This lecture was a preview to the book.

-Joseph Smith was not only prophet for LDS but for the whole earth. He foresaw where the first shot would be fired for the Civil War.

-Promised lands are given to people by God so the people can build a temple as we see in history.

-USA was a promised land but was not functioning as one, for when Joseph Smith tried to build temples they were burned not permitted etc.

-1844 Joseph Smith gave Book of Mormon to John Quincy Adams.

-People came to get Joseph Smith’s take on politics while he was running for president Joseph Smith showed them the Book of Mormon.

-George Q Cannon said if the people obeyed Joseph Smith’s policy there would have been no Civil War. The Civil War was result of a broken covenant.

-George Washington was a smart man. Why did he take on a world superpower, the British? He knew America was a covenant land and that God would help him to win. America was the only place which had the freedom for a temple.

-George Washington asked the people to repent. That is the power source for what built America.

-Usually the revolutionary leaders become dictating tyrants, but G. Washington rather retired to be a farmer.

-The first congress was like a prayer, G. Washington telling the people that we would fall if we became wicked.

-G. Washington said that if America gets wicked, the blessings of America will turn into curses.

-The Prophet Joseph Smith cried to God asking why in this promised land he could not build a temple. God said I gave you this free land with the Constitution, appeal to the leaders of the land. Joseph Smith did, for the Bill of Rights was seen as only applicable for federal law, the states could do what they wanted. The states had to be forced to obey the Constitution. This was stopping temples from being built.

-Joseph Smith said no slavery not anywhere but especially not here in the promised land. These were his political platforms.

-In the Doctrine and Covenants it said if they people in America went on the way they did they would be destroyed.

(*all prophets come to tell their country to repent, Joseph Smith no different!)

-Joseph Smith was assassinated while running for President. No response came from the current US. President. Then they burned the temple. They reached the point of no return. God took the Saints and put them in Mexico, then unleashes hell in the nation.

-God punishing the people for making a country where there could be no temple, God destroyed them, it’s kind for God was helping the people who were in the spirit world waiting for temple help.

-God was going to get Joseph Smith’s Presidential platform the nice way or the hard way. They chose the hard way, and went through war before coming up with the 13th and 14th amendments making states bound by the Constitution and slavery to end.

-Brigham Young quotes D&C 101 as the Civil War began, and said it was fulfillment of Joseph Smith’s prophecy beginning. God beginning to vex the nation for their evil.

-The Civil War North states were losing even though they had twice as much armies as the south states. This shows that God was exercising his wrath.

-The death of Lincoln’s son Willy brought him to his knees and he became a true religious person, and he prayed like he never had before. The people would catch him reading the scriptures.

-Lincoln at first was not against slavery, but as time went on he learned to be against it. The Civil War at first was not about slavery, but as Lincoln begins to learn the scriptures from a maid of his and begins to get revelation that God wanted to get rid of slavery. He saw perhaps North and South are in the wrong, and God just wants slavery to end. Lincoln wrote a note to himself from prayer that God wills that war, and that it won’t end yet. Normally a leader won’t say this, that the war will continue, but it’s just what Joseph Smith said would happen, suffering until the nation began to get it right, getting rid of slavery.

-Before a certain battle Lincoln covenanted with God that if they won that battle that would be his sign that it was God’s will to do the emancipation proclamation (to end slavery). In that battle, the secret war plans of the south were discovered by accident despite their top secrecy. They were found on the ground by some cigars. The leaders held these plans so secret that they memorized the plans then one ate them, another sewed them into his coat pocket and threw his entire coat into a fire. It was a miracle that the North found the South’s secret plans.

-Lincoln did the emancipation proclamation. He said, “I can do nothing else, I am a man under orders.” He called his cabinet together and told them he knew they didn’t like it but that he was going to do this.

-Lincoln caught the vision and said that they Civil War was because of the wickedness of the people. He spoke like George Washington and the Book of Mormon prophets. He said the nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. He told them they were because of their blessings had become too proud to pray to the God that made them.

-Lincoln checked out a Book of Mormon from the library of congress.

-Lincoln told the people the Civil War was because of their wickedness and that the North and the South US were in the wrong, that the judgements of God were just. He knew the speech would not be popular, but he knew he had to say it.

-Isaiah 5:24-25 is a passage Lincoln kissed at his inauguration.

-Lincoln had the Book of Mormon checked out for over 8 months. He had it 8 months overdue. It was unlikely that he did not read it.

-Lincoln returns the Book of Mormon 7 days before he issues his first draft of the emancipation proclamation. He called America to repentance and they listened. You can see their conversion in the news and the letters etc. Lincoln returning the Book of Mormon in this timing is like him saying ok I get it now then going and doing as instructed therefrom.

-The founding fathers came to Wilford Woodruff in a vision and asked him why he had not been getting their temple work done since they had laid the foundation for those temples to be able to be there.

-We have sins in America. You can’t legislate immorality in the promised land. They did that with slavery and we saw what happened. Today we are saying sin is great let’s legalize and encourage it.

-President Gordon B Hinckley said we in the secularization of America, are deserting God, and he will begin to desert us. If we are to continue to have the freedoms the founding fathers set up, we need to be righteous or we will lose the blessings.

-To activate the covenant blessings of peace prosperity temples etc., we as a people need to be righteous.

-Abraham Lincoln went through hell and back during his presidency. In those four years he aged like a person would in 20 years. He was then shot.