“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed;” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10)
“Do not allow your heart to be troubled.” (Testimony of John 10:9)
“Wherefore, stand in holy places and be not moved until the day of the Lord come, for behold, it comes quickly, says the Lord.” (Doctrine and Covenants 87:8)
We live in a time of fear. I wrote about that on March 16, Entering the Age of Fear. I don’t pay too much attention to social media, but I am told that it is alive with speculation about the apocalypse that it is upon us, that millions will die, that the governments of the world are conspiring to take away all our freedoms. The Covid virus was man made and calculated to reduce the population of the earth, that the vaccines being produced will cause sterilization or create some kind of chemical lobotomy, or at worst, be the means to control the populace more. Food shortages will cause starvation, the economy will never come back to what it was, money will become obsolete, and you wont be able to buy and sell without a chip that will certify you are virus free.
I don’t deny that there are conspiracies, because I know that there are. People have been meeting in secret places in the middle of the night under darkness fomenting sinister plots to gain power since the beginning of time. Secret Combinations are everywhere and exist in every country, and in every segment of society. Its just that, to me, it doesn’t matter. It’s not as important as the need for us all to be prepared. By prepared I mean spiritually and mentally. The stockpiling of food and guns will not ultimately save you and your family. The real story, the kernel of truth here, is that we are beginning to experience the full fury of Mother Earth’s campaign to do something about the wickedness and abuse that has been perpetrated on her by her ungrateful and greedy children. The only thing that will ultimately save you is your righteousness and your turning to God.
So, I sigh when I read about elaborate conspiracy theories or how people obsess about the end of the world and the apocalypse. Not because they are wrong or misguided, they may not be, but, in my mind it just doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. Conspiracies are only symptoms and not the cause of what is happening. You might say, “How can that be?” Well, wickedness is like a fungus that exists below the ground in a tangled network of molds and mycelium. The mycelium extends over acres of ground but only just barely below ground level, and then in a moment it bursts upward breaking ground creating stalks to release its spores into the wind. We are at the point in time where the wickedness is breaking out in all sorts of ways and the earth and nature can’t contain its revulsion anymore. The Apostle John, in Revelation, describes how the Angels hold back the elements from rebelling against mankind’s pollutions until they are commanded to release the elements (Revelation 7: 1-3). But first the servants have to be prepared.
When people send out emails detailing rumors of conspiracies, of which they usually don’t have the slightest bit of evidence, they are contributing to the atmosphere of fear. I could spend whole days watching YouTube on the subject of “Conspiracies” or “Covid-19”. There is an unhealthy focus that is being given to conspiracy theories and the coming apocalypse. If we obsess about apocalyptic themes and repeat speculation we have heard on the actions and motives of conspiratorial cabals (imagined or real) aren’t we feeding our fears and giving them power? One of the agendas of secret combinations is to plant fear. It is good to be informed, and it is wise to be prepared in physical things for disasters, but I wonder if there is something more important we should be focusing the majority of our attentions and energies on?
The Lord uses disasters, tragedies, even wars to wake us up, to grab our attention away from focusing on mundane worldly labors; Especially to get us to stop obsessing about ourselves. He provides intervals between incidents and disasters to give time to people to turn to Him and repent. Those intervals, however, are becoming shorter and shorter and the incidents are becoming more destructive; like a woman in travail. (1 Thessalonians 5:3)
In Isaiah 13, which is repeated by Nephi in 2 Nephi 23, the prophet details the destruction of Babylon in the last days. It is pretty horrific stuff to read. Verses 6-9 reads:
“Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt: And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.”
“Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.”
The rest of the chapter is pretty graphic. If those days are truly upon us, or at least around the corner, it is right that we should be paying attention. But where should our attentions be focused right now? Isaiah 13 also gives us a clue about where our attentions need to be focused. Isaiah tells us that before the destructions the “sanctified ones” will be removed and led away to safety.
“Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles. I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness.” (King James Version, Isaiah 13:2-3)
I like Gileadi’s translation of this verse: “Raise the ensign on a barren mountain; sound the voice among them! Beckon them with the hand to advance into the precincts of the elite. I have charged my holy ones, called out my valiant ones: my anger is not upon those who take pride in me.” (The Book of Isaiah, transl. Avraham Gileadi)
If you believe that Isaiah and Nephi saw our day in vision and wrote to warn us, then you must believe that when the time comes the Lord will call us out from Babylon and lead us to salvation. Remember the parable of the 10 virgins? Five of them were prepared with enough oil (spiritually oriented), but five of them were not prepared properly. The unprepared were told to go to the merchants to see if they could provide the oil of preparation, but were ultimately denied access to the “gates of the nobles” because their reliance on the merchants highlighted their dependence on the merchants for food, guns, etc. to save them. It was wrong for them to put their trust in the merchants and not in the Lord.
“Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear…For in the time of trouble, He shall hide me in His pavilion” (Psalms 27:3,5.)
“Wherefore, stand in holy places and be not moved until the day of the Lord come, for behold, it comes quickly, says the Lord.” (D&C 87:8)
You might ask, where are the holy places that I should be standing in? I believe it is wherever you are. If you are holy, the place where you stand is holy. So my advice would be to make the place where you are a holy place until the Lord calls you to go somewhere else. That will be work enough and require energy enough to consume most of your time. Ask yourself, can I hear the Lord’s call if He calls me to leave? (Mosiah 5:12). If not, you have your work cut out for you.