Editorial note — Chapter XXVIII
Reading edition
[Footnote D: This statement of Elder Orson Pratt's views is doubtless faulty. The Book of Mormon does not predict what will befall our nation, The United States, nor "its final end." But it contains a conditional prophecy in relation to the two American continents. These continents are a promised land. They are given, according to the Book of Mormon, primarily to the descendants of the Patriarch Joseph, son of Jacob, as an inheritance, but the Gentile races are also given an inheritance in them with the descendants of Joseph. The whole land, however, is dedicated to righteousness and liberty and the people who possess it, whether of the house of Israel or Gentile must be a righteous people and worship "the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ." In that event God stands pledged to preserve the land and the people thereof, free from bondage of all other nations, and to bless them with very great and peculiar blessings, guaranteeing to them freedom and peaceful possession of the land forever. If the Gentile races shall observe these conditions they and their children are to share in the blessings of the land in connection with the descendants of the Patriarch Joseph. But if they depart from justice, reject righteousness and Jesus Christ, then judgments of destruction decreed in the Book of Mormon, will overtake them until they are wasted away. This is the decree of God respecting the western hemisphere, and is one of the important messages that the Book of Mormon has to deliver to the present generation. See Book of Mormon II Nephi 1:5-12; also Ether 1:42; III Nephi 20:14-20; III Nephi 20:27, 28; III Nephi 21:11-25; also "New Witness for God" Vol. III, pp. 314-323. But it will be seen that these prophecies are conditional, and therefore cannot be held to be predictions of what the final end of our nation, the United States and other nations of the American continents, will be, since it yet remains to be demonstrated whether they will abide or violate the conditions upon which they may possess the continents perpetually.]