The Hopeful Message Hidden in the Nephite Genocide
The title is deliberately provocative, obviously, but there’s a real point there that came out in Sunday School.
4th Nephi through Mormon 6 makes very grim reading. It’s more horrifying when you think that the Book of Mormon was written for our day, as Elder Bednar confirmed recently. Here is the good news. The end of the Nephites was and is awful but they also could have stopped it at any time. They had multiple chances to repent. If they had taken any one of the off-ramps they would have been fine. Perhaps they could even have repented on the very morning of the last battle. The tragedy of the Book of Mormon is the tragedy of the addict who doesn’t even enjoy the addiction any more but who just won’t stop.
Here’s a way of looking at it. Suppose we had a book of scripture that was written about one particular person in Moses’ time who was bitten by a snake but refused to look at the brass serpent representing Christ because “of the easiness of the way.” The book of scripture could be pretty hard reading as it chronicled the person dying. The wound turning black, the creeping paralysis, the person turning pale, the struggle to breathe, the death rattles. It could be arbitrarily awful to read. But the ultimate message, as applied to oneself, would still be optimistic. All of this can be avoided if you just look.
That is essentially what we have in the book of Mormon chapters 1-6.
But then the horror becomes a different kind of horror. Because they did all this to themselves! Their will to damnation was so strong that they would rather experience the worst that human depravity has to offer rather than trust and repent. So how can you liken that to yourself? Pretty easily, actually. The Nephite relationship with sin in their last days was nothing unusual or different from our own. It is a matter of degree, not of kind. However it starts out, sin always becomes that gross and meaningless and horrible. That is sin’s very nature. Because if it weren’t that way, it wouldn’t be sin.
Jacob G.
November 5, 2024
“drunken with anger, as man who is drunken with wine” is the way the Book of Mormon so poetically describes it. Things sure look different when you are under the influence of sin and in rebellion against God.
Zen
November 5, 2024
This is why I suspect Trump will win reelection – because we are going to be given every opportunity to not self-destruct. Perhaps I will do a post later on the prophecies for the US.
I don’t think Trump is General Mormon or Moroni. But he may help us hold the hordes off for a bit.
All that said, I have been having a foreboding that a storm is coming. I had a similar premonition before Covid, but I am not sure this storm is necessarily bad. I am not prophesing anything. This might be entirely personal, or not. I don’t know. I just feel storm clouds on the horizon.
G.
November 5, 2024
Whenever I pray, I get told that all the warning signs I see are real and I’m right to prepare but everything is going to be great.
Temples on Mars, kids running happily down every street, happy wedding, happy marriages, the land blooming like a rose, medical miracles, sanity everywhere, peace for every land … don’t rule any of that.
I tell all my friends that they need to do some advance preparation for eucatastrophes. Don’t get caught entirely flatfooted when the skies rain gold coins .
Charles D
November 5, 2024
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
Eric
November 5, 2024
Neal A. Maxwell:
Much as I lament the gathering storms, there will be some usefulness in them. Events will help to draw fresh attention to God’s higher ways and His kingdom, which is to “become fair as the sun, and clear as the moon” (D&C 105:31).
Individuals and nations will continue to choose what they want, but they cannot alter the ultimate consequences of what they want.
Therefore, in this hastened ripening process, let us not be surprised that the tares are looking more like tares all the time. During this time when nations are in distress, with perplexity, there will actually be some redemptive turbulence: “For the kingdom of the devil must shake, and they which belong to it must needs be stirred up unto repentance” (2 Ne. 28:19).