O YE FAIR ONES

 

When Mormon stood on Cumorah’s hill, the carnage he saw took his breath away (Mormon 6:16).

To put the catastrophe of Nephite’s final battle into perspective, here’s some statistics of America’s warfare:

-        Revolutionary War (1775-1783) – 4,435 battle deaths in 8 years

-        Civil War (1861-1865) – 140,414 battle deaths in 4 years

-        World War I (1917-1918) – 53,402 battle deaths in 1 year

-        World War II (1941-1945) – 293,986 battle deaths in 4 years

On Cumorah’s hill, 230,000 Nephites were slain, in just one battle. Mormon did not specify how long it took to slaughter so many people but he called the deed ‘a battle’ and not a war (Mormon 6:2,3,8). Considering the ‘greatness of the number of Lamanites’ who fell upon their prey ‘with all manner of weapons of war’, I am guessing it took a matter of days (vs 8,9). And considering also that there existed continual bloodshed between the two parties for quite some time, I would imagine Lamanites’ warfare skills were very fine tuned and thus executed quickly (Mormon 4:11).

It is difficult to imagine how a people who once lived in unity and total harmony could come to a point of such hatred and overwhelming intent on destruction (4 Nephi 1:3,16,17). Mormon gives us some clues on how they arrived there.

• -        Their depravity: the Holy Ghost was entirely withheld from them (Mormon 1:14); they 'willfully rebelled against their God' (Mormon 1:16); in their extremities they 'cursed God and wished to die' (Mormon 2:14); they were consumed with revenge (Mormon 3:9-10); they forcibly deprived women of their virtue, killed them, and 'devoured their flesh like unto wild beasts' (Moroni 9:10);
• -        The fathers who raised their children to be godless had lost the light of Christ which is given to every man that is born (Mormon 5:16; President Harold B. Lee, in CR April 1956, 108). It is just about unthinkable that this could happen but such was their extreme wickedness;
• -        They denied God and put their trust in the arm of the flesh (Mormon 5:1).

All these things are bad enough but the main culprit was division among the people. Because they became a people led by Satan, they were driven to turn on each other (Mormon 5:18). Our destruction is his greatest victory.

And so it is happening in our day and age. Satan is using every tactic to divide us and make us turn on each other. A time will come when the whole world will be at war and when ‘every man, among all nations, that will not take his sword against his neighbour’ will have to flee to Zion, ‘the New Jerusalem, a city of refuge, a place of safety for the saints of the Most High God’ (D&C 45:64-71).

We will want to be among the righteous who shall be gathered ‘out from among all nations’ and come to Zion, ‘singing songs of everlasting joy’ for the ‘wicked will not come into it’ because ‘the terror of the Lord shall also be there’ (v 67).

Mormon in his sorrow and anguish lamented over the slain of his people: “Oh ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you….I mourn your loss, but behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows cannot bring your return” (Mormon 6:17-20). 

Let us never reject Him who stands with open arms to receive us but let us press on to Zion, the city of our God.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Mormon's Miraculous Book by Joseph Brickey)

P.S. Some have speculated that Mormon might have exaggerated the number of his army and that his numbers were simply military terms but I am going with what is recorded in the Book of Mormon.