Alleged Secret Combinations in The Modern World
During the Cold War, LDS Apostle Ezra Taft Benson repeatedly described communism as a secret combination. Apostle Bruce R. McConkie claimed that "eliable modern reports describe their existence among gangsters, as part of the governments of communist countries, in some labor organizations, and even in some religious groups." LDS Apostle M. Russell Ballard described secret combinations as including "gangs, drug cartels, and organized crime families. ... They have secret signs and code words. They participate in secret rites and initiation ceremonies. Among their purposes are to 'murder, and plunder, and steal, and commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness, contrary to the laws of their country and also the laws of their God.'" LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley compared modern terrorists to the "Gadianton robbers, a vicious, oath-bound, and secret organization bent on evil and destruction."
Ezra Taft Benson also stated in the November 1988 edition of the Ensign) in an article entitled "I Testify", that "A secret combination that seeks to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries is increasing its evil influence and control over America and the entire world."
Read more about this topic: Secret Combination (Latter Day Saints)
Famous quotes containing the words alleged, secret, combinations, modern and/or world:
“Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)
“It seemed as if the breezes brought him,
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him,
As if by secret sign he knew
Where in far fields the orchids grew.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is the structure of government that will best guard against the precipitate counsels and factious combinations for unjust purposes, without a sacrifice of the fundamental principle of republicanism?”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Primitivism has become the vulgar cliché of much modern art and speculation.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“They [the children] live in a world of delightful imagination; they pursue persons and objects that never existed; they make an Argosy laden with gold out of a floating butterfly,—and these stupid [grown-up people] try to translate these things into uninteresting facts.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)