I got an email from a young person about her peers. She explained her concerns, including, in part, the following: “It breaks my heart to know what emotions and thoughts my friend experiences, because I’ve had a taste of them. Other friends and loved ones I know deal with depression, anxiety, loneliness, feelings of worthlessness, suicidal thoughts, and PTSD- some of them under 18.”
I responded to her as follows:
I plan to speak about some of this in the upcoming March Conference. Not directly, but generally to try to help people see there is a great fog of lies surrounding us continually. There is a vision that Enoch had, Moses restored, and is now part of the Old Covenants in Genesis. In the LDS scriptures it is in the Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses. In that vision Satan had the whole world bound in a great chain, and he looked up at heaven and laughed. It is in OC Gen. 4:15: “And he beheld Satan, and he had a great chain in his hand, and he veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness; and he looked up and laughed, and his angels rejoiced.”
That great chain is not physical, but mental. The chain used by our common enemy is made of lies and deceit.
People are not depressed irrationally. They are responding in a normal way to an abnormal perception made of lies. They despair because they think there is reason to be despairing. But that is because they accept what the “world” is telling them about our present condition. Part of waking up is realizing that most of what is said, taught, claimed and broadcast in society is filled with lies about mankind’s condition, the state of society, and lies designed to inspire envy, jealousy and discouragement.
I have tried to awaken people to the reality that God lives and cares very much for those who respond to His voice. He intends to protect and care for His sheep. His commandments are calculated to free us from the imprisonment of worldliness and sin. He is trying to free us, not to impose upon us. I think God intends for you and those now living to participate in the building of a new society, a New Jerusalem, a place of peace apart from the world. But for now we await further command from Him, while still living in a society ever more in the chains of the enemy.
Thank you for your email. I will join you in praying for your friends. The Lord’s advice to people both in His day and today is the same, “Be of good cheer.”