Allen C. Christensen- Great Friend and Supporter of the Lamanites
Allen C. Christensen is an agricultural scientist who served as Professor of Animal and Veterinary Sciences and Dean of the College of Agriculture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and as Director of the Ezra Taft Benson Agriculture and Food Institute at Brigham Young University. In collaboration with the Tuba City Arizona Stake, the Benson Institute inaugurated a location specific gardening effort among the Navajo and Hopi peoples to strengthen families and improve nutrition. It was during that project effort that thoughts about his book titled, “Joseph Remnant; Lamanites in Today’s America” came which was published in 2019. Those experiences among the Navajo and Hopi peoples as well other indigenous peoples were written in Bringing Dignity and Hope: The Work of the Ezra Taft Benson Agriculture and Food Institute. His discipline publications are concerned with nutrition, agricultural development in less-developed nations including working with small-holder farmers in Latin America and Africa. His expertise in agricultural development was recognized by a U.S. presidential appointment to the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development. An avocational historian, he authored Before Zion: An Account of the 7th Handcart Company. He holds BS, MS and PhD degrees and was awarded an honorary degree from a Guatemalan university. He and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of five children and were also foster parents for four Navajo foster daughters and one Hispanic foster son. An active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints he has served as a bishop, stake president, mission president, patriarch and Area Executive Secretary in the Pacific Islands.
Brother Christensen’s newest book has some wonderful and inspirational stories about 15 Native Americans including Emeritus General Authority Larry Echo Hawk. Three of these Native Americans will be speaking at our FIRM Foundation Expo. Betty “Red Ant” LaFontaine (Navajo) , Delores Kahkonen (Iroquois), and Franklin Keel (Chickasaw). You will also hear from a new speaker named Rose Johnson-Tsosie (Navajo). Come and support our Lamanite friends. For information click the picture below.
Yesterday at the Timpanogos Chapter of the Sons of the Utah Pioneers, Brother Christensen shared the following talk that I know you will enjoy.
Pioneers, Native Americans and Jews
by Allen C. Christensen
“During my three years as a mission president, I read the Joseph Smith History in the Pearl of Great Price, 36 times, or every Fast Sunday. I also read many of the cross references. Fascinatingly, among the Scriptures quoted by Moroni to Joseph Smith the night of September 21, 1823 was the entire 11th chapter of Isaiah. In that context, I find Isaiah 11:12 especially intriguing: And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The title Israel rightly belongs to Joseph (1 Chronicles 5:1) and then, subsequently, was conferred upon Ephraim by Jacob (Genesis 48:17-20 and JST Genesis 48: 5-11).
Admittedly, in the 19th Century there was an initial gathering to Zion, the Mountains of Ephraim. The concept of gathering had great appeal for early British and Scandinavian converts. Yet, I have come to think the expression “assembled,” means to be assembled in stakes as that typifies Israel today, while Judah is to be gathered from the four corners of the earth. Using both assemble and gathered seems more than picturesque English literature. It is an insightful difference recorded in the King James Translation.
I have been interested in people, their history, culture and legends. Those were topics frequently discussed in my parent’s family. By the time I was five, I knew I wanted to see the world. As a nine-year-old, I received The White Indian Boy as a Christmas gift. It has become a semi-sacred treasure that I have read a number of times and have used as a reference. Since boyhood, I have been fascinated with the founding accounts of the Church, especially the pioneering and Utah territorial periods including our relationships with Native Americans. Members of the Pawnee tribe helped the 7th Handcart Company ford the Loup River. The Loup was reportedly the most dangerous of all such river crossings due to the quicksand in its bottom. My Christensen forebears were a part of that company. My great-grandfather, Niels Christensen, was a 12-year-old when they forded the Loup.
Ultimately, a mature Niels Christensen raised horses as a part of his farming operation. He had a two-year old horse that had not thrived. A Native American came looking for a horse. My great-grandfather told him about this one. They went to the bottom lands to see the horse. The Ute liked what he saw. In after years, my dad remembered the price paid for the horse was a pair of buckskin gloves, two buckskin blankets, two rawhides, a buffalo robe and two dollars in silver.
I have a 6th great-grandmother, who was a full-blood member of the Iroquois Confederacy, probably a Mohawk. Her Native American name was Josnorum Scoenonti, her English name was Running Deer. Today she has many descendants who are Latter-day Saints including some who have been General Authorities. Notable among them is the late A. Theodore Tuttle of the Seventy.
For five years in the 1880s, my maternal grandfather, George Albert Allen, lived among the Utes of Eastern Utah. He was a cowboy for the Schofield, Reid and McCune Cattle Company of Nephi, Utah. He learned to speak their language fluently and never forgot it nor their kindnesses to him. George also learned of some person-specific prophetic promises that Brigham Young had made to individuals Utes. George lived to see those prophecies come to pass. For example, as a boy Wanrodes had known Brigham Young, who had given him a blessing that promised that he [Wanrodes] would become head chief of the Ute Tribe. When Bridger Jim succeeded Tabby as chief, Wanrodes was getting quite old and his eyesight was failing. He said to George: Umpigi Brigham toowig sorokquent. “I’m not certain Brigham told the truth.” George said: “I told him to wait awhile, that Brigham knew what he was talking about.” When Bridger Jim died, Wanrodes was in his 90s and totally blind, yet the Ute tribe elected him as their head chief.
Apparently the Ute name Wanrodes means “Shining Brass.” Many Indian names have special meaning. That is the case with the name “Echo Hawk.” Elder Larry Echo Hawk’s surname is an English translation of a Pawnee name given to his great-grandfather, who was born in the mid-1800s in present-day Nebraska. Among the Pawnee, the hawk is the symbol of a warrior. This Pawnee war scout was known for his bravery, but he was a quiet man who did not speak of his accomplishments. Rather, others spoke in admiration of his good deeds which became, as it were, an echo from one side of the village to the other. Hence, the tribal elders gave him a highly symbolic name, Echo Hawk, “the hawk whose deeds are echoed.” (See page 43, Joseph’s Remnant, second paragraph.)
During the 1880s, federal marshals were in hot pursuit of Latter-day Saint men who were involved in the practice of plural marriage. Many of the Utes considered themselves to be Mormons. Federal officers continued their search for those men into the Uintah Basin. When encountering Utes, they would question them as to the whereabouts of the specific individuals they were seeking to apprehend. The Utes would ask to see the officer’s “Mormon shirt.” If there was no Mormon shirt or temple garment, the Utes had no idea as to where they could be found. Sometimes it can be very smart to play dumb.
While transcribing and adding editorial commentary to the Biography of George A. Allen, I received a letter from Jim Cooper of Cherokee, North Carolina. It provided something of an epilogue about Ute Chief Walker or Wakara. In 1947, an LDS elder traveling alone came to the border of the Eastern Cherokee Reservation at Soco Gap. The elder got out of his car, knelt upon the earth and dedicated the reservation for the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He then drove his car to the only restaurant in the little town and inquired if anyone knew of any families from Utah. A young man, Bill Larch, said the local high school band leader was a native of Roosevelt, Utah. After obtaining directions, the elder drove to the home of Philip and Kate Sneed Arkansas. Philip, Kate and their four children eventually joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Philip Arkansas was a great-grandson of Chief Walker of Walker War fame. Chief Walker had given the Latter-day Saints and Brigham Young some difficulty. Yet, it was Brigham Young who had presented Chief Walker with his baptismal certificate. Fascinatingly, on June 17, 1949 in the Oconaluftee River, Philip Arkansas was baptized a member of the Church by Truman Fox Clawson, a 2nd-great-grandson of Brigham Young.
My years at the University of California, Davis became a time when I began developing some close friendships with Jewish people and acquiring a deep interest in them. Robert Elser was one such friend. He told me that his parents had visited the Los Angeles Temple open house. Some 670,000 people attended that open house. “What did they think of it?” I asked. He replied: “My dad thought the temple was tremendous, he even tried to buy stock in the place!”
Reformed Jews sell seats in a synagogue or temple thereby raising money for a new edifice. It assures the purchaser of seating for the High Holy Days or the Days of Awe that begin with Rosh Hashanah and end with Yom Kippur. It occurs in the fall of the year and coincides with the ancient Feast of the Tabernacles or Ingathering. Dates vary yearly because Jews still use a lunar calendar. Fascinatingly, Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith on September 21, 1823. In 2020, Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown on September 18 and Yom Kippur begins at sundown on September 27. The preface to chapter 29 of 3 Nephi states: “The coming forth of the Book of Mormon is a sign that the Lord has commenced to gather Israel and to fulfill his covenants.”
While at UC Davis, I home taught Lt. Col. Louis Besbeck and his wife. She was a Latter-day Saint. He was a Jew. In those two years, not once did I hear of his experiences. As a young commissioned officer, he had been part of the Bataan Death March. He did not breathe a word about that. Until I met Lt. Benigno at Mt Samat in Bataan, Philippines and read the horrific suffering of the Martin Handcart Company written by my great-grandfather, Langley Allgood Bailey, I did not understand why. Langley wrote that when the rescuers arrived “that night someone stole and ate the leather straps from the rescuer’s saddles for hunger is a mild name.” Nineteen died that night. Graves were dug in the snow. Wolves came and tore up the dead bodies. The next morning he saw a young lady of about 16 walking in the snow leaving blood prints of her heels and toes. On leaving that morning he saw his brother, John, attempting to drive the wolves away from the bodies he had helped bury. John had to run for his life. Then Langley wrote: “I refrain from writing about the suffering of these folks. It can never be told.” (Journal of Langley Allgood Bailey, edited by Allen C. Christensen, p.8)
Lt. Benigno described his wounds and capture, of his escape through the jungle and making his way across the open sea to Cebu in a Banka boat, a motorized canoe, where he spent the remainder of the war as a guerilla. I attempted to question Lt. Benigno. He said, “I cannot talk about that. Let me just say that because of what happened here and on Corregidor, it has made it difficult to forgive the Japanese.” (Journal of Allen C. Christensen, XIX: 121-122.)
In Southern California I became acquainted with Dr. Fred Krinsky, a well-known professor of government at Pomona College and also an ordained rabbi. Fred said of his Jewish kinsmen, “Where two Jews are talking politics there are at least three political opinions with splinter groups. And if they are talking religion, you must double those numbers.” There is an echo of that in the current effort to elect a political party that can create a parliamentary coalition of sufficient numbers to form a new Israeli government.
Consider this phrase from Jacob’s patriarchal blessing upon Judah: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (Genesis 49:10). Couple that verse with D&C 77: 15 which speaks of “two prophets that are to be raised up to the Jewish nation in the last days.” The Jewish revolt against Rome following the Savior’s death marked the end of any semblance of a kingdom of Judah. Today, in electing the Israeli Knesset or parliament, one votes for a party rather than a candidate. The 120 seats are awarded on the basis of percentage of the vote received. That is how the Jewish nation is governed today. It was in March 1832 when Joseph Smith declared there was to be a Jewish nation. The modern Jewish concept of Zionism was nearly 70 years in the future.
Also of interest is the Spanish Inquisition. During the “Age of Discovery,” many Jews publicly became Converso’s. Yet, in the secret sanctity of their homes they remained practicing Jews. They played an important role in the settlement of the New World. “A mercantile people, Jews in the New World went about their business as traders and ship-owners, thus becoming first merchant class in the Spanish Empire. As long as they pretended to be Christians and delivered the goods, no one questioned their religiosity too closely.” (Edward Kritzler’s Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean, p. ix. 9)
The Spanish Inquisition, and I have seen evidence of its gruesome horrors in Peru, did not formally end until 1820, the year of the theophany at Palmyra. Parley P. Pratt’s magnificent hymn: “The morning breaks, the shadows flee, Lo Zion’s standard is unfurled. The dawning of a brighter day, majestic rises on the world,” seemingly has a reflection, an echo, of that terrible case of man’s inhumanity to man.
I have followed the wars and perplexities of the Middle East with intense interest. Initially, the Ingathering of Judah may have caught more of my attention than did the assembling of Israel. For a time, I seemed to read prophetic accounts in Isaiah and the Book of Mormon more in the Jewish context than the broader context for the entire House of Israel.
Consider, for example, 2 Nephi 10:9. Yea, the kings of the Gentiles shall be nursing fathers unto them and their queens shall become nursing mothers . . . For years I thought of the importance of Great Britain’s Balfour Declaration, and the measure of diplomatic legitimacy it conferred for the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, as a reflection of Britain’s monarchy.
Other incidents emerged. Noteworthy was the statement made by Isaac Halevi Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, when he met with President Harry S. Truman at the White House. The orthodox Rabbi said to Truman: “God put you in your mother’s womb so you would be the instrument to bring the rebirth of Israel after two thousand years.” That statement seems to suggest Rabbi Herzog may have had some understanding of our premortal life. Such concepts as pre mortal existence and the resurrection are not usually doctrinally characteristic of Reformed Judaism. Perhaps the declaration of the Lord to Jeremiah, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee: and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet to the nations (see Jeremiah 1:5) had special meaning for Herzog. President Truman is reported to have been a serious reader of the Bible.
David Niles, a Jew, was a presidential staff appointee for both Roosevelt and Truman. Niles thought the Rabbi comments were overdoing it. Then, when he looked at the President, he noted there were tears running down Harry Truman’s cheeks. (David McCullough’s Truman p.620)
Consider this possibility: Queens, as used in the context of temple language, could mean wives, specifically in this case, the First Lady. The United States has been the key nation of the Gentiles in the 20th Century. When I read Isaiah 42:22-25, I wondered, “Could these verses also refer to the Holocaust?” Consider Anne Frank and her diary in this context. Thou art a people robbed and spoiled; thine enemies, all of them, have snared thee in holes, and have hid thee in prison houses; they have taken thee for a prey . . . and set him on fire round about . . . Auschwitz and Birkenau remain horribly painful, numbing images of genocide.
We had five LDS Placement Students who lived with us a combined total of 15 school years. The four daughters are Navajo; the son’s stepfather is a Hualapai. Our only daughter, who was a volunteer for LDS Social Services in St. Louis, Missouri, has never been able to have children of her own. While we were serving in New Zealand, she and her husband went to China and adopted a daughter. In reflection, she said that the experience of having four Navajo sisters in our home taught her that she could come to love deeply an individual of another culture.
In 2009, I became involved in an agricultural development effort with the Navajo and Hopi people. It involved intensive gardening and reclaiming badly eroded soils. I visited with a number of people who had been participants in the LDS Indian Placement Program. Few of those on the reservation had remained active in the Church, yet all were pleased with the placement experience and were seemingly much better off, physically and financially, than had been their parents. Progress is somewhat generational.
During the March 2009 feasibility study, I sat one evening in my room at the Holiday Inn in Chinle, Arizona pondering this question: “How can we make tradition an ally rather than an adversary?” Consider the long and painful history of Native Americans and Anglo Americans, of betrayal by high-level governmental officials, of setting aside of treaty promises made to the Tribes, of fraudulent and deceitful practices conducted by individuals and businesses against Native Americans. In reflection, I have come to realize that it can be a hard directive to pray for those who despitefully use and persecute you (see 3 Nephi 12:44). That commandment is a demanding test of Christian discipleship. Unwittingly, or deliberately in cases, that is the very test that non-Indian America has imposed on the Children of Lehi. A compelling need exists to build an Ammon-and-Lamoni-type relationship of trust. In this dispensation, that leadership obligation rests heavily upon the Tribe of Ephraim.
We Latter-day Saints accept 1 Nephi 13:12 as Nephi’s description of Columbus and his voyage of discovery. Yet, Native Americans do not necessarily consider him as a heroic figure. One prominent Navajo woman has called him “that lost Italian who has caused us so much grief.” As I reflected on the challenges facing Native Americans, this thought emerged: “Every family, society, culture or nation needs its heroes.” The next morning at Canyon de Chelly I found a book on the Navajo Code Talkers. Later that morning I met one of them, Teddy Draper, Sr., a holder of the Silver Star and Purple Heart, one of 15 Marines who had raised the second much larger flag on Iwo Jima. He had been wounded in that battle. During heavy fighting, he had thrown himself between three dead Marines to save his life. His actions were heroic. His commanding officer asked him what medal, meaning decoration, would he like for that service. With shrapnel wounds above his eye, his shoulder muscle cut and wounds elsewhere in his body, he said, “I’ve already got enough metal. What I want is a promotion.” That was granted and he sent the money home to his family.
Ultimately, I learned that among those young Navajo marines, who created the code, were religious fellows who read the Bible. In their unique effort to create a code within the Navajo language, Dennie Hosteen, saw something of a fulfillment of Jeremiah 5: 15-16. The KJV reads: Lo, I will bring a nation upon you from afar, O house of Israel, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say. Their quiver is an open sepulchre, they are all mighty men. Or as Hosteen stated: “I am bringing a distant nation against you. An ancient and enduring nation. A people whose language you do not know, whose speech you do not understand.” (Sally McClain, Navajo Weapon, p.59)
I thought: “There are heroes. What is needed is to find them.” I began the search. The project we started initially had two demonstration gardens, one at the Tuba City Stake Center and the other at Polacca Branch—a Hopi unit, and 30 pilot families. Within four years it had grown to more than 2,000 families and a number of demonstration gardens across the reservations.
I have watched with deep interest the work of the senior missionary couples, who have served among the Navajo and Hopi peoples. Those missionaries enlarged my understanding of the verses found in 1 Nephi 21:22-23 or Isaiah 49:22-23.
“Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will lift up my hands to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people; and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers; they shall bow down to thee, their face towards the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shall know that I am the Lord; for they shall not be ashamed who wait upon me.”
Regarding 1 Ne 21: 22-23, I can see a partial fulfillment of events associated with the Navajo-Hopi project, as I watched endowed members of the church, who were serving as church-service missionaries kneel in the dusty reservation soils or earth and plant seeds of faith and food crops. The methods of planting those crops, especially for corn, was changed. Of special interest was an incident involving Arnold Yellowhorse. According to his wife, Arnold Yellowhorse, a Navajo, knelt and prayed over each individual corn seed as he planted them a foot apart along each emitter of the drip tape. I watched as Elder Earl Seeley, a PhD agronomist, knelt in the earth with program participants and taught them how to grow crops on soils that one Navajo said: “We thought these soils wouldn’t grow nothing.” As I recall, that Navajo man was serving as a bishop.
I have seen Tuba City Arizona Stake President, Larry J. Justice, carry little Navajo children in his arms, wipe the perspiration from their brow, and get them a drink of ice water, while their parents were working with and learning from the missionaries under a hot Arizona sun. President and Sister Justice are Anglo.
As mentioned previously, years ago, when I first read these verses, I thought they pertained to the role that Great Britain had played in the return of the Jews, namely the issuing of the Balfour Declaration that had given a measure of diplomatic legitimacy to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Given my experience with Native Americans, I think those prophetic verses can go beyond that.
I have come to feel that in addition to those events associated with the return of the Jews to their anciently promised homeland, this scripture may well pertain to wonderful senior missionaries, all of whom are endowed, who have knelt in the eroded reservation topsoil, their faces toward the earth, and have helped these people of the remnant plant seeds of crops and seeds of faith. Those efforts are rekindling the flame of faith. The Children of Lehi are seeing themselves in a new light.
Nephi said to his brethren: (1 Nephi 22:6, 8.) Nevertheless, after they shall be nursed by the Gentiles, and the Lord has lifted up his hand upon the Gentiles and set them up for a standard, and their children have been carried in in their arms, and their daughters have been carried upon their shoulders, behold these things of which are spoken are temporal; for thus are the covenants of the Lord with our fathers; and it meaneth us in the days to come, and also our brethren who are of the house of Israel. . . And after our seed is scattered the Lord God will proceed to do a marvelous work among the Gentiles, which shall be of great worth unto our seed; wherefore, it is likened unto their being nourished by the Gentiles and being carried in their arms and upon their shoulders. At least, to some degree, I have been an eye witness to that.
In 1 Ne 22: 6-8, consider in particular this sentence from verse 7 And it meaneth that the time cometh that after all the house of Israel have been scattered and confounded, that the Lord God will raise up a mighty nation among the Gentiles, yea, even on the face of this land; and by them shall our seed be scattered.
Is not the mighty nation that the Lord has raised up the United States? Section 101:80 reads: And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood. That scriptural declaration suggests such is the case. Furthermore, Spain and Portugal are not usually seen as mighty nations. They were not raised upon the face of this land, unless you stretch your imagination and state their New World colonies satisfies that provision.
According to Sam Charlie, growing a garden on land they have previously thought barren has been instrumental in helping them recover this lost part of their culture. (Sam Charlie and his garden were featured in the “Pure Religion” column of the October 2, 2010 edition of The Church News.) I treasure my involvement with the Navajo and Hopi peoples. I have met many of them. I have met their leaders. They are children of covenant promises made long ago to Lehi, Nephi, Jacob and Enos, and confirmed to others. While serving at BYU, there were choice experiences among the Children of Lehi living in Latin America.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to have been an eye witness to the beginning of the fulfillment of such covenant promises. I once said to those missionaries that it seemed to me that we are engaged in writing an unusual chapter in the history of the Church, when foretold events, recorded long ago in the scriptures, are beginning to happen before our very eyes.
In conclusion, I rhetorically pose these questions: What would our lives be like had not Nephi, Jacob and others recorded in detail these experiences and scriptural insights? What special thoughts and insights may our grandchildren miss if we do not write and preserve our personal record and the record of those from whom we have come?
Your officers have asked that we make the preservation of personal and pioneer histories a priority for our service. I hear some silent questioning of ability to do that. I refer you to 1 Nephi 19 and ask, “Which account of the exodus or flight from Jerusalem and the subsequent adventures of Lehi’s family do you think is probably the best written—Nephi’s first or second effort?” You will discover, as you become involved in this effort that your mortal trek has also been enriched and your abilities have increased.”
Allen C. Christensen. Manuscript prepared for delivery at the Timpanogos Chapter of the Sons of Utah Pioneers, February 20, 2020.
This painting below shows the Native Americans of the Promised Land watching as the Pioneers and Pilgrims or Children of Israel reestablished themselves here in the United States as the Tribes of Joseph through Ephraim and Manasseh and the Tribes of Judah. This Promised Land of the United States is called the Land of Joseph.
“This beautiful region of country is…the land of Joseph or the Indians, as they are called…The world will never value the land of Desolation, as it is called in the Book of Mormon, for any thing more than hunting ground, for want of timber and mill-seats: The Lord to the contrary notwithstanding, declares it to be the land of Zion which is the land of Joseph, blessed by him, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew…” The Evening and Morning Star Vol. 1 No. 5 October 1832 Page 71 Editor WW Phelps
“It was not by chance that the Puritans left their native land and sailed away to the shores of New England, and others later followed. They were the advance guard of the army of the Lord, predestined to establish the God-given system of government under which we live and to make America, which is the land of Joseph, the gathering place of Ephraim, an asylum for the oppressed of all nations, and prepare the way for the restoration of the gospel of Christ and the establishment of his church upon the earth” – Heber J. Grant, Conference Report, [April 1930].
Certain lands were given to Israel for an inheritance in time and in eternity. America is the land of Joseph; it was the home of Nephite Israel, who were of Joseph, for a thousand years, and it is the headquarters of the Church in this final dispensation in which the church and kingdom of God are in the lands of Ephraim.” (McConkie, Bruce R., A New Witness for the Articles of Faith [1985], 511.)
“The Lord gave a divine promise to the ancient inhabitants of this favored country (the United States): ‘Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ” (Ether 2:12).
“Our Heavenly Father inspired the leaders of…the United States of America, that they might together, under His direction, having been raised up by God for the purpose, establish the Constitution of this country and…Bill of Rights, that by the year of our Lord 1805 [there would be] a climate where our Heavenly Father could send into this period of mortality a choice spirit who would be known as Joseph Smith, Jr.” 2011 President Thomas S. Monson (ordained an Apostle, 1963; ordained President of the Church, 2008)
“The Lord gave a divine promise to the ancient inhabitants of this favored country (the United States): ‘Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ” (Ether 2:12).
“Our Heavenly Father inspired the leaders of…the United States of America, that they might together, under His direction, having been raised up by God for the purpose, establish the Constitution of this country and…Bill of Rights, that by the year of our Lord 1805 [there would be] a climate where our Heavenly Father could send into this period of mortality a choice spirit who would be known as Joseph Smith, Jr.” 2011 President Thomas S. Monson (ordained an Apostle, 1963; ordained President of the Church, 2008)
