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Thursday, April 23, 2009 – Moroni 9
What would be my greatest comfort if I were in Moroni’s position? Completely alone and wandering for years and years, doing my best to not be killed by the Lamanites. Well, here we may have an answer to that question. Moroni is following in the example of the first writers in the Book of Mormon and writing the things of the Spirit. For Nephi, that was Isaiah. For Moroni, it is the words of his father, Mormon. Considering how powerfully the Spirit resides in Mormon’s retelling of the history of his people, I can’t say I’d disagree in the least. It’s also a touching example of a son who loved his father like a son should.

In this letter to his son Moroni, Mormon states that he fears that the Spirit has ceased striving with them. I have often wondered what this means exactly. We know that the Nephites and all the children of Lehi were given light and knowledge far beyond what we have today, and they turned against it. How far had they fallen? Had they committed the unforgivable sin and denied the Holy Ghost? It is difficult to say for certain, but we do know this much: A person who denies the Holy Ghost and commits the unforgivable sin is no longer capable of repentance – somehow they burn the capacity of repentance out of themselves. We cannot know with any certainty whether they had fallen that far and it is not for us to speculate. What we can tell for certain is that even if they had not fully qualified themselves as Sons and Daughters of Perdition, they were extremely close. In the face of extinction and with one of the greatest prophets of God in the history of the world right there with them, they utterly refused to repent. They utterly refused to reconcile with God. It seems they were willing to curse God to the very violent end. Yet Mormon and Moroni had the same expectation from God as any true prophet: Continue trying no matter what. But Mormon, the man whose words have inspired millions in our day, knew that it was a waste of time. He knew they would not listen and that they were beyond recovery. All he could do was do everything he could, and all he could hope for was salvation for his own soul, as was the case with Moroni.

If anyone doubts the justness of God in letting the people of Nephi be utterly destroyed off the face of the Earth, this chapter helps put those doubts to rest.

When Cortez met the Aztecs, Maya and others, he met a people who had institutionalized human sacrifice and human torture beyond anything imaginable. The archaeological data also shows a people who did terrible things to each other. Here we see a glimmer of that. The Lamanites take Nephite captives. They kill the men and feed each family their husband and father. Surely this was a way of complete dehumanization and disgrace. The use of such methods is unconscionable. So the Lamanites are well on their way to being the blood obsessed religionists that were there when Cortez arrived. The Nephites did worse than the Lamanites. They took the women captives, raped them, tortured them to death in the most cruel manner they could devise and then cannibalized them … as a token of bravery. Yeah … crazy people. This is just a small glimmer and as we read on, this was nothing all that surprising to Mormon or Moroni. But I think that Moroni wants to include this to answer any doubts about the justness of God in letting them be destroyed.

There are times in human history when a people gets so wicked that the best that the Lord can do is wipe them out completely and start over: The flood in the times of Noah. The Jaredites. The Nephites. Sodom and Gomorrah. We have more intimate knowledge about how and why this happened with the Nephites than any of the others. What we see is a people that was wicked beyond all belief. They got there after having light beyond all others and turning their backs on it. We don’t have the details on most of that. We do know that Enoch and his city was around before the flood we trust that God did everything He could. The people of God were taken away, and the rest were destroyed because they had gone beyond the ability to repent. We know that the city of Salem was somewhere in or near the Holy Land, and we know that their king Melchizedek was among the greatest prophets in history. We know very little about him, but we are told that he and his city were also taken up into heaven, just as the city of Enoch was. Because we know good God truly is, we can make a few assumptions about the people who were left behind after Salem was taken. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because the Lord could do nothing further for them. Christ did say that if he had come to them personally, they would have repented, so it is hard to assume that they were Sons and Daughters of Perdition. But under the circumstances, there was nothing more God could do to save them. They were destroyed. The other remnant people, the Canaanites, were supposed to be destroyed as well, but the Israelites did not fulfill the Lord’s will in that matter. It will be interesting to get the full story on such peoples, but we know God well enough to know that he would not wipe out entire nations for no reason.