Ezra Taft Benson Quote

This email had an itunes attached to it, that I cannot add to this web page.  It was 1:35 long. 

I found this youtube that has the same message, but a bit longer at 3:35.  

Please take a moment to listen to this and then read the following:

Ezra Taft Benson was the Secretary of Agriculture under the Eisenhower Administration.
Later he became the Pres. of the LDS Church. 
His granddaughter sent this out (unfortunately, her name is not included in this). 
The incident happened during the time he was serving as Sec. of Agriculture. 
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This is very powerful and insightful. Maybe we ought to heed the message at this time in our Country. 
This is an amazing sound bite – what Grandpa Benson said about communism and socialism creeping into America.
I also found this great quote from Grandpa, too. I thought it was so applicable right now!

He said:
In 1787 Edward Gibbon completed his noble work, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”.

Here is the way he accounted for the fall: 
        1. The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society. 
        2. Higher and higher taxes and the spending of public monies for free bread and circuses for the populace. 
        3. The mad craze for pleasure, sports becoming every year more and more exciting and brutal. 
        4. The building of gigantic armaments when the real enemy was within the decadence of the people. 
        5. The decay of religion—faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life, and becoming impotent to warn and guide the people. 
Is there a parallel for us in America today? Could the same reasons that destroyed Rome destroy America?  The lessons of history, many of them very sobering, ought to be turned to during this hour of our great achievements, because during the hour of our success is of greatest danger. Even during the hour of our great prosperity, a nation may sow the seeds of its own destruction. History reveals that rarely is a great civilization conquered from without unless it has weakened or destroyed itself within. 

-- Ezra Taft Benson (God, Family, Country, pp. 363-364)

Forwarded November 2008