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From Generation to Generation

By Andrew Jenson

Assistant Church Historian

ONE morning in 1897, when circumnavigating the globe the first time, I was a passenger on a steamer sailing northward on the Red Sea. As we were nearing the north end of that body of water, one of the officers of the ship called out with a loud voice: "We are passing the historic Mount Sinai, where God thundered out the Ten Commandments in the days of ancient Israel."

I at once became deeply impressed and responded by quoting in my mind: "Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." I remembered that the children of Israel, who had lived in bondage in the land of Egypt, at the time of the exodus clung to the promises given in an earlier day to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, about a land (a promised land) that would be theirs if they would serve God.

And I then also remembered that a modern Israel, after suffering for sixteen years under the yoke of mob violence in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, cherished the promise made by a modern Prophet that some of them, after much persecution, would live to see the Latter-day Saints become a mighty people in the midst of the Rocky Mountains. Thus the Rocky Mountains also became a land of promise to many, and in the midst of their toils and hardships of travel they could sing-often with tear-filled eyes-"We'll find the place which God for us prepared, far away in the West."

So here we are in fulfillment of prophecy. But even now, after the lapse of many years, we still remember the wrongs of Missouri, and cannot easily forget the fate of Nauvoo, yet we glory in the fact that we reached our "promised land" and now we would like our descendants throughout the generations to come, to possess it. The Children of Israel prospered in the Land of Canaan as long as they served the Lord, but when they sinned, their enemies prevailed, and they were exiled or scattered all over the world.