[Mormon’s Call to Repentance]
[The Wicked Punish the Wicked in War]
[Sacred Records Removed]
[Mormon Says It All Was Not Necessary]
208 I haven’t thought of anything all day long yesterday and today except that book of Mormon, Mormon’s book—that’s the real Book of Mormon. The whole thing is there, and it’s a haunting book. It can’t leave you alone. If you see these dark circles [around my eyes], blame Mormon for that.
208 The questions are, are the Nephites stubbornly bent on doing the wrong thing? What is this everlasting harping on repentance? He won’t leave that alone. What is the wickedness that the Nephites must repent of? People fighting for their lives don’t bother with a lot of hanky-panky. That’s not what interested them. That’s just the point. The fighting is the thing; that was the wickedness. To set about deliberately and systematically killing people you have to have a mindset, and this has to be developed. You have to work up to it. Remember in the Book of Mormon how Korihor works on the people to do it. Alma repeatedly talks about the great reluctance of the Nephites to slay their brethren and the great reluctance of the Lamanites to do the same. People have to be trained and commissioned and put in order and conditioned for that sort of thing. Mormon shows us how far this mindset can go, because he [describes] it all the way to where it becomes actually a debauchery. It becomes addictive to the people; they have to have a bloodshed. This actually happens in the case of Aztecs and people like that, and he tells us what causes it. Do you remember Mormon 4:5? The cause was this: If they had not gone up against the Lamanites to war, they would not have been overcome. Then he says, “for it is the wicked that stir up the hearts of the children of men unto bloodshed.” We’re told [some of] the Lord’s first words to the Nephites were there shall be no contention among you, for all contention “is of the devil.” Somebody is stirring people up to this sort of thing, and this happens. This is what we’re told— that there is a source for it.
208 Mormon 8:41 You say, why would people go against their own best interest? Why would they do anything so insane? Well, the fact is that they do, and we are told that it is the evil one that stirs us up to that. There is such a stirring, and he tells us where it’s all leading to Mormon tells us where this is all going in the end. In the eighth chapter of Mormon he takes the roots of the trouble right back. He’s talking about us now, and he puts us into the picture with the perennial conditions there and the purpose behind everything. He tells us where it’s all leading, and with the last verse he brings us right down to the point at which we join the Nephites at this particular juncture of their history. Mormon 8:41: “Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you,” and it shall soon descend because of the things you’ve done. Well, we’re not to that yet, but this brings us right to the point.
208 The Book of Mormon tells us what we’re getting into and where it is all leading. President Kimball in his bicentennial address tells us how far we’ve gotten and where it has already led us. This is going to be required reading. I’ll have this photocopied the next time. It’ll set you back twenty cents, but it’s worth it. On the occasion of the bicentennial [of the United States] President Kimball gave this great address to the Church and to the world. He quotes familiar passages from Mormon, Moroni, and Alma in this. His talk is based on the Book of Mormon. So this is going to be required. You’ll find it very useful in the essay which you write, among other things.
209 Now, back to Mormon again; we can’t leave him alone. The constant refrain, as I said, is repent. The subject is repent of what. We saw Mormon was a very astute person. When he was eleven years old, his father took him to the town and he saw all the soldiers and the usual battles going on. It was a terrible thing. They had several battles, and then there was peace. Remember, he was a kid eleven years old. Just four years later, war broke out again, and whom did the people choose for their commander in chief? Mormon, who was going on sixteen. Does that ever happen? It’s happened lots of times. We’ll see that when we get to the Jaredites, and we can match it up against many cases in world history where this happened. Commanders as young as that have been common. But he tells us you can see why that’s so. He had a very high profile. Not only was Ammaron aware of his smartness, but he [Mormon] was a large, powerful person, very impressive, and he was always getting involved. His sympathies are so that after he’s sworn that he’ll never fight again, he does go back and fight again. He can’t leave the people alone. He must take a part in there. He was commanded to be an idle onlooker, and he wouldn’t be an idle onlooker. Finally, he broke his oath, he says, and went back again, though it was without any faith and hope at all. Yet that was his greatness of spirit. His love of the people was so great that he had to do that.
209 Mormon 1:16,17 But remember it tells us in Mormon 1:16 that he tried to preach to the people, so he had a high profile. He made himself a nuisance, and they wouldn’t listen to him—just like Abraham did, too. Well, that would certainly draw him to their attention and give him a high profile. We’re told that he was large and powerful beyond his age and a very impressive and very smart person— obviously the ablest person around. So they chose him. But they have the wrong priorities, the wrong policies, the wrong practices. There was simply no talking to them. He says in verse 17 here: “I was forbidden to preach unto them, because of the hardness of their hearts.”
209 Now this hardness, you’ll notice. What are the two expressions that are used? Hardness of heart, and what is the other having to do with the neck? The people are hard-hearted and stiff-necked. Hardness and stiffness are lack of adaptability, lack of flexibility, etc. Hardness of heart, we’re told, put a curse on their doings—just like hardness of the arteries. When you start getting old, things get hardened. They squeak and don’t work so well, and the joints are the same way. They become stiff, stiffness of joints, stiffness of neck, hardening of arteries, hardening of everything else. What is that? That’s inability to change or refusal to change, to yield, to adapt. They can’t repent, you see. So that’s the thing that holds you back, and when you reach a certain stage, when you’ve lost all flexibility and you won’t change, then it’s time to ring down the curtain. There’s no point to going on with the story because you’re not going to repent. Of course progress and everything else is progressive repentance. You have to repent. But their sins harden into policy now, just like concrete. Nothing’s going to change them, and that’s Mormon’s problem. This is what he says is going to be your problem, too. We can see it today.
209,210 Mormon 1:13 So “wickedness did prevail upon the face of the whole land,” he tells us in verse 13. Well, specifically, what wickedness? What’s he talking about? Well, he says it goes hand in hand with unbelief. They wouldn’t accept the charismatic gifts. They wouldn’t listen to the prophets. They wouldn’t trust in prayer or things like that. They were solid, practical, down-to-earth people, supposedly—materialists, positivists. For them that’s where the solution lay. We will do it our way [they said]. No other program got a hearing, we’re told. They had made up their minds; there was no point to talking to them. The result was a desperate search for economic security. It’s always going to collapse every time. Notice, putting all your money in the vault and hoping you can save it that way. See, they started burying it, but it was slippery. They couldn’t hold on to it. They were absolutely desperate for this security which they didn’t have, and they sought it, of course, in building up safe capital reserves and all those things. They had all the usual solutions that didn’t work.
210 Mormon 2:8 And again, the strength of the opposition was scary. They ran away. And then we reach a classic situation in Mormon 2:8. There are statements in Mormon here that simply knock you down. “The land was filled with robbers and with Lamanites; and notwithstanding the great destruction which hung over my people, they did not repent of their evil doings; therefore there was blood and carnage spread throughout all the face of the land, both on the part of the Nephites and also on the part of the Lamanites; and it was one complete revolution throughout all the face of the land.” That is an all-too-familiar situation. There are definite centuries in which [a complete collapse] happens—times of extermination, and we are approaching one of them. In fact, we’re in it up to our knees already. We’re getting deeper all the time.
210 Mormon 2:8-10 [A complete collapse] is what the Book of Mormon is talking about. They did not repent of their evil doings—on both sides they didn’t, neither the Nephites nor the Lamanites. They were equally bad because the only evil doings that concerned them were the evil doings on the other side so that vengeance became the name of the game. The other people are doing evil—well, they were doing evil, so we have a good case, you see. That’s the way we must think of it. They’re entirely evil, and we’re entirely right. It’s this black and white. Well, that’s the way they began to think. But then the Nephites did something we don’t do. In the verse 10 they began to repent, but it wasn’t a change of heart, he says. It was a change of policy brought on by economic disaster. Nobody could hold on to anything.
210,211 Mormon 2:10 Now we get an inner-city idyll here in verse 10—mugging, rip-offs, murder. Why not? This was their social life—”no man could keep that which was his own, for the thieves [that’s people who come in and steal], and the robbers [that’s people who rob you legitimately in white-collar crime], and the murderers, and the magic art, and the witchcraft which was in the land.” Everyone was a possible victim here. Nobody was safe. Total insecurity. And this is the way you feel today if you want to walk around in some of our inner cities. Everybody’s bedizened and befuddled by these magic arts. It’s the mystique of the gangs and the graffiti.
211 Mormon 2:11 In verse 11 notice this brooding evil, this feeling, “Thus there began to be a mourning and a lamentation in all the land because of these things.” You go back to visit an Indian village at a certain time, where they were once people of great faith, but they will have forgotten it entirely. It hit the Nephites harder than the others, we’re told, because their guilt was the greater. This mourning in the village, this tension in the village—you know when things are bad and it’s best not to go there.
212 Mormon 2:15,18 And then the terrible words in verse 15: “I saw that the day of grace was passed with them.” Well, right to the end the Lord’s going to give them plenty of opportunity to repent. This is going to be the sad thing. They’re going to have it right to the end. Anytime they want to they can change. The prime sin in which they are indulging is war “in open rebellion against their God, and heaped up as dung upon the face of the land.” It ends up as mass slaughter. As I said, many people of Mormon’s age today can make this astonishing statement [verse 18]: “A continual scene of wickedness and abominations has been before mine eyes ever since I have been sufficient to behold the ways of man.” Nothing else. Notice the nature of the wickedness here is open, public, and visible. This is quite different. It may fester underground, but this comes out. This is so open and so brash.
212 Mormon 2:24-26 It fills Mormon with sorrow [with] no prospect of improvement in this life. And here we have the great force of Mormon’s character in verse 24. He checks the flight and turns the tide to victory. They’re going to have about a dozen victories after this. They’re going to win hands down. The Nephites actually have the military advantage. So we have a Nephite victory in verse 24 and following. They win, and then in verse 26 there’s another victory. But the military situation is grim, he says, because it’s now man for man. It’s missile for missile. We count with them, you see. We’re on the same base they are.
213 Mormon 2:27-29 In verse 27 there’s another great victory for the Nephites. And they win everything back. And what does Mormon call this? A great calamity to my people. Well, what was it? Was he crazy? No. The calamity, as he explains it, is because of their wickedness and their abominations. That’s the calamity. Winning victories isn’t going to help. It’s going to justify them, make them feel all the better. So, more reasonable than many of us today, in verse 28 they make treaties. They make treaties with the Lamanites and the robbers—willing to divide the lands of their inheritance, which they’d won back. But they make a treaty and it holds. But notice in verse 29 they’re willing to accept their own lands as a gift from the Lamanites.
213 Mormon 3:2,3 And then, after all, it’s still not too late, in Mormon 3:2-3, if they’ll only repent. But they didn’t realize this. He says that they were given another chance for repentance. We have three great blessings in this life. The first is life itself, the chance to come to earth and have a body. The second is to have progeny, of course. And the third is, after that stage, the Lord allows us to live on, giving us more time to repent. As Nephi says, he extended our lifetime so we’d have more time to repent. That’s the great third boon he gives us. Spend your old age repenting—that’s the thing you have to do. Remember the first words of Christ to the Nephites? This is my gospel, that the Father calls upon all men everywhere to repent. But people haven’t the slightest inclination to repent today if they can find other people doing wrong.
214 But notice he keeps hammering away, repent. He saw that in this peace the Lord was giving them a chance for repentance, but they didn’t realize it. No one can ask for anything better than that, than these three blessings—life itself, progeny, and a special time for repentance. They turned it down. They blew it again. Their eyes were on the Lamanites whose king sent them a formal challenge to meet them on the traditional battleground, Desolation, near the narrow pass. It doesn’t say neck of land; it’s near the narrow pass. As I said, the Isthmus of Panama is not a narrow pass. No, they wouldn’t consider that. They said, we have more important matters to consider.
214 Mormon 3:7-10 But with that philosophy, however, in verses 7-8 there’s a Nephite victory, and another Nephite victory. They’ve been winning. Their policy is paying off. Why should they listen to Mormon here? These are great morale boosters. Now they take a sacred oath: “before the heavens” they’re going to do the noble thing and avenge the blood of their brethren on their enemies, etc. So they were out for the stock solution to the problem in [verse 10]. We’ve had these Lamanites on our hands all these years. How do we solve the Lamanite problem?
214 Mormon 3:10; 1 Nephi 2:23,24 “And they did swear . . . that they would go up to battle against their enemies, and would cut them off from the face of the land.” That would settle it once and for all—get rid of the Lamanites. And when they did that, that was it. That settled it as far as the Lord was concerned. The Lord told Nephi in 1 Nephi 2:23-24 that it would never work, you see. Right at the beginning of the Book of Mormon in the second chapter, the Lord already tells Nephi that solution is never, never going to work: “For behold, in that day that they shall rebel against me [the Lamanites, descendants of Laman and Lemuel], I will curse them even with a sore curse, and they shall have no power over thy seed except they shall rebel against me also [that will give them power]. And if it so be that they rebel against me, they shall be a scourge unto thy seed, to stir them up in the ways of remembrance.” I’m going to keep the Lamanites in place all the time as a scourge “to stir them up in the ways of remembrance.” You’ll never be able to beat them except by righteousness, by doing what’s right. They’ll have no power over you [in that case]. Don’t worry about them— you’re not going to beat them on the field. They’ll always be stronger than you are, but they’ll have no power unless you rebel against me. Then they’ll have power over you. But the only way to meet that, you see, is, “And if... they rebel against me, they shall be a scourge unto thy seed, to stir them up in the ways of remembrance.” So that’s what they’re doing. They’re stirring them, all right, but they just make them madder and madder. They have this one man, Mormon, trying to stand out and say, can’t you see the point of all this? Can’t you see what you’re doing? But they were out for the stock solution to cut them off.
215 Mormon 3:16; Mormon 5:2 Well, for Mormon that did it. He would have nothing more to do with them. His love and loyalty were boundless, as he says in the next verse, but he knew all along that he couldn’t save them. Now here’s your paradox. I prayed with all my heart, but without faith [he said]. Do you pray without faith? He prayed with all his heart, but without faith, because he knew they would not change. And later when his great heart overcomes his decision, he accepts command again. He tells us in Mormon 5:2, “But behold, I was without hope.” He accepted the commission again but without hope. Here’s a man leading his people without faith and without hope. We’re not going to get far without faith and hope. But he has charity, oceans of charity. That’s the thing, giving something and expecting nothing in return at all, and he does. He knows it’s a losing cause. As C. S. Gordon says, that is the essence of the heroic position—the hero who does the right and heroic thing knowing that he’s living for a lost cause, that he will never be able to win and is doomed.
215 Mormon 3:13 He says three times he pulled them through and gave them another chance. To do what? To repent, of course, (verse 13). But for them it was only another chance to “beat the damn Lamanites.” We’re going to get them this time. But this was the last straw when they swore this ringing oath in the manner of our stock heroes to avenge the blood of their brethren. At that point God gave Mormon a direct command. He said you’re out of it. Don’t have anything to do with it. “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay; and because this people repented not [when they had the chance] after I had delivered them, behold, they shall be cut off from the face of the earth,” not just the face of the land. They’ll be finished. They’ll become extinct.
215 Mormon 3:16,17 Well, they repented not. Repented not of what? Of what they were doing. Their behavior and policy were all absorbed in one thing, the activities of war. The Lord commanded Mormon not to move against his enemies in verse 16, to be a witness and a first-hand observer for our benefit, and for our full consideration before we make our big moves in the last days, as it says in verse 17. “Therefore I write unto you, Gentiles, and also unto you, house of Israel, when the work shall commence, that ye shall be about to prepare [notice commence, about to prepare] to return to the land of your inheritance.” Just at the point when we’re poised and ready to take things over. And they haven’t taken over. We have not gone back to the land of the inheritance of Zion, and the Israelis have not reclaimed the land of Israel that had been promised to Abraham. So this is just the first step we’re in now, but things move very fast.
215 Mormon 3:18,19 Then everybody must know this, he says in verse 18 and following—all of Israel and the remnants of Lehi’s people. These passages now are pure prophecy. These were prophesied way back 150 years ago, and we’ve seen it has followed right down the line. We thought it would never be. In my day this sounded far away and long ago. It was a romantic story—the story of the Indians, etc.—but didn’t apply to us. There was just too much bloodshed, etc. Things like that don’t happen in civilized societies. That was before World Wars I and II.
215 Mormon 3:20 What should they have been thinking of instead of war? Well, Mormon 3:20 tells us: “And these things doth the Spirit manifest unto me; therefore I write unto you all. And for this cause I write unto you, that ye may know that ye must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, yea, every soul.” This is what you should be concerned about, he says here. It’s the individual obligation to do the right thing. We’re going to be judged on an individual basis, not on membership or affiliation or office or patriotism, but for our “works, whether they be good or evil.” The gospel will be made accessible to all those who read this, at that time, he says verse 21. They will have the gospel, the Bible. They’ll have all the rest of it by the time they get this, and Mormon’s message to one and all is repent and prepare to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. That’s where the real problem is. As opposed to this we have the futile slogan, “there’s no substitute for victory.”
215,216 Mormon 4:5 Well, the Nephites in the next chapter start losing in a big way. Wickedness and folly ruin them, and Mormon 4:5 says it was because they took the offensive that they lost everything. But they had to do it [they felt]. They had to judge and they had to punish the Lamanites for their many offenses. That was their undoing. Leave the punishment up to God. Mormon 4:5: “But, behold, the judgments of God will overtake the wicked [don’t let that worry you]; and it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished.” We should leave it all up to God then and not try to police the world—though it’s a great boon, as you know, to the military industrial complex.
216 Mormon 4:8-10,11 Then in Mormon 4:8 there’s another Nephite victory. That proved Mormon was wrong, premature, disloyal. Their policy is working after all. Why should they give it up? Oh, boy. They were more than a match for the Lamanites. The slaughter went on on both sides, as it does today, and the Nephites stuck to their policy, which is called persisting in wickedness continually. That what he calls in [verse 10]. This, of course, is the shedding of innocent blood, which every war does [particularly a] perpetual war like Vietnam. There are those who delight in the shedding of blood continually; it becomes addictive. But if one delights in watching the shedding of blood, is such a person innocent? So to delight in the shedding of blood is to delight in the spectacle as well as in the participation.
216 Mormon 4:12-15 In verse 12 he said there never had been greater wickedness. Well, there was a war going on. That was their justification. And it was all perfectly legal, everything they were doing. It was the laws of war, as I said. They could feel perfectly moral about it because they had declared war, though we make wars without even declaring them. Congress must declare war, you know, but we don’t bother about that anymore. In verse 14, as in the case of the Aztecs, there’s an uncontrollable appetite for the shedding of blood, which they justify on religious grounds. They ritualize it. They use these slaughterings as sacrifices on religious grounds, a horrible thing. It’s so bad it must be holy to be tolerated, so we have Satanism and things like that. But it went all the way. Naturally this made the Nephites angry—talk about righteous rage. If they do that to your women and children, wouldn’t you be righteously enraged? Well, they were righteously enraged here. And they won another victory in verses 14-15. That proves that revenge is an effective stimulant. It is that. War and atrocity stories pay off to the troops. It’s good for motivation. But a year later the Nephites [begin to] dissolve “as a dew before the sun.” Just like that.
216,217 Mormon 4:23 Then in Mormon 4:23 there was a third fateful visit to the hill of Shim up north. Mormon is the only one willing to repent. And he repents backwards, you see. His humanity overcomes all his other feelings. He repents of his oath he’d made; he shouldn’t have taken it in the first place. We’re not supposed to swear at all. He disobeys God’s command. They thought that Mormon was the miracle man, that he could deliver them. He would save them; he was the man that had won three times already. Why did he give in to them? Well, why did Socrates not leave Athens? His friends all came and told him, up north we have plenty of friends who will be only too glad to accept you there. The richest men in Athens wanted to help him out. The doctors of the schools had ganged up against him, but he wouldn’t leave Athens. He could have left Athens to save his life. They said, well, why don’t you save the Athenians from committing this great crime in putting an innocent man to death?
217 Mormon 5:2 He said, look, I’ve been living in Athens all my life. I knew the kind of people these were. They’re my people. Now is not the time to skip out, you see. He’s like Socrates. I would be a hypocrite now if I ran out after all these 70 years I’ve been here and haven’t left you. I knew what was going on here. I’m not that kind of a fool. Now is not the time for me to withdraw. And it’s the same thing with Mormon. I’ve known these people and I’ve loved them all along. They are fools, but they’re my people and I love them [he might have said], so he went back. But he says in verse 2 that it was without hope and without faith, but with charity. He asked for no return. He never said, I’m doing this for your own good. Here is the smartest, cleverest, most great-hearted figure in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon deserves to be named after him; he tells us the whole truth and nothing but the truth here.
217 Mormon 5:3-8 But what happens in [verse 3]? Another victory, and then another one, and then another one. There are three victories in a row here. Twice more they gained the advantage. The military advantage has often been theirs, but that was not the issue; he says in verse 6, “it was all in vain”—not what becomes of them, but what they become. And he’s not enjoying this at all in verse 8, but he must make his report. God has commanded it. These things must become common knowledge to the Indians and the Gentiles on the land. It’s not enough for them to turn away with the idea that there can be no hope at all. That would turn them off. We mustn’t go too far with this, because there is always that hope. He says, that’s why I’m not going to tell you the whole story. It would turn you off. It would turn your stomach. You would feel lost in that case, when men can become so vile. But Lehi’s people, the Jews, Israel, and the Gentiles, he says, must realize where their only advantage lies. All this has not been necessary. He says that’s the point. That’s what so sad.
217,218 In Mormon 5:11 he says they will realize that it might all have been so different, “For I know that such will sorrow for the calamity of the house of Israel; yea, they will sorrow for the destruction of this people; they will sorrow that this people had not repented that they might have been clasped in the arms of Jesus.” It might have been so different. They didn’t have to go through with that sort of thing. It will play a role in restoring the Jews, he says, to the land of their inheritance. They’re having dire troubles and approaching disaster because they won’t see the principles set forth by Mormon here. They’re not reading the Book of Mormon now. There’s more to come, in other words. We’re told here that there is more to come. They have not yet suffered in the land as the Nephites did in theirs, before they learned their lesson, you see. They’ve suffered plenty, though.