Helaman 1 - Humanity on Display

This chapter has human nature on display for all to see. My time in the Air Force showed me most military planners prepare to fight the last war. Not only generals and admirals, but also politicians (especially so) and defense contractors are prone to this. The people who change the face of warfare are the underdogs who are so desperate to win, they'll fight in a way no one expects.

When Russia invaded Afghanistan, its tactics were based completely upon how they beat the Germans in WW2. They couldn't deal with anti-tank and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. The US Navy is still committed to aircraftcarriers because that's how they won the war in the Pacific. But cruise missiles are a daunting challenge for them.

This trait even happens in Helaman. Moronihah believed the Lamanites would attack just like they did when his father was in command. Only they didn't and as a result, the City of Zarahemlah fell to the Lamanites.

The Lamanites, thought the key to victory was the shields, protective garments, and weapons of the Nephites. Divine aid was something they couldn't grasp or imagine. So, while they capture Zarahemlah they still lost big by getting themselves surrounded. The armor and weapons they'd put so much trust in didn't help them at all.

It's vignettes like this which are so unerringly accurate in showing the humanity of the good guys that lead me to the conclusion, this book is not made up. Tolstoy maybe could have pulled it off. Joseph couldn't.

Alma 62-63 - The End of the War

There are a lot of lessons to be drawn from the end of the war. One is an exclamation point on need for national unity. Internal strife and factions almost destroyed the Nephites. The Nephites won only after the Chief Judge Pahoran, backed by the military might of Captain Moroni, put an end to the dissension.

Another lesson is given a choice, the masses, the people who actually get sent to war to fight, don’t like fighting and won’t. The Lamanite armies not only lost the battles, but also the war in large part because their soldiers defected and joined the Ammonites. No soldiers… no army. No army… no war. You really have to stir people up emotionally to get them to go to war because by nature people are appalled and terrified by it.

We get another glimpse into the different culture of the Nephites with the end of the war. They demobilize to a certain extent, but Moroni oversees the construction of more “places of defense” or refuge throughout the country. He then retires and hands over command of the army to his son, Moronihah. (Can you imagine the Commander of the Joint Chiefs saying, “I’m retiring now, so my son is going to take over in my stead.” Not in America.) The Nephites were okay with that. It would never happen here.

Helaman resumes the role of High Priest, but soon dies. Shiblon becomes custodian of the records. But he’s old too and knows he’s going to die soon. Since Pahoran doesn’t want the records, they are given to Helaman’s oldest son Helaman. I just have to comment here for a moment. We assume the custodian of the records is THE High Priest. Like so much of the Nephite society, these high leadership positions seem to be handed down from father to son among the Nephites. The judgeship passes from father to son. The army passed from father to son. The church did with Alma the Younger getting the job after his father. And then Helaman got it from his father.

Lest you think it was coincidence that the church leaders were such good men, I think the better interpretation is this patrilineal descent from father to son is something Heavenly Father worked with. So, he made sure men worthy of the callings were born at the right time to the right family.

And so ends the Book of Alma. The stage is set for the next epoch of the Nephite saga.

Personal Note: This actually is the end of my first pass of blogging through the Book of Mormon. It was  nearly a year ago, July 5, 2015 to be exact, when I made my first post on Helaman chapter one. Rather than rehash things, After this post I'm going to spend some time consolidating these entries into book form. Surprisingly, it's 47,000 words long - about 150 pages. I plan on posting it to Amazon where you can get it for free, or $0.99 if I must charge something for it.

In the mean time, about once a week, I'll post entries consisting of my impressions of our Gospel Doctrine lessons. It'll be more Book of Mormon goodness, but I'm going to spend most of my writing time working on a new Sci-Fi novel. I had a chance to pitch the idea to a book publisher recently and they really liked the idea, so I want to work on that to see where it goes. I plan on posting chapters to another blog so you can read along if you'd like.

I love feedback. If you'd like to see the contents of the past year's blog posts in a book, please let me know. The amount of interest will tell me how much effort to put into putting it together.

Alma 59-61 - Capt. Moroni and Pahoran

There is not a better example in scripture of statesmanship than that of Pahoran’s response to a Capt. Moroni’s scathing letter. I’ve mentioned in a previous post where Moroni’s temper gets the better of him. Here it shines. Yet, it’s hard for me to fault him when you think of the context in which he wrote the letter.

It was a difficult time, and that’s a huge understatement. While there was some good news from Helaman about the war, there was considerable cause for concern too. Helaman’s small force had recaptured all the Nephite cities in that part of their nation. Yet his undermanned forces, were hurting for supplies, and ill fed. They held on through sheer faith.

Moroni just heard of the loss of the City of Nephihah. Additionally, his forces were understrength and underfed too. Without food and supplies, you don’t have an effective fighting force. Such were the conditions of Moroni’s army.

When you combine their dire straits with the shocking news of the Nephihah, you can begin to understand how concerned and fearful Moroni was. He knew from first hand experience, the government could send more men and supplies. That it wasn’t told him things were not well at home. Like us, Moroni knew the greatest threat to the Nephite society came from inside. Rot from inside would destroy them faster than an invading army could.

With these things weighing on his mind, he penned a letter to Pahoran excoriating him for betrayal and dereliction of duty. When I think of the craven, self-righteous and self-serving politicians we have today, there’s no way Moroni would survive writing such a letter to our current leaders. Not so with Pahoran. To his everlasting credit, he didn't take offense but saw the anxiety and fears in the letter and answered those.

I can’t help but think that in a quiet, personal place, Moroni’s prayer of thanksgiving to God for Pahoran’s reply was more than a little emotional. Such is the patriotism and faithfulness of Moroni to the cause of liberty and his people. Such was Pahoran's statesmanship. Would that we had such men as these in our military and government today.

Alma 56-58 - The Sons of Helaman

The tale of these 2060 young boys who went to war is another insight into the vast differences between the Nephite culture and that of Upstate New York in the early nineteenth century. No one today would think of making a 16 year old commander in chief of a nation’s army. Yet this is what the Nephites did when they made Mormon commander of their armies. Not even in 1829 would that sort of choice be made. The question is why? I don’t know if the Sons of Helaman set the precedent or whether they followed an existing tradition, but the Book of Mormon refers to them as young men. If you can be appointed commander of an army at age 16, what does “young” mean?

There’s no way to tell from what I understand of the record to say how old these young warriors were. But if someone who is 16 years old is old enough to command an army, I suspect the “expected” age to serve is younger. The “unexpected” age to serve, which is what these boys were, is younger still. It seems reasonable to me to assume it wasn’t age, but ability to wield a weapon that became the criteria for them. 

On a tangential note, I once read part of an autobiographical book whose title I’ve now forgotten, of a woman’s experiences living among the Hopi Indians. This happened around the beginning of the 20th Century. In it, she recounts how they adopted her into their society and let her see the Prophecy Stone. It has inscriptions which speak of the “Lost White Brother” who will one day return. There are other prophetic inscriptions explaining what events will happen before he does. One warns them to always seek peace because their forefathers renounced war by burying their weapons in the ground. How critics will explain that away?

On another tangential note, did you know the Navajo sing the same tune Jews do, when they recite the scriptural account of the creation? You need to watch a presentation by Michael Ballam about his thoughts on the Gospel in the 2011 BMAF conference. It’s on Youtube. Find the video and listen around the 7:30 mark of an encounter with some Navajo indians. It's thought provoking.

But, I digress. These young men’s faith and Helaman’s boldness as a commander lead to miraculous results as they defended Nephite lands. It’s a powerful lesson on faithful actions in the face of overwhelming odds. They weren’t crazy, but they did take some pretty big risks. And because of the protection earned for them by their fathers’ righteous sacrifices, they became the Nephite’s “secret weapon” which turned the tide of the war in that part of the land. You can't make this up: boys turning the tide of a war? Yet it and a myriad of other stories are there for the taking. A feast of lessons on faith, just waiting to be had.

Alma 49-55 - The War Years of Moroni

Most of the rest of the Book of Alma deals with a series of wars between the Lamanites and the Nephites. These aren’t the only wars between the two peoples. In fact, their history is filled with them. So why did Mormon spend so much time on these wars if he wanted to deal with war and its effect on a society? He was involved in a lot of wars himself so he could have spoken with greater effect had he used his own stories. So, again, why?

I think it’s because they are more like us than any other culture in the Book of Mormon. They had “elected” judges and we have democratically elected politicians. They had a society where religion and politics were separated some what, while ours is much more so. Their biggest down falling was pride, so is ours. In their day, the religious were in the minority as it is today. The threats to their religious liberty and lifestyle were closest to the ones we face. And so he wrote about their wars for our benefit.

I also think this section of the book has more to say about our role as religious citizens of a country than any other in the Book of Mormon. We read about the terrible threat of internal dissension. The invading Lamanites weren’t as dangerous as were the Kingmen and Amalikiah or his brother Ammoron. They were such a great risk, Moroni gets special dispensation from the people to take draconian steps to crush the dissent. (Support us or die!) It was blunt and brutal and effective. It gives a clear lesson that the greatest enemies are the ones from within.

It also talks about keeping covenants in the face of great adversity. The Ammonites were about to renounce their covenant of peace to help the Nephites fight. It took a lot of persuading by Helaman and others to get them to change their minds. But it also led to the advent of the stripling warriors. These two thousand young men became the lynchpin of the Nephite defenses on a different front. I’ll write about them in more detail later.

The bottom line is, this is what God thinks your involvement in civic affairs and politics should be. He covers the spectrum from civic involvement all the way to direct combat with enemy forces.

Alma 43-44 - Captain Moroni

Excluding the Savior, if the number of pages dedicated to a person is a sign, then after Alma the Younger, the most important figure in Mormon’s abridgment of the Nephite record is Captain Moroni. This observation is strengthened by the fact that of all the prophets available to him, Mormon chose this man’s name for his own son. Moroni. The angel which adorns the cover of this book was named after a famous Nephite general!

As you read later in the narrative, Mormon gushes in admiration for him. So, it’s with great interest we meet this 25-year old who’s given command of all the Nephite armies. Given the structure of the Nephite culture, Moroni is of aristocratic birth, yet he’s not your typical aristocrat.

Think for a minute just upon Moroni’s actions in this part of the book. Though he’s general of the Nephite armies, he’s humble enough to ask Alma for divine help in knowing where his enemies plan to attack. To see how extraordinary this is, imagine a general today asking President Monson, what our enemies are going to do next. Imagine a general who is merciful to an army that has shown no mercy. Yet that’s what he did.

At the same time, he has a temper and it gets the better part of him. I’ve always thought it was a nice touch to show some of his humanity. It’s on much clearer display later on.

Moroni has alway been my personal hero in the Book of Mormon. He exemplified the type of military man I aspired to be: courageous, yet humble before God. A brilliant strategist, yet also willing to learn from others. It’s my opinion that many of the innovations he uses he learned from the Jaredite record. We see that in this passage in how he armed and protected his soldiers. Moroni’s army didn’t consist of mobile light infantry, but armored heavy infantry.

And he uses them to great effect. Sun Tzu would have admired how he maneuvers Zerahemna into  fighting him while crossing a river. You can’t exactly move fast and avoid things being thrown at you while you’re knee deep in water. Because of these actions, choices, and fervent prayers for help, Moroni’s smaller army defeats the larger Lamanite one.

Mormon makes an observation of about war which to me shows this is not some fanciful portrayal of a conflict. Instead Mormon labels war what it is: the work of death. We read about the see-saw of battle as first the Nephites then the Lamanites have the advantage. We read of the prayers and the courageous stand and the ultimate victory by the Nephites. Then there's Moroni’s graciousness in sparing the lives of the Lamanites. We also read the onerous task of dealing with the dead. While it was a great victory for the Nephites, we also see its cost.

It’s something to think about.

Moroni 9 - The Window into Hell

Throughout his book, Mormon spoke of the wickedness of the Nephites. In Moroni 9, his letter to his son, Moroni, gives us a glimpse into the awful depravity of both them and the Lamanites. It truly is a glimpse into hell.

This is a short entry because of it. By the time Mormon wrote this letter, he'd witnessed or heard accounts of the Lamanites forcing cannibalism upon their captive Nephites. That's horrifying by itself, but he goes on to say the Nephites were worse. And they were... they chose to be cannibals. It's a window into the depths which Satan is willing to take those who give themselves over to him.

The Lord's encouragement to Moroni at the chapters' end is one which we all can use... be faithful to Christ. As we remember him, and focus on the great peace and joy which He offers us, that can give us hope to endure well, the wickedness of the world and the trials in which we live.

That is a lesson we can use. It's what carried Moroni through all those lonely years.

Ether - The End

The moral of the end of Ether can be summed up in one sentence: If a people turn away from God and they don’t repent, they will destroy themselves.

Satan took them from one degree of darkness to another until there was no light of the Lord in them and anger, revenge and hatred ruled them. In that state, people choose death over life. It took four years to gather in all the people to the armies of Shiz and Coriantumr and eight days to kill themselves in one horrifying string of battles.

But enough of that, I start on Moroni in my next post.