Mormon 3:1-11
Before we get into the reading for today, there was some insight from yesterdays that I thought would be helpful. Speaking of the battles in the last chapter, HN comments, “The interesting thing is that the military situation is not desperate; it’s very much in their favor. They’re going to win three big victories in a row now. They’re going to take everything back, including the land of Desolation. They had no need for despair militarily, but that’s not the problem, is it? We’re properly armed and ready and marshalled for war; we’ve made out Cold War preparations on and on and on. That’s not the problem at all; that’s not going to solve a thing. That wasn’t the issue (in the Book of Mormon either.) Notice in verse 27 that they actually conquer everything. ‘We did go forth against the Lamanites and the robbers of Gadianton, until we had again taken possession of the lands of our inheritance’- the whole works. This certainly makes Mormon the greatest general in the Book of Mormon because of the things he’s able to do. The Lamanites and the Gadiantons, the bad guys, were willing to accept a treaty which was good for eight years; it says here. They were willing to accept terms in a treaty.” I hadn’t considered the fact that because the Nephites were able to beat the Lamanites militarily, without the strength of God backing them, that it would indicate the incredible military leadership ability of Mormon. In fact, if we think back to CM, he had the help of God, the inspiration of the prophets, and the divine intervention of 2060 of his soldiers. The Lamanites were given, in the treaty, the land southward and the Nephites maintained the land northward, divided by the narrow neck of land. HN gives some insight on this geographic significance when he says, “And what divides them is a narrow pass. Now the Isthmus of Panama is not a narrow pass; it’s 20 miles wide. We’re talking about the great narrow passes which allow either side to control them, you use. The Nephites could stop the Lamanites there, and the Lamanites could stop the Nephites there. This was the ideal place to make the boundary for the treaty here. You think of the famous passes like the Cilician Gates, the Khyber Pass, the Caucasian Gates, and Sankt Gotthard, or Echo Canyon here, or Cumberland Gap, or Thermopylae. There are narrow passes that control history, and the Isthmus of Panama is not one of them. Let’s not get into Book of Mormon geography. There was a pass somewhere where they control it. The narrow passage was the one that the Nephites or Lamanites could hold. Of course, that’s the best possible place to secure by treaty, which we learn at the beginning of the next chapter here.” Interesting, I’m not sure if he’s referring to the 20 miles of the Panama isthmus to be too big or too small, but I’m going to have to look up and do some research. It’s interesting the geographic significance of this narrow strip of land to the Nephites for security, and I really liked when he said, “there are narrow passes that control history.”
3:1-3 - After their victory, the Nephites have a decade of peace, and they spent their time “preparing their lands and their arms against the time of battle. And it came to pass that the Lord did say unto me: Cry unto this people- Repent ye, and come unto me, and be ye baptized, and build up again my church, and ye shall be spared.” It’s interesting because only a few years earlier, the Lord shut Mormon’s mouth and here he is commanded to preach repentance to the people. There must be a very fine balance between making people aware of their wicked state and their impending destruction but also not making them so accountable that they can’t overcome it in the next life when they have more and different information. It’s also interesting to me that Mormon’s mouth was shut when the people were steeped in witchcraft and “they had wilfully rebelled against their God.” He says that he was about 15 years old, so this is at least 10-15 years later, and it’s after their great victories, HN says that they should have spent this time, not building up their weapons and defenses but “you should use the time repenting, but they had no intention of doing that… It’s never too late here. He had withdrawn his spirit (Mormon) thought the day of grace was passed with them, but still the Lord holds out his hand to them. But ‘it was in vain.’ They wouldn’t listen. He gave them a chance for repentance. That’s what he calls it, ‘a chance for repentance. And behold they did harden their hearts.’ They didn’t take it. Because of the victory they thought they could do it themselves. They thought it was a military problem, as we do today.” It’s like they say, the people laughed at Noah for building the ark until it started raining, this is similar, after their great victory, the Nephites didn’t think that they needed God. HN continues, “Throughout this, you notice, the Nephites always are given a choice- they’re given a chance. Can’t we talk about this? Can’t we do something about this? The Lord is lengthening it out as long as he can. He’s giving them as much rope as possible, and they’re going to hang themselves on it just as sure as anything.” I think it’s hard to imagine, because the passage of time is covered in such a small amount of space but over the century that this extinction is taking place, there are time and time again where the opportunity for repentance is presented, and they just don’t take it. Mormon tells us “they did not realize that it was the Lord that had spared them, and granted unto them a chance for repentance.” It’s like we talked about yesterday, how we don’t know just how involved God is in our daily lives, with blessings and opportunities and protection, once we are left to ourselves then we see just how dependent we have been. I wish I had some frame of reference, I wish I could compare some of the stuff that I’ve done to this complete, knowledgeable rejection of God, I wish I could know the difference and how they felt or what they were thinking during this time. I just don’t understand and clearly I’m not perfect, I’m not even very good, but I just don’t know how to relate this to myself, I wonder if I’m closer to open rebellion then I think I am, or just how far away from that line I live.
3:4-11 - The king of the Lamanites sends a letter to Mormon, stating his intentions to come to war against them, so “I did cause my people that they should gather themselves together at the land Desolation, to a city which was in the borders, but the narrow pass which led into the land southward.” This chapter is so intense in geography, I can’t help but quote HN the whole time, I just found it so interesting. HN says “Well, Desolation goes with it. It’s a place of battle, a place of war. It’s a place not being farmed or densely occupied. A good defense zone is what it is, you see. But land Desolation- that’s the old word horba or horeb. Muslims divide the world into the Dar al-islam, the pacified world, and the Dar al-harb, the people who are dedicated to war and destruction. That’s what they do when they conquer. So you get a very good picture. See, here’s the pass and the desolate country around there. They’d fought lots of wars there. It was the natural place for battle. There are such places in Europe, as you know. I mentioned those passes, every one of which has been the scene of many battles. The Lamanite king sent an epistle that they were preparing to come to battle again. Well, Mormon’s people gathered themselves in Desolation and fortified themselves with all their force and beat them. That was sensible because they were on the defensive. Clausewitz’ first rule of war is always be on the defensive. The defensive always has the stronger side. That’s a general rule. You might find some exceptions to that, but not with Clausewitz. He says you always have the advantage. Mormon will tell us what happened there and why they lost later on.” Interesting theory that the first rule of war is to be on the defensive, that’s the most strategic advantage that you have. That goes right along with the Lord’s mandate that we be not guilty of the first or second offense before we go to war. Weird, I wonder if God is the ultimate military mind? The Lamanites come to battle against the Nephites “and it came to pass that in that year we did beat them, insomuch that they did return to their own lands. And in the three hundred and sixty and second year they did come down again to battle. And we did beat them again, and did slay a great number of them, and their dead were cast into the sea.” Hey, two more victories, pretty good. The Nephites take it pretty well, “they began to boast in their own strength, and began to swear before the heavens that they would avenge themselves of the blood of their brethren who had been slain by their enemies.” Revenge, that’s what it’s come to. It was just self-defense before, but now it’s active blood lust, and this is the point where Mormon “did utterly refuse from this time forth to be a commander and a leader of this people, because of their wickedness and abomination.” I didn’t pick it up from this verse, I just thought that Mormon quit because they were wicked and not repenting, and he was tired of it, but apparently, this wasn’t the case. HN says that he quit because seeking revenge and he knew that that goes against the commandments of God, it’s blood lust and he won’t have any part of it. The IM teaches, “In spite of Mormon leading his people for approximately 35 years, at this point he refused to lead them. Mormon must have been influenced by the abridgement he was making of the Book of Mormon. He saw Captain Moroni’s and Helaman’s justifiable reasons to go to war- defending their lands, houses, wives, children, rights, privileges, liberty, and ability to worship. He taught the people these purposes of war. After seeing the motivation the Nephites in his day had for fighting the Lamanites- to ‘avenge themselves’ and that they ‘began to boast in their own strength’ and that they were guilty of great ‘wickedness and abomination’- he temporarily refused to lead their armies.” I hadn’t considered that the empowering speech that Mormon gave the Nephite army that led to their victory had been learned from his abridgement, even though it makes sense that that’s the source, because they are so similar. It makes sense that Mormon had learned warfare from CM and Helaman, and I thought “he must have read that it’s only ok to go to war if you’re not guilty of the first or second offense,” but then it occurred to me that he didn’t read that anywhere, he wrote it, he was the source of that information when we read that portion of the scriptures. Concerning “Boasting” the IM quotes Elder Neal A. Maxwell as teaching, “Before enjoying the harvest of righteous efforts, let us therefore first acknowledge God’s hand. Otherwise, the rationalizations appear, and they include, ‘My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.’ Or, we ‘vaunt’ ourselves, as ancient Israel would have done (except for Gideon’s deliberately small army), by boasting that ‘mine own hand that saved me.’ Touting our own ‘hand’ makes it doubly hard to confess God’s hand in all things.” I know that we’ve talked about it on here many times before, but I try so hard to acknowledge God’s hand in my blessings. Everything I have or am is because he’s blessed me with the capacity to do so, I’ve been poor before, I’ll probably be poor again, I’ve been so maxed out mentally that I couldn’t even function and that’s probably going to happen again, probably today. Most people have lived their lives on both sides of the pendulum, rich and poor, bond and free, feast and famine, lonely and loved, weak and strong, and we have been given these extremes to build our character, to bring us closer to Christ, to test us, to teach us, and to reward us. The concept that we gain or lose anything because of our awesomeness is straight from the teachings of Korihor, that “every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.” I hadn’t connected these two events before, even though looking back on it, it makes total sense, but boasting in our own strength or believing that we are benefitted in any way other than the mercy and grace of God is the teachings of Korihor, that our life has no meaning and no value, it’s all just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. Very interesting.
3:1-3 - After their victory, the Nephites have a decade of peace, and they spent their time “preparing their lands and their arms against the time of battle. And it came to pass that the Lord did say unto me: Cry unto this people- Repent ye, and come unto me, and be ye baptized, and build up again my church, and ye shall be spared.” It’s interesting because only a few years earlier, the Lord shut Mormon’s mouth and here he is commanded to preach repentance to the people. There must be a very fine balance between making people aware of their wicked state and their impending destruction but also not making them so accountable that they can’t overcome it in the next life when they have more and different information. It’s also interesting to me that Mormon’s mouth was shut when the people were steeped in witchcraft and “they had wilfully rebelled against their God.” He says that he was about 15 years old, so this is at least 10-15 years later, and it’s after their great victories, HN says that they should have spent this time, not building up their weapons and defenses but “you should use the time repenting, but they had no intention of doing that… It’s never too late here. He had withdrawn his spirit (Mormon) thought the day of grace was passed with them, but still the Lord holds out his hand to them. But ‘it was in vain.’ They wouldn’t listen. He gave them a chance for repentance. That’s what he calls it, ‘a chance for repentance. And behold they did harden their hearts.’ They didn’t take it. Because of the victory they thought they could do it themselves. They thought it was a military problem, as we do today.” It’s like they say, the people laughed at Noah for building the ark until it started raining, this is similar, after their great victory, the Nephites didn’t think that they needed God. HN continues, “Throughout this, you notice, the Nephites always are given a choice- they’re given a chance. Can’t we talk about this? Can’t we do something about this? The Lord is lengthening it out as long as he can. He’s giving them as much rope as possible, and they’re going to hang themselves on it just as sure as anything.” I think it’s hard to imagine, because the passage of time is covered in such a small amount of space but over the century that this extinction is taking place, there are time and time again where the opportunity for repentance is presented, and they just don’t take it. Mormon tells us “they did not realize that it was the Lord that had spared them, and granted unto them a chance for repentance.” It’s like we talked about yesterday, how we don’t know just how involved God is in our daily lives, with blessings and opportunities and protection, once we are left to ourselves then we see just how dependent we have been. I wish I had some frame of reference, I wish I could compare some of the stuff that I’ve done to this complete, knowledgeable rejection of God, I wish I could know the difference and how they felt or what they were thinking during this time. I just don’t understand and clearly I’m not perfect, I’m not even very good, but I just don’t know how to relate this to myself, I wonder if I’m closer to open rebellion then I think I am, or just how far away from that line I live.
3:4-11 - The king of the Lamanites sends a letter to Mormon, stating his intentions to come to war against them, so “I did cause my people that they should gather themselves together at the land Desolation, to a city which was in the borders, but the narrow pass which led into the land southward.” This chapter is so intense in geography, I can’t help but quote HN the whole time, I just found it so interesting. HN says “Well, Desolation goes with it. It’s a place of battle, a place of war. It’s a place not being farmed or densely occupied. A good defense zone is what it is, you see. But land Desolation- that’s the old word horba or horeb. Muslims divide the world into the Dar al-islam, the pacified world, and the Dar al-harb, the people who are dedicated to war and destruction. That’s what they do when they conquer. So you get a very good picture. See, here’s the pass and the desolate country around there. They’d fought lots of wars there. It was the natural place for battle. There are such places in Europe, as you know. I mentioned those passes, every one of which has been the scene of many battles. The Lamanite king sent an epistle that they were preparing to come to battle again. Well, Mormon’s people gathered themselves in Desolation and fortified themselves with all their force and beat them. That was sensible because they were on the defensive. Clausewitz’ first rule of war is always be on the defensive. The defensive always has the stronger side. That’s a general rule. You might find some exceptions to that, but not with Clausewitz. He says you always have the advantage. Mormon will tell us what happened there and why they lost later on.” Interesting theory that the first rule of war is to be on the defensive, that’s the most strategic advantage that you have. That goes right along with the Lord’s mandate that we be not guilty of the first or second offense before we go to war. Weird, I wonder if God is the ultimate military mind? The Lamanites come to battle against the Nephites “and it came to pass that in that year we did beat them, insomuch that they did return to their own lands. And in the three hundred and sixty and second year they did come down again to battle. And we did beat them again, and did slay a great number of them, and their dead were cast into the sea.” Hey, two more victories, pretty good. The Nephites take it pretty well, “they began to boast in their own strength, and began to swear before the heavens that they would avenge themselves of the blood of their brethren who had been slain by their enemies.” Revenge, that’s what it’s come to. It was just self-defense before, but now it’s active blood lust, and this is the point where Mormon “did utterly refuse from this time forth to be a commander and a leader of this people, because of their wickedness and abomination.” I didn’t pick it up from this verse, I just thought that Mormon quit because they were wicked and not repenting, and he was tired of it, but apparently, this wasn’t the case. HN says that he quit because seeking revenge and he knew that that goes against the commandments of God, it’s blood lust and he won’t have any part of it. The IM teaches, “In spite of Mormon leading his people for approximately 35 years, at this point he refused to lead them. Mormon must have been influenced by the abridgement he was making of the Book of Mormon. He saw Captain Moroni’s and Helaman’s justifiable reasons to go to war- defending their lands, houses, wives, children, rights, privileges, liberty, and ability to worship. He taught the people these purposes of war. After seeing the motivation the Nephites in his day had for fighting the Lamanites- to ‘avenge themselves’ and that they ‘began to boast in their own strength’ and that they were guilty of great ‘wickedness and abomination’- he temporarily refused to lead their armies.” I hadn’t considered that the empowering speech that Mormon gave the Nephite army that led to their victory had been learned from his abridgement, even though it makes sense that that’s the source, because they are so similar. It makes sense that Mormon had learned warfare from CM and Helaman, and I thought “he must have read that it’s only ok to go to war if you’re not guilty of the first or second offense,” but then it occurred to me that he didn’t read that anywhere, he wrote it, he was the source of that information when we read that portion of the scriptures. Concerning “Boasting” the IM quotes Elder Neal A. Maxwell as teaching, “Before enjoying the harvest of righteous efforts, let us therefore first acknowledge God’s hand. Otherwise, the rationalizations appear, and they include, ‘My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.’ Or, we ‘vaunt’ ourselves, as ancient Israel would have done (except for Gideon’s deliberately small army), by boasting that ‘mine own hand that saved me.’ Touting our own ‘hand’ makes it doubly hard to confess God’s hand in all things.” I know that we’ve talked about it on here many times before, but I try so hard to acknowledge God’s hand in my blessings. Everything I have or am is because he’s blessed me with the capacity to do so, I’ve been poor before, I’ll probably be poor again, I’ve been so maxed out mentally that I couldn’t even function and that’s probably going to happen again, probably today. Most people have lived their lives on both sides of the pendulum, rich and poor, bond and free, feast and famine, lonely and loved, weak and strong, and we have been given these extremes to build our character, to bring us closer to Christ, to test us, to teach us, and to reward us. The concept that we gain or lose anything because of our awesomeness is straight from the teachings of Korihor, that “every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.” I hadn’t connected these two events before, even though looking back on it, it makes total sense, but boasting in our own strength or believing that we are benefitted in any way other than the mercy and grace of God is the teachings of Korihor, that our life has no meaning and no value, it’s all just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. Very interesting.
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