And with its long-prayed-for conclusion on November 11, 1918, came prayers for a lasting peace, hopes for a League of Nations that would guarantee future world peace, and sermons and visions that spoke of new hopes and new dreams for a blighted world.Ĭompared to the other great religions of the time, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with a membership then of only a few hundred thousand, most of whom lived in Utah and surrounding states, may seem like a very small voice in a vastly overcrowded cathedral. Yet the Great War, that “war to end all wars,” became but the catalyst and springboard for an even deadlier conflict a generation later. This was the conflict, remember, that witnessed the awful stalemate of protracted trench warfare and pitched hand-to-hand combat in the “no-man’s lands” of western Europe, the introduction of Germany’s lethal submarine attacks, chemical-gas mass killings, and aerial bombings on a frightening scale. The terrible battles of the Marne, Ypres, Verdun, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Jutland, Passchendaele, Gallipoli, and many others are place names synonymous with unmitigated human slaughter in what some have described as a nineteenth-century war fought with twentieth-century weaponry. Whatever the causes of that conflict, they have long been overshadowed by the “sickening mists of slaughter” that, like a pestilence, hung over the world for four and a half years. Another twenty-one million were permanently scarred and disfigured. Indeed, “lest we forget,” more than nine million men in uniform and countless legions of civilians perished in the battlefields, battleships, and bombed-out byways of World War I. Canadians wear scarlet poppies on their lapels and gather respectfully at public war memorials across the land, sing hymns, honor mothers who lost sons in battle, and listen reverently to the following poem, penned by John McCrae during the frightful battle of Ypres where men by the tens of thousands died in the blooming poppy fields of Belgium: To this day, Remembrance Day, November 11, is a Sabbath-like observance, a tolling bell in honor of those who gave their last true measure of devotion to the cause of God, king, and country.
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Īt a time when prayers in schools are discouraged, if not denied, at the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month,” school children across Canada and throughout much of the British Commonwealth of Nations are asked to bow their heads in grateful remembrance for those who died in war. To the views and comments of other religionists of the day who were sharing their own important visions at war’s end, Joseph F.
#Spencer's name of visions of glory is tom full
Just as it took Church leaders years to rediscover the full significance of President Smith’s visions of the redemption of the dead and their full significance as a vital assist to modern temple work, so also Latter-day Saint historians have been slow to view them as essential documents, pointers, and commentaries of the age.
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However, the purpose of this paper is to place this and his other wartime sermons in their historical context, to suggest their place in the wider tapestry of Christian thought, and to argue for their fuller application as commentary on temple work, war, and several other critical issues of the day.
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His final sermon, his “Vision of the Redemption of the Dead,” now canonized as revelation by the Church, stands as the authoritative Mormon declaration of its time.Ī thorough study of the historical process that brought this doctrinal statement out of obscurity and into the realm of modern Mormon scripture begs to be written.
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Sixth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (he served from 1901 to 1918) and nephew of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church, President Smith proclaimed some of his most comforting and most important discourses on the topics of death and suffering during the waning months of World War I. Smith’s discourses on life, death, and war are revered today by Latter-day Saints as profoundly important contributions to Mormon doctrine. “As I pondered over these things which are written, the eyes of my understanding were opened, and the Spirit of the Lord rested upon me, and I saw the hosts of the dead, both small and great” (D&C 138:11).