A Parable

A man awoke one morning hearing the words of a dream, and when he wrote them down he discovered that they were the words that the chronicler of the Book of Mormon might have written, had he lived in our time, setting down a record of our dealings with each other and with the Lord.

1. And it came to pass in the latter days that most of the believers in the promised land had set their hearts upon the things of the world.

2. They labored all day and into the night, both men and women, to earn money to buy the things the world called good, or to rise to a position of great honor in the world.

3. But the money they earned was never enough, and the things they bought did not make them happy, and the offices and honors they won were never secure;

4. Even when they had earned great wealth, the world persuaded them that they needed more.

5. And even when they had achieved high offices and great honors, their ambition was unsatisfied,

6. For they had forgotten that the rewards of the world come from Satan, and so have no substance.

7. To win the rewards of the world, they sacrificed the time they should have spent teaching their children.

8. They thrust their little ones out of their home into the care of strangers, in order to earn enough money to buy a grand house.

9. And when they had their grand house, the world said, they must be great people to have such a house!

10. But their children were strangers in their new home; they knew neither their father nor their mother, and often left the place, as a traveler leaves an unfriendly inn without a backward glance.

11. And again, they showered their children with presents: they gave them fine clothing, and let them ride through the streets in splendid vehicles.

12. And taught them to despise those whose clothing was plain, and mock those who rode in old cars, and jeer at those who had to walk because they had no car at all.

13. Thus they taught their children to persecute the poor, and to set their hearts upon the pleasures of the world.

14. And yet when these children took expensive poisons of ecstasy, and broke the laws of chastity, and cast aside other laws of God as things of no worth,

15. Their parents blamed the church for failing them, or the school for corrupting their values.

16. They did not see that their children had learned the main lesson of their parents' lives:

17. That any sacrifice is acceptable in order to win the rewards of the world,

18. Even the sacrifice of their own children.

19. These Saints who served the world more than the Lord gathered themselves in neighborhoods of costly houses, high on the hill so that all could see their splendor.