Question
Hi Gramps,
Since we live in the last days and there are alot of troubling things going on, I’ve noticed a pattern in the scriptures, Whenever things get too wicked and unsafe for God’s people, He calls them out of that particular place. The Bible and the Book of Mormon and Church History is full of exodus stories. Do you think something like that will occur again? Will the saints have to flee to the mountains or the city of Zion to escape being destroyed?
Dev
Answer
Hi Dev,
In my own reading of the scriptures, I have interpreted things somewhat differently. From what I can see, God requires us to avoid being of the world even while He expects us to live in the world. “Ye are the salt of the earth,” our Lord taught us, and compared us with a little leaven “hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” In like manner, we should act to raise the level of society around us.
But there are times when the people have cast out the righteous from among them, such as when Lot and his family were cast out of Sodom, or when the people of Ammonihah drove the male believers in Christ out of the city and murdered their wives and children. In such cases, the people are ripe in iniquity, and destruction inevitably follows.
In my firm opinion, if at some future time the Saints, as a whole, leave a city or region, it will be because they are driven away and forced to flee for their lives and liberty, as was the case in Missouri and Illinois early in the Restoration. I do not believe the Saints will otherwise be commanded as an entire body to physically pick up and move away from “Babylon”.
Gramps
