But even Israel's fields were full of tares; and the Lord mercifully suspended the fulness of the Gospel requirements, which, because of violation, would have been a means of condemnation; and the law of carnal commandments, generalized as the Mosaic Code, was given instead—as a schoolmaster, whose rigid insistence and compelling restraint, whose rod of correction would, in the course of centuries, prepare the covenant though recreant people for the reestablishment of the Gospel—as was effected through the personal ministry of the Redeemer. See Gal. 3:23-26.
Following the Messianic ministry and apostolic dispensation, another cloud of apostasy enveloped the world, and for well-nigh sixteen centuries held the race befogged in its clammy mists. In this murky and fetid atmosphere the weeds of superstition, unbelief and human dogma flourished as a dank tropical jungle, while belief in revealed truth survived only as a wilted growth amidst the prevalent insalubrity.
The last apostasy was general, alike on both hemispheres. For nearly two centuries after its establishment on the Western Continent, the Church of Jesus Christ flourished to the blessing of its members. Then followed disruption and apostasy, the bitter fruitage of sin; and so was fulfilled the saddening prophecy of Alma concerning the Nephites:
"Yea, and then shall they see wars and pestilences, yea, famines and bloodshed, even until the people of Nephi shall become extinct. Yea, and this because they shall dwindle in unbelief, and fall into the works of darkness, and lasciviousness, and all manner of iniquities. Yea, I say unto you, that because they shall sin against so great light and knowledge, yea, I say unto you, that from that day, even the fourth generation shall not all pass away, before this great iniquity shall come." (Book of Mormon, Alma 45.)
Following each of these epoch-marking declensions, from the Adamic to the current dispensation, there has come a period of revival, rejuvenescence, or as now witnessed, a definite restoration and reestablishment of the Church of Jesus Christ, by which the tares, though not yet rooted up to be burned, have been at least prevented from choking out the wheat.
The application of our Lord's parable of the wheat and the tares to the great falling away, or the last general apostasy, is thus shown in latter-day Scripture: "And after they [the Apostles of old] have fallen asleep, the great persecutor of the church, the apostate, the whore, even Babylon, that maketh all nations to drink of her cup, in whose hearts the enemy, even Satan, sitteth to reign, behold he soweth the tares; wherefore the tares choke the wheat and drive the church into the wilderness." (D&C 86:3; compare Rev. 12:6, 14.)
But the day of the Church's exile is ended. In unostentatious triumph she has returned after enforced absence, and is established anew for the blessing of all who make themselves fit to be partakers of her bounty.
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A NEW DISPENSATION