Preparing for the Final Act
‘It is not difficult to understand why the great God in heaven has reserved these special spirits for the final work of the kingdom prior to his millennial reign.’
Vaughn J. Featherstone, 1987
preparing for the twenty-first century
Over the summer, I read a book that helped me better understand the future and also ultimately giving me a clearer idea of our role in it as a people. It had some prophetic qualities, if one can define prophetic along the lines of futures studies or futurology: seeking to understand what is likely to continue, what is likely to change, and what is novel. Part of the discipline thus seeks a systematic and pattern-based understanding of past and present, and to determine the likelihood of future events and trends.
Although the book was written in 1993, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century by Paul Kennedy has a certain degree of foresight on events that now have come to pass over the last 20 years and on many challenges yet to come. Paul Kennedy’s ideas about our new century are based on the reflections of Thomas Robert Malthus, who in 1798 in an Essay on Population, was getting increasingly worried about what appeared to be the greatest problem facing the human species: “that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”. Population growth meant that the human condition would worsen, with the existing gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” would be exacerbated by the pressures upon the earth’s resources.
the dawning of a brighter day
Nevertheless, three developments permitted the British people to escape the fate Malthus predicted for them: emigration, the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. Between 1815 and 1914, around 20 million Britons left their country of origin - a massive exodus relative to the overall population. During the same period, thousands and thousands of mormon converts from the British Isles and Scandinavia were answering the call to go the Promised Land of the Americas and help build Zion. In fact, the mormon emigrants believed that the revelations given to the Prophet Joseph Smith were indeed ushering the dispensation of the fullness of times.
James E. Faust, in his conference address This is Our Day believes that ‘ours is the time of which the Prophet Joseph Smith spoke, “upon which prophets, priests and kings in ages past have dwelt with peculiar delight; and have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we live; and fired with heavenly and joyful anticipation they have sung and written and prophesied of this our day;… we are the favored people that God has chosen to bring about the Latter-day glory”. Faust further argues that ‘increases in technology, scientific inventions, and medical miracles have been marvelous and incredible. But we must use them properly to bring us joy, and that requires spiritual and moral leadership. Civilization has been around for a long time. While computers are a great convenience and wonderfully helpful in reducing drudgery, we are reminded that the Nephites “lived after the manner of happiness” even without computers’.
the power of technology
“The power of population” was answered, not so much by “the power in the earth” itself, but by the power of technology – the capacity of the human mind to find new ways of doing things, to invent new devices, to organize production in improved forms, to quicken the pace of moving goods and ideas from one place to another, to stimulate fresh approaches to old problems.
Paul Kennedy qualifies the above statement: it is equally important to notice, however, that this escape from the Malthusian trap was not common at all. Many other countries were not so fortunate (most of them were not empires with colonies from which they could feed and clothe a population explosion) and, constrained either by internal or external forces, these countries steadily lost ground. Ireland, disadvantaged in many ways, was unable to feed and clothe and employ generations of children outnumbering by far those of any earlier time. By the 1840s, starvation and emigration had reduced its population by about one-fifth.
India is another case in point. Its population also doubled and redoubled in the nineteenth century, but on a much less productive base. Furthermore, because the Indian states had been unable to resist Britain’s East India Company militarily, their subjects could do little when British machine-made textiles – not only cheaper, but of better quality than native cloth – poured into the country, driving out traditional domestic producers in the process.
the greatest test for human society lies ahead
The earth again confronts a population explosion, not in the developed societies of northwestern Europe, but in the poverty-stricken regions of Africa, Central America, the Middle East, India and China, involving billions rather than millions of people. At the same time, we are witnessing a knowledge explosion in an extraordinary number of fields of technology and production. In both respects, the impact is larger, and much more swiftly and widely felt. The greatest test for human society as it confronts the twenty-first century is to find effective global solutions in order to free the poorer three-quarters of humankind from the growing Malthusian trap of malnutrition, starvation, resource depletion, unrest, enforced migration, and armed conflict – developments that will also endanger the richer nations. In addition comes the dangers and challenges posed by global warming and climate changes with dire consequences for the poorest populations in the world.
This problem is more sobering because the technology explosion is taking place overwhelmingly in economically advanced societies, many of which possess slow-growing or even declining populations, while the demographic boom is occurring in countries with limited technological resources, very few scientists and skilled workers, inadequate investment in research and development, and few or no successful corporations; in many cases, their governing elites have no interest in technology, and cultural and ideological prejudices are much more tilted against change than they were in the England of the Industrial Revolution.
Two further difficulties: Firstly, population pressure in most developing countries is causing a depletion of local agricultural resources just when more farm output is needed. Secondly, new scientific breakthroughs are creating structural problems of transferring the benefits from the “haves” to the “have-nots” in a globalized economy.
Some of our Church leaders have hinted to the problems, challenges and difficulties to come – but many are focusing solely on spiritual trials and not necessarily on the societal difficulties and challenges that the final act might entail. I like this quote from Vaughn J. Featherstone who in 1987 gives us an idea of what lies in store for the coming generation: ‘It is not difficult to understand why the great God in heaven has reserved these special spirits for the final work of the kingdom prior to his millennial reign. My heart, like Enoch’s, seems to swell “wide as eternity” as I consider what our youth and those being born in this time will accomplish. This generation will face trials and troubles that will exceed those of their pioneer forebears. Our generation has had some periods of respite from the foe. The future generation will have little or none. But their great faith in the Lord will give them needed strength’.
at the summit of the ages
Gordon B. Hinckley further spoke of the new millennium in his conference address of October 1999: ‘For some reason unknown to us, but in the wisdom of God, we have been privileged to come to earth in this glorious age. There has been a great flowering of science. There has been a veritable explosion of learning. This is the greatest of all ages of human endeavor and human accomplishment. And more importantly, it is the season when God has spoken, when His Beloved Son has appeared, when the divine priesthood has been restored, when we hold in our hand another testament of the Son of God. What a glorious and wonderful day this is…’
‘We stand on the summit of the ages, awed by a great and solemn sense of history. This is the last and final dispensation toward which all in the past has pointed. I pray that every one of us may sense the awesome wonder of it all as we look forward shortly to the passing of a century and the death of a millennium. May God bless us with a sense of our place in history and, having been given that sense, with our need to stand tall and walk with resolution in a manner becoming the Saints of the Most High.’
