Monday, May 18, 2009

Divine Assistance Now

What will be the fate of the United States?

President Brigham Young: "When the day comes in which the Kingdom of God will bear rule, the flag of the United States will proudly flutter unsullied on the flag staff of liberty and equal rights, without a spot to sully its fair surface; the glorious flag our fathers have bequeathed to us will then be unfurled to the breeze by those who have power to hoist it aloft and defend its sanctity. How long will it be before the words of the prophet Joseph will be fulfilled? He said if the Constitution of the United States were saved at all it must be done by this people. It will not be many years before these words come to pass."

Members of the church, then, have the special responsibility to defend the Constitution from the constant barrage now levied against it. President Young's prophecy of the final destiny of the United States will not come about without tremendous effort on our part. Just as God's hand in a "lunar anomaly" let Paul Revere cross a river undetected to make his historic ride, His hand will be with us in our fight to defend the Constitution if we have enough faith to take on that fight!

President John Taylor: "When the people shall have torn to shreds the Constitution of the United States, the elders of Israel will be found holding it up to the nations of the earth and proclaiming liberty and equal rights to all men, and extending the hand of fellowship to the oppressed of all nations. This is part of the program, and as long as we do what is right and fear God, He will help us and stand by us under all circumstances."

It is up to each one of us to see to it that we are actively fighting for liberty rather than wasting our time on the sidelines.

President Benson: "This is still God's world...In due time, when each of us has had a chance to prove himself--including whether or not we are going to stand up for freedom--God will interject himself, and the final and eternal victory shall be for free agency...Time is on the side of truth, and the wave of the future is freedom. There is no question of the eventual, final, and lasting triumph of righteousness. The major question for each of us is what part will we play in helping to bring it to pass...Ours is the task to try to live and perpetuate the principles of Christ and the Constitution in the face of tremendous odds. May we, with God's help, have strength for the battle."

Monday, May 11, 2009

Divine Assistance During the Revolution

Many of us are aware of numerous instances of Divine Intervention during the Revolutionary War and through the writing of the Constitution. From the fog rolling in just long enough to cover the crossing of the Delaware to the colonists winning battles when so severely outnumbered and outgunned. I would like to share another incident with which many of you may not be familiar.

The following is written and documented in Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer. Paul Revere needed to cross a river undetected to begin his famous ride.

The moon was coming up behind Boston, a huge orb of light in the clear night sky. To Paul Revere it must have seemed impossible to pass the ship without detection. Then, miraculously, it was the moon that saved him. The moon was nearly full, a large pale yellow globe that was just beginning to rise in the southern sky.
Normally, Paul Revere's boat would have been caught in the bright reflection of the moonbeam on the water as he passed close by HMS Somerset. But there was something odd about the moon that night. Often it rose farther to the east, but that night it had a southern declination. A lunar anomaly caused it to remain well to the south on the evening of April 18, 1775, and to hang low on the horizon, partly hidden behind the buildings of Boston. The sky was very bright, and Paul Revere's boat was miraculously shrouded in a dark moonshadow that was all the more obscure because of the light that surrounded it. He passed safely "a little to the eastward" of the great ship's massive bowsprit that pointed downstream toward the incoming tide.