THE LATTER-DAY JUDGMENTS.

Liverpool, October 28, 1847.

Reverend and Dear Sir,—THE LATTER-DAY JUDGMENTS, the subject of my present letter, deserve a careful consideration among the topics peculiar to Latter-day Saints.

You must be already aware that it is a part of my faith that God designs to set up his kingdom on the earth, in order that the meek may inherit the earth as their celestial abode; and as He will not employ His enemies to administer even temporal affairs within the bounds of His kingdom, His kingdom will consequently be a temporal one, and wholly and exclusively conducted by His own loyal subjects, according to His righteous will. He will proceed from conquest to conquest, until all other kingdoms are overthrown and merged in one—even His own kingdom.

The means by which he will subdue and overcome the nations of the earth are two, viz.. TRUTH and JUDGMENT. He explicitly declares, that He will lay judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet. His latter-day proclamation is, "Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come." The salvation that He offers is temporal, spiritual, and eternal; and the judgments which He will inflict are also similar. As a supreme lawgiver, He claims the submission of all the inhabitants of the earth. Nor is it necessary that His servants should be for ever preaching the gospel on the earth, in order to effect a universal reconciliation of all men to their God. All men will not obey the truth, therefore what the truth will not save through faith, God's judgments will destroy through their unbelief. And these judgments will be executed speedily, even as in the days of Noah and Lot. God formerly gave the inhabitants timely warning before the deluge came, and before the fire descended from heaven.

The gospel must first be preached, and then the judgments will follow in quick succession. Even as a chalk-line makes an impression for the saw and the chisel, so God's judgments will make an impression, sensible and summary. The day of vengeance has long been in His heart. A day when His jealousy and wrath shall burn like fire, even to the lowest hell. The wicked and diabolical spirits will be pursued, even to their dens of darkness, and there scourged and bound. The righteous veterans that have long since fought and bled, in order to establish a reign of righteousness and truth on the earth, and prayed with uplifted hands for this day of truth and judgment, their language is, "How long, O Lord, wilt thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" But God, who is long-suffering—not willing that any should perish, but rather that they should repent and be saved—has nevertheless reserved the worst spirits to the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. That day is even now dawned. God has commenced to reveal his wrath against all them that obey not the gospel. It is a day of revelation and prophecy.

The righteous are timely advised to gather out and separate themselves from those that will not obey the gospel. They are not disobedient to the great revelation of mercy to them that obey, and of wrath to them that are contentious and obey not the truth. The winds and waves are wafting thousands to the land of refuge. The prairies and wilderness reverberate with the songs of the outcast but chosen and elect ones of God. A more intelligent, enterprising, and bold race of Saints, perhaps, has never been summoned to the help of the Lord against the mighty, since the foundation of the world. Their fortitude, patience, and invincibility are indelibly written in their bloodstained pathway through Missouri and Illinois. The old arts of tormenting the sick by burning their houses, and of famishing the robust by plundering their crops, and forcing the sale of property by threats of murder and arson, are fruitless. Prison walls and tragic scenes of assassination and expatriation have spent their fury to no purpose. The daring sons of Pharaoh, Cain, and Judas are baffled and confounded at such godlike firmness. Occasionally a priest, goaded on by the loss of his flock, has dared to act as champion, and throw the gauntlet for public discussion, but the inevitable discomfiture that has followed, has taught him the superior policy of evading discussion. But, dear sir, no man can long be a neutral in this warfare. He must choose his side. If truth fails to bring down high looks, judgments will not fail. Those judgments which begun at the house of God, in Kirtland, Independence, and Nauvoo, have been seriously felt by the Saints of God. But if the righteous scarcely escape, where shall the sinner and ungodly appear? The latter-day judgments that shall befall their enemies will be far more insupportable and abiding.

There was no part of the United States ignorant of the murderous doings of their countrymen towards the Latter-day Saints. The news spread over the continent, and reached even the remote islands of the Pacific with almost telegraphic speed. Nobody that loved justice, or felt the bowels of humanity, had the least need to be ignorant of the distress, and famine, and sickness, and nakedness that were inflicted on the innocent worshippers of the only true God by their countrymen. Presidents and governors, judges and lawyers, priests, physicians, and common people, all were made acquainted with the diabolical outrages. They were not only warned but forewarned. What has been the consequence? For the last sixteen years the fluctuations of business have been like the troubled ocean. Panic and depression have been as successive as light and darkness, with the exception of incalculable irregularity and confusion. In the place of wealth there has followed bankruptcy; for peace, national war; and for the blood of one murdered servant of God, there has been tens, and even hundreds, laid weltering in their gore. Some of the best blood of the nation (so accounted) has been demanded by Him that said, touch not my prophets and do my anointed no harm. The word of the Lord to all Israel, on the eve of the Carthage tragedy, was, if they (the enemy) begin to shed blood, the sword shall waste the blood of the nation. And how are the sons of the mighty fallen? What wailing and lamentation are heard from high places over distinguished slaughtered Americans! And the end is not yet.

But what shall I say of time-honoured orthodoxy? Poor creature! Her glory is being fast turned into shame. Many of her lovers are forsaking her, and the balance are too sleepy to wake up. They refuse to be fascinated, notwithstanding all her meritricious arts. Education, tracts, missions, and moral reform, are a vain thing for strength. The Lord is a jealous God, and will not give His glory to another gospel; but he will curse all the systems of men that are built upon human precepts merely, without the authority of immediate revelation. The various systems of modern christianity are cursed already, wherever the true gospel is proclaimed. That sincerity, fidelity, and zeal, which your churches and your preachers once had, is taken away from them; and your preachers have no longer power to preach with effect. The reason and cause of all this is, the true light has come; consequently, they have no longer any apology for upholding systems of error and false religions. The Spirit of God will be withdrawn from your ministry and your churches, just in proportion as the true light shines and the true gospel is rejected.

When the devout Jews rejected the novel doctrines of Jesus and his apostles, the virtues which they previously possessed either withered up or were withdrawn from them, and communicated to Infidels or Gentiles. So it is now. While the devout priests and churches reject the gospel ministered by an angel to Joseph, and confirmed by the signs following, their former virtuous principles forsake them. They become filled with the spirit of envy, hatred, and malice towards the Saints. They retail groundless slanders, and often are foremost in instigating mobs, refusing common civilities and hospitality to the servants of the Most High; and so sanguine is their opposition, that they even believe it would be well for the cause of religion, if the Saints were exterminated and put to death. So believed the devout Jews, who persecuted the prophets and slew the Holy and Just One. Thus, by step after step, the professedly pious are brought to become accessory to blood-guiltiness, and bring upon themselves all the blood that has been shed from the days of righteous Abel till now.

Oh! my much-loved friend, will you not shudder at the sight of such a catastrophe before the modern churches? What an awful curse! Given up by God to believe Saints to be sinners, and then to war against them even to blood-guiltiness! Strange and deplorable infatuation! One would think that the snares and pitfalls into which God precipitated ancient persecutors, would prove an effectual warning to modern persecutors to beware how they plunged themselves into a worse destruction! Oh, how great the severity of God towards them that strive with their Maker, and spurn the faith once delivered to the Saints as no longer needed! The very religion of modern christianity is now about as great a curse as can be inflicted upon its possessors, without doing violence to their power of agency. It is the prolific cause of judicial blindness and hardness of heart. A false religion is worse than no religion, because it is a lure and a lullaby, that excludes true religion from taking effect.

Modern religion rejects immediate revelation; consequently, all that knowledge that flows from visions and dreams, and the ministry of angels, and the prophetic inspiration of the Holy Ghost. A greater curse cannot well be conceived. There never was a people that lived a hundred years, or even fifty years, without immediate revelation from God, but they fell into gross darkness and contention, and those hurtful lusts that drown men's souls in perdition. There never was a people that survived the gift and blessing of immediate revelation any considerable length of time, except they fell into idolatry and worshipped strange gods; and their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after strange gods. All Israel fell into the worship of Baal, and hundreds of them became prophets to Baal. They, indeed, were the descendants of the mightiest Saints that ever lived, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, &c. They had in their possession the writings and traditions of their fathers, but still they were cursed because they rejected the knowledge of God through immediate revelation. They became like blind men groping in the dark. They taught their children to rebel against prophets and miraculous gifts.

Modern christians, with the Bible in their hands, are in as gross darkness as the worshippers of Baal. The god they worship is no more like the person of Christ, or the person of a man, than Baal was. Their order of church authorities and church gifts, and ordinances of healing and anointing, are probably about as remote from the apostolic pattern, as the worship of Mahomet or Vishnu is. Do not believe, sir, for a moment, that I intend, by this humiliating remark, any disrespect to the supporters of modern christianity. No: God forbid. As good a man as Paul the apostle was once as vehemently opposed to immediate revelation and spiritual gifts as you are, or any other abettors of modern christianity; but, by timely repentance, he escaped that awful curse of aversion to the only means of knowing the only true and living God. But multitudes of his countrymen still adhered to the belief that the gift of revelation had ceased, and prophets and miracles were no longer necessary. And you firmly believe that the curse indescribable has followed them to this day. Oh! how astonishing it is that you, sir, and your high-minded associates in modern christendom, should plunge into the same doleful abyss—reject the same doctrines and ordinances, as no longer necessary, and entail the same curse upon your children for generations to come! In this you are fighting against Jehovah. Every year and every day while you persist, the darkness of your minds will become more gross, and you will bring the worst passions into the field of conflict against the Saints. God will withdraw his Spirit from you, and you will ultimately be forced, through weakness and multiplied divisions and contentions, to unite the scattered fragments of sectarianism on some common platform of anti-scriptural invention. On this platform, and with this consolidated power of anti-Christ, the great battle is destined to be fought that shall silence the spirit of anti-revelation for a thousand years!

Alas! the deplorable destiny of those that war against prophets and apostles, and the spirit and power of primitive godliness! Such, in all former ages of the world, have been cursed with wars, conflagration, famine, pestilence, and the vagaries of an oppressive superstition. But, in the latter days, God has decreed a consumption upon the whole earth. The religion that is not based on the immediate interposition of the wisdom and power of God, from day to day, and time to time, will not, cannot, and shall not stand, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it, and let all the inhabitants of the earth hear it. Yea, sir, such religions shall be as the chaff which the wind driveth away, even as the small dust of the threshing-floor. God despises the religion that professes to flourish without the aid of constant revelation from the heavens; and he will shoot out the hot arrows of his wrath against it, until there is not a vestige or semblance of it left on the face of the whole earth. The potsherds may strive with the potsherds of the earth, but wo unto him that striveth with his Maker!

Alas the day, when God shall withdraw his Spirit from all flesh! Then confidence between man and his fellow, will give place to distrust; and jealousy, evil surmising, hatred, robbery, and blood-guiltiness will spread their direful influence through all communities! The cords of domestic union will be severed! The weak will be compelled to bow to the yoke of the strong—might will become the strongest pretext for right! The carcases of the poor and infirm will bleach uncovered upon the earth! The stench of putrefaction will impregnate the atmosphere with poisonous pestilence; insects and noisome creatures will breed innumerably to the annoyance of man! "The sword shall devour from one end of the earth to the other,—the earth shall be soaked in blood,"—the rivers shall become bloody, and the fountains of water shall no longer be pure. Many that lie down at night shall not awake in the morning. The fruitful field shall become sterile and barren, because no man knoweth for whom his fruits are growing. "The earth becometh empty and desolate." The master and servant are brought to a level. The priest is as void of consolation as the people. Paleness and fear are depicted on every human face. Traffic in merchandize, as a business, is wholly abandoned. Men cease to sow and to plough, in hope. Never before did the Almighty commence such an awful warfare against the inhabitants of the earth; never before was there witnessed such a succession of plagues and dire calamities amongst men!

After peace is taken from the earth, an agent, by the name of Death (probably invisible except to spirits and such as have the spirit of revelation) will go forth on the face of the earth and destroy one-fourth part of mankind. In the midst of this destruction of one-fourth of mankind, martyred Saints will ask the Lord to hasten the work of human destruction. An earthquake, and the lapse of stars from heaven, then begin to destroy the frail tenure of human hope; and even the great men, and mighty and chief captains become desperate, like the most effeminate and pusillanimous. Every successive plague is increasingly awful and unendurable. The plagues that fell upon Egypt will sink into insignificance and fade out of memory before the plagues which were shown to the revelator John, and which shall usher in the final consummation of the "mystery of God." The opening of the "bottomless pit" is followed with three woes which are inflicted upon men, and which are suited to the incorrigible condition of such obdurate spirits as no inferior engines of torment and destruction could subdue. But neither the torment inflicted by the sting of the locusts, like unto scorpions; nor that which is inflicted by the horses of that great army of two millions, whose mouths emit fire, smoke, and brimstone, and whose tails, being like serpents having heads, destroy both before and behind wherever they go; yet none of these things will lead these latter-day enemies to new revelations, unto repentance.

Now, sir, in conclusion, I have endeavoured, briefly, to direct your mind to the vortex of indescribable calamities into which the sentiments of modern christianity are calculated to precipitate all who know not God (by immediate revelation), and obey not the gospel revealed from heaven in this our day—a day of mercy and judgment.

With fervent desires that you and your posterity may escape the day of wrath, and seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, I subscribe myself

Your old friend and servant,

ORSON SPENCER.