In 1995 the Lord set me on a path that forever changed my life!   

Dear fellow Latter-Day Saint,

It is a challenging task the Lord has asked of me.  It will be impossible to accomplish without the help of nearly 1 million people and most of those people will come from the ranks of the Latter-Day Saints.  Why?

In my many conversations with Latter-Day Saints for nearly 3 decades I've discovered that many saints have strong feelings about the direction our nation is heading.  I know from those conversations that the Lord has planted in many hearts a desire to "do something!"

The Lord has been shaping and molding me to become the person He needs me to be for this undertaking.  I have done a lot of groundwork to prepare for this undertaking while still raising a family, faithfully serving in the Church and community, and providing my employer my absolute best.

As inspired, I've written a book that "tells all."  It is the first and probably only book I will ever write.  The book is the "first and the last":  the first step to begin our process of restoring the Constitution and the last step in my preparation for this undertaking.  The groundwork is now complete. . .  

. . .AND IT IS TIME TO MOVE FORWARD.

          consisted of eleven students, and we were teaching from the Old Testament.  The Church provides the material and a lot of great ideas that are tailored for children.  This Sunday, we were to teach about Nehemiah.  

Nehemiah isn’t a well-known biblical character.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t know anything about him before our preparations for our students.  After studying him for the week, and providing the lesson tailored for our students, the inspiration came for the title of this book.  Here is what I know of Nehemiah, and I will let the readers decide if the title is fitting or not.

To understand Nehemiah, we need to go back to that great patriarch, Abraham (Abt 2200BC).  Abraham is revered by Muslims, Jews, and Christians as the great prophet and progenitor of many nations.  His story is found in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament (or the Torah, according to the Jews) written by Moses and is also found in the Quran.

All three previously mentioned religions hold Abraham in high esteem, a man upright with God, a model of unwavering faith.  His posterity was given the same promises as Abraham, that if they worshipped God, God would in turn bless them.  According to the Old Testament, the covenant, or promises, from God were handed down to Abraham’s son, Isaac, and his son, Jacob, whom God renamed Israel.  Israel had 12 sons, all of whom were given the same promises.  The promises required obedience and faithfulness to God’s commandments.  Abraham’s posterity grew into two great nations, those who were born of Isaac, and those who were born of Ishmael (Genesis 21:13), Abraham’s first son from his wife’s maidservant, Hagar.  Fast forward to Moses (Abt 600 years later), whose lineage was from Isaac then Israel.

Moses led the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage and after a lengthy exodus, they became a great nation in the land that God promised to Abraham and they were revered and feared, mostly because they had learned from Moses the importance of obedience to God’s commandments.  God protected them and strengthened them individually and as a nation.

   The Israelite nation struggled as subsequent generations began to forget God and His protecting hand.  They generally struggled to observe God, as a nation, and lost His covenantal protection.  The Israelites split into two nations.  The northern Kingdom was captured by the Assyrians and the people were carried away into captivity and their history is largely unknown thereafter.  About 135 years later, the southern kingdom (mostly consisting of the tribe of Judah) fell to Babylon.  Their capital, Jerusalem, was also destroyed and many citizens were carried off into captivity.

Less than 50 years later, while the tribe of Judah, or Jews, were in exile, Babylon’s power waned as a new regional power emerged.  Persia, under the leadership of Cyrus, conquered the region including Babylon.  Cyrus’ reign over the conquered people was uncharacteristic of that period.  “Instead of tyrannizing over them and holding them in subjection by brute force, he treated his subjects with consideration and won them as his friends. He was particularly considerate of the religions of conquered peoples.” (Elmer W. K. Mould, Essentials of Bible History, pp. 348–49.)

Cyrus decreed that any captive Jews throughout Babylonia would be permitted to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple in Jerusalem that the Babylonians destroyed.  His immediate successors honored that edict, and this ushered in the period during which many of the Jews returned to Jerusalem.  Hence, we come to our story of Nehemiah, a Jew that was born while the Jews were in exile.

Nehemiah was cupbearer to the Persian king Artaxerxes (Cyrus’ grandson).  This position, obviously, held great trust and responsibility, as assassination was a constant threat to a king.  When the King learned of Nehemiah’s concern for the plight of his fellow Jews and the ruined state of Jerusalem, he was granted permission to return to Jerusalem to help rebuild it.  He was provided an escort with guards for his journey and permission to use timbers from the king’s forest.

The story of Nehemiah is not grand, like Moses parting the Red Sea, or bold like David slaying Goliath, but nonetheless, shows a courageous fortitude to do what he knew was right.  Nehemiah had joined others in rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem, but there were enemies in the region that did not want to see the Jews succeed.  Nehemiah became a great leader under the circumstances.  His faith in God gave him the strength and courage to inspire his fellow Jews to remain armed and vigilant while continuing the work of rebuilding the city walls.

At one point, some of those enemies tried subterfuge, not once, but five times to delay the work by trying to persuade Nehemiah to come down from his work so that they might “counsel together.”  Nehemiah’s response was identical each time: “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?”

When I learned of this story, I was inspired by those words, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down.”  In like manner, I believe that the work in which we are engaging is critical to rebuilding what gave strength to our nation, the Constitution.  The Constitution has been destroyed.  We will be fortifying the Constitution by rebuilding it to its more perfect and proper form and shape.  The Constitution and the principles upon which it was established have been destroyed by enemies both within and outside of our country.  We pay lip service to it, especially those within the chambers of those great buildings it (The Constitution) grants authority, but we do not understand it nor its proper function.  The Constitution was conceived with limitations on the national government’s scope and size with inspired checks and balances that were designed to prevent the abuses of power that have been all too common in my lifetime and the better part of the last century and a half.  We will be doing a great work and “cannot come down!”  

I was three quarters through the completion of this book, and I still hadn’t come up with a catchy title for it.  Then, just like any good inspiration, the title came to me out of the blue.  In the middle of July 2022, I was teaching with my wife in the “Primary” organization of our church congregation.  We were responsible for teaching the children who would be turning eight years old during the calendar year.  We had moved to our temporary home in Georgia in March 2022 and within about a month we were called to teach these precious children.  Our class

PROLOGUE