170 years ago today - Dec 20, 1846 (Afternoon)

[Brigham Young]
President Young called the people together at the stand on the council lot and gave them a severe chastisement for their sins and transgressions of the law of God. He told them that they must repent immediately and bring forth works of righteousness or they would be all swept from the face of the earth, and that the thieves need not undertake [to] go with the Saints from this camp for when we should leave here for the west the law of God in every particular would take full effect and that would cut the matter short, even as short as the man who went to cut a dog's tail off and by mistake he cut it close behind his ears. He did not want to go any further into the wilderness without an entire and thorough reformation, for we should all be destroyed by the Lamanites as were the Nephites of old, and finally concluded by saying that notwithstanding what he had said he still knew this to be the best people there was on the earth. I should conclude from all this that the inhabitants of the earth are nigh unto that period of destruction spoken of by Israel's prophets. -- Winter Quarters, Nebraska

[Source: Norton Jacob Diary, Archives, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.. Also The Mormon Vanguard Brigade of 1847, Ronald Barney, ed. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2005. 89-90, in The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, Ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City (2009), http://bit.ly/BY-discourses]

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