Approaching Zion: Watchmen and Waste Places

Armageddon for Breakfast

   ​I am disquieted
   Hail strikes the window pane
   Thunder grips my bone
   Stenosis squeezes
   Through my mind
   Curling darkly―
   Gone. I sit
   Holding my eyes
   In my lap

      ―​ "Disquieted"

There's a lot of fear and unease surrounding the end times.  I am not immune to fear myself.  I have to regularly "detox" my spirit after reading what others have written; so much is laced with doom-and-gloom.

There's a growing cottage industry that feeds upon the fear of coming calamity: of nuclear war, civil riots, societal breakdown, market collapse, natural disasters, enemy invaders, earthquakes (just to name a few).  And don't forget about Nibiru!

But the problem with fear is that it makes us want to control the future rather than exercising faith in God's providence.

I once asked the Lord how to best prepare for the end times.  And His answer?  To let go of fear, for fear makes us susceptible to being deceived.

As you know, perfect love casteth out all fear.  And in this we find the solution to our worries.  Fear loves to control; love fears not what is beyond our control.

Several years ago my friend told me about his millionaire uncle who lives in Northern Utah on a huge complex, a prepper-par-excellence.  With his vast wealth, he built his dream homestead in which to weather the end of the world.

His compound is stockpiled to the nines; if the world were to end, he will have a nice view of it, sheltered from the storm behind thick metal gates, surrounded by guns and gasoline drums.

There was a time I would have envied his uncle.  But now I pity him.  Imagine the kind of cage that must be, a burden, having a mindset that is dreaming and waiting for the apocalypse ― while there's a whole world worth saving!

I have decided that, should I live to witness the telestial fireworks, I don't want to be bunkered within a bomb shelter while people suffer outside the walls; I'd rather be running the water line to put out the fire, helping to save as many as possible as long as I draw breath.

Nuclear bombs no longer frighten me: for brighter far than any atomic blast is the searing light of our Savior.  No plague, no flood, no fire can ever separate us from His matchless love. 

And it is well.

Waste Places

   Or the courage of William who conquered
   Harold under the comet

     ― "I Love You, Elder Holland"

My purpose in writing this post is to lend courage to those who are anxious about the last days, so we may face the future with spiritual confidence.

The Lord said to me, "Be not afraid of the waste places; fear not to walk where lions dwell and scorpions tread.... See? The dawn is near: the sky begins to brighten before the appearing of the Sun.  So shall the servants of God shine forth before the coming of their King." (Personal journal entry for July 15, 2024.)

What have we to fear, who are the shining stars of God placed in the firmament of eternity?  Jesus declared, "Ye are the light of the world" (Matt. 5:14).  So let us start acting like it.

The world may burn; we may be trodden down and torn to pieces ― but it is going to be okay!

As the Lord reminded Joseph Smith:

   They can do no more unto you
   than unto me.
   And even if they do unto you
   as they have done unto me,
   blessed are ye.

(D&C 6:29-30)

Owls do not fear the dark.  The Kokaubeam welcome the night so their light may shine all the brighter upon these dreary wastes.

Isaiah prophesied:

   Thy holy cities are a wilderness,
   Zion is a wilderness,
   Jerusalem a desolation.

   Our holy and our beautiful house,
   where our fathers praised thee,
   is burned up with fire:
   and all our pleasant things
   are laid waste.

(Isaiah 64:10-11)

I am sobered by the stark depiction painted in scripture of the last days. 

And yet I am not cowed; I am not discouraged.  Yes, we navigate a spiritual desert, a parched Death Valley.  And yes, these wilderness conditions will only worsen before the end.  But always remember, we ride for the Promised Land.  So ride on!

   For the Lord
   shall comfort Zion:
   he will comfort
   all her waste places;
   and he will make
   her wilderness like Eden,
   and her desert
   like the garden of the Lord.

(Isaiah 51:3)

There is no burn scar upon the earth's breast the Lord cannot heal; there are none of her broken bones he cannot mend with His breath; there are no ruins nor fallen cities He cannot rebuild greater than at first.

Nothing we lose is ever truly lost.

"Tim" someone says, "You paint a rosy picture now, from the comfort of your air conditioned study, surrounded by your leather books and sitting in your soft chair.  But when invading armies pour over the Western front, across California and the Sierra Nevada, and corral us into concentration camps, I think you'll sing a different tune."

So what, then?  Shall we become Rambos and prepare for the Red Dawn?  Shall we fight?  Shall we seek vengeance?  Or shall we follow in the footsteps of Him whose feet did not flee the Via Dolorosa, but who embraced His fate on Calvary's peak even though it cost Him his life?

   Greater love hath no man
   than this: that a man 
   lay down his life
   for his friends.

(John 15:13)

If we love, we will not fear death; and if we no longer fear death, fear shall have no power over us anymore.

A Desert Rose

   Now history watches
   what we do, armed with love alone
   as others seek to steal our freedom in Christ
   hanging by a thin thread

​      ― "I Love You, Elder Holland"

​​Where do we look for courage?  Answer: to the word of the Lord and to the promises of God.

The Lord promised Enoch that in the last days, "great tribulations shall be among the children of men, but my people will I preserve" (Moses 7:61).

I believe it; I believe God will preserve His people, even as fruit is "preserved" by being plucked and bottled ("sealed") ― so too may we be preserved, whether in life or in death, it matters not.  Either way we shall be found with the Lord.

   And the desert shall rejoice,
   and blossom as the rose.

(Isaiah 35:1)

Every rose wants its bloom to last forever; but I say, don't shy away from the Lord's pruning shears; allow Him to clip us and carry us where He will.

We are His roses (for He has worn our thorns); let Him spread our beauty (His light) to the waste places of this earth drained of color.

Because even a blind man can smell the fragrance of a rose.  Let us be roses to them who are too blinded to "see," but who might still catch the Lord's cinnamon-scent upon our petals as we are blown in the wind, above the stink and rot.  Be God's rose.

Do not expect The Way of Holiness to be the scenic route (Isa. 35:8); our path is charted across the worst places, among the worst peoples, so we might call and invite them to join us in a better future.  Be the salt of the earth where others have salted the earth.

We are riding to a future where none shall "hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9).  So ride on!

We are not alone.  Riding at our side we find a great company:

   1. The exalted fathers, including Enoch and his City of Holiness (Moses 7:63)

   2. The 144,000 servants (D&C 77:11) and other translated beings

   3.  The angelic hosts (D&C 77:8), including the righteous of previous dispensations who have passed on but are returning for the Big Event

   4.  The Holy Ghost (D&C 45:57)

   5.  Fellow mortals who are pure in heart (D&C 97:21)

   6.  Watchmen appointed by God (Isaiah 52:8)

   7.  The Davidic Servant (Isaiah 52:13-15)

   8.  Jesus Christ himself (D&C 6:32)

Truly, as in the days of Elisha so shall it be again.

   Fear not:
   for they that be with us
   are more than they
   that be with them.

   And Elisha prayed, and said,
   Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes,
   that he may see.

   And the Lord opened the eyes
   of the young man; and he saw:
   and, behold, the mountain
   was full of horses
   and chariots of fire
   round about Elisha.

(2 Kings 6:16-17)

And it is well.

The Kingdom of Zion is Like. . . ​
​
   A dispensation is a fragile
   potential

​      ― "The Baptist"

Zion is not for perfect people; it is for those who repent and thereby become pure.

Robert Capon said, "Who is in heaven?  People think it is good guys.  There is nobody in heaven but forgiven sinners because there was nobody available to go to heaven except forgiven sinners; and there is nobody in hell except forgiven sinners.  The difference is that in heaven they accept the forgiveness, in hell they reject it."

Zion will be comprised of a motely crew of repentant misfits.

Jesus's parables of the torn garment (Luke 5:36) and of the old wineskins (Matt. 9:17) show that Zion will emerge as a new creation.  Therefore, its citizens must be new creatures.

Zion is not going to be a patchwork of the existing systems and organizations we see today; Zion is not going to be putting lipstick on the Church.

Zion is a mustard seed scattered among all nations growing into a mighty bush that the birds (angels) shall come to nest in.

Zion is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough (Matt. 13:33) (meaning kindreds of the earth), causing them to rise.

Zion is a seeker of lost things: lost pearls, lost coins, lost sheep and lost prodigals.

These parables are teaching us that what God values is strange (hidden) compared to what the world appreciates.

Zion shall not resemble a church, religion, or magisterium ― for it shall bear the image of the Kingdom of God, which the world does not recognize (since it lacks the trappings of the Great and Abominable Church we mistakenly equate with God's kingdom).

For Zion shall arise without mortal hands, and she shall lay waste to the nations and religions of the earth, as Daniel promised:

   The God of heaven
   shall set up a kingdom,
   which shall never be destroyed.
   And it shall break in pieces
   and consume all
   these [other] kingdoms,
   and it shall stand forever, 
   [this] stone [that] was cut
   out of the mountain
   without hands.

(Daniel 2:44-45)

Look for Zion where you least expect to find it.

The Future is in Flux

   Where is the broom,
   my dustpan? I do not
   like this voice
   speaking from the dust

      ― "Cleaning House"
​
I fear we are too fixated on what we think is "going to happen," as if it were fixed.  But the future is always in flux.

Faith, you see, has power to move the mountains of what is to come.

On the eve of prophesied calamity, everyone seems to wonder, "Where should I go?  Where will my family be safe?  What should I pack?"

The example of Jeremiah and Lehi before the destruction of Jerusalem shows there is no single answer.  Some shall continue to do God's work in captivity like Jeremiah; others will wander in the wilderness like Lehi.

It would be nice if there were an oracle we could get clear-cut answers from, as many people seem to treat the Prophet, waiting on him to issue marching orders to return to Jackson County.

But no one can tell us what we should do, personally, except God.

As Joseph Smith said to his Uncle Silas in 1833, "Man can[not] live upon the revelations [given] to another.  [For] the word spoken to Noah was not sufficient for Abraham, or it was not required of him to leave the land of his nativity, and seek an inheritance in a strange county upon the word spoken to Noah."

We speak of the coming calamity as if it were written in stone, as though it were the Battle of Troy or the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.  But faith has the power to create worlds (and futures) unborn; we can shape end-time events through exercising hope in the substance of things not seen.

All that will-be has not been revealed, and what has been revealed is veiled.  The road of faith is fog-filled, yet it is the safest course.  Beware the neon lights that illuminate the broad way, which I consider to be the carnal assurances offered by the Church.

Our faith can breathe new life into the waste places of prophecy, bringing hope to desolation and healing to abomination.

Is not the Lord a Master Painter?  He is not a photographer, but is like Monet.  He creates as well as captures.  He envisions, not only describes.

And I declare the Lord imagines a better future for us than we give Him credit for.

Have faith in Him.  Trust the promises He has made.  He keeps His word.

And it is well.