This week's Come Follow Me study covered Alma 53-63. I had been looking forward to reaching these chapters as it contains one of the most beloved stories of the Book of Mormon, Helaman leading his army of 2,000 stripling warriors because their parents had made a covenant that they would never pick up their weapons of war and shed bled again. This is not the only incredible story in this section of scripture so a quick recap:
- Pahoran, who was a good and righteous chief judge, has just replaced his father. King-men used this opportunity to try to overthrow the judges and put a king in place. King-men were high born and were basically looking out for themselves. Freeman opposed them.
- Moroni had to waste precious resources defeating the King-men, who were happy to let the Lamanites ravish their lands since the couldn't put one of their own in place as king. In causing this strife, the king-men weakened the armies that had to direct their energies elsewhere, and the Lamanites were able to steal away many of their fortified cities
- 2000 stripling warriors took the place of their fathers to help in the war against the Lamanites, who want to steal their land. They did this to protect the people who had taken them in and protected them. They asked Helaman to lead their army.
- The Nephites had many successes with great leaders like Moroni, Helaman, Teancum, and Lehi at the head of their armies. They employed many clever methods that the Lamanites later tried to employ unsuccessfully. One of them was using the Stripling Warriors to lure the Lamanites out of their stronghold. Another was getting them drunk.
- Pahoran and Moroni exchange epistles in which Moroni learns about the king-men uprising and sends armies to help Pahoran.
A Love for their Brethern
This time as I read these verses, what struck me in Alma 53 was that the Ammonites, or the people that had made the covenant to never shed bled again, (also known as former Lamanites, or the "Anti-Nephi-Lehies") were ready to break their oath because they were watching the very people that had saved them from the Lamanites and protected them, now being assaulted by those Lamanites. The Nephites were now in "the most dangerous circumstances" (Alma 53:9) and the Ammonites knew the would have "fallen into the hands of their brethern had it not been for the pity and the exceeding love which Ammon and his brethern had had for them" (Alma 53:11).
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/image/anti-nephi-lehies-bury-weapons-0c59e57?lang=eng
They did not want to break their oath yet they were "moved with compassion" toward their brothers that had protected them. This is when Helaman convinced them not to risk losing their souls by breaking their oath. Helaman knew the dangers of the Lamanites but his love of God's children and his love of God was so great that he knew they should not break their oath, that there was another when. When the 2,000 sons that had had grown up and were not under the oath asking Helaman to lead them, they agreed. In each case, the Ammonites, the sons of the Ammonites, and Helaman were motived by a love for their brethern and a love of God.
While the parents of these stripling warriors had much faith, remember that the wars between the Nephites and Lamanites, and also a dissenting group within the Nephites, the king-men and the freeman, had resulted in many deaths and many losses. I imagine that the fathers and mothers of these stripling warriors were proud of their sons but also they must have been a little scared. After all, being righteous did not guarantee being protected from death. In Alma 60:13, Moroni, chief captain over the army writes to Paharon, chief governor of the land, and states,
"For the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgement may come upon the wicked; therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost because they are slain; but behold, they do not enter into the rest of Lord their God."
Their Parents Taught them Faith
The stripling warriors had never fought before but there were two particularly large battles against the Lamanites that emerged with the Stripling Warriors, and each time, no lives were lost among these 2,000.
I love the respect and love from Helaman to these warriors in which he called them his sons, when he wrote to Moroni about them. He later talks about their obedience and faith and how it led to success in battle:
"Yea, and they did obey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their mothers had taught them." (Alma 57:21).
What are these words?
Helaman explained,
"... they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it." (Alma 56:47-48).
Liberty, not Bloodshed
The scriptures were emphatic about the motives between the Lamanites and the Nephites. The Lamanites were focused on vengeance against perceived wrongs taught to them by Laman and Lemuel. They were led by a king (Amalickiah) who had earned that crown by deceit and by slowly poisoning the previous king. The Nephites had one goal, their title of Liberty.
When Helaman writes to Moroni to recount how they had successfully defended their cities and taken back the land in their region, he restates the same things that Moroni wrote in the Title of Liberty,
"... the Lord our God did visit us with assurances that he would deliver us; yea, insomuch that he did speak peace to our souls, and did grant unto us great faith, and did cause us that we should hope for our deliverance in him. And we did take courage with our small force which we had received, and were fixed with a determination to conquer our enemies, and to maintain our lands, and our possessions, and our wives, and our children, and the cause of our liberty" (Alma 58:11-12).
While the Lamanites were taking Nephite woman and children captive, and slaying Nephite men, the Nephites were taking men captive in hopes of future trades. In fact, in Alma 62:27, they let Lamanite prisoners to make a covenant to join the people of Ammon as free people. They were interested in capture and destruction. Moroni found several opportunities to take back strongholds without killing. In one case, he tricked the Lamanites into becoming drunk (by sending Laman, an old former servant of the former Lamanite king) who lied and said he had escaped with wine. Moroni used that opportunity to free his people, not to destroy:
"But behold, this was not the desire of Moroni; he did not delight in murder or bloodshed but he delighted in the saving of his people from destruction; and for this cause he might not bring upon him injustice, he would not fall upon the Lamanites and destroy them in their drunkness." (Alma 55:19).
Moroni explained himself simply to Pahoran.
"I seek not for power, but to pull it down. I seek not for honor of the world, but for the glory of my God, and the freedom and welfare of my country." (Alma 60:36).
They Grew Weak when they Forgot, and Found Happiness when they Remembered
I talked in my previous post about the amazing amount of preparation that Moroni put into protecting his people. It's frustrating that he built up and fortified every city so well, only to have many of them stolen away by the Lamanites. Of course, we learn in these chapters that Moroni takes many of the cities back, and then Helaman does the same with all of the cities in his area. However, how could this happen?
It takes me back to what I discussed in the previous post, that we must prepare always and watch always. There were three contentions mentioned during this set of scriptures, one that was not described in detail, one with the king-men trying to repeatedly overthrow the chief judge and put one of their own in place as king, and one with the people of Morianton trying to claim a part of the land of Lehi, unrighteously. Moroni writes in frustration to Pahoran that "had it not been for the war which broke among us" (specifically referencing the king-men), "had they been true to the cause of our freedom, and united with us, and gone forth against our enemies ... if we had gone forth against them in the strength of the Lord, we should have dispersed our enemies."
By Alma 62 the king-men had been quelled, and the people of Nephi began to prosper again, in fact, it says they grew "exceedingly rich." The key here, though, was that when they put their title of liberty first, when they looked to God, they were happy.
"But notwithstanding their riches, or their strength, or their prosperity, they were not lifted up in the pride of their eyes; neither were they slow to remember the Lord their God; but they did humble themselves exceedingly before him.
"Yea, they did remember how great things the Lord had done for them, that he had delivered them from death, and from bonds, and from prisons, and from all manner of afflictions, and he had delivered them out of the hands of their enemies.
"And they did pray unto the Lord their God continually, insomuch that the Lord did bless them, according to his word, so that they did wax strong and prosper in the land." (Alma 62:49-51)
I leave my thoughts by rewinding from the 39th year of the reign of the judges from which the book of Alma ends, back to Alma 50 when "there never was a happier time among the people of Nephi, since the days of Nehpi, than in the days of Moroni, yea, even at this time, in the twenty and first year of the reignt of the judges." (Alma 50:23).
May we look at these two times of happiness and prosperity and remember that during these times, the people were looking to God, they were not caught up in pride, and they were constantly preparing and fortifying themselves both physically and spiritually.
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