Our safety and happiness and our wealth depend upon our obedience to God and his laws

 All that we possess is the gift of God. We should acknowledge him in all things. We sometimes talk about men having this right and the other right. We have no rights, only such as God gives us. And I will tell you what he will show to the Latter-day Saints. He will yet prove to them that the gold and the silver are his, and the cattle upon a thousand hills, and that he gives to whom he will, and withholds from whom he pleases. He will yet show you this is a matter of fact. Our safety and happiness and our wealth depend upon our obedience to God and his laws, and our exaltation in time and eternity depends upon the same thing.

Chapter 19: Temporal Blessings and the Law of Tithing

John Taylor

Teachings of Presidents

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/teachings-john-taylor/chapter-19?lang=eng&verse=#p

reminds me of this:

Our Safety Lies in Repentance

We Are to Use Judgement..Sometime Those Who Raise A Warning Voice Are Dismissed as Judgemental

As for the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus was uncompromising in condemning their hypocrisy. His warnings and commandments were direct: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.”23 Surely no one would accuse the Savior of not loving these scribes and Pharisees—after all, He suffered and died to save them too. But loving them, He could not let them go on in sin without clearly correcting them. One observer noted, “Jesus taught his followers to do as he did: to welcome everyone but also to teach about sin, since love demands warning people about what can hurt them.”24

Sometimes those who raise a warning voice are dismissed as judgmental. Paradoxically, however, those who claim truth is relative and moral standards are a matter of personal preference are often the same ones who most harshly criticize people who don’t accept the current norm of “correct thinking.” One writer referred to this as the “shame culture”:

“In a guilt culture you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you, by whether it honors or excludes you. … [In the shame culture,] moral life is not built on the continuum of right and wrong; it’s built on the continuum of inclusion and exclusion. …

“… Everybody is perpetually insecure in a moral system based on inclusion and exclusion. There are no permanent standards, just the shifting judgment of the crowd. It is a culture of oversensitivity, overreaction and frequent moral panics, during which everybody feels compelled to go along. …

“The guilt culture could be harsh, but at least you could hate the sin and still love the sinner. The modern shame culture allegedly values inclusion and tolerance, but it can be strangely unmerciful to those who disagree and to those who don’t fit in.”25


The Voice of Warning, D. Todd Christofferson, General Conference April 2017

The Foundation for a Productive Household Begins with Marriage

This plea for marriage was underscored in a recent article from the Witherspoon Institute: The foundation for a productive household begins with marriage. Other arrangements cannot measure up, not for the child, not for the couple, not for society, and certainly not for the economy. . .If marriage makes the world and economy go ’round, these newer family structures truncate productivity, and society begins to limp along.

J. Reuben Clark Law Society, Conference Washington, D.C., February 15, 2013, Jeffrey R. Holland

Reason and Experience Both Forbid Us To Expect The National Morality Can Prevail in Exclusion of Religious Principle

In his moving farewell address George Washington said: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

In that same spirit John Adams made this legendary statement to the officers of the Massachusetts militia in 1798:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

It was said of us a long time ago that “the Americans combine the notions of [religion] and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”

May it ever be so.


J. Reuben Clark Law Society, Conference Washington, D.C., February 15, 2013, Jeffrey R. Holland

It Is Time To Defend Not So Much Human Rights As Human Obligations

Whoever exercises priesthood authority should forget about their rights and concentrate on their responsibilities. That is a principle needed in society at large. The famous Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is quoted as saying, “It is time … to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.” Latter-day Saints surely recognize that qualifying for exaltation is not a matter of asserting rights but a matter of fulfilling responsibilities.
THE KEYS AND AUTHORITY OF THE PRIESTHOOD By Elder Dallin H. Oaks - April 2014 GENERAL CONFERENCE