Our Divine Constitution

Our Divine Constitution

The Constitution was divinely given for the purposes of God to go forth. The men who wrote the Constitution were guided by God through the hard days in which they were to come up with a constitution that would stand the test of time. Their inspiration can be seen within the document itself.

The Founding Fathers were inspired in the methods they used to write the constitution.  They came together with many different backgrounds, ideas and philosophies. They came from small states and big states, and from the south and north. Despite so many differences they came together in a single council under the hand of God. Councils are important because they facilitate revelation and unity. Every man was receiving his own inspiration and contributed to the whole. They were writing and revising and trying to compromise. Compromise is another way how the Constitution was divinely written. A couple of plans came forward, the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan. The small states supported the New Jersey Plan which wanted a legislature with the same amount of representatives for each state. The larger states and those who supported the Virginia wanted the legislature to be picked by population. The Founding Father compromised by making the two house legislature where the upper house was done uniformly and the lower house was done by population. This shows the power of councils and compromise and how they were divine tools used for the writing of the Constitution.

We see that the process of how the constitution was written was divinely guided but what about the Constitution itself was inspired of God? The constitution had a Bill of Rights which acted as extra safety precaution for the people of the United States.  The Bill of Rights is a list of “do not’s” for the federal government to insure the rights of the people. Also to make sure the Government didn’t get to strong the Founding Fathers made a system of checks and balances between the three branches of government. Not only did they divide the powers between the three branches of the federal government but also divided power between the federal government and the states. The Founding Fathers were then inspired by making the new government “for the people by the people of the people”. The power of the government came directly from the people. The people “ordained and established” the constitution. They made it expressly clear that Government is for the people and not the other way around. All these things were set forth to help enforce rule of law. This made it so no public officer was above the constitution.

The Lord stated in Doctrine and Covenants section 101 Verse 80 that He established the constitution by the hand of wise men who He raised up for such a purpose. The constitution and how it was written were divinely inspired of God. There would be no other way that it would be so successful in doing all it has done.