Vision 1 | Vision 2 | |
| Goal | Provide for the wants and needs of every human being. Make the world safe for each person. Save everyone. | Assist all who so desire to attain the character of Christ. Make each person safe for the world. Save those who want to be saved. |
| Means | Concentrate power in the intelligencia (smartest humans) so they can create heaven on earth. | Give each person the knowledge and power to become like Christ. Then establish Zion. |
| Strategy | Control education, media and governments to impose an “enlightened” mind-set on each person. | Empower every person to become like Christ through the laws and ordinances of the Restored Gospel. |
| Tactics | Use propaganda and force to control everything centrally and spoil the rich. | Preach the Restored Gospel to every human creature so that all can become unselfish. |
| Opposition | All theistic religions with their beliefs, traditions and scruples. | Selfishness of persons, temptations of Satan. |
| Religion | Glorify the human mind and treat human leaders as if they were gods. | Glorify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and their righteousness. |
| Theology | Only physical matter exists and all nature is governed by chance. Man evolved from primates, ceases to exist at death. | All things physical are controlled by an unseen spiritual universe controlled by the Gods. Humans are children of the Gods. |
| Morality | Obey your political leaders, break traditional moral scruples, there is no sin. | Be honest, true to your covenants, chaste and benevolent, do good to all men. |
| Rituals | Worship science, government leaders. | Pray to God, repent, partake of ordinances. |
| Church | Universities, public schools, the legal system. | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. |
| Vestments | Cap and gown. | Garments, temple robes. |
| Results | This system has never fully succeeded but its adherents will keep trying to implement Satan’s plan that was rejected in the war in heaven. | This system has often succeeded but not yet in this dispensation. |
The bottom line: We are nearly to the point where there will be only two churches. Then the end will come. The engine for producing full righteousness and preparing the world for the Second Coming is the Holy Temple. We need to do all we can to promote the Cause of Christ in the earth. The greatest thing we can do to promote the Cause of Christ is to establish Zion. The greatest help to establish Zion is the Holy Temples of Christ.
“Force and compulsion can never establish peace on earth. Men’s hearts must be changed.”
— President David O. McKay