In one instance God had to rescind the marriages of a numerous people, because such marriages, by their issue, would tend to frustrate the grace of God to the righteous, and entail blessings upon a strange people that God designed to curse. The ordinances of the church and institutions of God's house cannot be carried into execution in a land belonging to "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel;" because aliens from God will not have the Lord to rule over them. They consider that the laws of God set two against three, and three against two, the father-in-law against the son-in-law, &c.; and so do they have this effect, and always will have it, until the Saints are separated from their adversaries. Before there can be anything like a true, godlike, peaceful millennium, a separation must take place between the righteous and disobedient; even as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, even so must God's will be done with friends and foes on earth, like as in heaven. Had the Jews received Jesus Christ, He would have set up just such a kingdom on earth as in heaven, and the honest from all nations would have been _gathered_ to his standard. But seeing they would pierce the Shepherd, and scatter the sheep through a long cloudy day, as it had been prophesied of Him and his followers; He, nevertheless, assured his disciples that his people should be _gathered_, in the latter days, as wheat into the garner. John says to the Saints in the last days, that are scattered among the confused nations of the whole earth:--"_Come out of her my people, and be not partakers of her sins, that ye receive not of her plagues_." Here the reason why Saints should come out of other nations is distinctly avowed--"to escape her plagues." The same reason that was assigned why Lot should go out of Sodom. The idea prevalent that God would inflict all his judgments in one great tremendous DAY, is as absurd as the notion is universal. The famine and dearth were at the command of Elijah. The earthquake that swallowed up Dathan and the company of Abiram, was at the command of Moses. Moses also stretched out his hand as a signal to the accumulated seas to overwhelm the Egyptians, and they obeyed his mandate. But I will not multiply proofs. God will pour out his vials of wrath, and distress the nations till they will learn and practice righteousness; and his people must flee to their appointed hiding place till the indignation is overpast, otherwise they have no guaranty for their safety. The Hebrews were obliged to mark their houses, lest the destroying angel should slay both them and the Egyptians. The Lord God has decreed a consumption upon the whole earth, therefore let the righteous flee to the strongholds of Zion, that are preparing in that land that was promised to the Patriarch Joseph, while it is an accepted time, and the evil days come not.