When Jesus Himself appeared to the Nephites, He preached the same identical principles that He had previously taught to the Jews, adding occasionally further truths, because of the greater faith of the first named people; "And he did expound all things, even from the beginning even until the time he should come in his glory." Amongst other things He said: "Whosoever will hearken unto my words and repenteth, and is baptized, the same shall be saved. Search the prophets, for many there be that testify of these things."—3 Nephi, xxiii, 5.
And it is this same Gospel, attended by the same power and spirit, blessed by the same inspiration, and led by the same Priesthood, that is now being preached to all the world for a witness. Through its principles, and by its power the Kingdom of God will be established, righteousness spread, evil overcome, and Satan be vanquished; by it Zion and the New Jerusalem will be built up, Enoch and his city be received, the work of the Millennium be done, the renovation of the earth accomplished, and all God's glorious will be fulfilled, until the vision becomes a reality which Daniel saw and wrote:
"Behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed. * * * And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him."—Daniel, vii, 13, 14, 27.
APPENDIX.
The Ideas of a General Atonement and Redemption, Entertained by
Ancient Heathen Nations, Derived Originally from the Teachings of
Earlier Servants of God.
The following are some natural deductions drawn from the theories entertained by men and recorded in history, which tend to establish rather than to overturn the principles which are so clearly demonstrated in the foregoing pages, exhibiting and showing that the atonement was a great plan of the Almighty for the salvation, redemption and exaltation of the human family; and that the pretenders in the various ages had drawn whatever of truth they possessed, from a knowledge of those principles taught by the Priesthood from the earliest periods of recorded time; instead of Christianity being indebted, as some late writers would allege, to the turbid systems of heathen mythology and to pagan ceremonials.
We believe in the foregoing pages it has been clearly demonstrated to all Latter-day Saints, that the prophecy and promise of the coming of the Son of God was fully understood in every dispensation of God's providence from the earliest period of the world's history, down through the succeeding ages, everywhere and at all times when the Church of God existed on the earth. Furthermore, that the doctrine of the atonement, as understood by us, was understood in like manner by the ancient servants of the Lord, and that it was the central principle of their faith, the foundation of their hope for eternal felicity and salvation, and their only trust for the resurrection of their bodies and life everlasting in the presence of the Father. Again that the ancient Patriarchs, Seers, Prophets, High Priests and others, were almost as intimately acquainted with the earthly life and ministry of the Savior, by and through the gift of prophecy and the spirit of revelation, as we are by the perusal of His history, given to us in the sacred Scriptures. These worthies of olden time knew where He would be born and the names that would be given to Him; that His mother would be called Mary, and be a virgin of the tribe of Judah and house of David. Herod's massacre of the Innocents, and the flight of the holy family into Egypt, were not hidden from them. They spake of Christ's baptism by John in Jordan, and of the Divine approval that would follow; they prophesied of His ministry, rejoiced in His wonderful works of power and deeds of charity and love; they understood that He should be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver; they mourned at the vision of His sufferings and death, and rejoiced at his triumph and resurrection. Even the minor details of the soldiers parting His raiment among them, His death between two malefactors, and His burial in the rich man's tomb were revealed; and still further, His descent into Hades, His preaching to the spirits in prison, His visits to the Nephites and His ultimate ascension to the Father, were all comprehended. They knew that He would triumph over death, hell and the grave, be crowned with glory at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and that all power would be given to Him in heaven and on earth. These and many more details were understood, prophesied of, talked about and rejoiced in by the Priesthood and Saints from the days of Adam to the hour that they began to be fulfilled by His advent and incarnation.
It is needless for us to go backward to the days before the flood to learn to what extent these truths were understood by the antediluvian races; for all the accounts that we have of those peoples come down to us through the channel of the Holy Priesthood, and all the records, books, traditions, etc., of those early inhabitants of our globe were brought to the children of the renovated earth through one family, that of Noah; and that Patriarch, by right of universal fatherhood to the new generations, ruled them as High Priest, Patriarch and King, as one to whom the living God revealed His mind and will, through whom the keys, rights and powers of the everlasting Priesthood were continued upon the earth, and with whom special covenants were made by the Almighty and the bow set in the clouds as an everlasting token of their perpetuity and unchangeableness.
It will be perceived that in the first days after the flood there was but one religion, and that was the worship of the true God under the ministration and guidance of His duly authorized servants. Further, that the belief of the first inhabitants of the postdiluvian age was not only the true one, but it was accompanied by the power and authority of the Holy Priesthood, which received revelations direct from the Almighty. Thus the young world, like the old, was opened with a dispensation of God's mercy, and the posterity of Noah were not left to grope in the dark for light and truth, anymore than had been the immediate descendants of our great original father. The effects of thus repeopling the earth under the direct and immediate guidance of Jehovah, through His duly appointed servants, have been felt through all succeeding generations; for men, as they scattered over the earth, took with them the seeds of Divine truth, and though, frequently, in after ages, they disfigured it with false and base theories of their own, introduced all manner of corruptions into their forms of worship, established orders of uninspired and unauthorized priesthood, and replaced the worship of the true God by idolatry, yet the fact of the existence of God the universal Father was not entirely forgotten, nor was the doctrine of the atonement ever utterly obliterated from the minds of men. So strong and so universal a hold had this principle in the varied religions of antiquity, that its very strength has been used as an argument against the doctrine; and it has been vigorously asserted that the Gospel taught by the Savior was of pagan origin, and that He was simply a reformer who took the most excellent wisdom of past ages and framed it into a code of morals and system of religious faith to suit His own ideas and accomplish His own purposes, however noble those purposes might have been.
The earliest departures from the straight and narrow path to the lives that are eternal, appear to have been made in Chaldea and Egypt. In the former land, Nimrod was one of the first leaders in apostacy and wickedness.[A] These evils so rapidly spread, that as early as the days of Melchizedec and Abraham, the worship of false deities and idols seems to have become almost universal; and even those who did not worship graven images, the starry hosts of heaven, or the forces of nature, had so far perverted the principles of the Gospel, that they taught numerous soul destroying errors, totally inconsistent with the plan devised by heaven. In Egypt the apostacy began, and an unauthorized priesthood was established as early as the days of the grandson of Ham. The origin of this defection is explained in the Book of Abraham, as follows: