The Power Of Prayer Recognized

Our government, in its beginning, recognized the power of prayer, for in the first gathering of Congress, the Senate and the House, prayer was offered before a thing was undertaken in the way of legislation. Among those wonderful men who met at Carpenter Hall on September 5th, 1774, were some of the greatest Americans, men who were perfectly willing to give their lives for their country. They bowed in prayer, and more than half of them knelt when the prayer was being offered.

Source: Elder Reed Smoot
General Conference, October 1932

Topics: America, Heritage

Extravagance Deplored

I despise waste, and I think that waste under present conditions is almost criminal—the waste of anything. Extravagance that amounts to waste is likewise indefensible in view of the great needs that present themselves. Sometimes I grow indignant when I see and contemplate the extravagances that are indulged by some of our institutions, both public and private when people are in such great distress and great want. There are extravagances in government that absorb all my own taxes and the taxes of my neighbors. These expenses are useless and unnecessary, some of them legalized it is true, but public service ought to be so alive to the situation that confronts us today that even if extravagance is legalized it should be stopped. A sense of the proprieties and a sense of fairness and justice would prompt such action.

Our taxes are unbearably high because our incomes are so reduced. It is a tragedy to see the farms and the homes that are being sacrificed because of the inability of their owners to pay the taxes levied on them. Of course we want good government, we want the protection of law, we want all the opportunities that good government affords to us, and I recognize that they have to be paid for, but this is a day when economy must be applied.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1932

Topics: Responsibility; Taxes

Investigation By Taxpayers

I am very sympathetic with the movement that I have heard is in progress wherein the taxpayers constitute themselves committees to investigate our public expenditures. No official of the government who has the right conception of his trust ought, in any sense, to resent an investigation of the administration of his office. I like the idea. I wish citizens everywhere would organize themselves and go to public officials and question them and ascertain whether or not it is not possible to make reductions in the excessive costs for which we are paying bills, for we pay them all.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1932

Topics: Responsibility; Taxes

Living Within Our Means

We talk constantly about balancing the budget. We are not balancing the budget. Debts are mounting higher in our national administration and I suppose in our state government as well as in our municipal governments. I recognize the fact that many municipalities are actually embarrassed because they cannot get the means with which to discharge their public obligations. It may be that such strenuous circumstances will be necessary to teach us that publicly as well as privately we have to live within our means, for there is just one way for every institution as well as every individual to get out of its or his debts and that is by spending less than we receive and applying the difference to the liquidation of our liabilities. That is the only way to get out of debt. It is a very simple process, and yet it is a very hard thing to do and requires a tremendous amount of stamina to undertake the job.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1932

Topics: Debt

One of the weaknesses of present government is a breakdown in what we call democracy; and the great peoples of Europe, from whom practically all of this audience have come, are looking about for a substitute, and some of them are trying substitutes by way of dictatorships and what not. They are anxious to find a cure for the weaknesses that have expressed themselves in democratic institutions. Indeed, in the thought of many observers, democracy is on trial.

Source: Dr. Elmer G. Petersohn
General Conference, October 1932

Topics: Democracy

It is now more than 2,000 years ago since the Lord called the Prophet Ezekiel, the son of Buzi, commanding him to go and proclaim his word to the house of Israel. The Israelitish people had departed from faith in the God of their fathers and had turned to the worship of idols. Ezekiel, in obedience to the commandments of the Lord, went out to the people who dwelt upon the river Chebar and abode with them sever days. He was amazed at their wickedness, their idolatry, and he hesitated, reluctant to deliver the message which the Lord had commanded him to take to them.

Ezekiel Rebuked

At the end of that time the Lord rebuked him and said to him:

“Son of man, I have made time a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.

“When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life: the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.

“Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.”

Responsibility Of Leadership

I have often read these words of the prophet and have asked myself this question, What is their application to you? What is the responsibility that you are under in the capacity which you occupy in the Church and in the nation? The answer has always been the same. It is this, that whatever my profession, whether it be as a citizen of the government to which I have given allegiance, or a member of the Church with which I am affiliated, it becomes my duty to magnify in my life and to teach others to do so, the ideals for which my country stands, and the creed which my Church teaches. If I fail in this and lead others away from loyalty to their country or devotion to the truths of religion, I assume the responsibility of not only being a violator of the laws made for the protection and temporal welfare of the citizens, but of the law of God which has been given to us for the salvation of our souls.

This places upon me, if I properly understand it, and upon every other person who assumes the responsibility of leadership, whether it be in the Church or state, a tremendous responsibility, a responsibility which I always feel when I stand before a congregation of my brethren and sisters, as I do now, upon occasions of this kind, and I always feel the necessity of dependence upon the Lord and upon you, my brethren and sisters, for help.

Source: President Anthony W. Ivins
General Conference, October 1932

Topics: Public Duty

The Mormon Pioneers

What is it that has brought this about? Why is this great congregation of men and women assembled here this afternoon? Anglo Saxon men and women as a rule, people whose forefathers many of them laid or assisted in the laying of the foundation upon which our government rests. I knew these men and women as perhaps few men now living knew them. This Mormon Pioneer, I knew his faith, I knew his industry, I knew his integrity, I knew his devotion to the government of which he formed a part, for he believed that it was a God-given government. He knew that it was not alone the doing of men, that had brought him to this forbidding looking country, and yet in its ruggedness and its barrenness grand beyond comprehension. And so he toiled on. When difficulties confronted him he prayed to the Lord for light and strength, and then went out and did the thing that was required of him. Profoundly religious he held in reverential respect the religion of other men. He knew that other people found God in temples built with hand, just as he found him here under the stars where he worshipped in those early days.

I think of those men, I think of their statesmanship. They were the peers of any of their time, intellectually, educationally, largely men who had come from the New England states of our republic, the descendants

Source: President Anthony W. Ivins
General Conference, October 1932

Topics: America, History

Destiny Foretold

I shall not take time to go back and prove to you the truth of Elder Talmage’s remarks of yesterday. This country in which we live had been declared by the prophets thousands of years ago to have been given by God our Father to the covenant people of Israel. The coming of Columbus was not a thing of chance. The prophets predicted his coming ages ago. He came here under the inspiration, the impulse, unknown perhaps to him, of the Spirit of the Lord, just as we are led to do many things without just knowing the reason why, for the accomplishment of a divine purpose. The establishment in this country of a government to which the oppressed of all nations should come for refuge, for freedom. He declared that no kings should ever rule here, centuries before Columbus sailed from the port of Spain. He told the history of this country, its past, its present, and declared its future destiny, just as definitely as he declared its past history.

What is that destiny? It is that this government of ours shall persist; it shall continue; it shall never be thrown down; no enemy that comes against it shall ever triumph—upon this one condition, that the people to whom the Lord has given these bounteous blessings; these miracles which have come to the earth during my lifetime, these people who have grown from an exceedingly small beginning to be the wealthiest, perhaps the most important in influence—I believe I am justified in saying it—that there is in the world—upon condition that they serve the Lord of the land, who is Jesus Christ.

Source: President Anthony W. Ivins
General Conference, October 1932

Topics: America, Destiny; America, History

God, The Author Of It

Where much is given much is expected. This land, to God our Father, is a chosen land, dedicated as I have said to the principle of liberty and freedom, not license.

Our fathers, under His inspiration, gave us the constitution of our country, the bill of rights which defines our privileges and places limitations beyond which we may not go. Liberty, when carried to the extreme, results in license. I want to impress upon this congregation, my brethren and sisters who are here, that the Lord our God has been the author of it all. It was he who led you from your native lands. You people from the green fields and lanes of England, you did not leave your homes because you did not love your native land. You had fought for it, defended it, and were ready to fight for it again. You people from Scotland, you people from Ireland and Wales, from Germany and the islands of the sea, oh if I only had the time to go back and tell you I could show you that the whole story of your lives had been written by the finger of God.

So we are here; here, thank the Lord, citizens of the best government in the world. We are here, members of the Church of Christ our Lord which has been restored through the medium of heavenly messengers who had authority to give to men upon earth, the keys of the holy priesthood. What for? For the redemption of the human family. Whether men believe it or not these things are true, and ultimately they will believe it, and there is no power either in earth or hell that can stay the progress of the Church, unless its people prove recreant to the covenants that they have entered into with our Father who is in heaven. Just so, there is no power that can wreck the government that God has established in this country unless it be the people themselves, and that I do not expect nor believe can occur.

Source: President Anthony W. Ivins
General Conference, October 1932

Topics: Heavenly Interest in Human Events

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