Daily Inspiration Quote by Orson Pratt

Obedience is doing double duty here: it is piety, and it is citizenship. Orson Pratt frames the Flood story like a legal case, not a tragedy - "loyal and obedient subjects" under "legal power" - then hands down a verdict: compliance equals survival. That bureaucratic chill is the point. By recoding Noah as the model subject of a sovereign, Pratt turns a familiar biblical narrative into a political theology where God's authority resembles a state, and salvation resembles amnesty granted to the compliant.

The intent is disciplinary. Pratt, a 19th-century Latter-day Saint theologian writing in an era obsessed with order, apostasy, and legitimacy, uses Noah to train the reader's instincts: the righteous are not merely good; they are loyal. "Legal power" implies statute, jurisdiction, enforceable consequences. It's a move that quietly delegitimizes alternative moral claims. If God governs by law, then dissent isn't just sin; it's insubordination.

The subtext lands on Pratt's own community. Early Mormonism was forged amid persecution and internal fracture; authority had to be argued for, not assumed. By stressing that only one household was "saved", Pratt naturalizes the logic of a remnant church: truth is measurable by obedience, and minority status is not evidence against you but proof you are the faithful few.

It also scrubs away the uncomfortable human texture of the Flood. There's no mention of violence, grief, or innocence - only legal outcome. That austerity is rhetorically useful: it makes divine judgment feel impersonal, predictable, even fair. Law doesn't hate you; it simply operates.