How much better, how much wiser, how much more righteous are we than the ancients?

As we read of their doings we’re appalled at their ignorance and at their lack of civilization.  They worshiped dumb idols.  They made their children pass through the fire and sacrificed them to their idols.  They worshiped sex and the goddess of fertility, and kept groves and prostitutes where worshipers could practice their religion.  The world was filled with violence with ethnic groups pitted against one another, and with one nation committed to taking the lands and treasures of another.  They considered themselves strong and invincible.  They mocked true religion, and killed the prophets that were sent to save them.  They even killed their God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who created them and who came to offer them eternal life.

How ignorant and barbaric can people be?  Every one of the societies that practiced these abominations was destroyed.  In every case God tolerated their evil as long as He could, giving them every opportunity to repent before finally declaring them irrecoverable.  Never did the Lord destroy a people or a nation without first warning them by sending prophets.  But when the prophets and the warnings were rejected, the righteous were withdrawn from the population, and then the residue was left vulnerable to whatever holocaust could best wipe the slate clean and allow a fresh and unsullied start.

The violence and abominations were so ubiquitous that I maintain that the majority of people who have lived on this earth have no descendants today.  The people who sacrificed their children, who worshiped idols, who were morally loose, who loved war and bloodshed, who were violent and hateful, who practiced robbery as nations or as individuals, and who mocked religion and killed the saints and prophets were wiped out.  When it became obvious that none among them would repent, and that they would teach their children to be wicked like themselves, they left the Lord no choice but to remove them and their posterity and to begin anew.

Thank goodness we’re beyond that.  How fortunate we are to live in an enlightened world that doesn’t kill children, worship idols and sex, practice violence and terrorism, and ridicule or ignore prophets.  We’re better than the ancients.  We’re smarter.  We’re more righteous.  We’re enlightened.

Today we have running water in our homes, refrigeration, foods and fruits from far places, shiny automobiles, heated and air-conditioned homes, and houses that are better in every respect than any palace that any king lived in anciently.

And yet we haven’t gotten beyond the selfishness and the pleasure seeking and the idol worship of the ancients.  Mankind hasn’t learned a thing.

Today instead of burning our babies as an offering to Molech, we abort them as an offering to pleasure and convenience.  Because of today’s refined techniques, the ignorant ancients were never able to come anywhere close to the level of sacrifice that we achieve today.

Ashtoreth and her localized groves are nothing in comparison to the prostitution, pornography, and promiscuity that blankets the world today.

The wars and rumors of wars and horrific acts of terrorism that make up our daily news can surely be no less than the level of violence that brought on the great flood of Noah’s day.

Christianity is being mocked to such an extent, and even so-called Christians have strayed so far down strange paths, that if Jesus was to come among us today as He did among the Jews, He would be unrecognized, persecuted, and killed.

Mankind hasn’t learned a thing.  We’re just more sophisticated in the way we commit evil.  The Gentile nations (which is every nation in the world) think that they’re strong and invincible.  But even the United States of America, the strongest and most advanced nation the world has ever known, is now ripe for destruction.  Every other like-minded society the world has ever known has been destroyed, and the United States cannot be an exception.  The Lord has many means at His disposal to accomplish that which becomes necessary.

The Lord can use armies.

It is recorded in the Pearl of Great Price that Enoch beheld that “the people of Canaan, which (were) numerous, (went) forth in battle array against the people of Shum (a great people), and (slayed) them that they (were) utterly destroyed.”  (Moses 7:5-7).

The Lord can use pestilence.

The Assyrian king, Sennacherib, cut off nations, not a few, robbed their treasures, slew and deported whole populations, and went at the head of a vast army to subdue and destroy Jerusalem and king Hezekiah.  He surrounded the city.

“And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand (185,000):  and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.”  (2 Kings 19:35).

The Lord can use natural—and even supernatural—disasters.

Only four righteous people were to be found in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which had wholly condoned and embraced homosexuality (which, amazingly enough, the U.S. and the western world is rapidly imitating).  Lot, his wife and two daughters were extracted from the city.

“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.  And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities...”  (Genesis 19:24-25).

The prophet Alma was sent to warn the city of Ammonihah to repent lest they be destroyed.  But the people said, “We will not believe thy words if thou shouldst prophesy that this great city should be destroyed in one day.”  (Alma 9:4).

Alma’s missionary companion, Amulek, warned the Ammonihahites that “if ye will cast out the righteous from among you then will not the Lord stay his hand; but in his fierce anger he will come out against you; ...(Alma 10:23).  The Ammonihahites cast every man who believed Alma and Amulek out of the city, and burned their scriptures, their wives, and their children.  (Alma 14:7-8).

Without the presence and prayers of the righteous to protect them, a short time later a vengeful army of Lamanites came “even into the city of Ammonihah, and began to slay the people and destroy the city …  And behold, in one day it was left desolate...”  (Alma 16:2, 10).

The people of Ammonihah have no descendants today.  They were left without root or branch.  The same is true of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah; most of the army of Sennacherib; the people of Shum; all the antediluvians except the parentage of Noah, his wife, his sons, and their wives; the people of Zarahemla, Moroni, and the other 14 cities that were burned, sunk, crushed, and destroyed in America at the time of Christ’s crucifixion; and the many, many millions of Jaredites who occupied the Americas for several thousand years before the Nephites.  There is not a single descendant left from the Jaredites except for possible small, righteous families or groups that the Lord may have led away before allowing the rest to destroy themselves.

If we were to warn today’s advocates of homosexuality and of same-sex marriage, and proponents of pornography and abortion, and terrorists of every ilk, and worshipers of wealth, and adherents to the secret combinations that are among us that they’re ripe for destruction, we’d be accused of bigotry, or worse, and every means would be employed to silence us.

Mankind hasn’t learned a thing.