You love fine clothing and adorning your churches more than you love the poor, the needy, the sick and afflicted among you.
Oh you polluted, hypocritical teachers who sell yourselves for nothing!
Why have you polluted God's holy church?
- Note: Can we name "God's holy church", a church Moroni saw in vision in 400 A.D.? What would qualify a church to be God's church? What would qualify it to be holy? Of course it would have to be His church, established by Him alone.
- Moroni saw people living in a time of great wickendess, in a time when "great and marvelous" things would be coming forth. What are those things? They are the messages of the brass plates (Alma 37:3-4). The messages of the rest of The Book of Mormon....the “greater” things. Those things will only come forth when the Gentiles (particularly LDS Gentiles) humble themselves and become sanctified as Jared's brother was sanctified (see Ether 4:4-7).
- It has been made clear by latter-day prophets that all is not well in Zion. For example, read President Spencer W. Kimball's message to the LDS Church in the July 1976 Ensign entitled, "False God’s We Worship". Also read Pres. Ezra T. Benson's talk to the LDS Church on pride in the May 1989 Ensign. Nephi saw the future and wrote that we'd be telling ourselves, “all is well in Zion, yea Zion prospereth” and thus be carefully lead to hell (2 Nephi 28:21).
- Futhermore, the Lord placed the entire Church under condemnation in 1832 (see D&C 84:54-57), and President Benson reminded the body of the Church no less than six times in as many years that this condemnation had not yet been lifted, that the only way to lift the condemnation was to read and heed The Book of Mormon (The New Covenant). Furthermore, speaking of a day of wrath, burning and desolation, the Lord said, "...and upon my house shall it begin.” (D&C 112:23-26).
Why are you ashamed to take the name of Christ upon yourselves?
Why do you value the world's praise more than endless happiness?
Why do you wear those beautiful things that have no life of their own, while ignoring the hungry, the needy, the ill-clothed, the sick and the oppressed who pass by you?
Why do you build up and uphold secret combinations in order to profit yourselves, and allow the widows and orphans to mourn as their dead fathers and husbands cry to the Lord for vengeance upon your heads?
