The Last Days and the Arrow Seen Before

This week I had the chance to go boating and took my six-year-old and four-year-old children.  We put them on the tube to be pulled by the boat and thought they would have a great time.  Another child about their age joined them on the tube, and as we started to pull them the tube went right under the water and all three kids fell off into the cold lake.  My two children started screaming as if their lives were about to end as they started to drift away in their life jackets from the boat and tube.    I jumped in to help them get back into the boat, but they were still completely inconsolable for a couple of minutes.  After checking with my wife who was about 500 miles away from us to see if she hadn’t heard their screams echo throughout the state, she said simply, “Didn’t they know that could happen?  That’s the kind of thing you should probably prep them for.”  Oops—I think I missed that part of the preparation.  The third boy who was much more of a veteran on the water had not screamed or been very afraid, and that likely had to do with the fact that he knew that people often get thrown off into the water from a tube.  My children did not realize that such a thing was expected or even possible, and the shock and fear overwhelmed them when it did.  As the phrase goes from Dante, “The arrow seen before, cometh less rudely.”  The completely unseen arrow hit my two with full force.      

                As I thought about this experience, I realized that this principle must be at least part of the reason that the Savior has been so explicit in warning us about the trials and tribulation of the last days.  The Savior warned His apostles during His own time when He was about to leave them: “They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service….  But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them” (John 16:1-4).  In other words, the world would largely reject the Twelve and do terrible things to them, but that was not to cause them to question the validity of their mission; rather, when the rejection came they could remember that the Lord had told them that it would be so.  In that same spirit, when speaking of the last days the Savior seemed to suggest that the reason for His warnings was so we would not lose faith when some of the terrible things happened.  He prophesied to His disciples: “You also shall hear of wars, and rumors of wars; see that ye be not troubled, for all I have told you must come to pass; but the end is not yet” (JSM 1:23).  When the wars and rumors of wars surround us—and surely that’s what we already see now--instead of becoming scared we should remember that it was all prophesied by the Savior and expected to happen.  In the version of the Mount Olivet discourse in the Doctrine and Covenants, we have this account: “And there shall be earthquakes also in divers places, and many desolations; yet men will harden their hearts against me, and they will take up the sword, one against another, and they will kill one another.  And now, when I the Lord had spoken these words unto my disciples, they were troubled.  And I said unto them: Be not troubled, for, when all these things shall come to pass, ye may know that the promises which have been made unto you shall be fulfilled” (D&C 45:33-35).  Earthquakes, desolations, war, murder—that will all be a part of the frightening experiences of the last days.  But these events should not scare or trouble us; rather the fact that the Savior told us they would come should give us hope in His plan and the ultimate triumph of good.
                In another teaching about His coming, the Savior spoke of the “distress of nations with perplexity, like the sea and the waves roaring” when “the earth also shall be troubled, and the waters of the great deep.”  He said that these events would cause “men’s hearts failing them for fear” as they would be “looking after those things which are coming on the earth” (JST Luke 21:25-26).  The world will not see the arrows coming and their courage will fail at the coming calamities.  But for the disciples of the Lord our hearts need not fail us—we know what is ahead and can recall the words of the Lord in the challenging times: "Remember that I told you of them."