Member Training – Final Warning to Civil authorities

Member training from January 27th 2025.  This nights discussion focuses on the scriptural principle of dealing with civil authorities even when those authorities are acting outside their authority or even if they are officers of an invading and occupying force. There are three steps to dealing with these officers, none of which involve treating them as legitimate. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Our dear Father in heaven, as we come before thee this night, we're grateful unto thee for the opportunity to have a group of like-minded people who can get together and talk and teach and learn together. We ask thee this night that we might have thy spirit to be with us, to guide us and direct us, that we might learn and understand the principles that are laid out before us, and that our minds might be clear and our courage great. These things we pray for in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Linda. Go ahead, Carmen. Hopefully you all got either an email message or you saw it on Telegram or you saw it on the member Facebook page. But I just wanted to bring it up today. I saw we've gotten some responses. I'd just like to encourage more responses to our activity report here.

Let's see here. that I sent out. If anybody has any questions on it, it's twofold. It's to help you kind of have more ideas of things that you can be doing to be actively involved in promoting the cause of liberty. And then it also helps us to see where we're all at. Because if I'm assuming that you guys have all done X, Y, and Z, but none of you have done X, Y, and Z, then I'm... I'm going to be saying things that are not helpful because that's not something that you've covered before. And so it helps me to say, okay, what is it that you like doing? Where are you at? What don't you like doing? And then also the last question goes over, what have you done to nullify? Or what are you working towards nullifying any illegal laws? So that way we can have, what are some successes people are having in being able to actually live liberty?

And we can share that with others. So just real quick, just the question of what bootcamp classes have you completed, if you've been able to go through them or not? How far have you gotten? And then also, how many people did you share Tree of Liberty Society links with this week? I needed to... that just specifically with us. What things of ours have you shared? I'm not sorry, what, but how many? And then what specific ones have you shared? And then how many pass-along cards have you passed out? Have you encouraged anybody to go to the boot camp? How many member trainings have you attended or watched? What volumes of Invasion have you read? How many have you been able to distribute? And then, of course, the action. on nullification. So hopefully you all got that. But again, I encourage you all, whether you have or not, now you've seen it. And if you have any questions about it, please reach out to me. But I'd really like it filled out every week, once a month minimum. It will really help me out. And I hope it'll help you out as well. Does anybody have any questions about that?

Two real quick questions. Our weekly activities are for Monday to Monday. That's how we're looking at. Okay. And it says completed classes. So we can complete them either in person or online by reviewing. So the bootcamp is specific. It's different than the training. So there's training and then there's the bootcamp on the website. And so that's separate. Those are six classes on the website. I see. Okay. And you, you've gone through all those. Cause I did that. You were at the St. George where we did all of them at once. I would like to say that I accidentally. pasted the link to the Facebook link form. And I should have copied and pasted the actual form into my calendar. So I have a reminder in my calendar that the meeting is coming up. And so I want to have it filled out by Monday afternoon, but I did it minutes before the meeting because I was out and everything. But anyways, so I found it very helpful. racked my brain about what I had done and I actually felt good about myself.

And so it was really cool. Yeah. Good. Yeah. And if, you know, it's not something to make you feel bad about if you, you know, maybe you didn't do as much as you had hoped or that you realized that you didn't do much and it's, it's not to make you feel bad or anything like that. It's just to help us all kind of see what are examples of things that we can do. And then let me know what is going on because it helps us to be able to track things like that. Any other questions? So just a little bit of background, right? We want to look at, we see these are common ideas on how do we react to civil authorities, elected officials, people in government. You have the extreme on one side, right, of you're just a bootlicker, you're doing, you just love the government and whatever they're going to do, you're just going to love it. And then you have maybe some, especially after some of the trainings that we've done, maybe they've recently read Killing No Murder and they're just going to go and They're ready to lop some heads off. But usually these two extremes are not the average person. This is kind of more along the lines of what an individual would think. They're going to write a letter to a legislator and they want to be as kind as possible. They don't want to offend them.

They'll say they will address them as in some kind of honorific. And they'll write them to request that they support a bill or that they oppose a bill. And then they'll, you know, they don't want to be offensive. They don't want to offend the guy in hopes that maybe they can change their mind and get them to do the right thing. And so they'll, you know, say something along the lines of, you know, it's okay if we disagree, but hopefully we can work on something in the future. And they think that'll be an effective way to talk to a legislator. especially at the point that we're at right now, all of these are not the way that we should react or interact with an elected or a government official. And so, go ahead. I'm going to disagree with you. I like the second approach. I knew you would, Alan. I knew you would. And that's something we've gone over. And it is important for us. to not treat them as legitimate. And so what I'm going to go over tonight is not treating them legitimately. It is not treating them as they are something special if they're above us or that we're worried about it. But I do want us to understand that there is a point where we do have to do these things, right? Excuse me, Ben. Go ahead. Something close to the first one. I've seen this a lot.

I really saw it real heavily in a congressman's talk once. And that is there's this reverence that some of the population has towards the choice of a mob, the elected officials. I've seen it in these settings several times where it's as though they're talking to Peter or Paul or Christ. It's just so sickening. These people are harming us, cruel, posing tyranny everywhere you look on us. And they had reverence. And this is really trained, obviously, in the schools and elsewhere, that you're supposed to have reverence for somebody that was elected to office. And it's so anti -freedom, such an anti-freedom attitude. Like almost you have to kiss their ring to be able to... just so grateful to be in their presence yeah i i confronted one congressman about his all his unconstitutional voting record he got really mad and and uh you know he couldn't answer the questions and so forth and one fellow looked at me and said well you don't understand politics no i just right of course political science and studied it for 50 years but uh you know they're trying to tell you you're supposed to have reference towards it and it's it's so un-american yeah And then an example of the letter is what I see a lot, especially with some groups out there where they're just so desperate to have a so-called seat at the table that they're afraid that if they do something like you just talked about, call them out, that they'll lose the so-called access that they have.

What they don't realize that is if they're not a part of the conspiracy, they don't have any access that they have is just pretend access to make that person feel good. And... you know, give lip service for that elected official. And so it's important for us to realize that. Real quick example, Ben, I was at a protest of the president of China was here in L.A. and protesting his meeting with the governor and so forth. And they had a lot of different protesters. And I was standing next to some Taiwanese people and was so sad. They were so desperate to have the other nations, the world allow them to, you know, because the Republic of China. was kicked out of the UN because they replaced them with communist China. And it was like, that was the ultimate goal to be part of the world community in the UN. And I did my best to try to tell them, no, it's us that need to follow your, what's happened to you. But they wanted a seat at the table of the UN. Exactly.

So what I'm going to be sharing with you guys, there are examples of people in captivity. And so, you know, just, this is. We see ancient Israel and dealing with Egypt. And then you have ancient Israel dealing with Babylon. And then you have the ancient Christians and dealing with the Romans. And then you have the Mormons dealing with the invasion of Utah and being occupied territory, just like we saw in the previous three examples, where you have a people that are in captivity. And how did they respond and how did they interact with their... invading forces because it is very tempting right just to not even do anything but go on the physical attack like one of the examples I gave in the in the previous slide and so I want to show some some principles right because of our captivity there are times when you scripturally should engage with civil magistrates because there are times that we do engage with them and so I want to cover what is the scriptural example?

What's the mandate? What do the scriptures show us how we interact with officials, government officials that are illegitimate, that are a part of an invading force? And so do we just, do the scriptures show, do we just go after them? Or are there certain things that we, is there a way that we interact with them? And because I think it's really important for us to understand principles to be able to see specific application of those things. And I think the scriptures are the best example for us. And so I want to do that. And the first thing is, is the example and the parable of the woman and the unjust judge that we read about in the New Testament. It starts, there was a city, there was in a city, a judge who feared not God. nor regarded man so it's laying the foundation it's it's laying you know the groundwork of who this guy is he's not he's not a good man he's a wicked man he doesn't care about god and he doesn't care about the people that he's supposed to be serving that's laying that foundation right who who is this guy he's a bad guy but what happens and there was a widow in that city and she came unto him saying avenge me of mine adversary And he would not for a while, but afterward he said within himself, though I fear not God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her lest by her continual coming she weary me.

So yes, it was out of selfishness that he did, that he avenged the woman because he didn't care about her. He was a conspirator. He basically was a, he, if he didn't regard God, he obviously, was serving Satan. But she was able to get a bad person to respond to her. And that wasn't her treating him as begging him for anything. That was her harassing him, basically saying over and over again, do this right thing, do this right thing. And so he finally just did it just to get her off of his back. So that's a parable. So I want to go through maybe some specific examples as well. So we go to Moses and how he demanded Pharaoh let Israel go. So I think this is a really good example. We know the story, but I want to go through and show you the principle. And as we go through it, we'll see exactly how this was handled.

Now, was Pharaoh a good guy? Did he care about the Hebrews? Was he worried about getting reelected? Did he serve God? Did he fear God? No, no, no, no, all of those things. He was their slave master. He was an evil guy. And so did Moses just say, forget Pharaoh, Israel. We're just going to either go lop his head off or we're just going to take off. That wasn't what happened either. We see in Exodus 8, it says, And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me. And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs. So list some of the plagues that he's going to put upon the people of Egypt and upon Pharaoh. So Moses is told by God to go and tell this to Pharaoh. And then the consequence. And then did Pharaoh do it? No, he didn't do it. He ignored Moses. So then he goes on and the Lord said unto Moses, rise up early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh. Lo, he cometh forth to the water and saying to him, thus saith the Lord, let my people go that they may serve me. Else, if thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies upon thee and upon thy servants and upon thy people and into thy houses. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies and also the ground whereon they are. So again, he goes to them. He goes to Pharaoh and he tells them what he wants done.

And he says, if you don't do it, This is going to be the consequence. So did he go to Pharaoh and say, oh, thou honorable Pharaoh, thou art wonderful. You know, your holiness, the Pharaoh, please, I beg of you, do this thing for us. Although, you know, and if you don't do it, I understand completely. It's okay. No, he said, do this. And if you don't, this is the consequence. And of course, but Pharaoh did ignore Moses. When we go on to Exodus 9, again, the Lord tells Moses, go into Pharaoh, tell him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me. For if thou refuse to let them go, and will hold them still, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle, which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels. upon the oxen and upon the sheep, there shall be a very grievous moraine. Pharaoh ignored Moses though again. So did Moses say, you know what? Pharaoh, he's not going to listen to us. We should just go either raid his house and kill him. We should just escape in the night. No, he goes back. And the Lord said to Moses, rise up early in the morning, stand before Pharaoh and saying to him, thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me. For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart and upon thy servants and upon thy people, that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.

And Pharaoh again ignored Moses, right? And then we go to Exodus 10. And Moses and Aaron came unto Pharaoh and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyselves before me? Let my people go that they may serve me. else if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow will I bring the locust into thy coast. Okay? So we see again, did Moses say, oh man, I must have done it wrong last time. I should be nicer to him. No, he's like, you've got to do this thing. And again, something bad is going to happen again if you don't listen. It wasn't like, oh, me doing the mean things to you before that God did to you before. That didn't get you to listen, so maybe I should change my method and I should just be nice to you. No, he said, if you continue to ignore me, this is what's going to happen to you now. So Pharaoh ignored Moses and Pharaoh dies. No. Go ahead, what? He doesn't die. No, Pharaoh doesn't die. He threatens him with the firstborn, yeah. Well, the next one, right, yeah. But after all these things are done, he chases him into, oh, no, I'm sorry, you're right. Pharaoh doesn't die, but Pharaoh, thank you for the clarification. When they do chase after Israel, the armies of Pharaoh die.

A lot of the people, they are crushed by the Red Sea when the Hebrews go through. So there is even more death and destruction. Another consequence comes onto Egypt for disobeying what Moses told him to do. That's the main point. So now we go to Elijah. Elijah's on the run. You have the king and you have Jezebel killing prophets. And Elijah is on the run. And in Kings 18, it says, And it came to pass after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, show thyself unto Ahab, who was trying to kill Elijah. So God doesn't tell him to stay in hiding. God doesn't say, Go and sneak in and kill Ahab. He says, go and present yourself to this guy that's trying to kill you. Go talk to him. And Elijah said, as the Lord, so now he's talking to Ahab, as the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him today, unto Ahab. And when Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said unto him, is it you, you troubler of Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father's house, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals.

The Baals, I'm not sure to pronounce that, but Baal. But anyway, so you have this guy, he says, you've forsaken the commandments. So Ahab is a Hebrew. Ahab is part of the, he is the leader of Israel. And he's trying to kill these true prophets of God. And he's saying that the true prophet is the troubler, but the prophet says, no, you're the troubler because you've gone against God. So is he bowing down and saying, oh, please don't kill me. Oh, I'll be nice to you if you just leave me alone. No, he's right in his face and he's right there saying, you're the bad guy. And Elijah came unto all the people and said, how long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him, not a word. They're like, they didn't want to say anything because they, of course, they didn't want to say that they didn't want to openly defy, you know, verbally say that they didn't believe in God, but they also didn't want to go against the priest of Baal. And so Elijah challenges the priests, right? They were the, again, these guys were the priest of Israel and of Baal.

So they were church leaders as well as servants of the Babylonian false idols. to see whose God will light the different piles of wood on fire. And the priests of Baal fail while, of course, Elijah succeeds. And so after, right, you have this, you have, again, Elijah presenting himself before the king, says, let's do this thing. They do it and they fail. And so the scriptures say, and then when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, the Lord, he is the God. The Lord, he is the God. And Elijah said unto them, take the prophets of Baal, let not one of them escape. And they took them and Elijah brought them down to the brook of Kishan and slew them there. So Ahab wasn't a problem anymore. The priests of Baal weren't a problem anymore. That was the consequence, just like we saw with Egypt, was they did not follow God. And so the consequence of, they had the chance. Elijah came to them and gave them the final opportunity. Who do you serve? Who is the real God? And because they did not repent of their ways, the result was death. Now we go to Nephi and we see that he went to go ask for the plates. Nephi, right? Laban was, I'm sorry, Laban had basically the five books of Moses. And on these plates, and they were told to go to Laban and get them.

Now, because they knew that who Laban was, it was a bad guy. Did they go and they say, you know, we just have to sneak in and we have to grab the plates and steal them in secret? Or did they go and try to talk to Laban and try to present things to him? And so we see that Laban went under the house of Laban and he talked with him as he sat in his house. And he desired of Laban the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass, which counted the genealogy of my father. And behold, it came to pass that Laban was angry and thrust him out from his presence, and he would not that he should have the records. Wherefore, he said unto him, Behold, thou art a robber, and I will slay thee. So he threatens to kill them. They go and they ask for the plates, and the response that they get was, I'm going to kill you. So now they've escaped. Laban and now did they say okay now Laban's not going to give this to us so we've got to plan some way to be able to sneak in and get them no they go back and it came to pass that we went down to the land of our inheritance and we did gather together our gold our silver and our precious things and after we had gathered these things together we went up again into the house of Laban and it came to pass that we went in unto Laban and desired him that he would give unto us the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass, for which we would give unto him our gold, our silver, and all our precious things.

And it came to pass that when Laban saw our property, and that it was exceedingly... he did lust after it in so much that he thrust us out and sent us and sent his servants to slay us that he might obtain our property and then we know um after that the lord opened up a way for the consequence right there was for not doing what what god told him to do laban was then killed so that a nation would not dwindle in unbelief and so he was given those two opportunities to do the right thing When he refused, then the consequence happened. Then we have Moroni. He writes to a chief judge. He says, and it came to pass that he wrote again to the governor of the land. For behold, I have somewhat to say unto them by way of condemnation. So Moroni doesn't start out this letter saying, man, I really appreciate all the good work you're doing. Thank you so much for X, Y, and Z. But can we do this thing better? No, he starts off with, You guys are doing garbage stuff.

I'm condemning you for what you're doing. And now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect. Yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state. So he goes on to be critical. Why are you guys leaving us not doing the right thing? Why are you guys, you know, totally ignoring what you're supposed to be doing? Can you think to sit upon your thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor while your enemies are spreading the work of death around you? And so he calls them out. He's like, Everything is getting worse. These enemies are coming and gaining ground. And you guys are just sitting on your rear end, not doing anything. And so in this example, it was actually a righteous leader. And he says, you know, he writes back to Moroni saying, you know, forgive us. We're dealing with stuff on our own.

He doesn't get all mad at him and get all offended because he's a righteous leader. So he didn't get offended. by being called out being condemned he explained the situation and said you know working to to help you guys out but we still see even though he was a good guy moroni wasn't wrong for condemning him and so and and for calling him out for what was going on and so we see that moroni was still right for doing what he did but the righteous a righteous uh government official is not going to be offended by being called out. So that's one way we can tell because if we're afraid to call out somebody for doing something bad because we might not have a seat at the table, we know right off the bat that that individual in government is bad. And so because a good person in government is going to respond with, hey, you know, I'm sorry for what's going on and he's not going to, you know, be mad at you for doing so. So let me go back to another version of the parable of the woman and the unjust judge. going into the warning and the consequence.

We see in D&C 101, verses 81 through 93, it says, Now unto what shall I liken the children of Zion? I will liken them unto the parable of the woman and the unjust judge. For men are always to pray and not to faint, which saith, There was in a city a judge which feared not God, neither regarded man. And there was a widow in that city, and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while, but afterward he said within himself, though I fear not God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. Thus will I liken the children of Zion. Let them importune at the feet of the judge. And if he heed them not, let them importune at the feet of the governor. And if the governor heed them not, let them importune at the feet of the president. And if the president heed them not, then will the Lord arise and come forth out of his hiding place and in his fury vex the nation.

And in his hot displeasure and in his fierce anger, in his time, will cut off those wicked, unfaithful, and unjust stewards and appoint them their portion among the hypocrites and unbelievers, even in outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Pray ye therefore. that their ears may be opened unto your cries, that I may be merciful unto them, that these things may not come upon them. So again, we see the example that we've shown throughout all these scriptures. You warn them, you give them the opportunity to do the right thing. And we have some examples where they will say, it's in my best interest to get them to go away and to avenge them. And then you have other examples of, Yes, they will ignore you. And so we have the same example of the consequences for those that will not heed the warning that was given to them. And in all those examples we see, they were not praised. They weren't worried about getting a seat at the table.

They were not worried about offending them. They were just calling them out, explaining the situation, telling them what the right thing to do was. and then explaining what the consequence is for not doing the right thing. Ben, can I mention one example? Yeah, please. There are others in this, but one of my very favorite is Jeremiah and how he courageously condemned the Hebrews for the pagan worship and so forth and warned them. And, you know, he's warning his God. But his standard was God's law. His standard was God's guidance. And he wouldn't alter from it. That's one of the messages and one of the things we learned from the message you're giving us. But Jeremiah did exactly that. And what happened? They didn't listen to him. And what happened to him? We have lamentations telling us. Yep. Absolutely. Anybody else have any comments before we move on? Any other thoughts? Well, just other quick thoughts. The reaction to authority. So what kind of authority we're really talking about here is totalitarian authority. Yeah. And these men were courageous, Laban and Moses and so forth, to stand up with somebody and just a snap of his fingers to have you killed. And also one of the messages here is being nice, being kind is not a godly response to evil.

And, you know, I've, especially living here in Utah, I've been following politics and talking to people for 60 years. And I've seen this kind of a cultural thing where kindness is above everything. And what we're saying here, kindness doesn't play a role in the godly response to these unjust tyrants, these unjust authority figures. Yeah. Because you're treating illegitimate people as legitimate, and that's ungodly. Yeah, look what happened to the J6ers. You know, they're ushered onto the lawn and the barriers were removed and they're like, come on over. And then they're thrown in prison. They're live ruined for years. Yep. So we don't treat illegitimate leaders as legitimate. We don't try to get a seat at the table. We don't put, as Mark said, kindness above all. We put God above all. And this fake idea of, you know, of not we are we are lied to believing that contention. meaning contending for truth is bad. They say that all contention is evil. Well, we can see that, no. Maybe they would call Moses contentious or they would call Jesus contentious for turning over the money changers. But that is a counterfeit. That is a lie to get people to not oppose evil and to bow down and just wait and hope that these bad guys will do good. There is a process of, you know, you're not expecting, you know, we're not waiting. And I guess I'm getting ahead of myself, but we need to make sure. You made me think of something. Yeah.

In 1 Samuel chapter 8, the people conspired to correct the prophet Samuel because Samuel was allowing his sons to be bad judges. And they're like, we need a new form of government. They wanted to be just like everybody else. Yep. So, right? So we ask ourselves, how did they address the civil authority in all of these examples? Did they butter them up saying, you know, your great honorableness? They didn't do any of that. Did they flatter them? Absolutely not. Did they act like the authorities were good guys? You know, hey, we just, you know, you're a good guy. We just need to help you understand this a little bit more. No, they didn't do any of that. They called out the leader and they demanded action. And then said, this is what's going to happen if you don't do that thing. So those are the three ways that you, those three steps. If you're going to address a civil authority, that's what you do. That is the scriptural example. And that's not just when you don't have a, if you have a government that's not controlled by conspiracy, that's not, no. All of these examples that I gave were, they were in captivity.

They were ruled by a conspiracy. They were ruled by conspirators, whether within their religion or not. These are all examples of they're in a bad situation, and they didn't use these examples to try and make sure that they buttered them up. They demanded action and said, if you don't do this, this is the consequence to your actions. One of the easiest ways I got to keep perspective on is the word talkistocracy. The worst type of people is the one's ruling us, which leads me to think that those that voted for him are more ignorant than, well, the negative IQ people. If we realize that these people are arrogant, power-hungry, manure heads, that that's for the women in the group. Then we're not going to be tricked into calling them your honor or get, yeah. Yeah, any kind of honorarium. And Ben, what your point here, and the point was just made, is that you're implying that they do have authority. And if you do that, when they don't have legitimate authority, you're actually enabling them. You're actually supporting the evilness. So that is so important. I've had about... 4,100 calls that were taken by Kate Darling on a radio show over the last nine years. And one thing that puts one difference between my calls and almost everybody is when she has somebody on that's evil, I outright have no revere, have expressed disdain for what they're doing and openly, honestly talk about it.

Many of you are probably aware of Alan Dersowitz, Harvard Johnson. And he was on, and she wouldn't let me, she wouldn't take the calls when he was on, which is what she often does. But she took me right afterwards. I just tore about six points of his deceit, his unconstitutional positions, his contradictions, I mean, irrationality. So if we get informed, it's really important that the care of God's law, we got to take advantage of the knowledge we learn. show any sort of respect for wicked people carrying out their wickedness yeah yeah well it's it's a form of idolatry when you're giving um if you're treating someone uh legitimately that is not legitimate and god has called them we have a standard of what is legitimate or not now we're saying that this this thing that is um not godly that god does not approve of that god says is illegitimate and then we're treating it the opposite way God has told us to, we are putting them above God and God's law. I think that's a violation of the Ten Commandments right there at the top of false idols. Exactly. So I want to look at the underlying principle and give us a few examples of what the Lord told the apostles when they were going out and they were doing the same thing, but to the masses, just to the people.

We look and the scripture says, and this is Matthew, and when you come into a house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet for a testimony against them. And verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents, I thought, and harmless as doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.

So again, it's that thing, you give that voice of warning. And then if they reject it, then you bear that testimony, and then the consequence will bear upon them if they refuse it. And then we see another example of that in the Doctrine and Covenants. It says, And in whatsoever place you shall enter, and they shall receive you not in my name, you shall leave a cursing instead of a blessing, by casting off the dust of your feet against them as a testimony, and cleansing your feet by the wayside. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall lay their hands, upon you by violence, ye shall command to be smitten in my name. And behold, I will smite them according to your words in my own due time. And whosoever shall go to law with thee shall be cursed by the law. So it will be returned. And so again, that consequence for their actions. So again, look at all these examples, right? Was Moses worried about being effective suppose like in today's terms right is oh you're not effective because you didn't get this bill passed or you're not effective because you didn't stop this bad bill that's that's where the focus is on um in in the world is about so-called effectiveness and having a seat at the table, being able to get things done. And that's kind of going back to what you said in the beginning, Mark, about you don't understand politics, right? This is not how you're effective. This is not how you get things done.

All of these examples are not people that were looking for to be effective. They were talking about accountability. They were going there to tell the truth. And to give that last chance of warning, right? You're not begging them. Moses didn't go begging. They weren't waiting for permission. They were giving them one last chance to repent. what they had done. And if they refused to do it, then the consequence was going to come upon them. They still went on, right? Moses still left. Elijah still killed the priests. All those examples we see, what God wanted to be done was still done. When we think that we have to compromise truth and we have to treat an illegitimate person as legitimate so that we can be so-called effective, we are engaged in idol worship. We are rejecting the pattern God has set, and we are putting our own wisdom above God's wisdom, which will lead to destruction. And so we can't be so worried about short-term so-called effectiveness because the conspiracy controls the government. There's only going to be a few examples of what we see with the parable of the unjust judge where harassing them gets them to do the right thing. Most of the time, it is what we see in most of the examples that I gave today, where they reject it and they receive the punishment.

But it is our job is to give them that last chance to repent and then have the consequence fall upon them if they choose to reject that call to repentance. into doing the right thing. And so it's important for us to realize what I'm talking about here today is that when we write, when we are corresponding with them, it is giving that opportunity to repent and we're not begging them. We're not hoping that a sternly written letter will get them to do the right thing. It is about giving them that last warning shot and that we are engaged in nullification. We are ignoring them. We are not obeying an illegal law. We are definitely standing up and we are applying the principles that the founding fathers did of resisting and interposition and stopping tyranny from being implemented. But we are giving them at the same time, we are giving them that opportunity to repent or to be destroyed. And so we again go back to the namesake of the society of what it will take and that sacrifice. that we need to be willing to engage in to be able to make sure that these things happen and that we can be in good standing before the lord by following correct principle of yes you do engage but it's an engagement of of warning and of calling them out for their evil and hoping that they do the right thing but then you doing what's right no matter what not trying to get not just thinking that if we uh follow and and gain the the uh favor of evil that we will be able to have the favor of god as well because that is that is not how it works that we've talked about before the apostle paul said that you know they hated you know that they hate you they hated me first and so that is what we will receive for doing those things and so it's important for us to not be fooled and luled into thinking that we will be friends with evil because we are not here to be friends with evil. We are here to call it out and stamp it out.

Our judicial leaders, our judges in that, are so evil. I brushed the cuff of my pants off a couple of times out in the mission field when I was having my legal problems. One of the friends in the court, he says, he's brushing his feet off against you. And one of the friends that was the cop there said, no, he's just kicking manure off. You know, they know what you're doing when you dust your feet off. They know that you're bearing testimony against them. Absolutely. And they're so evil that they make a joke, trying to turn that you're... You're off your rocker. Ben, one thing you're teaching us, and I think it's important to focus on, is that we're supposed to carry out God's law and promote God's law and advance God's law. And that law includes the Founding Fathers' understanding of the political philosophy of free society and the legal. understanding the Constitution they gave us. But when I do this, I've confronted about a dozen senators and congressmen and town hall meetings and city councilmen and all these sorts of things. And when I go into this, I'm focusing only on one thing myself. I'm focusing on being educated on the subject I'm going to address and promoting God's principle, promoting liberty, promoting justice. individual rights, and then I concentrate on trying to do a good job. I have a responsibility of doing it. If I do a bad job, I can actually do more harm trying to advance godly principles.

But I don't care at all about the response. Only to the extent I care about it is to be able to rebut godly. what they have to say. So it's important. And if you know your subject well, and you can reason well, you can rebut it. And so that's one advantage too. They expose, these evil people expose themselves in their responses to you often. And I've gotten more education of people at these meetings from the way they responded and my ability to collapse their arguments. So we have to be well educated when we do it, but focus on. doing our job is to promote godly principles and don't care about their reaction other than to be able to collapse their arguments. The results of God's, yeah. Yeah, I think godly thoughts are important and try to think godly that way. But the more we study, the more I think Teancum was right on. So Teancum, like all the examples that we have, They still went through these scriptural steps. So I'm not saying that we, that there is not, all those examples that I gave ended up, well, not all of them, not the unjust judge, but we have, you know, Elijah and we have Nephi and we have Moses.

The leader ended up being killed. And so I'm not saying that that's not, that's not, obviously we've gone over that in the past. That is, that is a, it is a godly solution at the right time. showing tonight is what is it that you do leading up to that and um and so it's it's something that we're we we talked about last week uh in the previous week as well of what not doing shortcuts because shortcuts cause problems and so if we just start off with saying oh they're evil they're not going to do the right thing anyway so i'm just going to go do xyz um then we're we're taking the shortcut that is not something that God has laid out for us. He has warned them, just like with the Savior and the turning over the tables. He spoke in the synagogues. He warned them. He called them vipers. He called them children of hell. But then he had to go and do the next step of turning the tables because they wouldn't repent. And so we need to make sure that we are going through the proper steps, the godly scriptural steps, before we follow the inspiration to do anything other than that. and this is a great example but not only is he risking his life and life of others as well uh every time he confronted the pharaoh but it was a lot of trial a lot of work a lot of uh coming before him and every time he did so he could have lost his life So it's not confronting these people. It's not an easy thing to do. And that's why, you know, cutting out their heads, that seems like an easy solution. No, confronting these people, you have to get well educated. You have to be courageous.

You have to do it repeatedly over and over again. It's a lot of work and it's a lot of courage. Well, when I was reading. Killing No Murder. I was also reading the first of the Book of Mormon, and I was also reading Jesus Christ. I was trying to make sure if I went off the deep end, at least I was reading something spiritual to hold me on. But the Come Follow Me book for kids and that that was with the Book of Mormon said that Laban might have been a relative of Lehi. And for him to refuse to give the oldest son the plates was questionable. Then for him taking all of the wealth, all of the gold and that, and then sending his 50 to wipe him out, that was flat-ass theft. Flat-out theft. And just like our... political leaders now with the taxes they charge. So reading Killing No Murder, it mentions that it's easier on the people and easier on the person to cut their heads off. Whenever I talk to a police officer, judge, even my lawyer friend, I bring up that when these people go against the Constitution and try to make things up, I've been watching those videos on YouTube about the people being approved for their offices. Every time I see Shurtleff, he doesn't do nothing. He's just trying to set people up. Every time Schumer says something, they're just evil. They're not saying anything. They're just trying to prove their point. AOC is dumber than a box of rocks. It would be... more humane for the American people to see them dangling from a marquee than it would be to have them keep going like they're going. And I think this is a good point that you need to have a good consequence.

You can't just, I mean, we need to have an inspired consequence if we're going to go offering one to them. I don't want to be telling them, and if you don't do it, I'm going to go door to door to every constituent in your district and embarrass you because that's just too much work for me. It's like parenting. I better not give a consequence. It's too hard. And it might not work either. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, make sure it's an inspired consequence. Yeah, absolutely. Alan, one of the points that Ben's pointed out to us is that the short-term solutions like that, you have to look at... what is likely how much you're likely to benefit from it i mean are you going to kill almost every congressman and senators because they're all uh carrying out evil consistently there's only one congressman i could say that's not are you going to kill the president and then they just replace him with another one like him so you have to look at how much benefit you're going to gain from trying to kill them as opposed to the hard work of educating people and getting them out of office. After listening to Ben, and if you've been paying attention over the years, Ben says if you get the right ones, the rest of them will flee like cockroaches. Well, you expose them. You turn the lights on and they flee. That's true.

You're not saying kill some of them. Well, I was saying expose them and they run like, you turn the lights on and you expose them and they run like cockroaches. Absolutely. Shurtleff and Schumer have had the light shone on them so much that it just don't make a difference. When they're that evil, and a lot of our elected officials are right there, I mean, I've named Schumer and Pelosi and Shurtleff. Well, all those examples that you're giving for current, those all apply to all of the examples that we gave tonight with Pharaoh, with the priest of Baal. You just go down the list. They all applied to every single one of them, but all of those prophets followed the same pattern. And so what I'm saying is we have to follow a pattern and we can't take shortcuts. I'm not disagreeing with you. I think all those principles laid out, that's why I recommend the book. That's why we sell the book, Killing No Murder, but they follow the pattern.

And even that book, Killing No Murder, lays out that pattern of, like Mark was talking about, of the benefit. And so we have to look at what are... those steps that we need to make sure that we're following, that we're not taking shortcuts because taking shortcuts causes us problems every single time, no matter what you do, whether it's cooking, whether it's sports, whether it's business, whether it's freedom, taking a shortcut is actually a longer path in the long run than just doing the right thing from the get-go and following that pattern that we find in the scriptures. So it's 10 o'clock. We'll go ahead and close up officially. Then we can have open forum, talk about what anything. In open forum, we can talk about whatever we want to talk about, this topic or anything else. Let's go ahead and have a closing prayer, though. And I'm going to ask Bobby, would you say the closing prayer for us? Okay. Thanks.

Dear Father in heaven, we thy sons and daughters, thy servants, come before thee at this hour. Thank you for the opportunity we've had together tonight to discuss these principles and patterns. that have been established in life scriptures and throughout the history of this world which sarah has created we thank you for the messages that we're presenting and for those who put input in tonight and we thank you for the things that we've learned father we ask thy blessings to help us to find a way to amicably apply these principles into our lives into our communities and into our social circles with those that we know and come in contact with and to find ways to open a conversation and dialogue with them to teach these principles that we've been instructed with tonight and in other meetings, that we may be thy servants in all things and be thy witnesses in all things. We pray for thy truth to be upon us tonight and help us to be safe in all things that we do wherever we go. We ask thy blessings for the love of the windows of heaven and pour out that knowledge which thou hast upon our heads to know what to say and when to say it. Father, we thank Thee and give Thee gratitude with all of our love, with all of our strength, with all of our mind, might, and love to glorify Thy holy name in all things. And we say these things according to our faith in the sacred and holy name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thank you.