great rock in a weary and thirsty land. It is like a great tree under whose branches men from every clime can be shielded from the burning rays of the sun.

And such the Constitution of the United States must be to every faithful Latter-day Saint who lives under its protection. That the Lord may help him to think straight, and to pursue a straight course regardless of personal advantage, factional interest, or political persuasion, should be the daily prayer of every Latter-day Saint. I counsel you, I urge you, I plead with you, never, so far as you have voice or influence, permit any departure from the principles of government on which this nation was founded, or any disregard of the freedoms which, by the inspiration of God our Father, were written into the Constitution of the United States.

Source: President Heber J. Grant
General Conference, October 1944

Topics: Heavenly Interest in Human Events; Responsibility; US Constitution

Our Country Under Divine Guidance

No nation has been more greatly blessed than has the United States. We live in a land which has been called choice above all other lands by divine pronouncement. The Lord has watched over it with a jealous care and has commanded its people to serve Him lest His wrath be kindled against them and His blessings be withdrawn. Our government came into existence through divine guidance. The inspiration of the Lord rested upon the patriots who established it, and inspired them through the dark days of their struggle for independence and through the critical period which followed that struggle when they framed our glorious Constitution which guarantees to all the self-evident truth proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That is to say, it is the right of every soul to have equal and unrestricted justice before the law, equal rights to worshp according to the dictates of conscience and to labor according to the individual inclinations, independently of coercion or compulsion. That this might be, the Lord has said, “I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood.” (D.&C. 101:80)

The founders of this nation were men of humble faith. Many of them saw in vision a glorious destiny for our government, provided we would faithfully continue in the path of justice and right with contrite spirits and humble hearts, accepting the divine truths which are found in the Holy Scriptures. The appeal of these men has echoed down the passing years with prophetic warning to the succeeding generations, pleading with them to be true to all these standards which lay at the foundation of our government. This country was founded as a Christian nation, with the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of the world. It was predicted by a prophet of old that this land would be a land of liberty and it would be fortified against all other nations as long as its inhabitants would serve Jesus Christ; but should they stray from the Son of God, it would cease to be a land of liberty and His anger be kindled against them.

Source: Elder Joseph Fielding Smith
General Conference, April 1943

Topics: America, Destiny; America, Heritage; America, History; Heavenly Interest in Human Events; Responsibility

And now, I pray that those who belong to this Church will hearken to that warning. I sincerely hope the American nation will turn for counsel toward these great mountains where the House of the Lord is established, where His inspired servants may be found, and, above all, that this nation’s people will hearken to that counsel, to achieve the place that Thomas Jefferson predicted would be our blessing if we followed the fundamentals of government as laid down by the founders of this great nation, and to avoid the catastrophe that now lies immediately ahead:

Let us then with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and republican principles, our attachment to our Union and representative government. Kindly separated by Nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal rights to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting, not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed and practised in various forms, yet all of them including honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter; and with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

As members of this Church we know what our relationship to the Government of the United States is. We know what our responsibilities are, for God has revealed them to us. I sincerely pray as citizens of the United States, as members of this great Church, we will set an example which will create, if it is possible, a restitution of all those glorious privileges and blessings that we have lost and are losing—and we will arouse America by our example.

Source: Elder Joseph L. Wirthlin
General Conference, October 1941

Topics: America, Future; Freedom, Loss of; Responsibility

Upholding The Constitution

Finally, if we would make the world better, let us foster a keener appreciation of the freedom and liberty guaranteed by the government of the United States as framed by the founders of this nation. Here again self-proclaimed progressives cry that such old-time adherence is out of date. But there are some fundamental principles of this Republic which, like eternal truths, never get out of date, and which are applicable at all times to liberty-loving peoples. Such are the underlying principles of the Constitution, a document framed by patriotic, freedom-loving men, who Latter-day Saints declare were inspired by the Lord.

This date, October 6, has been set apart by churches as “Loyalty Day.” It is highly fitting, therefore, as a means of making the world better, not only to urge loyalty to the Constitution and to threatened fundamentals of the United States government, but to warn the people that there is evidence in the United States of disloyalty to tried and true fundamentals in government. There are unsound economic theories; there are European “isms,” which, termite like, secretly and, recently, quite openly, and defiantly, are threatening to undermine our democratic institutions.

Today, as never before, the issue is clearly defined—liberty and freedom of choice, or oppression and subjugation for the individual and for nations.

Source: President David O. McKay
General Conference, October 1940

Topics: Government, Downfall; Responsibility

May the Lord be with us at all times, under all circumstances; may he bring into our lives a burning desire to uphold the Constitution, a living faith in its inspired origin, that we may always be found among those who shall support it to the last breath.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, April 1935

Topics: Responsibility

The faith of the Latter-day Saints and the teaching that I have had since I was a child at my mother’s knee, as well as from this stand, is that the Constitution of our country was written by men inspired of the Lord God Almighty. Therefore we, as Latter-day Saints, more than any other people, ought to be supporters of the Constitution, and all constitutional law.

Source: President Heber J. Grant
General Conference, April 1926

Topics: Responsibility; US Constitution, Inspired

We Should Not Be Led Astray By Fallacies

In these days of confusion, when the Constitution of Our country is assailed, by those who have no understanding of the purpose of God regarding this great country, it behooves those who do understand to consider seriously and faithfully, the benefits that will flow to us by honoring and sustaining the government that was reared under the direction of our heavenly Father.

We are a peculiar people in many ways, and in this particularly are we peculiar, in that we believe that the constitution of the United States was inspired by our heavenly Father, and he has told us that he raised up the very men who should frame the Constitution of the United States. Knowing that, we should not be led astray by the fallacies of individuals whose selfishness inclines them to attack that which our heavenly Father has prepared for the people of this land.

Source: Elder George Albert Smith
General Conference, October 1924

Topics: America, Heritage; Responsibility; US Constitution, Inspired

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