[Moroni on the Shedding of Blood]
Abraham [Pivotal In World History]
[Importance of Repopulating after Disasters]
[Qualities of Abraham: Charity & Intelligence]
[Forgiving & Repenting]
[Problem Solving: A moral & Intelligence Issue That Leads to Repentance]
[Abraham 1:2 on Real Happiness]
Clausewitz’s Rules of War
World War II Memories
105 Alma 48:16-18 Moroni in Alma here., he praises the qualities of [Moroni]: “This was the faith of Moroni, and his heart did glory in it; not in the shedding of blood but in doing good, in preserving his people, yea, in . keeping the commandments of God, yea, and resisting iniquity. Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men [notice it’s the hearts he’s after, not the bodies]. Behold, he was a man like unto Ammon [the great pacifist], the son of Mosiah, yea, and even the other sons of Mosiah, yea, and also Alma and his sons, for they were all men of God.”
105 Well, there are some things to be said now about these qualities [in Alma 48: 16-18] This shows the two qualities of Abraham in the vast Abraham literature. It’s very large. Abraham is mentioned perhaps more than any other person in world literature, because he is the father. He’s in the center, he’s the pivotal character of world history, and he’s our father. We all have the blood of Abraham in us, whether we know it or not. Do you know why that is, what the chances are? We mentioned that you could put it on the computer. Nobody knows the time of Abraham, but we know it was one of those particular times of extermination. He lived in a time of extermination. Everything was desolate. It was always dry. He dug wells, and he planted trees that he would never be able to use. The famine waxed sore in the land. He had to move from Haran to Canaan, from Canaan to Egypt and back again, driven wherever he went. Then [he went] to the five cities where it was lush. But suddenly they had fallen in a terrible collapse. Everything collapsed, and then he moved to Gerar and tried to make a living in Gerar. It was even worse—terrible plague everywhere he went, drought everywhere, crops failed, world collapse. It was a terrible thing. Well, we get to take that up in the book of Abraham. But there’s a great literature about that.
105,106 Those pivotal times [3000 BC, 1200 BC, 600 BC] we talk about that are so important. Well, at that time the world’s population was really reduced. People just disappeared. It was one of those times of extermination. The Great Plague in the 1340s wiped out at least half the population of Europe, and in some parts completely desolated the world. But do you notice the promise to Abraham and his children? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They always lay such heavy emphasis on numbers. Your offspring, your seed, will be as numerous as the sands of the sea. If you can count the stars of the heaven . . . They’re as numerous as the dust of the earth. That’s making it infinite. But why are they so obsessed with getting a lot of descendants, millions and millions? They’re bound to get a lot anyway. Why is this an obsession with them? That’s the trouble with us; we have too many people running around. The earth is overpopulated like a cancer and eating everything up now.
106 Well, the reason is to repopulate the earth. Abraham had three wives. He took Sarah, but Sarah was barren, so he took Hagar, who was of the blood of Ham. Many accounts say she was the daughter of Pharaoh; she was an Egyptian. The Egyptians play a big role here. His wife, Sarah, was the great mother in Israel, mother of all the Semites. She was Semitic. And Hagar was of Ham. Then after Sarah died he took Keturah, and she was of [Japheth]. She had six sons, and Abraham taught them the arts which later became the arts of the West—the mathematics, the science, the architecture, and those things in which Abraham himself was a genius. They spread in all directions, so we have the blood of Shem, Ham, and Japheth being refreshed in all directions. His seed became very numerous, we are told, in all these directions, which means they intermarried with everybody. As you know if you’re a genealogist, we mix with everybody else, and before you know it, we all have the same genes all mixed up together. I don’t think there’s a chance that anybody in the world is without some of the blood of Abraham because he was told repeatedly, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22:18), especially his priesthood.
106 So here we have Abraham going out, and he had two great qualities. I’m going to put then on the board. First of all, they always talk about Abraham’s charity. Charity was dead in the world, and Abraham revived it. There are many examples of that, of course, and charity is translated in the New Testament, in the new revised version as love. ‘The greatest of these is love,” it says. The Latin word for charity, charis, is grace. It’s cognate with our English word cheer. It’s universal. Charity, love, and grace marked Abraham. His second [outstanding quality] was his immense intelligence, his curiosity about everything. He was a scientist, as we know. Joseph Smith gave us the great astronomer, the cosmologist, so busy and zealous in his study of the stars and structure of things. He gave us a hologram of the universe, etc. We are told that intelligence, or the glory of God, is like light and truth. Of course light and truth always go together. So what we have here is ... What is the Only Begotten full of? “Mine Only Begotten who is full of grace and truth.” These are the qualities of the Only Begotten Son. If you have these, this is everything. In fact we’re told that in the two great commandments, the first two commandments. The Lord says on two commandments hang all the others. If you keep them, you’re bound to keep the others. The first is “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” In Deuteronomy it says “With all thy heart and with all thy soul [NEPHESH], and with all thy ME’OD [mind or intellect].”
106,107 There are two great commandments. First, you love him, but you love your neighbor as yourself. Now that’s another kind of love. That’s charity or grace. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Of course if you keep these, you don’t need to worry about the others. If you love the Lord that much and if you love your neighbor that much—thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not commit adultery. You won’t do any of those things if you keep the first two commandments, if they are in your heart. The Lord says on these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets. If you keep them, [the others] are taken care of. They are grace and truth. And this is grace, with all thy heart, might, mind, and strength. “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. ... Light cleaveth unto light” etc.
107 So the same things are in the first two commandments. They are charity for your fellowman, love. That isn’t an intellectual sort of thing; that you just feel. Abraham often did. Satan often came and reasoned with Abraham and said you’re not being rational about this thing, supporting the people of Sodom, for example. They’re bad people, he says, but I feel sorry for them. Let’s save anyone. And after the battle Abraham was worried sick. He said, there might have been a righteous man killed on the other side, and in that case, his blood would be on my head. It bothered him terribly. What was he to do about that? That’s charity. It’s not particularly rational, but it’s a feeling. Love or charity is spontaneous. As Paul says, you don’t bicker, you don’t calculate, you don’t work it out, you don’t make intellectual plans, you don’t argue about it, you don’t make Jesuitical sophistry about it. No self-interest. Love requires nothing in return. You’re not asking for that. It’s not a deal, it’s not an exchange, it’s not business or anything like that. Love is spontaneous. The other is intelligence, which doesn’t make deals [either]. As Brigham Young said “Light cleaveth to light. We love knowledge because it is good in itself, and we make no excuses for it.”
107 As Irenaeus tells us, there are only two things in which men can excel. They are, of course, in forgiving—that’s grace, isn’t it? You forgive others. But I shouldn’t forgive him—he did this or he did that, or it wouldn’t do me this good. No, you don’t ask that at all. The Arabs have a saying: “The brave man never asks the odds; the generous man never asks the price; the good man never asks questions.” You just forgive. If you forgive, that is grace. And you repent. To repent is honest thinking. It’s close, critical analysis of your own behavior. Intelligence, you see, is problem-solving ability. That’s the way it’s defined by William James and others. That has been the standard definition of intelligence by the psychologists—problem-solving ability.
107 But what do you need to solve problems? That’s a moral quality. You can’t cheat; you must be honest. You don’t anticipate the answer unfairly. You don’t get it out of the answer book. Problem-solving ability is a moral quality. It’s the capacity to be strictly honest, which is very rare. Intelligence is examining your own inadequacy. The first thing you ask when you’re confronted with a problem is where am I failing? What don’t I know here? Where have I broken down? Where am I inadequate for this? That’s what you deal with, not how much have I got or what’s my degree. That has nothing to do with it. The thing you’re interested in to solve the problem is where you’re weak. It’s a humiliating process, the progressive exposure of your own ignorance as you go on and on. [Joseph] Scaliger was perhaps the greatest scholar of modern times (he died in 1608). When he went into the ghetto in Rome to chat with the children so he’d learn Hebrew offhand, the scholars laughed at him. They held him in contempt. We just don’t do that sort of thing. They are mere children. What can they tell you? [they said]. Well, they knew more Hebrew than he did. He learned it, and the others never did. That’s our haughtiness
108 Problem-solving ability is necessary for repentance. Intelligence is a process of progressive repentance. You repent of your mistakes you make. You repent of your stupidity, and you have to keep doing that all the time, because we don’t get to first base. Otherwise, you’ll never break through to anything.. Remember, the great scientist when he finally sees the light almost invariably says, “What a fool I’ve been. It has been staring me in the face all this time and I didn’t see it.” The stars have been sending us the same hints for thousands of years, and we fail to respond to them. They are there all the time. It just depends on your being able or willing to see them.
108 Moroni, it tells us here, [In Alma 48] is both smart and magnanimous. Notice those are the two qualities. He’s smart; he always bamboozles the enemy. He runs circles around them, and he is also generous with them. They’re never the enemy to him. They’re always his brethren. He always stops the war the minute he sees the tide turning, the minute they start weakening. As compared with our “me” generation—they’re smart but selfish. If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? “One of the sad ironies is that the people who get hooked on money tend to consider themselves very smart, cool-headed, and rational.” But which is the smart thing in the long run
108 Abraham saw where real happiness lies. This is it. Notice that Abraham doesn’t subdue his ego at all. He doesn’t wipe himself out in the NYETI NYETI or anything like that. The second verse of the first chapter of Abraham is one of the most marvelous condensations you will find anywhere. This is Abraham’s life already summed up in that second verse, and the world he lived in. It’s a long one. You have to stop for breath. It’s one sentence, that long verse.
108,109 Abraham1:2 : “And finding there was greater happiness and peace and rest for me ...” He’s not ashamed of wanting happiness and peace for himself. That’s what you do. Don’t fool yourself. Don’t say, oh, I don’t want anything for me at all. I just want to suffer. No, that’s not it. “I sought for the blessings of the fathers, and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same.” So he only wants these blessings so he can administer them to others. To administer means to hand on, to spread around, to be in charge of distribution. So that’s what he wants. He wants these blessings because he’s told, remember, “in thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the world be blessed.” He’s the greatest pronouncer of blessings who ever was. Wherever he went he would pronounce blessings. The Lord tells him, as I commanded Adam to give my blessing to the animals—and Adam passed it on to Noah—so I now command thee. You do the same thing, and he did. He took great care of the animals and birds. He was always much concerned for them. “... having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who possessed great knowledge [notice, he wants righteousness and knowledge, but more and more; it’s progressive; he doesn’t stop there] and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge.” He wasn’t satisfied with where he was.
109 The stories of the childhood of Abraham are the most interesting things. He was always asking questions, always researching, always doing remarkable things, and getting himself and his family into trouble. They had to move out, much the same life as Joseph Smith. He was very precocious. And incidentally, this is not a mythical hero. What do typical, mythical heroes do? They’re strong and brave and they have big muscles and they fight bad people. Never is any physical prowess or characteristic of Abraham mentioned—never his strength or his endurance or his formidable appearance or anything. Always just his intelligence and his kindness. Those are the two things that go together wherever we see him.
109 Abraham 1:2-4 “... one who possessed great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to be a father of many nations ...” That’s what he wanted to be, you see. You say, how ambitious, what an ego! Not to be worshipped by them but to help them and give them something. He wanted the priesthood so he could pass it on. “And desiring to receive instructions [he was humble; he had to know how he’d go about it] and to keep the commandments of God, I became a rightful heir, a High Priest, holding the right belonging to the fathers [so he could hand it down]. It was conferred upon me from the fathers; it came down from the fathers, from the beginning of time, yea, even from the beginning, or before the foundation of the earth, down to the present time, even the right of the firstborn, or the first man, who is Adam, or first father, through the fathers unto me. I sought for mine appointment unto the Priesthood according to the appointment of God unto the fathers concerning the seed.”
109 He sought for the appointment so he could administer “the appointment of God concerning the seed.” His fathers had turned from their righteousness—they wouldn’t listen to him or anything like that. He was in a bad world. They utterly refused to listen to his voice.
110 So we have the me generation. We’re smart but selfish. Wilford Woodruff said there’s a common misconception of the Latter-day Saints, that since God rewards the righteous with prosperity, the rich must be righteous. He said they have that in their system. Will they ever get it out?
110 This is Book of Mormon warfare, and it is relevant. I’m going to put Karl von Clausewitz on the board. I mentioned him before. [He wrote] the standard work on war. You can’t do anything without Clausewitz. He’s the one that everybody quotes, because this is on the general principles of warfare—not strategy and tactics. It deals with them, but this has to do with how wars go on and the very nature of warfare. It’s called On War. It was the classic work, and the Book of Mormon reads as if it were taken right out of Clausewitz. But there was one thing wrong with it. The marvelous thing is the timing of these things. I think they’re great. You’d say Joseph Smith lifted the whole story of Moroni, the whole warfare in the Book of Mormon, out of Clausewitz. But Clausewitz was published in 1833, too late for the Book of Mormon. They’ll argue about that, of course, but no—he didn’t use Clausewitz. It had limited circulation until it became very popular. Clausewitz was very active in the Napoleonic wars, and he gives us the principles, the principal maxims on war. He breaks it down to the great maxims of war. The most famous saying of his that everybody knows by heart is, “War is therefore a continuation of policy by other means.” It is carrying on political disagreements between nations, ideological, etc. Policy by other means. He is strictly a soldier dealing with the technical side, only with how war is conducted, yet he’s not only going to talk about the causes in the background, here he spills the beans. This points directly to the causes, a continuation of politics.
110,111 The Book of Mormon begins with war in Jerusalem, and ends with war at Cumorah. In between there are a lot of wars. They all deal with political ambition. You don’t have to go to Egypt, Babylonia, or Jerusalem to illustrate this, because we see territorial ambitions in such Book of Mormon characters as Zerahemnah. They want to make themselves leaders of men and nations. Remember, Amalickiah wanted to lead everything. Once you start out, you don’t know where to stop, like the Hitlers of the world. Zerahemnah, Amulon, Amalickiah, Ammoron, Laman, Nehor, Zeezrom, Korihor, and so forth—all those are men that started great wars in the Book of Mormon out of personal political ambitions. They wanted to get ahead. They started out with political parties and ended up uniting bodies in war such as the great coalitions of Amalickiah we’ve just been seeing about.
111 Another saying of Clausewitz is “War belongs not to the province of the arts and sciences but of social existence.” It would be better to liken it to business competition; that’s what it is. Remember the warlords—what is their purpose? Why do they keep being warlords? Well, it’s for loot, of course. That’s the grandeur, that’s the king. The opening lines of Beowulf are a typical example. The warlords of the steppes live on booty and loot. They plunder the rich cities of the plain. They come down from the hills and plunder the cities of the plain. They’re always in motion, so naturally their wealth has to be transportable wealth, whereas the sedentary cities have to have sedentary wealth, like architecture and art, literature, libraries, and things like that. They are stable. But people on the march have to have wealth which is portable. So what is it? It’s gold, silver, and jewels—everything that counts with them. They collect it. You see the tribes of the steppes where the women all carry the family wealth in gold and silver coins around their necks. That’s why the Chinese put holes in the middle of their coins, so they can string them.
112 Clausewitz continues: “Moreover, politics is the womb in which war is developed. It is business on a great scale.” Nothing describes it better these days than that. And so we don’t need to explain that. And then he says, “Disarming the enemy—this is the object of war and the abstract, the final means of attaining a political object, forcing the enemy to disarm,” Disarming the enemy is the object of war. Not to destroy them, because you can profit greatly.
112,113 In the Book of Mormon Moroni often requires the enemies to lay down their arms. This happens again and again, and he lets them go home. There are no reprisals. The war always takes place on Nephite soil. If they just go home and promise they won’t come back, that’s all he ever asks of them. No reprisals or anything similar. In the 44th chapter of Alma and the 15th, 20th, 52nd, 37th, etc. The test comes when they lay down their arms. Then you know your will has dominated over theirs, and they know it too. So Clausewitz says “The disarming of the enemy is the object of war.” Moroni was satisfied when the enemy laid down their arms.
113 Clausewitz’s next maxim is an interesting one too: “The aggressor always pretends to be peace-loving [see, we’re always on the defensive] because he would like to achieve his conquest without bloodshed.” Hitler would have been glad to take all of Europe without any bloodshed at all, if they had let him have what he wanted. Anybody would do that. “Therefore aggression must be presented as a defensive reaction against the aggressor nation.” Your aggression is always represented, according to Clausewitz here, as being a defense action. You’re just defending yourself.. Nobody ever attacks. You’re always just on the defensive.
113 We see good examples in the Book of Mormon in the case of Giddianhi and Lachoneus. We’ll get to them. [Giddianhi and others] were the heads of the robber armies. The fact that they could have robber armies that could overthrow governments [is disturbing]. Now we’re setting something of that in the Medellin, the same sort of thing. Here’s a gang of robbers that can actually defy governments, including our own, and get away with it. It’s happening more frequently. And that always happens in Book of Mormon lands; that’s the tradition down there. The Book of Mormon trains you up to all this sort of thing. Giddianhi writes to Lachoneus in 3 Nephi 3:9-10: We wouldn’t bother you except you’re infringing on our rights of government, our ancient society which is old and venerable. You have been the aggressors against us [paraphrased]. And the Lamanites always had that legitimate charge. They always would explain how Laman and Lemuel were robbed by Nephi and his trickery. They really believed it.
113 So we’re always fighting for freedom, no matter which side you’re on. I don’t want to submit to you, you don’t want to submit to me, so I’m defending my freedom and you’re defending your freedom. Quoting Clausewitz again: “Those who belong to the profession will always look upon themselves as a kind of guild.” So it’s a profession, a corporate guild. “A closed corporation must exist more or less in every army.” That’s true. “Military virtue is a quality of standing armies only.” And yet it’s the citizen soldier who does all the fighting most of the time. That’s why you have this cult. What other business requires you to wear a special outfit all the time and decorate yourself with visible symbols of every remarkable or praiseworthy thing you ever did. You can’t do anything praiseworthy without putting a ribbon or a medal on. That’s a strange thing. Of course, in Europe they just cover themselves. It’s marvelous how they can do it. Every time you turn around you pin another medal on. This is true, though.
113,114 This is interesting: It is professionalism which guarantees ongoing tradition, but it’s also a very dangerous thing. Now Clausewitz says, “It is impermissible, even harmful, to leave a great military event to purely military judgment [don’t leave it to the army, for various reasons]. The influence in the Cabinet of any military man except the commander in chief is extremely dangerous,” because they have their own interest, their own purpose, etc. And as they disagree with the government, they have the power to take over, which happens in Central America again and again. If you have the strongest army, you take over the government. Then you are the government. So here it is, he says, that’s why “it’s impermissible, even harmful, to leave a great military event to purely military judgment.” The influence in the Cabinet of any military man other than the commander in chief, who has to be represented, is very dangerous, because then it’s very easy for them to take everything over.
114 It is not the business of military men to meddle in higher politics of state. The chief military commander is the only one who should be in the Cabinet. It is harmful, impermissible, for the military even to participate there, because they have their own interests and they do things differently and impulsively. When you have the power and want to go ahead, [you say] let’s go ahead. Wars are always messed up. Nothing is going to go straight in them. This is absolutely basic with Clausewitz and important too.
114 A good example of the last, though, is Moroni getting on his high horse when he writes to Pahoran, remember? He speaks as a general in the midst of war. He blows his top and writes some very indiscreet letters. And he’s absolutely wrong, the great Moroni. He doesn’t understand what’s going on back home. He’s writing to Pahoran about conditions he isn’t aware of at all. He’s going to take over, he says. We’ll come and seize the state— we’ll expel you. I’ll march with my men and we’ll unseat you, he says in Alma 60. I’ll just take over the government myself. Pahoran writes and says, you just don’t understand what’s going on. Pahoran is very wise about it and doesn’t take any offense. He says I admire your great heartedness; that’s the way you should be. Then he explains, and then Moroni apologizes and they work very closely together from then on and are able to mop up the war. They finish it up. They just work hand in glove after that.
114 The first maxim is that [war is] “politics by other means.” The second maxim is “war is thus an act of force to compel our adversary to do our will.” That’s what you want, not to eliminate him. “War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.” That’s Clausewitz again. And, of course, that’s what it is in the Book of Mormon. Remember in this chapter here, it was entirely a personal thing between Moroni and Amalickiah, and it climaxed with Amalickiah threatening to drink Moroni’s blood. They’re that worked up. It’s a personal feud between the two, and it is so between the generals.
115 It is an act of war to compel our adversaries to do our will—a duel on a larger scale. It’s personal. Alma fights Amlici face to face. That’s a duel, but they represent the forces. Amalickiah swears, as I said, to drink Moroni’s blood. Of course the classic is Shiz versus Coriantumr when they both exterminate each other.
115 Clausewitz goes on to say, “If the enemy should choose the method of great decision by arms, our own method must on that account be changed against our will to a similar one.” If they’re going to fight, we’ve got to fight. What the enemy does, we must do. We must on that account against our own will adopt a similar method. Moroni repeatedly found that the enemy had copied his equipment and his tactics. In war, armies always look alike. They always do, of course. We must copy their methods. If you have a helmet that’s superior or a gun that’s superior, it’s only a matter of weeks until the other side has the same thing, because they can’t allow you to enjoy that advantage for any length of time. So the two sides look just alike. The Germans had very good tanks, the Mark IV, far better than a Sherman, so we quickly had to change ours to a Pershing. The Russians introduced the Shepatovka, and it worked very well. Then the Germans had it, and then we got the bazooka. The German gray uniform was superior to ours in World War II because it was less visible. All uniforms look alike now. Everybody goes around in camouflage. Their 88s were far superior to what we had, so we immediately had to counter with 150s and things like that. So what the enemies do, we have to do—change to a similar one. “If the enemy should choose the method of the great decision by arms,” we can’t do anything but reply the same.
115 Moroni repeatedly found that the enemy had copied his equipment and tactics. That’s what made the war draw out for fourteen years, because every time he got something good, the Lamanites would do the same thing. He couldn’t fool them anymore with that trick with lines or the fortifications, or the falling back, or the leading into a pocket. They caught on very quickly and did the same thing, so the war dragged on.
116 Continuing on the idea of the duel of equal parts, Clausewitz writes “The ruthless user of force who shrinks from no amount of bloodshed must gain an advantage if his opponent doesn’t do the same.” War is war, he says, and don’t try to talk about civilized war or the rules or the laws of war—that’s ridiculous. It’s a contradiction of terms. If there were rules or laws, you wouldn’t fight. You’d talk about it. When you start scratching and biting, it’s because the rules don’t hold any more. You’re not paying any attention to them. So you must be ruthless. Now Teancum and Amalickiah typify this. Well, Lehi, Moroni’s second in command, is a good example. He was a holy terror, but Teancum was the worst. Teancum was Lehi’s chief of staff, and Amalickiah typified the principal on the other side. It’s always the wicked against the wicked in the Book of Mormon, never the righteous against the wicked. It’s a duel between Amlici and Alma. We mentioned that before. Wasn’t that a good guy against a bad guy? When the war was over, they mourned terribly because they were convinced the war had been because of their wickedness. They had brought it on themselves. They weren’t fighting bad guys as good guys after all. As Mormon cou