Russell M. Nelson Quotes
Imagine the privilege the Lord has given us of sustaining His prophet, whose counsel will be untainted, unvarnished, unmotivated by any personal aspiration, and utterly true!
Nelson, Russell M. "Sustaining the Prophets." Ensign, Nov. 2014, p. 74.
Justinian, like many civil political leaders before and after him, took great pains to minimize the civil authority of the church. Separation of church and state is not a modern notion, though it was harder to accomplish in antiquity. Rulers would want to coopt the religion to help legitimize their rule, but tried to keep the church as weak as they could unless another religion was challenging for supremecy.
The Judge, a fundamentalist Christian, unilaterally had a large granite monument of the Ten Commandments installed in the Rotunda of the Supreme Court Building. A Federal Judge in deciding a lawsuit ordered him to remove the monument which was held to have been placed there to symbolically uphold the supremacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition in our legal system. Judge Moore appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court which let the removal decision stand. However, the judge still resisted. The other 8 Alabama Supreme Court justices then removed the Chief Justice and ordered the monument removed. Moore who had been selected to office in a “Bible-Belt State,” still blocked the removal forcing a showdown with the Federal Courts and his colleagues in Alabama. Shortly thereafter, both the monument and Judge Moore were removed.
Russell Marion Nelson Sr. is an American religious leader and former surgeon who is the 17th and current president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Nelson was a member of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for nearly 34 years, and was the quorum president from 2015 to 2018. As church president, Nelson is accepted by the church as a prophet, seer, and revelator.
