(For an alternate lesson plan, follow this link.)
A BASIC
THEME: FREEDOM AND COVENANTS
In the war
chapters of Alma (43-62), the word "liberty" is used 33 times, and
the word "freedom" is used 26 times--two similar terms, for a total
of 59 times. The word "covenant" is used 26 times, and the word
"oath" is used 12 times--two similar terms, for a total of 38
times. As we read through these war stories, we can find a couple of
themes among all these repetitive words, and the first one is:
Freedom is vital.
This applies
to the entire plan of salvation, to societies here on earth, and to
individuals. Freedom is the very essence of the plan of salvation.
Without it there would be no progress. Without it there would be no
point. It is important enough to go to war over. Jesus Christ led
us in a war in heaven and the cause was liberty over slavery. Most wars
here on earth are fought over the same thing. Over and over in the Book
of Mormon account, we can see that the Nephites "did think more
upon...liberty...than they did upon their lives (Alma 56:47).
Fighting
alone will not bring freedom, however. Freedom is bought with righteous
living, with the keeping of covenants. This is what confuses a lot of
people in our day. The more we discipline ourselves to keep the
commandments, which some see as restrictive, the more free we will be.
The more we give in to passions or foolishness, the more restricted our lives
actually become. So the second principle we see is:
Keeping covenants brings freedom.
One of the
finest examples of covenant keepers of all time is found in the people of
Ammon. 15-20 years before the conflict
we read about in this week’s assignment, a group of Lamanites joined the church
due to the missionary efforts of Ammon and his brethren. They included the high king of all the
Lamanites and two of his sons who were lesser kings. At the time of their conversion, the king led
them all to make an oath that they would never fight again, even in
self-defense. The reason for this oath
was that they had been such a blood-thirsty people, the king did not think they
could be forgiven of any more killing, even for a righteous cause. (See Alma 24:16-18.)
They kept
their oath. Twice the other Lamanites
came upon them and slaughtered them, and they offered no resistence. Once, their massacre resulted in the
conversion of many of their persecutors, but after the second time, the Lord
told Ammon to remove them from the land of the Lamanites, and take them to
dwell with the Nephites where they could be protected without having to fight themselves. This they did.
Wars continued. These people of Ammon (also known as the
Anti-Nephi-Lehies) sent their support to the Nephite armies in the way of food
and provisions, but they kept their oath to never fight again themselves. After 15-20 years of this, however, they
began to wonder whether keeping their oath was a good idea. (Alma 53:13)
When they had been Lamanites, they were always moved to fight by anger
and hatred for the Nephites. Now they
were “moved with compassion” to take up arms in defense of the
Nephites—opposite reasons for engaging in war.
Helaman and his brethren (in present-day terms, the General Authorities)
convinced them that the keeping of their covenant was vital (Alma 53:14).
In the midst of this
difficulty, someone thought of something:
The young men of Ammon had been babies when the oath was taken, and
therefore had not participated. They
would now be in their teens or 20s, an age at which they could take up arms.
These young men entered into
a covenant in their new role as soldiers.
(Alma 53:17) This was the exact
opposite covenant their parents had entered into! Their parents’ oath was to give up their
lives rather than to ever fight again.
The young men’s covenant was to fight “in all cases” for liberty, even
unto death. Both covenants were
righteous covenants and were motivated by pure love.
Who did this battalion of new
solders ask to be their commander?
Helaman! Not a trained army
officer, but a prophet of the church.
(See entry on Helaman in the Book of Mormon Index.) He was only in his 30s by now. There is no indication that he had previously
been a leader in the armed forces, but their trust was in the Lord, not in the arm
of flesh. Helaman, therefore, left his
ministry and became a military leader.
Stripling Warriors today, from lds.org
THE FAITH OF THE STRIPLING
WARRIORS
These young men, “the
stripling warriors” or the “sons of Helaman,” are most well-known for their
faith that they would be spared, despite their youth and inexperience. They may never have remembered seeing their
fathers go off to war, or practice any fighting techniques. The only training they would have had would
have been what Helaman gave them. (Alma
56:45-48) Even though they valued
liberty over life and were not afraid to die, they did not doubt they would be
delivered. Why? Because their mothers had taught them so.
Now I have a question for
you: Why on earth would their mothers
teach them this? Many, many of the
Nephite soldiers who were valiant and righteous men died in battle. Look just a few verses previous and read that
a “vast number” of Nephite men had been slain.
Were these warriors less righteous; were they lacking in faith? It doesn’t sound like they were. (Alma 56:11; 60:12-13) Teancum, for example, was a righteous soldier
who was killed after he single-handedly assassinated the Lamanite king,
Ammoron, in an effort to end the war (which actually was the beginning of the end of the war. Teancum had faith in God and lost his life in
a righteous cause. In fact, never in the
entire Book of Mormon is there another army recorded that did not lose men to
death, whether for a righteous or an evil cause. If these people of Ammon had access to the
records of the Nephites up to that time (which they did—Helaman kept the
records), they would never have seen a scriptural precedent for a righteous
army being totally spared of death. So
why did their mothers impress this promise upon them?
I think the answer can be
found in Alma 27. After the second
massacre upon the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, when Ammon asked the Lord whether he
should take them to live with the Nephites, the Lord gave them a promise (Alma
27:12) that he would preserve that generation.
The stripling warriors were that generation. Now, after 15-20 years of actively living the
gospel, their mothers knew the Lord.
They knew he was a God of Truth.
They knew he kept his promises.
Why the Lord gave them this
promise while letting others perish is one of those questions we can’t
answer. Perhaps He felt the people of
Ammon had sacrificed enough with the loss of so many of their loved ones in the
massacres. Perhaps He knew they would
rather fight themselves than send their children off to war, and this promise
gave them great comfort in that situation.
Helaman also promised them
that the Lord would strengthen them because they kept their covenants. (Alma 56:8)
Being completely unseasoned, and properly under-trained warriors, they
would need this help.
THE LORD FULFILLED HIS
PROMISES
The Army of Helaman fought in
three recorded battles to retake Nephite cities from the Lamanites, and
participated in another conflict without fighting. In each case they were successful because
they and their parents kept their (opposite) covenants and followed the commandments.
Pre-Battle
Before the Army of Helaman
was formally given a commission, two opposite areas of the Nephite country were
under attack, one near Bountiful and one near Zarahemla. Moroni and Lehi were leading the defense on
the Bountiful end. Antipus was leading
the defense on the Zarahemla end.
Antipus needed help the most, so that’s where the Army of Helaman
headed. The Lamanites had taken four
cities there, and Antipus had only 6,000 soldiers with which to defend a fifth
city, the city of Judea. The Lamanites
were about to come against the city until they saw the 2,000 warriors coming to
join Antipus; then they chickened out.
And here is the first time we see the promise of preservation
realized. (Alma 56:19)
Battle of Antiparah
The next year, in the 27th
year of the judges, they engaged in their first battle. This is the battle we are most familiar
with. 2,000 more Nephite soldiers had
enlisted, giving Antipus a total number of 10,000. The Lamanites had taken the city of
Antiparah, as noted above. The Nephites
had made their cities into such excellent fortresses that they were very easy
to defend, but it made it almost impossible to take one back after the
Lamanites had conquered it. So Antipus
decided the only thing to do would be to draw the Lamanite army out of the city
where they could fight them on even terms.
To do this, he set up Helaman and the 2,000 warriors as bait. They were to march past the city, near enough
for spies to detect, looking like easy prey.
The Lamanite army would then come out and attack them, but Antipus and
the remaining 8,000 would catch them from behind and engage them in battle.
The plan worked except for one
thing: The Lamanites were a lot faster marchers
than the Nephites expected. The Army of
Helaman had to really clip along to stay out of their reach, and the Army of
Antipus couldn’t catch up from behind for two days. Then, suddenly, Helaman realized that the
Lamanites were no longer on his tail, and he had no spies back there to tell
him what had happened. He didn’t know
whether the Lamanites were waiting to ambush them, or whether Antipus had
caught up. But he and his young men
decided to go back and fight. When they
got there, Antipus had been killed, as well as most of the other leaders, and
the soldiers were in confusion and fear.
The presence of the 2,000 with their leader Helaman buoyed them up, and
they all took courage and won the fight.
In the end, the remaining Lamanites in Antiparah were frightened and
deserted the city. The objective was won,
and the promises of the Lord were fulfilled.
(Alma 56:56 to “strength of God”)
The Battle of Cumeni
Their next recorded battle
was a year or two later. They were
deployed to recover the city of Cumeni.
Once again, straightforward hand-to-hand combat was useless because of
the fortifications of the city. Antipus
was gone and Helaman was now in charge of the whole group. This time they placed the city under siege,
and when the Lamanite supply train came, they attacked it. They sent the prisoners from the supply train
off to Zarahemla under guard. Within a
few days, the army within the city of Cumeni surrendered. Now the Nephites had a huge number of
prisoners which were very difficult to control with the forces they had. So they sent them with a large guard off to
Zarahemla as well. The very next day, a
fresh army of Lamanite soldiers arrived at Cumeni. The number of Nephites left behind to guard
the city were too few to manage the battle.
They sent a messenger to tell the guards of the prison train that they
were under attack. Unfortunately, the
prisoners heard, took heart, and revolted.
Because they had no weapons, most of them were killed by the guards, but
a few escaped. The guards then returned
to help Helaman with the battle. They
won, but it was a very sore battle in which 1,000 Nephite soldiers were killed. Not one youth of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies died,
but every single one was wounded. (Alma
57:26). Once again, why were they
preserved? (Alma 57:21) It wasn’t just that they obeyed their
military leader, Helaman; it was that they obeyed their prophet Helaman.
The Battle of Manti
Later in the year, they
prepared to retake the city of Manti.
Due to the fall of the government, of which they were unaware, they had
received no provisions or reinforcements for quite some time. They were malnourished and small in
numbers. They had to come up with a very
clever plan to be successful this time.
Like the other Nephite border
cities, the city of Manti was mightily fortified. After praying for God’s help to strengthen
and deliver them once again (Alma 58:10), their whole (small) and receiving his
renewed promise that he would (Alma 58:11), they came up with a plan. They brought their whole (small) army near
the city and camped, making it appear that they planned to put the city under
siege, like they had done at Cumeni. The
Lamanites saw how small their numbers were and decided to attack them, rather
than risk an ambush on their supply trains.
When the Nephite spies saw that the Lamanites were preparing to come
out, Helaman split the small army into three tiny squadrons. Two of the squadrons hid, leaving the
stripling warriors as the decoy again.
As the Lamanites came out to battle them, the Army of Helaman began to
retreat. The Lamanites pursued. The hidden squadrons cut off the Lamanite
spies so they couldn’t return to warn the city, and then they attacked and
conquered the city easily because very few had been left to guard it.
The 2,000 warriors traveled
for days, with the Lamanites right on their tails. Suddenly, the Lamanites realized that they
were heading toward the big Nephite city of Zarahemla and decided they had
better back off. They camped for the
night, intending to turn back to Manti the next day. But Helaman commanded his soldiers to march
all night, going around the Lamanite camp, so that they reached the city of
Manti first. When the Lamanites arrived
and realized that the city was full of Nephite warriors now, they fled into the
wilderness. With very little bloodshed,
the city of Manti was regained. (Alma
58:39)
APPLICATION
We also will be strengthened
and preserved as we follow the example of the people of Ammon and their sons,
the 2,060 stripling warriors (60 more enlisted during the war). (Alma 58:40)
·
LIBERTY: They stood fast in liberty. We can do this in the defense of our
countries at war time. We can also
defend our religious rights from attacks of those who would remove them. And we can resist giving away our personal
agency to any sin or addiction on a daily personal basis.
·
MEMORY: They remembered God, day to day. They remembered what he had done for them in
the past, and they remembered his promises for the future. We can do the same through our church worship
(specifically the sacrament and the temple), our daily prayers and scripture
study, our patriarchal blessings and other blessings.
·
OBEDIENCE: They
kept the commandments. We have all
covenanted to do the same and the keeping of our covenants will strengthen and
preserve us as it did them. Like the
stripling warriors, we need to obey every word of the prophet with exactness.
·
FAITH IN
CHRIST: They had “faith in the prophecies
of that which is to come.”
As the children’s song says,
we must follow the example of the Army of Helaman with courage and conviction
that the Lord will preserve us in our daily battles for freedom.
Here are a few links to "We'll Bring the World His Truth" (AKA "The Army of Helaman") Primary song on YouTube.
