The apostasy from true Christianity required a restoration. The establishment of the Constitution required a revolution. What will the restoration of the Constitution require?

  1. Our Savior Jesus Christ organized a Church. It fell into apostasy.
  2. God gave us the Constitution of the United States. It is falling into apostasy.
  1. The apostasy from true Christianity occurred when worldly wisdom substituted priestcraft for priesthood.
  1. The apostasy from the Constitution is occurring because worldly wisdom seeks to substitute a regulatory state for a constitutional republic.
  1. In the religion apostasy, the church morphed with the state. In the constitution apostasy, the state has become a religion.
  1. In both apostasies, unsavory elements under cover of lip service manipulate the systems for power and gain.

Power  

  1. The Gospel uses power to help, to lift, to exalt. It includes the powers of the Atonement, priesthood, repentance, resurrection, procreation, service, and the temple endowment.
  1. The Constitution limits power to prevent its abuse. To this end, it calls for the separation of power, the division of power, and enumerated powers.
  1. Worldly wisdom denies the Atonement, substitutes false priesthoods, ridicules repentance, scoffs at bodily resurrection and life after death, perverts procreative powers, gives service only as a quid pro quo, and mocks temple ordinances.
  1. Worldly wisdom has diminished each of the power-controlling principles in the Constitution:
  • The separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers, with its attendant checks and balances, is ignored. The executive branch siphons judicial and legislative powers and funnels them into executive agencies, thus building a powerful regulatory state, aka the fourth branch of government.
  • The division of powers, by which federal and state governments counterbalance each other, has been undermined by the direct election of U.S. Senators rather than election by state legislatures as originally specified in the Constitution. States are increasingly supplicants to the federal government for money, and become subordinate appendages thereto.
  • Limiting the federal government to 18 enumerated powers listed in the Constitution has become a joke. Expansive interpretations of the General Welfare Clause now justify Congress passing whatever legislation it desires.
  1. The legislative branch passes wish lists or thousand-page legislation, both fertile grounds for unelected bureaucrats who write the rules we must follow. Congressional oversight is spastic at best. Employees of the executive branch have thus become the true legislators, the faceless dominion-seekers warned of in D&C 121.
  1. The executive branch has established in-house administrative judges who exercise judicial powers not granted by the Constitution. Citizens do not have the same rights under administrative law as they do under the constitutionally established judicial branch of government.
  1. Having written the rules, agencies investigate violations, assess penalties, demean opponents, judge guilt, ignore due process rules, block and complicate judicial appeals, collect the fines, and … keep the money.

Gain

  1. As the religion apostasy grew, tithing and free-will offerings proved insufficient for a paid priesthood with desires for pomp and luxury. Soon came the sale of indulgences to benefit ancestors in purgatory, the sale of relics, and outright taxation, the state being the collection agent.
  1. As the constitution apostasy spread, taxes and tariffs were insufficient to provide for the growth of government services and entitlements, especially as politicians traded goodies for votes. Bribes, shakedowns, collusion, pay-to-play schemes, prosecutorial abuses, intimidation and plea bargains, excess fines, impounding bank accounts even when no indictment has been issued, and general corruption litter the government and political landscape. Villains can be found in both political parties.
  1. In sum, the primacy of the Constitution is fading; the rule of properly legislated law is withering.

The Future

  1. The apostasy from true Christianity required a restoration. The establishment of the Constitution required a revolution. What will the restoration of the Constitution require?

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Gary Lawrence is a political pollster and the author of “The War in Heaven Continues; Satan’s Tactics to Destroy You, Christianity, the Family, the Constitution, and America.”