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Independence Day quote

This interesting quote came along in one of the LDS quote-of-the-day mailing lists yesterday.

“President Wilford Woodruff spoke of [the Founding Fathers' visit to the St. George Temple] in these words:

” ‘Before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, “You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God.”

” ‘These were the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two days and two nights. . . .

” ‘I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon Brother McAllister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men’ (Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, sel. G. Homer Durham [1946], 160-61).

“These noble spirits came there with divine permission–evidence that this work of salvation goes forward on both sides of the veil.”
- Ezra Taft Benson, “The Constitution–A Glorious Standard,” Ensign, Sept. 1987, 8

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 at 12:33 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Independence Day quote”

  1. John in MN says:
    July 4, 2006 at 1:36 pm

    Looks like one of the quoted sentences above wasn’t quite finished. From http://www.adherents.com/largecom/fam_lds.html

    I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon Brother McAllister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others. I then baptized him for every President of the United States, except three; and when their cause is just, somebody will do the work for them.

    I sure hope he provided Brother McAllister with a few nose plugs. Anyone know three deceased US presidents as of 1877 who might have not had a just cause at the time?

  2. Tim says:
    July 5, 2006 at 1:08 am

    My favorite Independence Day quotation is from President Abraham Lincoln:

    All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

    At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

  3. Mark Butler says:
    July 5, 2006 at 2:47 pm

    The actual question of the merits of these men is open for debate, and indeed we are not in a proper position to judge anyway, however I strongly suspect the three names include Martin Van Buren and James Buchanan.

    Ironically, this Mormon Battalion “marching half naked and half fed, and living upon wild animals, discovered and made a road of great value to our country.” A country from which the main body of Latter Day Saints, huddled in dugouts and crude shelters frozen in along the banks of the Missouri River, was presently fleeing for safety (US President Martin Van Buren once told Joseph Smith, who was seeking financial redress for criminal mob actions, “Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you. If I take up for you I shall lose the vote of Missouri.“)
    (http://sangres.com/history/mormonbattalion.htm)

    James Buchanan, in what came to be be known as Buchanan’s blunder, replaced Brigham Young as territorial governor, and sent a 2500 man army to install a new one, on the rather exaggerated testimony of an over-zealous federal judge, largely for political reasons as well. And of course he neglected to tell Brigham Young or anyone else in Utah of that fact. So on July 24, 1857 a rider rushes in to the main Pioneer Day celebration in Little Cottonwood Canyon and tells them that a very large federal army is on its way.

    Given the previous experiences in Nauvoo and Missouri, that caused the Mormons to call out the Nauvoo Legion (the ancestor of todays Utah National Guard) and to go into an immediate defensive position, with some rather tragic consequences – the Utah War ended peacefully, but was wholly unnecessary to begin with.

    Here is a pretty decent account:

    http://www.historynet.com/we/blutahwar2/

  4. FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Disrespecting Holocaust Victims? says:
    October 24, 2009 at 9:22 pm

    [...] who allowed the attempted genocide of another people, the Church will do their baptisms when “their cause is just.” That, I suspect, will come LONG after the Cubs win the World Series–in a four-game [...]

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