Geopolitics and the Rule of Tyrants
[Importance of 600BC]
[Great Assembly of the Nation]
29 There is nothing more remarkable, in fact, more miraculous, about the Book of Mormon, than its Kulturgeschichte, culture history. It is just loaded with the details that give us an insight into the culture of a particular people. It describes three distinct cultures, and it describes them very vividly. We have been talking about the Near East (the Old World) at the time of Lehi. Remember, the first book of Nephi all takes place in the Old World (one of the most important books), and it describes the ancient civilization of the New World in great detail, a totally different civilization. It also describes the present culture, which is as far removed from Joseph Smith’s day as the other cultures are. Who ever dreamed of the culture of the 1980s, which he has so vividly described. Well, that’s all in the Book of Mormon.
29,30 1 Nephi 1:5,6 He couldn’t have chosen a better year to have things begin than the year 600 B.C. (a nice round number). Historians call this the pivotal year. Everybody noticed that around the year 600 B.C. everything pivoted, everything changed. The whole world turned on a pivot, and very suddenly there was an entirely new culture and civilization among nations throughout the entire world. We saw that this also happened in 1200 B.C. (600 years before the same sort of thing happened. All the early books of the history of Israel have to do with the conflicts, and agreements and friendships, between the Philistines and Israel because they were very close together. The Philistines were Greeks, and they settled there back in 1200. That’s why it’s called Palestine. It’s named after the Philistines because they settled in Palestine. The lands were named after the places where they settled, not the places where they came from. In 600 was the passing of the old sacral kingship (that culture). Before that kings were sacred and so was the temple. The king was never crowned in the palace; he was always crowned in the temple. Kingship was sacred. The kingly line was sacred; it was the patriarchal line. This was so in almost all cities. There is a great deal on this subject. But all of a sudden the sacral kingship passed away, and the question arose, “Who’s in charge around here?” Anybody who could grab the power, and so you have the age of tyrants, and you have the new and ambitious age of emperors, and things like that. But first, why? And all this is relative to the Book of Mormon because it’s the same thing. You see, as the Book of Mormon starts up everything is in upheaval. Poor Lehi didn’t know what to do; he prayed desperately. He went out about his business, and then he had a vision and came home. There was nothing to do. He had to leave and get out (we’ll talk about that the next time, his means of departure, etc.). But everything was in upheaval. His own family was split down the middle. We saw the last time that one side was for supporting Babylonia, and the other side was for Egypt. They had been otherwise; they had shifted positions. At this time, you see, no one had any particular loyalties. It was free enterprise everywhere, and money was behind everything here. We will see why this was literally the case. The twenty-sixth dynasty was the great last dynasty of Egypt and the dynasty under which Lehi lived. Israel was a protectorate of it, as a matter of fact.
30 1 Nephi 1:4 How does the Book of Mormon start out? In the first year of King Zedekiah. Well, Zedekiah was put in by Necho II. His name wasn’t Zedekiah; Necho II, the Pharaoh, gave him that name. The king of Egypt put him in, who is Necho II. How could Necho II do it? Because he had a lot of money. Where did he get it? He got it from Gyges. Who was Gyges? He was the big man in Sardis, which was the capital of Lydia where they had just invented money (it had been coined in the eighth century). Don’t think that didn’t make a difference. Money was necessary; the situation required it. That freed everybody to go in and do pretty much what they wanted to.
30 What happened to the sacral kingship in 600 B.C., what wiped them out? Now we have to go into a little Geopolitics here. This is important because it goes on all the time. Notice, it can only happen in Palestine which is the cockpit of the world. It is today, and it always was. It was in Lehi’s time and before in 1200 B.C. Why? Because that is the only place in the world where the sea invades the land mass to a great extent. See, it goes right into the middle of the great European/African mass that comes together.
31 This is called Geopolitics, and it’s what pushed Hitler into World War II. We wouldn’t have had World War II if it weren’t for Geopolitics. Well, his idea was that it was behind everything—the doctrine of Geopolitics. It’s good we have this here because this shows the role that Palestine plays—why this is so extremely important along here. Geopolitics was invented by Alfred MacKinder, a Scottish geographer, in the early twentieth century. It was taken up by Karl Haushofer who was Hitler’s official geographer. The theory was very plain. It had already been expounded long ago. Well, it’s this idea: Central Asia is controlled by the land people—the great land mass of Central Asia. It’s called the Asiatic Shield. The shield is that part which is covered by snow about half the year, so you can see it from space. It’s shaped like a shield too. Here are the great people of the plains. This is the clock, the driving force of history. Whenever there is trouble, it begins there. Why does it begin there? Because these are nomads in the vast, central part of Asia, living on grass. Their economy, therefore, is quite sensitive. It’s a marginal economy. In a bad year they have to move, and they are able to move because they are nomads. They tour all the time. And where do they go? Naturally, they move to the richer and more prosperous civilizations on the periphery. All the world civilizations lie on the periphery—in India, in Egypt, and in Europe. Notice, in every case there is a literal wall; they build a literal wall to keep the nomads out.
41 Mosiah 4:11 It’s the same thing in the Book of Mormon. The greatest patriotic celebration they had was the celebration of the triumphant rule of King Benjamin in which they had victory, triumph, and prosperity throughout. He held a great assembly of the nation, and all he did was tear them down, put them in mind of their nothingness. He said, “I would that ye should remember [keep in mind] ... the greatness of God, and your own nothingness. ... I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice” (Mosiah 4:11). He had to teach them to rejoice. These four stages that the Greek tragedians repeat (they are repeated in quite a number of plays) are the four that we follow. We follow them in the Book of Mormon too. They are (1) OLBIA (2) KOROS (3) HUBRIS (we all know what that is) and (4) ATE. This is what you go through. OLBIA is happiness and prosperity, having what you want (and not necessarily getting it dishonestly). Prospering in the best possible sense is OLBIA. But when you have that, then you get koros. That means full. When you’ve had all you can eat, and you insist on eating more, that’s bad—that’s KOROS, that’s overfilling, that’s force eating. You have eaten too much when you have KOROS. That leads to hubris, overconfidence. You think you are so important. You automatically feel that you are the good guy, and what you do is all right. You take advantage of others, and then you start playing the game pretty rough. That’s the way powerful people always do. The final stage is ATE, the point at which you participate in ending the play as fast as possible. When you have reached the point of no return, there is no, LA COMMEDIA EFINITA no point to continuing the play. Things will just get worse. As the Book of Mormon puts it often, you are either ripe in iniquity (if you get any riper than that you rot, as Shakespeare says), or the cup of iniquity is full. You cannot dilute it anymore; there is nothing you can do about it. If it’s full, you can’t add anything to it. Take something from it is what you’re going to have to do—tip it over. But when the cup is full and when the fruit is ripe, you can’t go anywhere after that. That is the point of ATE. The other point is to end the play and not let the misery drag on. The person walks as if he were sort of hypnotized, and the things he says and does are destructive. He is subconsciously aware of what he is doing; he is trying to get rid of himself. It’s almost a death wish that you have there. You want to end the play as fast as you can, and that’s ATE. You see, that will seize upon a people.
42 These great forces all came out among the contemporaries of Lehi in the year 600 B.C. This whole thing came to a head and got lost at that time. There was no better period in which to launch a new civilization than in the time of Lehi because he was a colonist, a patriarch, and a father leader. He was driven out of a city that collapsed. He was a victim of the great powers, etc. But we have another element in here, and this makes quite a bit of difference. This is so much like our own time and our own world, and the point is that he had the gospel. Remember, he went out and he prayed right at the beginning of the first chapter. He was absolutely sick; he couldn’t stand it. Then he went out and had a sun stroke (or whatever it was out in the desert). He ran home to his house in Jerusalem and threw himself on the bed. Then he thought he was carried away, and he saw what happened. He saw the Council of the preexistence. He saw the plan, the Lord coming down, and the twelve apostles. He saw how it all worked out. From then on he was one happy man. He could do nothing but rejoice after that. He went out and tried to preach, ran into real trouble, and had to leave town. Well, this is another story which we will take up later. But this picture is a real one, and it includes ourselves. So everything is being hastened now. There’s an acceleration. You notice throughout the Book of Mormon there’s a great sense of urgency. This book was brought at a particular time for a particular place, addressed to a particular people. “This comes to you, oh ye Gentiles, that ye may be wiser than we have been.” You don’t have much time, but do what you should do, and don’t do what you are doing. It keeps telling us that. So the Book of Mormon has a real message for us.