From our earliest days, when the Prophet Joseph and Patriarch Hyrum suffered in Liberty Jail and died in Carthage Jail, to the Saints spending nearly 30 years resisting Federal anti-polygamy laws, practicing civil disobedience and being willing to go to prison in order to serve God, on down to the modern day we have examples of the lives of great Saints who have repeatedly broken the laws of the land in order to do what is right and to serve God. Latter-day Saint history is full of rebels and rogues, people who would rather be exiled from the nation, who would rather be killed, than disobey the Lord. So how is it that so many of us have become so milquetoast about standing up the government tyranny? Why is it that so many of us think that the Saints should “strictly obey the laws of the government in which they live,” even when such laws aren’t just wrong or immoral, but even when said laws actively compel us either to disobey God or punish us for obeying Him? While there are numerous reasons, one of the largest is because Latter-day Saints have misinterpreted the Twelfth Article of Faith, D&C 58:21, and D&C 134:5 as giving commandments to the Saints to obey the law and to comply even with evil laws. A close examination of these scriptures though, as I attempt here, show that such interpretations are, by the large, gross nonsense.
Tag: rebels
The Dismal Fourth of July
This Saturday is the Fourth of July, American Independence Day. It is the first in the life of the Latter-day Liberator and it dawns dismally. Instead of a celebration of revolution and liberty, we find the creeping Fascism of the past few decades has suddenly become a raging torrent as the officers of the State have begun to openly wage war directly upon American citizens and the actions of those in power threaten hundreds of millions of people with absolute poverty, starvation, devastation, and death. But there is hope. By recovering the ideas and truths of the past that gave birth to the original Independence Day we can renew and reestablish our rights as never before for this Independence Day and every one after it.