Until the Earth is Empty
For a desolating scourge shall go forth among the inhabitants of the earth, and shall continue to be poured out from time to time, if they repent not, until the earth is empty, and the inhabitants thereof are consumed away and utterly destroyed by the brightness of my coming.
Twenty years ago when I read this I was embarrassed. I didn’t believe that there was any likelihood of a Black Death level plague, let alone one that ‘utterly destroyed.’ For sound biological reasons, there are usually biological limits on how deadly a plague can be if it is going to spread. Plus the advance of medicine and so on. I could come up with pretty implausible and far fetched scenarios where you get a very destructive plague, but even then I had a hard time imagining one that recurred every time people were wicked.
I know better now.
Nearly every country and every continent and every creed (including us*) and every class is suffering from a plague of childnessness. Countries like Japan and South Korea are suffering sustained population losses on the level of Germany in the Hundred Years War. Bulgaria is emptying out. In prosperous and wide open America, our birthrates are such that generation on generation we are losing 25% of our population. There has never been a plague this deadly. Nor almost any war, not even close. And its getting worse.
The U.S. had low birthrates in 2007. Only 4.4 million children were born that year. Last year, 3.4 million. We lost a million babies a year in just a decade and a half. Truly an enemy hath done this, except the enemy is ourselves and our rulers.
It is easy to believe that the only solution is to repent.
* In 2012 we had 122,000 children of record. In 2023, we had 90,000 after 10 years of Church growth. In 1986, by comparison, when the Church was 4 times smaller than it was now . . . we had 90,000 children of record. Given the number of children of record and the size of the actual LDS population (as opposed to nominal membership), our actual total fertility rate is probably just above replacement. Which is bad in secular terms, though not as bad as everyone else. In metaphor we have prostate cancer while much of the world has pancreatic. But is shockingly bad, almost an abomination, for the kingdom of God.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Zen
February 7, 2025
2. To punish with severity; to chastise; to afflict for sins or faults, and with the purpose of correction.
…
3. To afflict greatly; to harass, torment or injure.
Webster’s 1828 dictionary
I previously imagined biological diseases, and that probably will be non-negligible, but we have killed as many as China’s One Child policy, and we did it voluntarily.
But to think of childlessness as a punishment is interesting. The economy depends on the young. Retirement depends on young people paying into it. Expect a stagnant decaying economy where you work until you die. No safety net.
And as robots begin doing more jobs, imagine your only care and interaction with the world being a lifeless automaton. That is, if you can get it. Because who is going to pay for it all?
Rozy
February 7, 2025
Yes! I’ve long thought that the desolating scourge or plague of the last days could be something other than a physical disease. Pornography is certainly a desolating sickness; as well as abortion, and all the other sexual perversions that are glorified in the arts. All of them have the ability to frustrate the Father’s plan which is probably why He is hastening the time so the world won’t be utterly wasted at the Savior’s coming.
Sute
February 7, 2025
Google Mareks disease. Over the last 50 years poultry vaccination programs have made Mareks disease more virulent. So much so that any non vaccinated chicken quickly gets it and dies. The vaccinated populations still get the virus and it mutates in them but they mostly don’t die. Sounds similar to the COVID vaccines… Recipients still get it and spread it and it’s still mutating.
So I can very much imagine how a few decades from now our vaccine programs will result in more virulent viruses and then eventually everyone that isn’t vaccinated dies and eventually the vaccines can’t keep up and everyone dies. Grimm future.
Zen
February 8, 2025
I remember thinking how ridiculous that the Family Proclamation was. Do we honestly have to clarify that men and women are different?
Ah… the folly of youth. Time always vindicates the Prophets.
~lagrev-nocfep
February 8, 2025
Going out on a sturdy limb here to say that the law of chastity always gets phrased negatively but really should often be phrased positively.
Zen
February 8, 2025
Absolutely! The purpose of the Law of Chastity, is not eternal virginity, or frigid prudishness.
It is eternal families. Relationships, children and all that entails.
Ben Pratt
February 9, 2025
~lagrev-nocfep, the definition of the law of chastity given during the endowment presentation used to be negatively phrased: don’t do it except with your spouse. In the last few years it was changed: do it only with your spouse.
It is a small change but a meaningful rephrase.
Zen
February 24, 2025
I have been pondering about the Abomination of Desolation, or more properly, the Abomination that makes Desolate. We could point out individual sins and faults, but perhaps it is wiser to say, the family of sins that leave us childless, alone, focused on ourselves.