At times, I spend hours sifting through tons of data and this is the perfect thing to keep me company:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=graZHQTxetA
In hearing of the accounts of persecution, I cannot help but think of all the anti's still at it today. Many that I have encountered at various pageants, at Nauvoo at the temple dedication there, were from Texas. When I was down there as Supplier Quality with Boeing for the major assemblies for 767 and 747, I was impressed with many things of Texas life - but I did not like the anti sentiment there.
In fact, I outed myself as Mormon with the engineers at the company that I interfaced with, and after going cold, eventually the (largely Baptist) men there warmed back up to me (to their credit). But there were several "universities" in the area that trained people in how to attack the Church and so much else. Likely, these organs sent emissaries out to attack the Church in various venues including one of the last Palmyra pageants the Church put out. We were there in 2016 and we could hardly hear the pageant over the bull horns and ruckus in the background.
My oldest daughter, while visiting Conference in 2012, decided she wanted to stay back in the hotel room during one of the sessions and looked up some of the garbage from one of the signs of the protesters that she had heard from her "Christian" friends in High School. It caused seeds of doubt and it finally took her down. Which eventually took my son down. She has paid a heavy price for that. I have a sad gift in that I can project out actions (good and bad) of myself and others whom I have stewardship over. I saw what was coming and warned her in a very heated exchange after she had become embittered towards the Church. It was a major catalyst in me deciding to come to Cardston, where I would be relatively free from the garbage and, in part, from a corrosive influence of apostates within the walls of my own home.
And part of the reason I have gone after jokers like the Cardston apostate and others like the rainbow crowd who come here to protest our lack of "diversity". I am done with it all. And I curse those who attempt to overthrow Zion; in a very real way. I have NO patience for it. I was talking to someone about the purple haired freaks that showed up to march on Cardston's Main Street a year or two ago during "gay pride" month (whatever - there is NO pride in perversion - just sadness for sin). I was working on my house and I could hear something going on downtown and knew it likely was this sham group with their false symbol of "hope" and immediately stopped, raised my hands to heaven and asked God to send them to hell so our little town would not have to endure the crap I have seen everywhere else I have been. Well, within minutes, a black cloud moved in and a massive surge of hail and intense rain came down on the downtown area and they scattered. To my knowledge, they have not been back since.
I have done a similar thing to other apostates and those who stand in the way here in Cardston. We are to use our Priesthood to bless and to curse. Mostly bless - but I feel sorry for those who stand in the way of the work (and the numbers are gathering to the point that we are about to have the gospel taken from us and taken to the Jews, for this land largely having rejected it). There are living and ordained Apostles who will stand in the way of the armies who shortly come against Jerusalem. Their role is to do the same on the world stage. Wherever we are, we need to get used to this role against those who come to molest God's work on this earth, once they have done the role of humbling and driving the insolent among us.
Whether on this side of the veil, or on the other, I intend to do the same with what energy I have been given. I do not bend a knee to anyone. Only to God and His Savior.