Isaiah

Isaiah 24:5

Who can look at [the world] and not exclaim in the language of Isaiah, "The earth is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, and broken the everlasting covenant"?

The plain fact is this: the power of God begins to fall upon the nations, and the light of the latter-day glory begins to break forth through the dark atmosphere of sectarian wickedness, and their iniquity rolls up into view. And the nations of the Gentiles are like the waves of the sea, casting up mire and dirt, or all in commotion. And they hastily are preparing to act the part allotted them when the Lord rebukes the nations, when he shall rule them with a rod of iron and break them in pieces like a potters vessel. The Lord has declared to his servants some eighteen months since that he was then withdrawing his Spirit from the earth, and we can see that such is the fact. For not only the churches are dwindling away, but there are no conversions, or but very few. And this is not all. The governments of the earth are thrown into confusion and division, and destruction to the eye of the spiritual beholder seems to be written by the finger of an invisible hand in large capitals upon almost everything we behold.

And now what remains to be done under circumstances like these? I will proceed to tell you what the Lord requires of all people—high and low, rich and poor, male and female, ministers and people, professors of religion and nonprofessors—in order that they may enjoy the Holy Spirit of God to a fulness and escape the judgments of God which are almost ready to burst upon the nations of the earth: Repent of all your sins and be baptized in water for the remission of them, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. And receive the ordinance of the laying on of the hands of him who is ordained and sealed unto this power, that ye may receive the Holy Spirit of God. fn


(Kent P. Jackson, comp. and ed., Joseph Smith's Commentary on the Bible [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1994], 50.)