We have turned the page in our calendars and we have welcomed 2025. The election results were certified by Congress this week in the Electoral College, setting up the January 20th inauguration of our 47th POTUS, Donald J. Trump. He returns after a four-year exile, and already the surge in energy politically is resounding throughout the world.
Trump is no minimalist thinker. He is proposing buying Greenland (yes, the country), taking back control of the Panama Canal from China, annexing Canada as the 51st state (yes, the whole country apparently), putting an end to the unnecessary war between Ukraine and Russia, downsizing the Washington D.C. swamp of excessive governmental agencies, and oh yes, shutting down the borders and exporting the criminals that have been allowed to enter America illegally. Did I miss anything? Probably, because no matter how you describe it "Make America Great Again" is going to involve a lot of agenda items.
There are razor-thin majorities in both the House and the Senate this year, and it appears that majority is ready to take on the world at the jump when Trump officially is sworn in. No matter whether you believe the MAGA hype or not, it has the feel of a BIG DEAL about to be unleashed. If even a small percentage of his agenda gets enacted it will no doubt affect the lives of Americans here at home and potentially the lives of nations elsewhere.
The gloating over the election victory is getting a little tiresome, if you ask me. I am weary to the point of exhaustion over all the hyperbole on display. The partisanship is frankly disturbing. It has extended in the extremity to Trump roundly and squarely placing ALL the blame on Governor Newsom (D-CA) for the raging wildfires exploding in Los Angeles County. Trump says he warned Newsom repeatedly about his ill-conceived policies that shrunk the water supplies, and now California is suffering because of the unheeded cautions Trump raised. Politicizing EVERYTHING must end, I pray.
It appears Trump has selected a team of cabinet members from among the ranks of the best and brightest to kick off his last hurrah. This slate of party faithful will be turned loose to tackle some big issues, and one can only hope they will be successful, regardless of your leanings politically. Can we really unite behind this new leader? He is signaling early his proclivity to speak his mind. He has no further political aspirations - this is his final shot to fulfill his MAGA promise, and so far he is withholding nothing in his verbal arsenal. He's already held more news conferences than his predecessor did for four years. My counsel to my family recently was "Buckle Up." Change is coming.
I was reminded the other day about something Joseph Smith said. Lorenzo Snow reported a day when someone came and asked Joseph Smith, “Who are you?” To which he replied, “Noah came before the flood. I have come before the fire.” (See this report of President Snow under entry of January 1, 1892, in diary of Abraham H. Cannon, vol. 16, p. 30). What could he have meant by that answer?
Truman Madsen offers this:
That leads to a probing question: How much did Joseph Smith know about himself and his own calling? Clearly his knowledge grew and expanded from the initial encounters of the Sacred Grove. But what really was implicated in that tantalizing phrase picked up by enemies and friends, “You do not know me”? Or, in his turning to people on the stand (this happened at least three times in Nauvoo) and saying, “If I revealed all that has been made known to me, scarcely a man on this stand would stay with me”? (“The Prophet said to me [Brigham Young] about sixteen years ago [at Kirtland], ‘If I was to show the Latter-day Saints all the revelations that the Lord has shown unto me, there is scarce a man that would stay with me, they could not bear it’” (MS 13 [September 1, 1851]: 257).
In another case he said, “If the Church knew all the commandments, one-half they would condemn through prejudice and ignorance.” (HC 2:477. Compare George Q. Cannon, in Conference Report, April 6, 1900, p. 57).Some readers of this page may not know about Joseph Smith. Search deeper into this blog and others to resolve your curiosity. Suffice it to say he opened this last dispensation of the fulness of times. He sought guidance from his Father in Heaven in a humble prayer in the spring of 1820, and was answered in a glorious vision from both the Father and the Beloved Son Jesus Christ. He organized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 6, 1830, in Palmyra, New York. I revere him as a mighty prophet of God, who was followed in succession until the 17th President Russell M. Nelson, who now presides in his 101st year in mortality.
We have seen "the fire" now in Los Angeles County with no end in sight. Legion are the Biblical prophecies about fire in the latter days that will threaten to consume the whole earth before the Second Coming of our Lord.
We will yet see many horrific scenes before that day comes, and we can do all that we can do to forestall it through all the political machinations the mind of man can conceive. However, the building of modern-day temples will predominate our work as Latter-day Saints to ensure the gathering of Israel on both sides of the veil. Those sacred ordinances performed within the temples will seal our progenitors to their families as fervently as we know how to do that work.
I was asked recently what I do when my loneliness overtakes me from time to time since the death of my beloved wife Patsy. My simple response was, "I don't stay at home; instead I go to a nearby temple and perform an ordinance." It's never been easier to do temple work than it is right now, and I pray I may be independent enough to go and accomplish that angelic mission for as along as I am able.
I look forward with great anticipation for the events of 2025 yet to unfold. I am a born optimist by nature. In saying that, I recognize the gravity of the Machiavellian contrivances in which the world finds itself today. Those who seek for power to work their plots through subtlety and deception always seem to come to a deadly end, however. Eventually the truth will out.
So what is my prediction for 2025? That the day will come in the not too distant future when Joseph Smith and his successors will yet shine forth when all other solutions fail on the grand stage of political intrigues. President Russell M. Nelson has unleashed an era of temple building worldwide that will continue to accelerate around the world. That eternal work of providing ordinances to our kindred dead who now reside in the spirit world will go forward without ceasing from this year onward.I claim no special gift of prophecy here, but that's about as safe a bet on the future as I can conceive of making.
Oh, and I AM NOT given to hyperbole.