BOM Alma 56

BOM Alma 56 July 29, 2016

 

California's second temple
The Oakland California Temple (LDS.org)

 

The tactic, described in Alma 56, of having a swift group of fighters — in this case, Helaman’s young “stripling warriors” — go out before an enemy army in order to tempt them into an ill-advised pursuit while another group of fighters, allied with the first, pursue that army from behind — was used by Muslim forces, if memory serves, several times in the Crusades.  As I read the accounts, decades ago, I wondered why on earth the Crusaders were so stupid as to fall for the trick not merely once, but on multiple occasions.  Yet fall for it they did.  And then, when they finally tried it once on the Muslims, the Muslim armies responded, essentially, with “You’ve got to be kidding.”

 

One other note:  I’ve run into critics who’ve denounced the notion that Helaman’s two thousand young fighters could have emerged from a major battle without a single fatality as absurd, utterly unrealistic, and so forth.  But that’s rather the point, isn’t it?  Helaman himself plainly views it as a miracle, and Mormon, the editor, includes it because he sees it that way, as well.  Without divine aid, such an outcome would be essentially impossible.  In a sense, it’s rather like denying the resurrection of Christ because science and daily human experience tell us that dead bodies simply don’t come back to life.  Well, of course they don’t!  The message of the first Christians wasn’t “Listen to this!  Jesus rose physically from the dead just the way people often do!”  The stunning miraculousness of it, the astonishing impossibility of it, is exactly what caught attention.

 

Posted from Newport Beach, California

 

 


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