That men have not enjoyed peace, happiness, and continual progress is, therefore, not because God has failed to make known the way by which these blessings could be had. It is because men have refused to obey the revealed laws upon which these blessings are predicated.
The burden of all the prophets, from Adam to our present prophet, has been to persuade men to look to God and live. Over and over again in every dispensation they have warned of calamities pending because of man’s corrupt and sinful ways.
Cain’s curse was brought on by his own willful rejection of the counsel of God. The antediluvians brought on the flood in which they perished by rejecting Noah, who taught and pleaded with them for one hundred twenty years. The Jaredites pursued their rebellious course to their utter destruction in defiance of the teachings and warnings of their prophets. Following the same course, the Nephites suffered great destruction at the time of Christ’s crucifixion.
All of this endless tragedy, carnage, and sorrow could have been avoided. All of these peoples could have existed in peace and prosperity had they been willing to look to God.
For us as individuals the course is crystal clear. By precept and example we should do all that lies within our power to take the message of the gospel, the Lord’s solution to our problems, to the peoples of the earth and inspire them to look to him and live. For every individual in this world there is yet an option, and it is still open. But whatever others may do, let us not personally be diverted from our course. Let us ‘be not faithless, but believing’ (John 20:27).
Let us so long as we live continue to ‘seek … the Lord to establish his righteousness’ (D&C 1:16). Let us prove worthy to live with him eternally in the heavens. Let us not be deceived by the learning and sophistries and the wickedness of this world. Let us not forget that God lives, that we are his children, that his purpose is to bring us to immortality and eternal life. Let us always remember and keep in mind that all man has learned and accomplished, together with all that he will yet learn and accomplish in mortality, is as a drop in the ocean compared to the knowledge and works of God. Let us remember that in the light of God’s knowledge, and he knows all things, still his instruction to us—against that total knowledge—is that, above all else, the one thing of most importance to us is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Let us be constantly aware that we are living in the last gospel dispensation; that Satan has marshaled all his forces for war; that he is making his final premillennium struggle for our individual souls and for the souls of all men. Let us realize that the conflict we are now in will be accelerated to such intensity ‘that every man that will not take his sword against his neighbor must needs flee unto Zion for safety’ (D&C 45:68).
Let us understand that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the literal kingdom of God in the earth; that neither defectors from within nor enemies from without can stay its progress. It is here to stay and to triumph. In the words of Moroni, ‘The eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his promises shall be fulfilled’ (Mormon 8:22).
(Marion G. Romney, Look to God and Live, pp. 8–9, 12–13)