No. 19. SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, . VOL. L.
THE POWER OF EVIL.
Discourse delivered at the General Con-
ference of the Church, in the Taber-
nacle, Salt Lake City, Sunday, April
7th, 1895, by
PREST. WILFORD WOODRUFF.
-[REPORTED BY ARTHUR WINTER.]-
I ask and desire this morning the
faith and prayers of the Latter-day
Saints in my behalf while I stand before
you. This is not merely an idle cere-
mony, for if I possessed all the oratory
and learning of the ancient Greeks and
Romans it would not give me power to
edify one immortal spirit in the children
of men or to point any immortal soul to
the way of salvation. I am entirely de-
pendent upon the Lord. I always have
been during my life, and in my travels
and pilgrimage, preaching the Gospel of
Christ to my fellow men. It does not
make any difference what age a man is
in the preaching of the Gospel, whether
he be twenty-five, ninety, or five hun-
dred years of age, if he is only inspired
by the Spirit and power of God. Many
of the ancients lived to a very great
age. Father Adam up to the last speech
he ever made to his children, according
to the revelations of God, was filled
with the Holy Ghost, and he was nearly
a thousand years of age.
I have some things upon my mind I
would like to present to the Latter-day
Saints if I can get the spirit of them.
I think it would be profitable to us to
spend a little time in reflecting and
meditating upon the powers that be—
the powers that exist today on the earth
and have existed from eternity unto
eternity—good and evil, light and dark-
ness, Christ and Belial, or Lucifer, the
son of the morning. When we look
over the history of the world we can
see from the creation of Father Adam
down to our day the operation of these
two powers. And these powers will
exist until the end of time, and from
that time henceforth, until there is a
change in the destiny of the spirits of
men. It seems that from the time
of the great rebellion in heaven,
when one-third of the hosts of heaven
were cast down for their rebellion
against the great Eloheim and Jehovah,
the Creator of heaven and earth, there
has been a warfare against God, against
Christ, against His Church, against His
Priesthood, and against everything that
would tend to salvation and eternal life.
And in looking over the history of the
world, from the revelations of God to
us, we can see in the peopling of the
earth and in the building up of cities by
the inhabitants of the earth, the powers
of evil, of darkness and of sin have had
great control over the children of men.
Men were led to sin and to do evil until
those ancient cities, like modern ones,
were filled with iniquity. The Lord
raised up prophets and inspired men in
all those dispensations, when cities and
nations became ripened into iniquity, to
give them commandments, to warn them
of the judgments of God, and to tell
them what to do to escape those judg-
ments. And when these cities and na-
tions were fully ripened in iniquity and
would not repent, all that those proph-
ets proclaimed unto them came to pass.
You may take all the ancient cities—
Thebes, Nineveh, Tyre, Sidon, Babylon,
Jerusalem, and others—and they had
prophets raised up among them. They
were warned of God, and were told
what awaited them unless they repented
of their sins, and all came to pass as the
prophets spake unto them. My mind
rests upon Jeremiah. The Lord called
him in his day to go and warn King
Zedekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusa-
lem, and the prophet told them what
would come to pass. The king and the
inhabitants were wroth against him and
they persecuted him, and he had so
many trials to go through that a man in
reading of them would not be surprised
if Jeremiah felt like saying, "You may
all go to destruction for what I care; I'm
not going to stay with you." [Jeremiah 37-38] But the
Lord had said unto Jeremiah, "Before I
formed thee in the belly I knew thee;
and before thou camest forth out of the
womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained
thee a prophet unto the nations." [Jeremiah 1:5] All
that Jeremiah said to the inhabitants of
Jerusalem came to pass, and the history
of Jerusalem is terrible. The whole
house of Israel had warning; prophets
were raised up among them, and they
prophesied unto them. All the judg-
ments that visited them were foretold.
I speak of these things because they
are on my mind, and we are in a some-
what similar condition ourselves. Take
the days of Christ. As soon as Christ
was born how quickly Herod sought
His life! Joseph had to take Mary and
the young child into Egypt in order to
save the child. [Matthew 2:1-16] The power of evil was
after Him for His destruction. And did
the Savior, when He was grown to
manhood, escape that power? Was
there anything about Him in this re-
spect that differed from others of the
human family? There was not. He
was tempted, He was tried, and the
enemy labored for His destruction
through His whole life. His mission
was a short one. It was only three
and a half years from the time he en-
tered into the Priesthood until He was
crucified, and that, too, by this power.
And the sorrow that has come upon the
Jewish nation in consequence of this
act of theirs, and the bill that they have
had to pay, has been indeed great, and
all that the prophets said concerning
that has come to pass to the very letter.
Nearly nineteen hundred years have
rolled around since the death of Christ,
and that yoke has been upon the neck of
the Jews from that day until this. They
have been trampled under the foot of
the Gentiles, in fulfilment of the words
of the prophets of God, and because
they shed the blood of the Savior, their
Shiloh. And it has not yet come to an
end with them.
John, while upon the Isle of Patmos,
clothed with the glory of God and
wrapt in the visions of heaven, por-
trayed, prophesied and wrote concern-
ing the events that should take place
down to the coming of the Son of Man.
He told us concerning the restoration
of the everlasting Gospel. He says:
And I saw another angel fly in the midst of
heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach
unto them that dwell on the earth.
Saying with a loud voice, Fear God and give
glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is
come. [Revelation 14:6-7]
That has come to pass. The time has
come when the Lord has set His hand
to fulfil the flood of revelation contained
in all the records of divine truth. The
Lord raised up a man, ordained and
prepared from the foundation of the
world, to stand in the last dispensation
and fulness of times, to receive the Gos-
pel and the Priesthood, to organize the
Church of God, and to prepare the way
for the coming of the Son of Man. We
know that these two powers were mani-
fested with the Prophet Joseph as they
were in the days of the Savior. The
very moment that he received these
revelations from God and proclaimed
them, it seemed as though all earth and
hell were let loose for his destruction.
It appeared as if the devil was afraid
that he would live to carry out these
prophecies. You know his history. Some
of us have been associated with that
Prophet. We have seen this spirit of
the evil one manifested. The Prophet
Joseph was never let alone by the pow-
ers that exist until he, like the Savior
and others, sealed his testimony with
his blood. But during the short time
that he dwelt in the flesh he accom-
plished all that he was ordained to
do. He not only organized the Church,
but he brought forth this book of revela-
tions that I hold in my hand—the Book
of Doctrine and Covenants, which con-
tains some of the most sublime revela-
tions God ever revealed to man on the
earth. The Lord also chose Twelve
Apostles, High Priests, Elders, Priests,
Teachers and Deacons, and set in order
the whole organization of the Church of
