Steadfastness and an Uneasy Peace
Book of Mormon Notes - Friday, December 1, 2023, Helaman 6
Like their great predecessors the sons of Mosiah, the sons of Helaman became instruments in the hands of God and worked miracles that brought many Lamanites unto repentance and conversion to Jesus Christ. Like the Ammonites who preceded them, these Lamanites also became more righteous than the Nephites. In fact, the Lamanites’ growth in righteousness provides a stark contrast to the Nephites descent into greater wickedness. Mormon makes this contrast explicit time and time again, just as Jacob had done when his own people began to indulge themselves somewhat in wicked practices. (See Jacob 3:5-7)
Jacob taught his people that the Lamanites were more righteous than they were because they kept the commandment of the Lord to have only one wife, and husbands and wives loved each other and their children. Mormon teaches us that the arighteousness of the Lamanites exceeded that of the Lamanites because of their firmness and their steadiness in the faith. In retrospect we can see how Mormon contrasts the firmness and steadiness of the righteous (Nephi, the Ammonites, the Lamanites, etc.) to the wavering and unsteadiness of the wicked (Laman and Lemuel, the Nephites, and other who churned so rapidly through the pride cycle).
Remember Lehi’s prayer and blessing to his son Lemuel?
And he also spake unto Lemuel: O that thou mightest be like unto this valley, afirm and bsteadfast, and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord! (1 Nephi 2:10)
Remember King Benjamin’s exhortation and invitation to his people?
Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, that you may be brought to heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of him who created all things, in heaven and in earth, who is God above all. Amen. (Mosiah 5:15)
As Mormon traces the hand of the Lord in Nephite history, he also consistently juxtaposes the firmness and steadiness of the righteous to the wavering and unsteadiness of the wicked. Mormon must have been even more impressed by the truly converted Lamanites and others who were firm, steadfast, and immovable, people like Nephi and Lehi who built their foundation upon the Rock of Christ, because of the contrast between them and their ever-oscillating counterparts. In fact, in only a few more chapters Mormon will make this contrast even more explicit by drawing one of his patented “Thus we see” lessons from his abridgment of the large plates of Nephi:
And thus we can behold how false, and also the unsteadiness of the hearts of the children of men; yea, we can see that the Lord in his great infinite goodness doth bless and aprosper those who put their btrust in him. (Helaman 12:1)
I imagine that as Mormon studied and abridged more and more of the large plates of Nephi, the firmness and the steadiness of the truly converted Lamanites and other steadfast and immoveable souls struck him as something especially praiseworthy and atypical in human nature. In fact, when Mormon directed his prophetic gaze toward the future he certainly saw that one of the chief characteristics of people in the last days, and especially the tumultuous, democratic, post-Christian people of the United States of America, would be our falseness and unsteadiness. Mormon knew that in the last days, all things would be in commotion. He understood what Alexis de Tocqueville also understood about democracy in America, namely, that it would make the practice of sustained thought and steady contemplation next to impossible for most people. (See, e.g. my essays on “Why Are We Restless?” starting here, but especially here and here).
Just think of the sustained thought and the steady contemplation that Mormon practiced, and the pointed quest that Mormon pursued in order to create this amazing abridgment out of so many records. It boggles the imagination that Mormon was able to do it, and it absolutely defies any and all hypotheses that a newlywed farm-boy in his early twenties with little to no formal education somehow concocted the story on his own in only a couple of months. Mormon himself had to be steadfast and immoveable in order to abridge the Book of Mormon, and his narrative highlights the virtues of his predecessors who were also steadfast and immoveable. It wasn’t just sustained thought, steady contemplation, and a pointed quest that enabled Mormon to do what he did. It was the Lord Himself who sustained and worked through this mighty prophet-historian:
And I do this for a awise bpurpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord cknoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, he dworketh in me to do according to his ewill. (Words of Mormon 1:7)
Nephi described the way in which the Lord enabled him to write in similar terms:
And I, Nephi, have written these things unto my people, that perhaps I might persuade them that they would aremember the Lord their Redeemer.
Wherefore, I speak unto all the house of Israel, if it so be that they should obtain athese things.
For behold, I have workings in the spirit, which doth aweary me even that all my joints are weak, for those who are at Jerusalem; for had not the Lord been merciful, to show unto me concerning them, even as he had prophets of old, I should have perished also. (1 Nephi 19:18-20)
The Lord worked in Nephi, the Lord worked in Mormon, and the Lord worked in the Prophet Joseph Smith in order to fashion this treasure of faith, another testament of Jesus Christ, a book that would bless generation upon generation of latter-day disciples of Christ and all who begin a serious study of the book:
There is a power in the book which will begin to flow into your lives the moment you begin a serious study of the book. You will find greater power to resist temptation. You will find the power to avoid deception. You will find the power to stay on the strait and narrow path. - Ezra Taft Benson
But to return to Mormon’s point about the righteousness and steadiness of the Lamanites, let’s remember how Mormon described the original Ammonite converts:
And as sure as the Lord liveth, so sure as many as believed, or as many as were brought to the knowledge of the truth, through the preaching of Ammon and his brethren, according to the spirit of revelation and of prophecy, and the power of God working amiracles in them—yea, I say unto you, as the Lord liveth, as many of the Lamanites as believed in their preaching, and were bconverted unto the Lord, cnever did fall away. (Alma 23:6)
And,
And they were among the people of Nephi, and also numbered among the people who were of the church of God. And they were also distinguished for their azeal towards God, and also towards men; for they were perfectly bhonest and upright in all things; and they were cfirm in the faith of Christ, even unto the end. (Alma 27:27)
There is a parallel in the Lamanite conversions that were brought about by the faith and instrumentality of Nephi and Lehi, because Mormon also notes that the righteousness of these Lamanites exceeded that of the Nephites, “because of their firmness and their steadiness in the faith”. With his bird’s eye view of Nephite history that he obtained from the records and his experience during the process of abridgment and his bird’s eye view of his latter-day audience through the gift of prophecy and revelation, Mormon was able to pinpoint the permanent things, the eternal things, the steadfast and immoveable things, especially in contrast to the so frequent and disturbing fluctuations in faithfulness among the Nephites.
But what Mormon saw concerning his latter-day audience, including the tumult and the commotion of the world and the ceaseless motion of democratic Americans, must have made even the vacillating faith and righteousness of the Nephites seem a little bit more like firmness and steadiness. My point, the point that I make frequently throughout my Book of Mormon notes, is that Mormon’s inspired analysis and report of these events in Nephite history was aimed specifically at us, his readers in the last days.
Thus Mormon’s praise for the firmness and steadiness, the righteousness of the Lamanites that exceeded that of the Nephites, has a message in it especially for us, especially we members of the Church of Jesus Christ who might be compared to these ancient Nephites. It is a very helpful message for members of the Church especially because it prevents us from complacently assuming that our membership in the Church, or our status as a chosen people - even a chosen people with pioneer ancestry - will automatically guarantee that we will be firm, steadfast, and immoveable. In fact, if my reading of Mormon’s narrative is at all accurate, the exact opposite is more likely the case: unless we repent and become converted like these ancient Lamanites, we will inevitably endure the same kind of roller-coaster ride that eventually led these ancient Nephites not just through ups and downs, hills and valleys, and the proverbial pride cycle, but to complete destruction.
In Helaman chapter 6 Mormon observes that there were many of the Nephites who had become ahardened and impenitent and grossly wicked. Was Mormon merely lamenting the wickedness of these Nephites or does his historical commentary point to something that he foresaw about the latter-day equivalent of the Nephites in our time? These hardened and impenitent Nephites rejected the word of God and all the preaching and the prophesying which did come among them. This sounds like a very good description of many of the reactions to General Conference that I read on social media.
The rest of this chapter - events that took place between 29–23 B.C. - also sounds like a fitting description of conditions in our own time. Even though there were many among the Nephites who had become hardened and impenitent, there were others in the Church who rejoiced because of the conversion of the Lamanites and the growth of the Church. They fellowshipped one with another and experienced joy together even in the midst of so much wickedness and impenitence in the surrounding culture. I think that we find pockets of this kind of joy among the Saints, especially when we see the growth of the Church in foreign lands and among the nations of the earth.
The influx of fresh converts blessed these ancient Nephites, and it blesses us today. Just as the converted Lamanites came to the land of Zarahemla, declared the manner of their aconversion, and exhorted the people to faith and repentance, those of us who live in what is sometimes pejoratively called the Book of Mormon Belt benefit greatly from the conversion and testimonies of our converted brothers and sisters who come from foreign lands and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to us by word and by example. I’m always impressed by the faithfulness, firmness, and steadiness of the many African, South American, Central American, Asian, European, and Australian Saints who come to visit for general conference or who migrate here for a time, bringing with them the light and warmth of their conversion to Christ, and the brightly burning flame of their testimony of Jesus Christ.
Think of the impact for good of leaders like Elder Uchtdorf from Germany, Elder Soares from Brazil, and Sister Andrea Muñoz Spannaus from Argentina, for example. And think of the many thousands of other faithful Saints from foreign countries who come and apreach to us with exceedingly great power and authority, bringing many of us down into the depths of humility, to be the humble followers of God and the Lamb. As we will soon read, sometimes it takes an outsider, someone like Abinadi, to come into our communities, teach us what we truly need to hear, and to help us to see what we truly need to see. This is exactly what Samuel the Lamanite, of whom Mormon writes in coming chapters, does for his audience. This is also one reason why the French Aristocrat who traveled to the United States of America around the time of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, was able to write in a quasi-prophetic mode regarding the people whom he observed and their descendants, namely us.
Like Hagoth, and like the Ammonites, many of the Lamanites, and aNephi and bLehi as well, went into the cland northward to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At this point in his narrative, Mormon pauses to describe a peculiar era of peace. Although there was some prosperity in the Church because the work of Nephi and Lehi and the conversion of many Lamanites, this particular era of peace and prosperity doesn’t strike me as exceptionally peaceful in the same way that the original Nephi and his people lived after the manner of happiness, or in the same way that there never was a happier time than in the time of Moroni. This strange era of peace and prosperity that Mormon describes feels more like a kind of complacent calm before the storm, or a temporary lull before major calamities.
There was so much peace during this time that the Nephites and the Lamanites began to mingle and interact as if they formed one nation. There was a kind of cosmopolitanism and free-trade that might remind us of capitalism in the United States of America. Nephites traveled freely among the Lamanites, and Lamanites traveled freely among the Nephites, buying and selling - doing business we might say. These peaceful, cosmopolitan conditions were conducive to the kinds of deals that both Nephites and Lamanites conducted in order to get gain. If there had been a Forbes or Fortune magazine at the time, there probably would have been articles about great entrepreneurs whose companies were thriving.
Both the Lamanites and the Nephites became exceedingly rich during this time. Business was booming. The agold, silver, and precious metals were pouring in, and the ancient equivalents of the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Fords, and Vanderbilts - or now the Buffetts, Gates, Bezoses, and Musks - were sitting pretty, both in the land south (the land of aLehi), and in the land north (the land of bMulek). It was a good time to be on the ancient Wall Street. Craftsmen and farmers also flourished. It was the Roaring 20s (29-23 BC), and the Swinging 60s (the 62nd year of the reign of the judges had just ended).
What could possibly go wrong? Things were great. They were multiplying and waxing strong in the land. Up to this point in Mormon’s abridgment it seems like all was well with both the Lamanites and the Nephites. But as soon as I read about the activity of the women in their societies, alarm bells go off:
Behold their women did toil and spin, and did amake all manner of bcloth, of fine-twined linen and cloth of every kind, to clothe their nakedness. And thus the sixty and fourth year did pass away in peace. (Helaman 6:13)
Of course there is nothing inherently wrong with women who toil and spin. People need clothes to wear. But for some reason, whenever I see the word “fine-twined linen” in the Book of Mormon, I know that disaster is looming. (Pun intended) Still, there was peace for a couple of years. But in the 66th year of the reign of the judges, only 27 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, both the chief judge aCezoram and his son who became chief judge after him were murdered. Maybe this time period was also something like the 60s and the assassination of JFK. It sounds like the 60s because the people began to grow exceedingly wicked again. Mormon explains why:
For behold, the Lord had blessed them so long with the ariches of the world that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, nor to bloodshed; therefore they began to set their hearts upon their riches; yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another; therefore they began to commit bsecret murders, and to rob and to plunder, that they might get gain. (Helaman 6:17)
But fortunately for us, nothing like this could ever happen in our time, right? This was the end of the uneasy peace that I was trying to describe earlier. Although commerce was good, most of the people weren’t really righteous. They became so comfortable in their wealth and so complacent in their prosperity, that they forgot where it all came from. The love of money that is the root of all evil is insatiable. Hearts set upon riches are never satisfied. Once hearts are set upon riches, it’s never enough just to have sufficient for your needs. These ancient Nephites and Lehites, like so many of us in contemporary, and particularly contemporary American society, weren’t just trying to keep up with the Joneses. They were ready to get rid of any Joneses who stood in their way. It wasn’t just a capitalist rat race, people trying to outdo each other and competing for the chunks of cheese. It became a kind of secret warfare in which the law of the jungle prevailed, and nothing was out of bounds, not even theft or murder.
Sadly, these conditions remind me too much of the world in which we now live. But that’s why Mormon holds up the mirror of his own decaying civilization to us so that we can take note and make the necessary course corrections.