Government
Families and Tribes
[B of M Consists of Seven Different Tribes]
21 3 Nephi 6:5 A strange thing has happened, you see, very disturbing. Everything was going so well. They’d come through a terrible time; then everything was going too well. It all “came up roses”; everything was happy. Then we’re told in 3 Nephi 6:5 that things couldn’t be better. There was nothing to keep them from being completely happy. There were no economic, social, or any other kinds of problems except in themselves—that was the only trouble. And almost immediately things started going bad. It tells us the cause of it was what? We’ve already seen that. But in that case, what do you do? Isn’t that a remarkable parallel to things now? What are you going to do with the incompatibility of two good things here?
21 See, the essence of tragedy is the incompatibility of two good things, not of bad things. It’s not the black hats and the white hats against each other at all. There’s no such thing in the Book of Mormon. In the Land of Promise the promise is what? The promise is a blessing and a curse, never mentioned apart. The curse always comes with the blessing. The fact that [the blessing] is peculiar to this land doesn’t mean we have it sewed up. We have our choice of being blessed or cursed.
21 The essence of a Greek tragedy lies in the choice between two necessary things.
22 What is the solution? Well, it’s in 3 Nephi 6:20. You’ve got to have angels come. That’s the only thing that will help you. It’s got to come from the outside. But it isn’t angels here. “And there began to be men inspired from heaven and sent forth.” And then the question is, were these angels? No, men can be inspired by heaven without even having direct revelation. They can be inspired by heaven and go forth, preaching boldly when they see how things are. Can we count on that solution? Well, the angel has already come for our particular crisis. Who was the angel? Moroni? He’s already come; he’s given us the record here. He’s given it all to us; it’s all set out in black and white for us here. Now we recognize that it’s perfectly valid what’s said here. I mean it fits us like a glove. It never did when I was younger. The missionaries pushed the Book of Mormon as a romance that told us the story of the Indians, etc. Red man, why do you always roam? It was a romantic novel. They almost took it that way, you see. That was the appeal. It’s a very different story today.
22,23 So they were men inspired from heaven, it says. They were not angels and not direct [revelation], but they were inspired from heaven, inspired from above. And what was the reaction here? (We’ve had Moroni.) The next verse tells us: Many of the people were exceedingly angry and chiefly their chief judges who were high priests and lawyers. Sister Laver, why would they get angry? Not just angry, but absolutely red hot, exceedingly angry. Who were they and why would they be angry? Well, what was the reaction to Moroni? We said Moroni came. What were people mad at Joseph Smith for? And they were plenty mad at him, weren’t they? They gave him an awful time, from the time he was a kid, right from the beginning. But what were they mad at? They weren’t mad at him; they were mad at Moroni. If he hadn’t claimed to see an angel, he wouldn’t have been in any trouble at all. It was the idea of Moroni coming that really set them on their ear—telling them they were all wrong. What followed from that was devastating. They wouldn’t take it. Well, this has happened all the time. Do you remember some other people who were given a bad time by the clergy, the scribes and the Pharisees, the lawyers and the elders? Abinadi. On the same question, besides Abinadi what other great prophet and teacher was given a bad time by the scribes, the Pharisees, and the elders of the Jews? Jesus Christ.
23,24 3 Nephi 6:22 We see in verse 22 they couldn’t do anything about it. They had a limit to their authority. What couldn’t they do here? What was the limit on their authority in verse 22. What didn’t they have any control over? They didn’t have any control over killing them? The laws of capital punishment were under strict control. They had strict restrictions on capital punishment, the rule being that nobody could be executed without what? Without a warrant signed by the governor. Today, who can give pardons in our society? The governor and the president are the only two.
24 3 Nephi 6:23 How are they going to get around the troublemakers here? Notice verse 23. They’re going to engage in covert operations. They have the power and the authority, but this does not give them the constitutional right. Well, sometimes it’s “necessary” to stretch the constitution. These people are a nuisance, you see. We’ll just get rid of them quietly, and then it will be announced when it’s over. Nobody will be the worse off; they can’t do anything about it. Well, this is the typical covert operation, a thing into which we’ve drifted quite a bit in this country. Again, you see, this is a [situation] where the Book of Mormon is very relevant here. This is how they get around it, getting rid of troublemakers.
24 3 Nephi 6:26,27 They were going to be brought up and tried, and probably convicted. Verse 26: “They were taken and brought up before the judge, to be judged [so the trial was set for them to be tried; there was going to be big frontpage news] of the crime which they had done.” Well, they weren’t going to put up with that, because it didn’t look good for them, it tells us here. They belonged to the establishment; this was standard procedure. But what about the judges that were going to judge them? They had connections with the judges who were going to judge them.
24,25 3 Nephi 6:27 The joke is that the judges themselves belong to the establishment. How are they connected? Well, family connections. Verse 27: “Almost all the lawyers and the high priests did gather themselves together.” What would you expect them to do in this case, Brother McNary? The judges are in on it. As soon as they say something like kindreds, and you say family, then what do you expect? It’s not going to be just a government investigation, is it? Because they know each other. They’re a closed group. They exchange with each other, you see. This is aristocracy. And how did these kindreds get to be associated? Well, of course, by intermarrying. You get all this pride and wealth, etc., and then what do you do? You don’t just go and marry anybody. So you get this closed [unit], and this is what you have here with these kindreds.
25 Jacob 1:13 In the Book of Mormon you have the seven clans. They remain throughout, but they don’t remain the government. They remain subdued. They’re there and they’re the real basis of personal relationships. This is where decisions are made, etc. If you look at Jacob 1:13, you see right in the beginning that’s the way they organized. He tells us here, “Now the people which were not Lamanites were Nephites; nevertheless, they were called Nephites, Jacobites, Josephites, Zoramites, Lamanites, Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites”—seven different tribes representing seven different types of family. Zoram probably wasn’t of Israel at all or he wouldn’t have been the servant to Laban. And Ishmael with that name [probably wasn’t]. Remember, Ishmael was the great rival of Isaac. Ishmael was a favorite Arab name. They had the Nephites and the Lamanites and the Jacobites and Josephites. These are all sorts of people that were mixed in, because when they joined up they had their family backgrounds, and they kept them. It’s the form of seven tribes—the very same thing that has been shown by a German [scholar]. He wrote a very good study on ancient tribes, but seven is the number of tribes to make it official for various reasons. We have seventy to represent the seventy nations of the earth and the seven presidents of Seventy. They represent the normal distribution of the human race in sevens.
26 3 Nephi 6:28 So what did they do here in 3 Nephi 6:28? They entered into a covenant. This is very serious. A covenant means it’s going further than just being relations. What is a covenant? To destroy the government, to take down the chief judge, to destroy the rights of the people, and set up a king. What does the word covenant come from? It comes from the Latin CONVENIRE. It means “to meet at a certain place.” CON means “to come together,” and VENIR means “to come.” You come together at a certain time and a certain place, you see. That’s an appointment, and there you make an agreement. So that’s what a covenant is. So they came together at a certain time and a certain place and agreed to set up a government within a government. The covenant would make them that—to covenant “to combine against all righteousness.” Well, righteousness is an abstract term. Who would ever want to combine against all righteousness? This is the way the editor reads it. But what is their program? What does it mean by that?
26,27 3 Nephi 6:29 “Therefore they did ... enter into a covenant to destroy them, and to deliver those who were guilty of murder from the grasp of justice.” Well, the whole thing was to liberate these justices, so they were to stop the trial in other words. They were going to have this very serious trial, and they were willing to wreck everything just to avoid standing trial. We’re not going to be tried by you people, they said. So, [they did it] in order to elude the grasp of justice, which was about to be administered to them according to the constitution. See, they were going to have to suffer the full force of the law, and they were going to use various ways of getting out of it. They had great advantage here because they controlled most of the offices in the government. And their program was to get rid of the people of the Lord, while escaping the arm of the law, which nearly had them.
27,28 3 Nephi 7:1 Now we’ve got the seventh chapter here. Are things going to go happy there? What is the standard solution now preferred to the problem of taking over great power? How do they do it? Here it is, you see, “They did destroy upon the judgement-seat, yea, did murder the chief judge of the land.” They “did murder the chief judge of the land. And the people were divided one against another.”
28 . 3 Nephi 7:2 Now the Book of Mormon has this breaking up. What are they going to do, now they don’t have the central government? Does it tell us here? How did they break up?. What’s going to happen to them? They destroyed the government, but did they just scatter in all directions, every man for himself? No. They had an organization already in place. They had an infrastructure already that had been there all along. What was that structure? It was the tribes. We saw that way back in Jacob; they really identified themselves by tribes. It doesn’t talk about those having any authority or government. It says they bore the names of their tribes, and you can be sure they bore them proudly. They were rivals and this sort of thing. They’ve had them all along, so they have something to fall back on, and it’s tribes.
28 3 Nephi 7:2,3 “And thus they did destroy the government of the land.” This is the main thing here; they actually got rid of their central government. Well, they’re soon going to regret it bitterly, what they have done. What was their objection to it, incidentally? Well, we’ll get to that in a minute. Now the result wasn’t instant confusion, as we were just noting here, but immediately separating into tribes. That implies that they were already in place and going. The tribal system was the infrastructure, and that’s so with almost all American Indian tribes. They have clans and phratries. They’re the more important; they’re your family, you see. We read in the third verse that the tribes were already organized and appointed and had their chiefs already. They became independent tribes.
29 3 Nephi 7:5 So every tribe appointed a leader here [in 3 Nephi 7]. It tells us there were no wars as yet. Well, why should there be wars among tribes? Would you think that a tribal organization would incline people to wars? Yes, the tribes are very [enduring] because of family pride. We must be a little better than you.
30,31 3 Nephi 7:6 “And the regulations of the government were destroyed [that was what they were after, you see], because of the secret combination.” They carried on their underground. Notice, we would call this privatization. They took it for themselves, and out went the regulations. So happy, happy day. What were they supposed to regulate? Notice, it tells us what they were supposed to regulate right here—the secret combinations and their friends and kindreds. Those were the very secret combinations which were not answerable to the government. They were therefore outlaws, so the class and family system enabled these deregulators to operate more effectively because of the secrecy, the closeness of family ties. They could keep things to themselves. As we said, tribal societies are exclusive. They lead to rivalry, hostility, family pride, great inbreeding.
31 This happens, this mutual destruction. It’s destroying [the people] in the Book of Mormon. Remember the Jaredites? Remember the Nephites and the Lamanites? We’re going to have them destroying each other here. We have people getting rid of the regulations against insider trading or whatever it may be, and this makes it possible.
31 3 Nephi 7:7 “And they did cause great contention in the land, insomuch that the more righteous part of the people had nearly all become wicked.” Nonexistent, as far as that goes—wicked. They were no longer righteous. What happens to a righteous person who becomes wicked? He disappears. This great contention was inevitable. Was it between the righteous and the wicked? This is the point. No, there weren’t any righteous people around. They had gone—they were hiding under the rock. There were hardly any; it was an extinct species, it tells us here. Notice, “the more righteous part of the people had nearly all become wicked; yea, there were but few righteous among them.” They were not going to be heard; they didn’t have a chance. Well, things were in a desperate situation now, you see. We’re building up to something—you can see that. Incidentally, are the righteous a threatened species today? Well, how do we know? Who determines whether they are or not? It’s going to be a very interesting problem. We think we’re terribly righteous, as far as that goes.
31 3 Nephi 7:8-10 Then Mormon marvels at it: “And thus six years had not passed away [see, he’s as surprised as we are] since the more part of the people had turned from their righteousness.” Then he quotes the Old Testament pattern. They do that, because that’s the nature of a dog and that’s the nature of a sow, to wallow in the mire. Now, the secret combination—this is an interesting thing here. The secret combinations were not the same as the tribes, you notice. They were those who were opposed to the government before they broke into tribes, before the putsch. They were the old king-men who had turned up. We won’t have to review that. A large part of the Book of Mormon has been taken up with these king-men with their pride and their nobility. Moroni said his purpose in life was to pull down the pride, nobility, and wealth of these king-men. They were the aristocratic, rich, extreme right, etc. (if it looks like an elephant, call it an elephant). These were the hard-core king people, but they turned out to be a minority. They weren’t the ones who overthrew the government. They were a minority against the tribes with their own leaders. And after it was too late, the rest of the people regretted what had happened. This is a terrible thing.
31,32 3 Nephi 78:11 “They were not so strong in number as the tribes of the people, who were united together.” They had a common hatred. They hated the king-men more than they hated each other, so that was their unity. That was their sacred bond. So “they were united in the hatred of those who had entered into a covenant to destroy the government.” They regretted it now. They said those rascals are responsible for it. They [the king-men] wrecked the central government and they hated them. They started making things pretty hot for them so they would have to get out. They missed the central government, and they hated each other worse than that. We get an interesting setup here. As usual, the king-men were joined by a steady influx of dissenters when they went out. This was the system that always happened. You find these dissenters all the way through the Book of Mormon have an important aspect regarding race.
32 3 Nephi 7:13 What about verse 13, about where the king-men went? What’s significant in [verse 13] on a very basic question of the Book of Mormon? “And so speedy was their march that it could not be impeded until they had gone forth out of the reach of the people.” They went a long way, it tells us here. They went out by themselves; out of reach, “And thus ended the thirtieth year.” Here you have a large group going out, going far and fast so they can’t be reached again. Now what’s happening there? It’s like a transplant of some sort, isn’t it? What would happen when they went out there? This casts a significant light on the race question in the Book of Mormon; it’s the sort of thing that was going on. They had this big country to go out in, and they would go out and settle there. That’s what they did, and then they would meet up with others, etc. This thing had been going on from the beginning. The result is you get a very complicated race picture, racial and ethnic mix, in the Book of Mormon. Why is that significant as far as evidence is concerned?
32 What argument does that answer that’s always been brought against the Book of Mormon? They say, “Look, everybody’s a Nephite or a Lamanite.” Do we believe that? Does the Book of Mormon preach that Lehi’s people were the only people that ever came here? No. It gives us a very complicated ethnic mix, and that’s what we’re getting here. And there’s a great deal about that in the Book of Mormon which we overlook. These things are going on, these connections. How long does it take to make another race? Well, chapters 7 and 8 are good. What we’re looking for now we’ve never looked for before. It’s the parallels to the day we’re living in now—not only the events, but the atmosphere of it. You feel that it’s coming home to you. This is dismally familiar. This is where I came in. I wish it wasn’t like this. It didn’t used to be like this, but it is now. So watch sharp.