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Transcript of Book of Mormon Classes by John W. Welch, 2007 to 2009

Alma 49-51. (About 10 minutes of the beginning are missing from the audio.)

The Nephites had in the meantime gone the next step, and were always one step ahead of the Lamanites in terms of technology.

(Student) Alma 49:8 pointed out that Moroni’s defenses were a new kind that had never been done before in their 500 year history.

Yes. The population has now become large enough and armies big enough that they could begin attacking actual cities and, for some reason, as you say, they had not done this before, and it really did come as a surprise to them.

(Student) I am wondering, in the Old Testament, did they not have walled cities? It is easy to see where he got the idea, but now he has the manpower.

They certainly did. He might have read about it. It is a little hard to know. Sometimes they just talk about a walled city or a fenced city, and it does not say how big, so maybe they had smaller ones, but these were really fortified and with a single gate, only one way in and out.

(Student) What was interesting to me is they did it all without bulldozers. I realized how long it would take them. How big of a monstrosity was it that they could throw rocks down...

Imagine digging a ditch piling the dirt up on the other side.

(Student) Then building a fort on top of that.

Then they would put ramparts or pickets up on top of that so they must have worked very hard. Some of the cities had natural areas that were easier to fortify than others were, and I have seen some cities down in the Yucatan where they are built on a river where there is a cliff on one side so you only have to fortify them on part of the sides. However, it is true that when we go into the archaeology, and this is a recent development, we now find evidences of fortification like this, which people did not know about before.

(Student) I think in verse 22 it is so interesting when they tell of trying to dig down the banks of earth that they might obtain a path but that they were swept off by stones. The ditches were filled up in a measure with their dead. That just creates a picture.

That is an amazing picture. Chapter 49. That is because they fought with waves of men coming, and they just kept sending them, and as they were killed with stones, arrows, or whatever, they were collapsing into the ditch and they could not pull them out even to rescue them if they were to trying to save the wounded. So they did fill up.

Now is there something just or some poetic justice in what is happening here?

(Student) Moroni did not brag about his successes.

No. He does not usually, in fact when he wins, what does he do? He says, “Let us get back to work.” And we will talk about that too. But is this a kind of poetic justice. We have seen this on other occasions, where if you want to do justice in the ancient world, the sort of thing that you thought you were trying to do to your enemy will happen to you. So if you dig a pit for your neighbor, you fall in it. That is justice. That is an Old Testament passage rather like this one. Abinadi is burned and he says, “What ye have done to me is going to happen to you.” And we Alma 49-51 6 Dec 2008 (file 080612)

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have this in the teachings of Jesus in several places. If you forgive, you will be forgiven, and if you do not you will not be forgiven. Whatsoever measure you use for measuring, that yardstick that is going to be used to measure you. So there is a kind of balance in that.

(Student) I like verse 28 where it talks about God’s matchless power in delivering, and how the Nephites had all power over their enemies, and in 28 they were thanking the Lord for that power.

How do you see that that applies to us?

(Student) The power that we can have in the Lord as we fight our enemies.

Your point is about Moroni not bragging. When they win, they did not say what? We are wonderful. When they win, they take it, give God the thanks, and remember that they had all sworn an oath too. That the Nephites had sworn an oath that they would fight, and if they did not they said, “May we be trampled upon just as we are trampling on our coats” and things like that. Well, any time you swear an oath or make a kind of vow in the Biblical system, you say to God, if you will give us victory, then we will sacrifice or dedicate or do something for you. So when we see them coming back after a victory like this, a very natural thing that they would have is an explicit obligation to come and give God thanks in some way. So I am wondering if this thanksgiving is mentioned here to let us know that they have fulfilled the obligation that they had incurred when they swore their own oath.

(Student) When we think of an oath, we suppose that somebody making an oath would have extreme integrity and honesty, and here we have these [Lamanite] chief captains making an oath to do evil and yet they will do everything just to keep their oath even though it is for an evil purpose.

That is interesting. Yes. Oaths have a lot of power for good or for evil and you know, the Gadianton robbers will swear oaths to each other. Usually the oaths of the bad guys are oaths in which they were promising each other that they will support one another. The oaths of the good guys are usually oaths that they will obey God’s law or do what God wants done, so that may be a bit of a distinction. Remember the oaths of the Gadianton robbers were so vile, so fearful, that what do we learn at one place? They were not acceptable to be published. The brethren did not want anybody to know about those oaths, because there was a wrong way to swear oaths. If you did it wrong, that created all kinds of problems.

(Student) One of the interesting things is that the Lord inspired them to build the fortifications that protected them as long as they were righteous. When they fail to keep the commandments and be righteous then…it turns against them…I just think that is so interesting.

It is. It is very interesting. Remember that these chief captains who have sworn this oath, they are from the Land of Nephi. They were not very far removed from the people who were converted by Ammon. Do you remember the oath that they made when they were converted? They swore that they would never again shed blood. That oath will come up with the stripling warriors because their fathers had sworn that oath and could not go to battle, so the sons have to go. But there you have Lamanites who were taking the oath for the right reason, but the seriousness of their keeping that oath is consistent within the Lamanite culture that we see. And what a wonderful lesson to me. This tells us that we should be just as committed to keeping our oaths.

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(Student) I am very interested to hear in verse 30 where it said, “The word of God was declared by Helaman, Shiblon, and Corianton as they ….

That is right. Those are those three sons of Alma and Corianton is still on the job. His repentance was effective, complete, and it is interesting that Mormon wants us to know that. He does not just say Helaman and his brothers. He names Corianton and we get the point.

(Student) On oaths, we swore an oath to the Lord when we were baptized and confirmed…

When you are ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood it is with an oath and a covenant, and of course, when we go to the temple, the covenants that we make—that word covenant is just another word for an oath in a way. We just say “yes,” but what does Jesus say about swearing oaths. “Just let your speech be yea, yea, and nay, nay.” That is how we are supposed to swear oaths when we do it right. We say yes, and we mean it. And that is what we do with baptism.

People ask when they ever swore an oath when ordained an elder. I will bet your bishop asked if you would; are you prepared, ready, and willing? And you said yes. Well guess what. You just made an oath. Hopefully everybody understands that.

I thought it might be fun to hear your reaction to this first question about the weaknesses that you think Satan is using right now in your life and your family. These [Lamanite] chief captains knew the territory. They were Zoramites, they knew the lay of the land, and they thought they knew right where the weakest part was. How many of you play Risk? You put all these armies out on the board and you always attack where you are strong and the other guy is weak. Right? You get to roll three dice and they only get to roll one. You usually win. Well the Lamanites thought that was what they were looking at. “Let us just go get some easy pickings.”

By the way, why did they think Ammonihah would be so easy? They had conquered it before and how long before that was it? How many years? Do we know? We do. It is interesting that there are only three events in the whole Book of Mormon for which we are told the day, month, and year of when it happened. The first is the day, month, and year in Alma 16 when the Lamanites attack and defeat Ammonihah when it is wicked, and they obliterate it, destroy it, and leave it as a heap. The second is right here. Seven years and a couple of months later, they were back - close, not bad - seven years is not very long to reestablish a place. The Nephites were probably reluctant to move back into this land. It was defiled with dead bodies; they had heaped them up. They had not been given a proper burial, and there was corpse contamination. They would not have wanted to go there. Disease too, so it has probably only been a short time and already all of this has been rebuilt. I think the dates are given to us so that we know how hard they were out there digging, and how this really is an astonishing thing, that Moroni and his men have put together.

The third date - what is the third one that we know day, month and year? It is the - when the death of Christ is given.

(Student) What kind of a tool did they dig with? Did they have metal shovels?

They did not, but they had good, hard wood in the jungles and in the forests and they mostly had tools that were made out of hard wood.

(Student) Do we have evidence of these tools in our archaeological diggings?

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Most of the wooden tools did not survive, so there are not many of those, but there are pictures of them, some drawings. I will see if I can dig some up for you.

Well, anyway, the Lamanites thought they had a weak spot and they were going after it. That did not work out. But does Satan do the same kind of thing in your life? Does he know what your strengths are? Is he going to waste his time on going after them? I do not think he usually does. How have you found that in your life? Do you think he knows your weaknesses well enough that he can head for them?

(Student) Probably one good one is the Word of Wisdom. I do not think any of us in here smoke or have a problem with it, but not many of us feel like we are tempted with that each day? But there are other people for whom that is a huge issue.

Good point. (Student) I personally do not think he can read your thoughts but he can see your actions.

That is a good point. I like that.

(Student) The sly glance that you take at this or that, and then he can tempt you.

(Student) How do we know that he cannot tell what we are thinking?

Well, I believe that myself.

(Student) Where does it say?

Do we have any authority for that?

(Student) We can just say a general authority said one time.

Well, but I do believe there are limits to what he is allowed to do.

(Student) We know that the adversary can be removed from your presence with light, Section 52 of Doctrine and Covenants talks about the pattern of the gospel, and if you understand that pattern, you can chase the adversary away. I think there are ways that your actions and your thoughts will drive him away, whether or not he knows them.

Interesting. When you drive him away, do you think he is just going off to another place where he can maybe have an easier time of it?

(Student) I think that is exactly what he is doing. That is what we learn from the scriptures. He always follows the path of least resistance and I have heard thoughts that the adversary will not spend time with a heart and mindset is in the right direction because he will look for souls that are easily influenced.

So we can put up our defenses like Moroni and it is going to work. It is reassuring to know that there are ways that you can drive Satan away from you. Do you have a story on that?

(Student) When we were in the mission field in Brazil, the mission president came and got my husband and me out of church, and took us out to a city because an Elder was possessed with the devil. They prayed for him and cast the devil out and they got the car to take him back to the mission home for a few days, but it came right back - right back. And then three of them when we got there, tried to cast it out and they could not. We had to call the area presidency and I am

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telling you, when they came, he just yelled at that spirit to leave, and it did leave but the Elder finally had to be taken from the mission field because he kept allowing it to come back in him.

Interesting. Well, those are some stories.

(Student) You know, to change the subject a little to the original question, what tempts our weaknesses, I live in Gilbert, Arizona, and I have a group of friends that walk together, go to the temple together, and they are in the class that I teach. I have noticed over these past months that so many women are so concerned about what other people think of them, how they dress, what they do, whether they have plastic surgery, and these are wonderful Latter-day Saint women who are very faithful, but…

Do you think that the men do not worry just as much? All right guys, let us be honest.

(Student) But if we would concern ourselves really with what the Lord thinks, then we will be in harmony with the spirit, and if somebody does not like us or whatever, at least we know we are in harmony with the spirit.

Do you think Satan will try to get you to think that you are not adequate in some way and that you need to get preoccupied with the wrong things? If he knows what you really in your heart of jealous hearts want, maybe he can get at you. How many of you have ever read C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters? Have we all read that? If it is been a long time maybe we should read it again. You know there was a sequel to it. Have any of you read Screwtape Proposes a Toast? Screwtape’s Letters was so popular that C. S. Lewis just kept writing and so there is another book. I think maybe there is a lot of truth in them

(Student) Insecurities did not come from God.

You wonder where they are coming from and how we can anticipate them. I think one thing I have found is that I can anticipate what Satan is going to do because I know what he has done before. I know what he has done to me; I know what he has done in the scriptures. He pretty much follows the same game plan. He has his strategy, and like any other person, he is going to want to try to keep with that program. He believes it is going to work. If you look at what has happened before— remember that when Amalickiah had to get those good soldiers who had fled to the top of the hill to come down, he kept sending the same message up. Four times, and they finally came down. I think Satan is a lot the same way, he just keeps sending us the same message. We know it is going to come and maybe we could be a little more prepared for it.

I liked to tell my students down at BYU that it was really important for them to anticipate, to be a step ahead of where Satan might come. We have to pray, we are told, that we not be led into temptation. If we know we have a particular weakness, whatever it is, we need to pray that we have strength in that area, that the Lord will help us and strengthen us. I think the more specific we can be in our prayers in this regard, the more the Lord can help us with it. It is a lot, I think, like wrestling, basketball, or anything else. If you know the moves that your opponent is going to put on you, if you have wrestled this person before, you can anticipate their moves. If you are just a little bit ahead, you can stop that move before it has any momentum. Timing is a lot. You know, if you had the play book for the opposing football team and you knew exactly what they were going to throw at you with the next play, the defense could be right there. It would be nice if we knew.

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I think we do know in the case of Satan. We know, we have been warned, we have been told. We just need to execute. That is something we learn from this otherwise rather unpleasant story.

We have already mentioned the successes that they had, and that once Moroni won, in chapter 50, verses 1-6, you would think they ought to have a big party. They ought to give everybody a vacation. Everybody should just have a great time, but what does he do? He puts them all back to work. It struck me that sometimes we have a success, we have a great family home evening, we do something really well, and then we kind of say, “Well, I guess I did not have to worry about that next week, or keep it up.” but I think that the question here is, how we can prevent that syndrome? I think it is a normal inclination that we all have, that once it is going well, we let up. It is the pride cycle in a way isn’t it. We get rich, we think everything is great, and then wham, we are reminded that inflation is a reality and we are back to where we are. How do we stop that?

(Student) …it can work for us too. If we have a successful experience and it felt good, we want to do it again.

Good. Just remember that. I like that. Sometimes we are too quick to forget. Maybe we are again valuing the wrong thing. We are not savoring the goodness of the success and somehow we think that sitting on the beach in Aruba is going to be more fun than having another good Family Home Evening next week or whatever.

(Student) But if you do it enough times you get in the habit, then it is easier.

That is right. And that is habit and character-building.

(Student) I get the grass all mowed and the weeds all pulled and then I think I can rest.

You mean your weeds did not obey you.

(Student) No. It turns out that they did not stay the way I wanted. As Moroni showed us, you have to keep working in order to keep it up. He moved people out of the way when they were in a dangerous situation; he populated land with Nephites so that they would be a deterrent to the Lamanites. He did many other things in order to keep ahead of the game.

That is good and in terms of its changing, I have up here my very abstract map of Zarahemla, Nephi, and Ammonihah. The first time they come up this way, and they find that is all fortified, but the next time, things are going to change. They are going to come in this direction. They are going to go Nephihah, then attack Lehi, and then they are going to make this big sweep all up along the seacoast until they are right in the borders of Bountiful. Bountiful guards the narrow neck of land and it is the most important Nephite piece of geography. If the Lamanites can get to Bountiful, then the Nephites have no way to escape into the land northward. Wherever that narrow neck is, it is a place that everybody has to go through. It will prove to be the same kind of important place in the final battles with Mormon at the end of the book. So they are absolutely desperate to be sure that this does not continue and I think your point is that they were somewhat prepared but they were not prepared for this change. Things really came at them in a different direction.

(Student) To be fair, they were somewhat distracted by people…

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You mean by the king-men. Yes. We have king-men problems here! We have Morianton problems here. Life is not simple for Captain Moroni is it.

Speaking of other things that happened, Nephihah died and so in the middle of all of this, you have a war going on, and you lose the head of state. He is not the king but he is the chief judge and he died at a very precarious moment again. Another point of weakness is always that period of transition. So you have Nephihah dying and his son Pahoran stepping in to take office and if you noticed, I asked you the third question about swearing oaths of office.

Let us read for just a minute the oath at the end of chapter 50, so the son of Nephihah, this is verse 39, “The son of Nephihah—that is Pahoran—was appointed to fill the judgment seat in the stead of his father…and governor over the people.” He swears, and here again is another oath. This is an oath of office, and here we have the words that the Nephites used when they installed their head of state. Did anything here strike you? Let me just read it to you. It says that it is an oath and a sacred ordinance. Now sacred means it is holy. That means God is being involved. It may in those days have involved some kind of sacrifice. They were still living in a world where the Law of Moses applies and they are doing sacrifices to sanctify and make things very holy. This was probably some kind of ceremony, probably a very public thing done in or around the temple and he then swears and he must have said something like this, “I will judge righteously. I will keep the peace and the freedom of the people. I will grant unto them their sacred privileges to worship the Lord their God. I will support and maintain the cause of God in all my days and to bring the wicked to justice according to their crime.”

Have any of you ever held a public office where you had to swear an oath? You have been in the police force right.

(Student) Yes, and in the House of Representatives also we took an oath.

What kind of oath was it?

(Student) A Constitutional oath, to defend the Constitution.

Was it longer or shorter than this one?

(Student) Pretty short.

Did it have an impact on you?

(Student) It always has. I have…let us remember our oath here. It is always, in law enforcement at least, there is always this notion that it is okay to do this because it is in the interest of justice; it may not be. The fourth Amendment may not condone what we were about to do, but it is in the interest of justice and then we have to say, “Well, we are going to defend and honor the Constitution.”

So it does act as a guide, a deterrent.

(Student) Yes, exactly.

And when you were in a position of power like that, you probably could have gotten away with maybe not being quite so honorable, right? Did the oath stop you from doing that do you think?

(Student) Yes, it has. To most people it is an abstraction, but when you are calling the play, you are the guy who is going to say all right, you will do this.

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The buck stops here.

(Student) Yes, and I am accountable to the people who trust me, and I did not want to have to answer to them.

That is a great, personal experience. Anybody else? Wayne, when you went in the Air Force I will bet you swore an oath. Right? What was it like?

(Student) A very solemn oath that you take.

Was it public?

(Student) Yes.

Was the name of God invoked?

(Student) Unfortunately, not.

No. But what was it like?

(Student) Well again, to uphold and defend the Constitution and we believe that the Constitution is inspired and so…

It appoints a commander and chief.

(Student) That is right. It is of the nature of a sacred oath.

Like you say, it was a solemn occasion and probably a lot of formality went with it to impress upon those taking the oath the importance of it. Others?

(Student) Hippocrates’s oath.

The Hippocratic Oath when you were a doctor. That is right. When you graduate from medical school, that is right, they still all stand and the oath of Hippocrates is read. That is right. That is an important one.

(Student) Also graduation from Officers Candidate School. Also when we went into counter-intelligence, special agent school we had to take a different oath.

Okay, I would bet that was pretty serious.

(Student) Anybody who works with an election booth. Before our training, we all take an oath.

I did not know that. No, I did not. How many of you knew that? When you go to the voting booth, of course you have been there on the table…

(Student) It is an oath to uphold the Constitution, to be honest…

So it is a Constitutional oath… Yes, and allow everybody to exercise his or her 15th Amendment rights to vote well that is.

Well, there are oaths, I suppose, when we pledge allegiance to the flag. In a way, that is certainly an oath as well. When you become a citizen, when you are naturalized there are the words of an oath. They are all different but there are oath-taking occasions all around. We did not swear by God anymore, usually, but when our country was first started, many of the State Constitutions said that a person was unfit to hold any public office if they did not swear that they believed in what was called a state of future rewards and punishments. That was the phraseology. You did

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not have to say what it was. You did not have to say I believe in heaven or hell, but you had to believe that in the future, at some time in your life or in the next life, you would be accountable for what you did. There was no one else to watch these powerful people, and it was only that sincere belief that they would be accountable to God or to inevitable consequences for their actions that qualified them to serve in office. I thought that was an interesting. Of course, we have gone away from that. The State of Pennsylvania had that in their original constitution as a State constitutional requirement.

Maybe we should remind all of us in political or other positions of the gratitude we have for people who do keep their oaths, and recognize it. We can be grateful that people in our country do that and take their responsibility seriously.

(Student) When we raise our arm to the square that we will support our Church leaders, or even when we say yes, we will be a visiting teacher, it is not the oath of public officials but to me it is a promise to God and I will fulfill that obligation.

Yes, the raising your hand to the square is not verbally saying it.

(Student) But it is showing.

But it is certainly publicly committing. That is nice. Thanks for mentioning that.

Well, we have a couple more here. After we go through the king-men problem, look at the first part of chapter 51. What is it that these king-men want? They want power; they want to be a king. But how are they going to go about doing that? Did you notice at the end of verse 2, what is it - these guys are pretty shrewd. They did not come in and say, “We are going to change everything.” What do they say? That just a few little things need fixing, right? Have you ever heard this before? Well, they only desired that a few particular points of the law should be altered. Now what do you think the few points were? We did not know. I suppose one of them was that we want to change the name of chief judge to king. That is just a small thing, right? Just a little change. But I got wondering, are we a little too pliable in our world that we just are willing to change just a little bit here and a little bit there and maybe every year we just change or alter one little thing, but then you get to the end of a decade and all these cumulative changes have ended up. We would not have bought into that all at once, but a little bit. It is like cutting the tail of a dog off just an inch at a time. Well, it can lead to a very, very large change. Maybe we have to be concerned about that in our own lives. It is not just in a public way but little changes that we succumb to may have more consequence than we think.

(Student) Because we are not aware of the Constitution and what the Founding Fathers thought when they wrote the Constitution. They just did not know that they are breaking it. They are really breaking Constitutional Law and I even think our judges did not realize that.

There are some activist judges who are more willing to make little changes. Some are doing it on purpose making big changes, but we do have to be careful about that and I think especially in a Constitutional sense, just changing one or two words can change the whole balance of power and the whole dynamic of something like the Constitution.

(Student) It says that most of these king-men were of high birth.

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What do you think? They are aristocrats; they are landed people. None of the sons of Mosiah wanted to be king but maybe some of his nephews. You know there was lots of family around and…

(Student) As Mosiah warned…family, it is going to come up.

You are right. He wanted to be sure that they all disclaimed and got out of the way and all four of those sons pack up and go away for 14 years just to stay out of all of this trouble, but maybe because they were gone, other people stepped in and tried to assert themselves.

(Student) Could they have been descendants of Mulek?

I have wondered about that. When it says nobles, there must have been some kind of bloodline there. Maybe if they are not sons of Mosiah or relatives of Mosiah 1, or King Benjamin, they certainly could have been descendants of King Zarahemla and the Mulekites. We did not know, but we call them king-men. But do you know what the word in Hebrew is for king? It is Melek. Melek and Mulek! In Hebrew, you did not have vowels. They look exactly the same, so it is just m-l-k so a Melek man could be a Mulek man or a king man. At least there is going to be that play on words that might have made it attractive for Mulekites to say, you know, this Nephite experience is going south. These people, after all, moved in with King Mosiah 120 years ago and they have been in charge around here long enough. Maybe we ought to reassert our rights.

As long as things were going well, any residents of Zarahemla seemed to be quite happy. But now we have Zoramites and Nephites and maybe the Mulekites are saying, “Why are we getting caught in the middle of this? Why do we have to go fight this Nephite battle? You know, this isn’t our war, and you can understand politically how that could very easily have been our view.”

(Student) Could we go back to the altering of the laws for just a bit? When you look at our own Legislature, legislative body and in a year’s time, how many of our laws are changed just a little bit and how many of those year after year, but they all change our lives?

Yes, they do. And some of them change our lives in ways we did not realize.

(Student) We did not realize it until it is too late or until years have passed.

I have not gone out and done anything like this, but I am a law professor and so I try to teach people what the laws are, and I am a strong believer in the obligation of the government. If you are going to change the laws, you have to have a much stronger legal education program to let the general public know what the laws are.

(Student) I think we should keep in contact with our legislators and ask why and what.

We should do that too, but I think the government also has an obligation. You cannot just change something on the books and expect people to know about it. How can they keep the law if they do not know what it is? I suppose police enforcement would be easier if people knew the law.

(Student) I have been in the House of Representatives, so I have been a law maker as well as a law enforcer, and we passed a city ordinance that it shall be unlawful for the train to block 2nd West longer than five minutes. I got that piece of legislation and I asked, “Well what are we doing? Are we telling the train? Do we give a ticket to the conductor? How do you enforce that?” It is a great idea. No one wants to sit on 2nd West waiting for the train, but what do you do?

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Sue the Union Pacific? Some laws are just passed as tokens hoping that it will trickle down and someone will obey it. The ancient world was much more reluctant to change the laws than we are, and maybe it is necessary in a modern world to make changes to keep up with societal differences. We live in a very dynamic world and laws get out of date and become problems, but it is not an easy process.

(Student) Well I really do not think it is that difficult. The law does not change. The rules and regulations may. But law itself is really very simple. I think this partisan argument about having to enforce the law… everybody knows what the law is. I did not think it is a big secret.

What you are pointing out is we use the word law to mean many different things. And we could use a richer vocabulary to help explain that. Is there a difference in the way the word is used in the Book of Mormon? Is liberty talking about something different from freedom? The word liberty just comes from the Latin and freedom comes from the German freiheit but are freedom and liberty synonyms?

(Student) In Greek it is eleutheria, it is one word.

That is right. Just one word and it means not a slave. To be free, you did not have a master. Well, we will think about that.

(Student) Nowadays, people define liberty and become libertarians so they want to remove some of the laws and put some limits to liberty, because sometimes you have to be responsible. You cannot be completely free to do anything you want.

Well that is a good point. We do have at least two senses in which the words liberty and freedom are used in the Book of Mormon. There is the freedom to worship God and then there is liberty, meaning freedom from slavery. I do not know whether the words are always used to mean one or the other. But they did have two different meanings that they had developed and it is possible that there is a slight difference in them.

(Student) I like in verse 20 in Alma 50, “Blessed art thou and thy children and they shalt be blessed inasmuch as they keep the commandments.” Then in verse 22, “And those who are faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord,” and then in 23, “But behold, there never was a happier people.” I think this is kind of the bottom line. If you keep the commandments, you are going to be a happy people.

Let us look at chapter 50 verse 23. What were the conditions that made things so happy for Moroni and his people at this time? It is about to all come unraveled very quickly. We are going to have the Morianton problem, and then we are going to have Amalickiah coming through on his campaign, but for a moment here, at least… This is Mormon writing, and looking back, Mormon says there was never a happier time among the people of Nephi. Was this a happier time than 4 Nephi?

(Student)…than in the days of Moroni?

Ah, we have to keep reading. Never was there a happier time since the days of Nephi than in the days of Moroni even at this time in the twenty-first year, so down to that time, there had never been a happier time. This was a happier time than when King Benjamin converted all of his people and they all were unified. What was it that made this a happy time?

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(Student) They were faithful and kept the commandments.

Okay. There is a lot of faithfulness – more so than before.

(Student) They had been through very difficult circumstances so they had something to compare it with.

I like this point about how hard they had worked. Never before had there been such a mobilized, unified force. How many of you would say that the pioneer crossing of the plains was the happiest time in the Church? It may have been. It was hard but they came singing their way across the plains and so there is that kind of happiness.

(Student) …they put the things that they had been taught to the test because they put themselves in very dangerous circumstances believing that God would deliver them and he did, so the reward of that faith and fighting for something very specific…

Never before in Nephite history had their homelands, the heartland of their people been invaded. There had been other wars; there had been kind of skirmishes; there had been some civil wars; and some tough ones. Amlici had been fighting, but never before had they had these outside armies coming in and invading them. As you say, they put themselves in some really tough situations and in some ways they did not have a choice but they responded by mobilizing and unifying. How many of you would say that the1940s were the happiest days of American history? Well, there is some truth to that. The greatest generation—the way the nation had to pull together for a cause working together, every single person all the way down to the farmers and the factory workers, the men and the women—that is what produces this kind of happiness I think.

(Student) The same years of war were my teen-age years from 1940 to 1950 ….

They were probably not happy.

(Student) We had the war, Second World War, then….

It was very difficult.

(Student) Well I think there is a sense of oneness whether you are in difficult times or struggling but if there is oneness with the group, then it is a happy time…it is the oneness that brings that about.

Is there a good lesson for us in that? I mean, do we want to be happy? We all want to be happy, but we also want to figure out how we can have these circumstances in our life.

(Student) It is also important that they had some really faithful, charismatic leaders who were capable of uniting them, and that they were willing to follow. They had confidence in them.

That is right, and it was not just the leaders who were strong but the followers who were willing to follow so that bond between leaders and followers… if you want to have a happy time in your ward, you need a strong Bishop, but your Bishop is only going to be as strong as his followers are going to be.

(Student) For the time period you mentioned, you have Churchill, you have Roosevelt, and Eisenhower that seemed to rally us and we had confidence in them.

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So it does have to come from the top down, there is no question. I would just like to also say that I think that if Churchill and F.D.R. had not felt like his people were behind them, it would have been demoralizing for them too.

(Student) Well look at how Moroni felt. That fascinated me, how angry he was because he did all of this and the king-men were, “We are not going to help you guys.”

He is pretty stern.

(Student) Yes, he was pretty upset.

And I have asked you why? What justifies his severe treatment? I did not know if you thought about that, but we are out of time to talk about it in much depth. Notice, however, that Moroni gets martial law authority. He goes to the people and he gets authority as commander-in-chief of the military to be able to deal with these king-men, he gives them an opportunity to take an oath. If they will not fight, which is a legal obligation of all able-bodied men and they can be put to death for not fighting, then he will put them to death if they will not swear the oath. Some of them he puts in jail and they sit there until this war is over which is another six years, so he says, “We will take care of you, but not right now. We have other things.” Why? They are really up against the wall, and that comes back to this point here, that what is happening here is so catastrophic that if they did not use every possible resource they have, Bountiful is going to be taken, their lands are going to be invaded, they are going to be encircled, and it is all over.

(Student) Lincoln had to do certain things to some people…

Lincoln is a good, good comparison. We could spend a lot of time thinking about that. But I would like to suggest that we leave on a positive note tonight, which is to think about this state of happiness, and I hope you have reflected a little bit on this last question. What circumstances have brought about the happiest times in your life? I think that sometimes we tend to think about the hardships and the difficulties. Did any of you think about the happiest moments of your life and can you reconstruct in your own mind what it was that made that so happy?

(Student) You know, as you were talking about unity, when I was thinking about this question earlier I thought it is that contention that he talks about in verse 21, in their quarrelings and their contentions, and there are times in my life there has been unity because things are hard but I did not feel like arguing about a lot, and because of that, because I am not content to be critical, I think I am happier, even though the externals are very bad, but I think when we had something hard happening, we did not criticize. Some things we just let go, but we are not willing to, usually.

And that makes us happy. I think so.

(Student) The happiest time of our lives was when our last child was married and…

We will try to take that in the spirit in which it is intended.

(Student) …the end of the story was that we were all in the temple together, all the brothers and sisters and their spouses, and grandparents, and other family members, and that really was a happy time that what they had been taught had stuck and we were all together in the temple.

Well the Nephites left us a record that says, “This was our happiest time.” We should leave a record about our happy moments for our children, so they know how much that meant to us.

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(Student) As we have been talking I have been thinking about a time in my life that was a difficult time that turned out to be a time of unity and love and strength. It was after my father passed away, and he had left a farm full of things he had collected for years. He was a collector of everything, and the barn that was about to come down, and so we met together, and all of the nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters came and everyone pitched in. There were three years of that with people coming many times, and we would always end up with a weenie roast like dad always did, and we finished the job! And the love and strength that came to our family was better than any vacation we could have taken. We will never forget it.

So your advice to people would be if you care about something as much as you and everybody in the family cared about your situation here, even though it is very hard, it might produce the happiest time of your life. You have to choose to go do it and then make it happen. Steve, was your mission the happiest two years of your life?

(Student) The happiest times are tied to missions. Yes it was a great time, but I think what has brought us even greater joy and satisfaction is that we have had three sons on missions, and the fourth one is out right now, and on each of them we have gone to the mission field to pick them up and so we have actually spent a few days with them while they visited families they wanted us to meet. Seeing them interact with those families, and on a couple of them, we did not understand the language, but we got with them. We could feel the love; see the love that these converts have for our child. You just think, “Whoa, he was a brat when he left on his mission and now look at what he is,” and he had his badge on and he was doing the work, and we saw him doing the work, and it brought us such joy, and in one month from now we are going to pick up son number four and spend a few days with him in the mission field. That is a highlight.

That is, that is. I would think that there are many things that would go on. I mean it just does not end when they are in the mission field, that there are many other successes we enjoy with our children as they come through difficult challenges. So that is a formula right? Your greatest joy, your happiest times are really when you are making other people happy or rejoicing in their happiness. That is important, and I think the Nephites were probably rejoicing in their collective happiness as they had made other people happy. When you go out digging those ditches, you are doing it for other people. That is where you will find happiness.

One last comment. You guys have been great. This has been the happiest day of my life, so thank you for making it a happy experience, but Sister Mayfield, are you going to make a final comment?

(Student) I was thinking of some things that are individual to us the day we were married, of the day we found his third Great Grandparents’ tombstones and holographs in an uncared for place. We did not know anything about them. Since then it is all tied in with the temple… finding that and identifying family. I think those are the happiest times. That is what I have found.

Thank you for sharing that. There are these punctuating moments that are just emblazoned in our minds and it is great to remember those. But there are happy times out there, and I pray that the Lord will bless us all with great happiness and that we will see that when Lehi said, “Man is that he might have joy,” the Book of Mormon gives us the pattern. It shows us the way. It tells us what it was that created this happiness and we can go and do likewise, I testify of that and am grateful for your comments. I appreciate all of this tonight very much. Thank you, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Alma 49-51 6 Dec 2008 (file 080612)

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Transcriptionist Carol H. JonesEdited by Rita L. Spencer

Alma 49-51 6 Dec 2008 (file 080612)

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