The Race Question

To clinch the Bering Straits argument, it is usual to point out that the Indians are Mongoloid and therefore cannot possibly be of the racial stock of Lehi. Again an unproven hypothesis is set against a false interpretation of the Book of Mormon. As to the hypothesis, it is fairly well known by now that the predominant blood-type among the Mongols is B, a type which is extremely rare among the Indians, whose dominant blood-type is O, that being found among 91.3 percent of the pure-blooded North American Indians. "Here is a mystery," writes Beals commenting on the disturbing phenomenon, "that requires much pondering and investigation." fn

But if we are to take the Book of Mormon to task for its ethnological teachings, it might be well at first to learn what those teachings are. They turn out on investigation to be surprisingly complicated. There is no mention in the Book of Mormon of red skins versus white; indeed, there is no mention of red skin at all. What we find is a more or less steady process over long periods of time of mixing and separating of many closely related but not identical ethnic groups. The Book of Mormon is careful to specify that the terms Lamanite and Nephite are used in a loose and general sense to designate not racial but political (e.g., Mormon 1:9), military (Alma 43:4), religious (4 Nephi 1:38), and cultural (Alma 53:10, 15; 3:10-11) divisions and groupings of people. The Lamanite and Nephite division was tribal rather than racial, each of the main groups representing an amalgamation of tribes that retained their identity (Alma 43:13; 4 Nephi 1:36-37). Our text frequently goes out of its way to specify that such and such a group is only called Nephite or Lamanite (2 Nephi 5:14; Jacob 1:2; Mosiah 25:12; Alma 3:10;30:59; Helaman 3:16; 3 Nephi 3:24;10:18; 4 Nephi 1:36-38, 43; Mormon 1:9). For the situation was often very mobile, with large numbers of Nephites going over to the Lamanites (Words of Mormon 1:16; 4 Nephi 1:20; Mormon 6:15; Alma 47:35-36), or Lamanites to the Nephites (Alma 27:27; Mosiah 25:12; Alma 55:4), or members of the mixed Mulekite people, such as their Zoramite offshoot, going over either to the Lamanites (Alma 43:4) or to the Nephites (Alma 35:9—not really to the Nephites, but to the Ammonites who were Lamanites who had earlier become Nephites!); or at times the Lamanites and Nephites would freely intermingle (Helaman 6:7-8), while at other times the Nephite society would be heavily infiltrated by Lamanites and by robbers of dubious background (Mormon 2:8). Such robbers were fond of kidnapping Nephite women and children (Helaman 11:33).

The dark skin is mentioned as the mark of a general way of life; it is a Gypsy or Bedouin type of darkness, "black" and "white" being used in their Oriental sense (as in Egyptian), black and loathsome being contrasted to white and delightsome (2 Nephi 5:21-22). We are told that when "their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes" they shall become "a white and delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:6; "a pure and delightsome people,"edition), and at the same time the Jews "shall also become a delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:7). Darkness and filthiness go together as part of a way of life (Jacob 3:5, 9); we never hear of the Lamanites becoming whiter, no matter how righteous they were, except when they adopted the Nephite way of life (3 Nephi 2:14-15), while the Lamanites could, by becoming more savage in their ways than their brother Lamanites, actually become darker, "a dark, filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that which ever hath been . . . among the Lamanites" (Mormon 5:15). The dark skin is but one of the marks that God places upon the Lamanites, and these marks go together; people who joined the Lamanites were marked like them (Alma 3:10); they were naked and their skins were dark (Alma 3:5-6); when "they set the mark upon themselves; . . . the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God," when he said, "I will set a mark on them. . . . I will set a mark upon him that mingleth his seed with thy brethren. . . . I will set a mark upon him that fighteth against thee [Nephi] and thy seed" (Alma 3:13-18). "Even so," says Alma "doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation" (Alma 3:19). By their own deliberate act they both marked their foreheads and turned their bodies dark. Though ever alert to miraculous manifestations, the authors of the Book of Mormon never refer to the transformation of Lamanites into "white and delightsome" Nephites or Nephites into "dark and loathsome" Lamanites as in any way miraculous or marvelous. When they became savage "because of their cursing" (2 Nephi 5:24), their skins became dark and they also became "loathsome" to the Nephites (2 Nephi 5:21-22). But there is nothing loathsome about dark skin, which most people consider very attractive: the darkness, like the loathsomeness, was part of the general picture (Jacob 3:9); Mormon prays "that they may once again be a delightsome people" (Words of Mormon 1:8; Mormon 5:17), but then the Jews are also to become "a delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:7)—are they black?

At the time of the Lord's visit, there were "neither . . . Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites," (4 Nephi 1:17;see also 3 Nephi 2:14) so that when the old titles of Lamanite and Nephite were later revived by parties deliberately seeking to stir up old hatreds, they designated religious affiliation rather than race (4 Nephi 1:38-39). From this it would seem that at that time it was impossible to distinguish a person of Nephite blood from one of Lamanite blood by appearance. Moreover, there were no pure-blooded Lamanites or Nephites after the early period, for Nephi, Jacob Joseph, and Sam were all promised that their seed would survive mingled with that of their elder brethren (2 Nephi 3:2, 23; 9:53; 10:10, 19-20; 29:13; 3 Nephi 26:8; Mormon 7:1). Since the Nephites were always aware of that mingling, which they could nearly always perceive in the steady flow of Nephite dissenters to one side and Lamanite converts to the other, it is understandable why they do not think of the terms Nephite and Lamanite as indicating race. The Mulekites, who outnumbered the Nephites better than two to one (Mosiah 25:2-4), were a mixed Near Eastern rabble who had brought no written records with them and had never observed the Law of Moses and did not speak Nephite (Omni 1:18); yet after Mosiah became their king, they "were numbered with the Nephites, and this because the kingdom had been conferred upon none but those who were descendants of Nephi" (Mosiah 25:13). From time to time large numbers of people disappear beyond the Book of Mormon frontiers to vanish in the wilderness or on the sea, taking their traditions and even written records with them (Helaman 3:3-13). What shall we call these people—Nephites or Lamanites?

And just as the Book of Mormon offers no objections whatever to the free movement of whatever tribes and families choose to depart into regions beyond its ken, so it presents no obstacles to the arrival of whatever other bands may have occupied the hemisphere without its knowledge; for hundreds of years the Nephites shared the continent with the far more numerous Jaredites, of whose existence they were totally unaware. fn Strictly speaking, the Book of Mormon is the history of a group of sectaries preoccupied with their own religious affairs, who only notice the presence of other groups when such have reason to mingle with them or collide with them. Just as the desert tribes through whose territories Lehi's people moved in the Old World are mentioned only casually and indirectly, though quite unmistakably (1 Nephi 17:33), so the idea of other migrations to the New World is taken so completely for granted that the story of the Mulekites is dismissed in a few verses (Omni 1:14-17). Indeed, the Lord reminds the Nephites that there are all sorts of migrations of which they know nothing, and that their history is only a small segment of the big picture (2 Nephi 10:21). There is nothing whatever in the Book of Mormon to indicate that everything that is found in the New World before Columbus must be either Nephite or Lamanite. On the contrary, when Mormon boasts, "I am Mormon and a pure descendant of Lehi" (3 Nephi 5:20), we are given to understand that being a direct descendant of Lehi, as all true Nephites and Lamanites were, was really something special. We think of Zarahemla as a great Nephite capital and its civilization as the Nephite civilization at its peak; yet Zarahemla was not a Nephite city at all: its inhabitants called themselves Nephites, as we have seen, because their ruling family were Nephites who had immigrated from the south.

There were times when the Nephites, like the Jaredites, broke up into small bands, including robber bands and secret combinations, each fending for itself (3 Nephi 7:2-3). And when all semblance of centralized control disappeared, "and it was one complete revolution throughout all the face of the land" (Mormon 2:8), who is to say how far how many of these scattered groups went in their wanderings, with whom they fought, and with whom they joined? After the battle of Cumorah, the Lamanites, who had been joined by large numbers of Nephite defectors during the war, were well launched on a career of fierce tribal wars "among themselves" (Moroni 1:2). It would be as impossible to distinguish any one race among them as it would be to distinguish two; there may have been marked "racial" types, as there are now among the Indians (for example, the striking contrast of Navaho and Hopi), but the Book of Mormon makes it clear that those Nephites who went over to live with Lamanites soon came to look like Lamanites. An anthropologist would have been driven wild trying to detect a clear racial pattern among the survivors of Cumorah. So let us not oversimplify and take the Book of Mormon to task for naive conclusions and images that are really our own.


(Hugh Nibley, Since Cumorah, 2nd ed. [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1988], 219.)

Counselor in the First Presidency

A major concern that faced the new First Presidency grew out of the Church's policy on priesthood. The Stanford action was only one manifestation of the problems it created. There were others. On February 5, 1970, there was a near riot at a basketball game in Fort Collins, Colorado, between Brigham Young University and Colorado State University. It was triggered by a group of militant black students from CSU who used this means of protesting the Mormon Church's policy on priesthood. These militants were permitted to offer an invocation before the game, which was little more than a broad indictment of the Church. There also was an overt show of protest during the warm-ups when a group of blacks massed beneath the BYU basket, shouting threats at the players. At halftime vulgar insults were made against the BYU Cougarettes and the players, eggs were thrown onto the playing floor, and an iron object and a lighted torch were thrown toward the floor. Finally, fights broke out in the arena. Order was restored only when the city police were called in.

A few days after this incident in Fort Collins, a militant activist named Jerry Rubin, who was then under indictment for rioting in Chicago, spoke on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. During his incendiary remarks, the speaker bitterly berated the Latter-day Saints, warning, "We will either integrate the Mormon Church, or we will destroy it." These incidents were symptomatic of broad-based attacks being made on the Church around the country by its enemies and detractors. Adding to the turmoil this created was the upheaval caused by America's involvement in the Vietnam War. At the time, a member of the Church, a Vietnam War veteran, had been speaking in Church meetings, "arousing people to fever pitch," according to President Lee, "with scare stories about impending doom."


(Francis M. Gibbons, Harold B. Lee: Man of Vision, Prophet of God [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1993], 423 - 424.)

Racial Challenges tothe Church

The United States underwent severe racial disruption during the 1960s, and the Church was pointedly singled out for charges of discrimination against blacks. This caused many tense moments, tremendous debate, and unrest among the membership, particularly in the Church leadership ranks.

The most memorable events to typify this stressful period were the racial riots at Los Angeles in 1965. On August 14 there were massive black riots in South Los Angeles: four hundred or more fires were started, scores of stores were looted, and numerous whites were attacked.

Elder Lee had been scheduled to hold a conference in Los Angeles that weekend, but after the explosive situation was explained he conferred with President Hugh B. Brown of the First Presidency and they decided to adjourn the conference after only the leadership meeting had been conducted. The days that followed showed the wisdom of that decision as rioting continued and the situation remained tense. The National Guard was in "ready combat" at every block within a forty-two-mile radius.

Before that, on Sunday, March 7, a group of three hundred protesters marched to the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City, demanding that the Church speak out in favor of civil rights for blacks. The march was repeated also the next day.

There were rumors of blacks invading Salt Lake City to take vengeance upon the Saints and the Church. In 1962 the Salt Lake Temple east doors were bombed. The vandalism was never totally ascribed to racial problems, although it appeared a possible act of racism.

The peak of the challenge on racial issues came in 1969. Late in October Elder Gordon B. Hinckley came to Elder Lee to express his concerns about current issues and struggles. Prominent among his worries were the difficulties facing Brigham Young University because of the protests blacks made against their athletic teams. Of course, the problem had its roots in the long-standing doctrine relative to restricting the priesthood from those of black descent. Now there were strong pressures being placed on the Church Board of Education to permit the recruiting of black athletes to appease those who were protesting against the university.

Three days later the Brethren assembled for their weekly meeting in the Salt Lake Temple. Elder Lee described this temple meeting as characterized by an unusually deep spiritual atmosphere. Elder Lee was called on to pronounce the opening prayer at the temple altar. He was strongly impressed to pray for a oneness such as the Master prayed for with his disciples long ago in Jerusalem. He prayed that God would safeguard the portals of the temple and, if necessary, send the protective agency of those personages translated, but not yet resurrected, who were reserved to protect the Lord's work on earth. He pleaded for direct intervention to give the leadership of the Church divine guidance in decisions that must be made within the week and would determine the course of action the Church would take to meet the racial issue. The ramifications of such an important decision could stay with them as long as they lived.

In the first week of November a spirited Church Board of Education meeting was held. The Brethren met under the backdrop of a recent meeting of the athletic directors of the Western Athletic Conference universities, which ended in a brawl when a delegation of blacks forced themselves into the meeting. At that meeting, the BYU representative had read a policy statement rebutting the charge of racial discrimination at the Church school. Now at the Church Board of Education meeting the subject of prime concern was the adoption of a policy permitting recruiting of black athletes at BYU. Obviously, only the Church Board of Education could discuss the real issue, the long-standing prohibition of black male members from holding the priesthood.

Knowing that a policy statement would be necessary from Church headquarters, Elder Lee had spent several days documenting his own thinking on this weighty subject. He then asked G. Homer Durham and Neal A. Maxwell, prominent educators, to do likewise. Placing their texts with his own he delivered the three approaches to Elder Gordon B. Hinckley and asked him to formulate out of their combined thinking the most satisfactory statement that could be read by the critics of the Church, as well as the Church members, to make the Church's position clear.

The background to that position, which President McKay had always reaffirmed, was that the priesthood restriction was not merely a practice or a policy but was based upon a principle handed down by divine order; and that therefore a change could be made only by a revelation from the Lord through his prophet. After two or three drafts and revisions, the statement on the Church and the blacks was ready.

Although misleading announcements in the media caused much confusion during the Christmas holidays of 1969, the statement, which earlier had been circulated to Church leaders in missions, stakes, and wards, was released nationally. It appeared in print for the Latter-day Saints to read in the Church News, on Saturday, January 10, 1970, signed by all members of the First Presidency.

The Church tried to take some positive steps to give black baptized members an improved status in the Church as a social organization. Under date of June 10, 1971, President Lee recorded in his diary his concerns and action: "I spent considerable time in the temple meeting of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve considering what could be done with our black members locally who want to be more fully fellowshipped. More meetings will be held with these members."

A study was made by three members of the Quorum of the Twelve, Elders Howard W. Hunter, Thomas S. Monson, and Boyd K. Packer, which resulted in the organization of a social group of black members known as Genesis. In deciding how to implement this organization, which met in addition to the customary involvement in local wards, where they participated in Primary Association, Relief Society and social activities, President Lee, according to the recollection of Elder Monson, gave this counsel, after deep and solemn pondering and prayer: "I can see where we should not have Sunday School included in the program, but my feelings are, however, that we should extend to our black brethren every blessing up to the holding of the priesthood, and then the Lord will show us the next step."

The subject was not easily put to rest, however. But when it was finally handled and resolved, eight years later, it was done so as a divine principle requiring a revelation from God to his prophet on earth. President Spencer W. Kimball's historic announcementfn on June 8, 1978, declaring that all worthy male members of the Church, regardless of race, may be ordained to the priesthood brought joy and happiness to almost everyone and ended a social issue which had been a divisive and burdensome trial to many people in and outside the Church.


(L. Brent Goates, Harold B. Lee: Prophet and Seer [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1985], 381.)

Much has been said of discrimination against African American males and LDS women in regard to holding the priesthood in the LDS Church.

Acting under what he and his people believed to be divine direction, some time late in the 1830s the Prophet Joseph Smith established a position that the blessings of the priesthood should be withheld from black members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This practice continued in the Church through Joseph Smith's successors until the announcement of a revelation received by Spencer W. Kimball, twelfth president of the Church, in June of 1978. There is no statement directly from Joseph Smith himself offering commentary or doctrinal explanation for such an action, though the scriptural basis for a lineage-based granting or denial of priesthood may be found in the Pearl of Great Price. (Moses 7:8, 22; Abr. 1:21-27; see also Gen. 4:1-15; Moses 5:18-41.) Leaders of the Church have repeatedly affirmed that the position of the Church in regard to who does and does not bear the priesthood is a matter of revelation from heaven and not simply social or political expediency.

As to the fact that certain individuals or groups of people have not always had access to the full blessings of the gospel or the priesthood, there is also scriptural precedent. From the days of Moses to the coming of Jesus Christ, the Aaronic or Levitical Priesthood was conferred only upon worthy descendants of the tribe of Levi. In the first Christian century, the message of salvation was presented first to the Jews (the "lost sheep of the house of Israel," Matt. 10:5-6; 15:24) and then later, primarily through the labors of the Apostle Paul, to the Gentile nations. Ultimately the blessings of the Lord are for all people, "black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile." (Book of Mormon, 2 Ne. 26:33.) At the same time, God has a plan, a divine timetable by which his purposes are brought to pass in and through his children on earth. He knows the end from the beginning and the times before appointed for specific doings and eventualities. (See Acts 17:26.) That timetable may not be ignored, slighted, or altered by finite man. The faithful seek to live in harmony with God's will and go forward in life with all patience and faith.

Women in the LDS Church are not ordained to the priesthood. The leaders of the Church have instructed that men and women have roles in life that are equally important but different. Some roles are best suited to the masculine nature, while women have natural and innate capacities to do some things that are more difficult for men. Because of the sanctity of the family and the home and because of the vital nature of the family in the preservation of society, Latter-day Saints teach that motherhood is the highest and holiest calling a woman can assume. The Mormons believe that women should search, study, learn, prepare, and develop in every way possible—socially, intellectually, and spiritually—but that no role in society will bring as much fulfillment or contribute more to the good of humankind than motherhood.

There is nothing in LDS doctrine to suggest that to be a man is preferred in the sight of God, or that the Almighty loves males more than females. Latter-day Saint theology condemns unrighteous dominion in any form, as well as any type of discrimination because of race, color, or gender. God is no respecter of persons. Women are the daughters of God, are entitled to every spiritual gift, every virtue, and every fruit of the Spirit. Priesthood is not maleness, nor should it be equated with male administration. A man who holds the priesthood does not have any advantage over a woman in qualifying for salvation in the highest heaven. Priesthood is divine authority given to worthy men, as a part of God's great plan of happiness. Why it is bestowed upon men and not women is not known. The highest ordinance of the priesthood, received in the temple, is given only to a man and a woman together.

A Latter-day Saint apostle, James E. Talmage, stated, "In the restored Church of Jesus Christ, the Holy Priesthood is conferred, as an individual bestowal, upon men only, and this in accordance with Divine requirement. It is not given to woman to exercise the authority of the Priesthood independently; nevertheless, in the sacred endowments associated with the ordinances pertaining to the House of the Lord, woman shares with man the blessings of the Priesthood. When the frailties and imperfections of mortality are left behind, in the glorified state of the blessed hereafter, husband and wife will administer in their respective stations, seeing and understanding alike, and co-operating to the full in the government of their family kingdom. Then shall woman be recompensed in rich measure for all the injustice that womanhood has endured in mortality. Then shall woman reign by Divine right, a queen in the resplendent realm of her glorified state, even as exalted man shall stand, priest and king unto the Most High God. Mortal eye cannot see nor mind comprehend the beauty, glory, and majesty of a righteous woman made perfect in the celestial kingdom of God."<#>8

(Robert L. Millet, The Mormon Faith: Understanding Restored Christianity [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1998], 178 - 179

Lineage and Priesthood

In the Book of Abraham as in many ancient versions of the Abraham story, the hero in his youth challenges a king's assertion of divine authority (Abr. 1:5-6), claiming to have the true authority himself (1:2-3). The king takes up the challenge and tries to make a ritual offering of Abraham as the well-known substitute King or tanist. (Abr. 1:8-14 and Fac. 1.) Abraham's miraculous delivery converts the King, who petitions Abraham for his priesthood and offers his own honors in exchange—such is the burden of many legends and of Facsimile No. 3; he also covets Abraham's wife in hopes of establishing a priestly line in the true succession. (233: Apr. 1970, 79ff.)

Why was Pharaoh, "a righteous man, ... blessed ... with the blessings of wisdom" (Abr. 1:26), denied that priesthood which he "would fain claim from Noah, through Ham" (1:27)? Certainly not because of Ham, "a just man [who] walked with God" (Moses 8:27), but rather because he claimed it through the wrong line, "that lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood" (Abr. 1:27). What was wrong with it? Simply this: it was not the patriarchal but the matriarchal line he was following. Even while "seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations (what the Egyptians called the pa'at), in the days of the first patriarchal reign" (1:26), he nonetheless traced his descent and his throne to "a woman, who was the daughter of Ham, the daughter of Egyptus" (1:23); this woman "discovered the land" and "settled her sons in it" (1:24). Her eldest son became the first Pharaoh, ruling "after the manner" of the patriarchal order (1:25), which the King sought earnestly to "imitate." Thus the government of Egypt was carried on under the fiction of being patriarchal while the actual line was matriarchal, the Queen being "the Wife of the God and bearer of the royal lineage." (421:47.) But however noble it may be, a matriarchal line cannot claim patriarchal authority, even though all the parties concerned are sympathetically portrayed. In all of which there is no mention of race, though enemies of the Church have declared with shock and outrage that these passages are proof of Mormon discrimination against blacks.
(Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1981], 133 - 134.)

Is God Racist?

Is God racist? By dealing only with those of Hebrew decent and calling prophets to only preach to the house of Israel, for thousands of years, is that racism? Or was it purely lineage? By further allowing only those of the tribe of Levi to hold the priesthood, does that make God racist? Or was it a lineage question? I'm sure the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians were livid...."Who do these Jews think they are with their one god, we have many... look at those self righteous blind cult worshippers. they wont even let other tribes hold their priesthood."

When Jesus preached the gospel first to the "lost sheep" of Israel and then secondly to the gentiles, did that make Jesus racist? Was it lineage? I'm sure there were people saying things like, "Well, well, well, look at those crazy Jesus cult worshippers... oh so NOW theyre going to preach to the gentilest....they just had to wait until 33A.D.!" Does that mean that all the people that lived on the planet before Jesus' earthly ministry who were not Hebrew are going to hell? Is God merciful to those who have never heard the gospel of Christ or had the gospel of Christ preached to them, or just to those who have had the opportunity to hear the gospel of Christ? If they are going to hell, is that just or merciful?

If the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ("Mormons" that claim to to be led by God by a living prophet) did not to allow blacks to hold the priesthood until 1978, does that make them racist? Does it? Were the Jews racist for following the prophets of old and not allowing gentiles to hold the priesthood? Is the "Christian" world greatful to the Jews for the records they kept, for everthing the Jews went through and are now going through? Which is more offensive: blacks not recieving the priesthood until 1978, or the fact that the Curch of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (which claims to be led by God through a living prophet) does not recognize priesthood authority of anyone of any color that belongs to any other religion?

If God is racist then he's racist, but if God is not racist, are those who claim to follow Him racist? Does God cave to political pressure of kings, nations(Iran), reverends(Al Sharpton), columnists(Earl Ofari Hutchinson) ,personalities(Bill Maher), celebrities(Ben Affleck), and politicians(Linburn Boggs)? Are God's ways the ways of man? Are his thoughts the thoughts of man? Does God operate on a timetable based on man's view of Him? Does He have a plan? Can peoples and nations of peoples who have never heard of Jesus or have never held the priesthood God be saved in the Kingdom of God? If the LDS church believes that they are God's church on earth and you have a problem with that...take it up with Him. If you think Mormons are crazy, and you have a "boo for them and yeah for us" mentality, then why do you care about LDS theology, ..if only to make a name and money for yourself with blatant religous bigotry and ignorance (intentional or unintentional). Half truth's and lies travel faster and stick around longer than the truth.

" But to comprehend God, heavenly wisdom and intelligence are necessary. Earthly and heavenly philosophy are two different things, and it is folly for men to base their arguments upon earthly philosophy in trying to unravel the mysteries of the kingdom of God."—JD, 14:191, March 20, 1870.
(John Taylor, The Gospel Kingdom: Selections from the Writings and Discourses of John Taylor

I believe God is Just and Merciful and grants blessings to those who have not recieved blessings here on earth. I believe the motherless, fatherless, the widow, the barren womb, the mentally handicap, physically challenged, the broken hearted, the lonely, the sick , the hungry, the naked and to those who have never heard of Christ or who have never held the priesthood of God will be compensated according to the perfect love, charity, justice, and mercy, that God has for each of His children.