Martin Luther dismissed the Sermon on the Mount as “the devil’s masterpiece” (ein Meister Stuck des Teuffels, German spelling as in original) (“Das heißt ein Meister Stuck des Teufels”, D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar, 1906), vol. 6, pg. 10). Luther called the Sermon on the Mount “the devil’s masterpiece” because, as he surmised in the essay, “the devil so masterfully distorts and perverts (verdrehet und verkeret) Christ’s true meaning through his Apostle [Matthew] especially in the fifth chapter”. (See the discussion of this, which includes the above quote, in John W. Welch, The Sermon on the Mount in the Light of the Temple, pg. 36 (London: Ashgate, 2009)). Martin Luther appears to have believed that Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount (as recorded by Matthew) weren’t compatible with what he (Luther) wanted the Gospel to mean, based on his own selection and elevation of a few verses from Paul over the rest of the corpus of scripture.

In taking this approach, and also in dismissing James as an “Epistle full of straw” (ein rechte stroern Epistel) because it teaches the importance of works together with faith for the disciple of Jesus Christ, Martin Luther is treading in very dangerous territory. Luther’s posture on this matter assumes that Jesus contradicts Paul. If that is the case, one should follow Jesus, not Paul. But Jesus doesn’t contradict Paul. Instead, Luther was misinterpreting Paul — Paul’s writings, when understood properly, don’t actually contradict Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. But the content of the Sermon on the Mount, which Latter-day Saints find enlightening and view as a “constitution” of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, does indeed seem to contradict Luther’s preferred interpretation of Paul. My conclusion as a Latter-day Saint is that Luther was in error, not Jesus Christ or Matthew.

Luther did not see it this way, however, and because he perceived that the Sermon on the Mount contradicted what he wanted the Gospel to say, his solution was to conclude that the Matthew had distorted Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount. In reality, Luther incorrectly saw a conflict between Paul’s writings and the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. But this conflict isn’t really there.

In my studies of the Old and New Testaments, the Latter-day Saint interpretation of Paul’s teachings shines as the interpretation that most fully incorporates Paul’s actual message into a whole or unity with the teachings of Christ and the other Apostles contained in the New Testament. (I mention the Old Testament here because I have found the study of the Old Testament to illuminate Paul’s writings.) Not surprisingly, in my Latter-day Saint interpretation of Paul’s writings, those writings do not conflict with or contradict Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or James or Peter. Rather, they are in harmony one with another, and with the Acts as well.

The Latter-day Saint interpretation of the New Testament adequately incorporates the teachings and doctrine found in James, which, from my point of view, many or most Protestant approaches (that I am aware of) fail to do. The “works” that James mentions, and without which James teaches that faith is dead, include the commandments that Jesus gives those who would be his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere in the Gospels. They also include the specific acts required by Jesus as a sign of one’s faith — baptism by immersion for the remission of sins and the laying on of hands for the Gift of the Holy Ghost, acts that are specifically discussed in the Gospels and in the Book of Acts.

But, as Paul correctly notes in his writings, it is not these acts themselves that save anyone but rather Christ’s grace (lest anyone give those acts themselves actual saving power, as the Jews had been accustomed to, and as Roman Catholics would later be perceived to do, which is what led Martin Luther to militate against “works” in the overzealous way that he did). Latter-day Saints understand and believe that Christ’s grace is the only power that saves us but we also understand that we must choose whether to accept Christ or not and thereby whether we receive that grace. As children of God, we are autonomous individuals who live in the fallen world in which mankind has become as God, “to know good and evil” (Genesis 3:22). As such autonomous children of God, we must choose for ourselves whether to accept Christ’s Atonement in our lives.

This message of salvation by the grace of Christ — which grace we choose of our own free will to accept or reject — is straightforwardly the message of the Book of Mormon from beginning to end: despite any and all works that we could possibly do, it is only by the grace of Christ that any of us are saved (2 Nephi 25:23) because, when we accept Christ and love God with all our heart, might, mind and strength (as commanded), then his grace is sufficient for us and this grace makes us perfect in Christ (Moroni 10:32). The Book of Mormon teaches that the grace of Christ, and not anything that we ourselves do, perfects us in Christ. However, consistent with what Jesus and the Apostles taught in the New Testament, the Book of Mormon teaches that we must choose for ourselves whether to accept this grace and in so doing, allow it to perfect us in this manner by the choices we make. We show the choice we’ve made to accept Christ by doing certain things that Christ commanded us to do. Grace and commandments, Paul and Jesus — and the other writings of the New Testament — are brought into harmony through the Gospel as understood by Latter-day Saints, with the Book of Mormon as a God-given aide in understanding the message of the New Testament.

For Calvinists, it’s the idea that we choose for ourselves whether to accept or reject Christ that is objectionable. For some Lutherans, it is the idea that Jesus Christ does indeed require some “works” on our part in order to show that we have accepted him and that we’ve become his disciples. For many creedal Christians, all talk about Jesus’ actual teachings actually seems irrelevant because the message of the Bible for them seems to be reduced to only one key point: the existence of the One-Substance Trinity, the belief in which is really the only thing that fundamentally matters.

But on the most basic level, the works that figure into the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, and which are discussed at length in the writings of the New Testament, include accepting Jesus Christ in our hearts. The New Testament does not require acceptance of a philosophical abstraction such as the One-Substance Trinity but rather it requires us to have faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. Even those Lutherans or other creedal Christians who believe that they are saved by “faith alone” believe that this step (of accepting Jesus Christ in one’s heart) is required. This acceptance of Jesus Christ as one’s Savior is itself a work; Latter-day Saints refer to this as having faith in Jesus Christ. Other fundamental biblical works that Latter-day Saints believe, based on the Bible, are required are baptism by immersion by one holding proper authority and receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands by one holding proper authority. It is my conviction that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alone puts the correct emphasis on these biblically required works and how they relate to our faith (which is itself also a work).

The New Testament does not give us license to sin and feel absolved from accountability for those sins. It is true that we obtain forgiveness for our sins when we accept Christ’s Atonement in our lives and have a broken heart and contrite spirit about the sins we have committed (because our sins have contributed to the suffering that Christ endured in his atoning sacrifice). But it is also very clear that the New Testament requires a posture of repentance of those who claim to be disciples of Christ and, although someone living a repentant life still messes up and commits plenty of sins, for which one can rely on the healing power of the Atonement, someone living such a life as a disciple of Christ does NOT have the attitude that there is no “law” for them. That is simply a misunderstanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

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The basis of this post stems from a comment I made elsewhere in a discussion with a Lutheran about Paul’s writings and Luther’s views.

On July 3 my oldest daughter and I were fortunate enough to attend our Uncle Jim’s organ concert in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. We were in Salt Lake City for a family funeral but the Fourth of July atmosphere and its expression in the organ concert lifted our spirits as we enjoyed a fantastic performance of a variety of celebrations of America in music in what is, for us, a special place.

We enjoyed not only classic American songs traditional for the Fourth of July but also traditional American hymns of devotion and faith, including Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing and Amazing Grace (and others), all of which were resplendant on the Tabernacle organ. Our Aunt Barb, Jim’s sister, also sang America the Beautiful with Jim accompanying on the organ as part of the concert. While listening to this and the other patriotic songs booming from the powerful Tabernacle organ, as well as the American devotional songs, my mind turned to our pioneer heritage and the upcoming July 24 celebrations, even though we were on the eve of the Fourth of July.

Giving it a try: up close and personal with the famous Tabernacle organ

The Fourth of July and Pioneer Day, July 24, really go hand in hand as holidays of the same stripe. Despite having been ousted from the boundaries of the United States of America in the largest forced migration in American history, our Latter-day Saint ancestors made a point of celebrating the Fourth of July as “loyal Americans” (even though a great number of them had recently emigrated from England and elsewhere, “across the sprung longitudes of the mind”) from almost the very beginning after settling in the remote wilderness of the valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847. It is a solemn thing to ponder the feet of those who made the trek, whether those who sacrificed by burying children along the way in the vanguard company or who did so later in the successive waves of Mormon and other pioneers who made the incredible journey across America’s wildernesses.

Pioneer Day is, simply, an expression of gratitude that our ancestors arrived in a place far away from the severe persecutions and suffering at the hands of fellow citizens and neighbors that they experienced in Nauvoo and in Missouri before that. The Fourth of July is a reminder that such persecutions and suffering should not have occurred in the first place in a land that exalts individual freedoms. It took a Civil War — not fought for religious freedom but with immediate effects for the personhood and freedom of those incomprehensibly enslaved on American soil because of their race — for the Bill of Rights to begin being incorporated against the states so that, as a derivative blessing of that emancipating struggle, the First Amendment could become the robust protection of religious freedom and liberty of conscience, for both religious and non-religious people, that it became throughout the twentieth century.

Appreciating both holidays together as I sat in the Tabernacle listening to both classical patriotic and devotional Americana, I felt deeply grateful for the protective hand of Providence in our daily lives, in the course of the Church, in the progress of our country, and in the blessings that abound in our current country of residence, the United Kingdom, whose history, culture, political system and philosophies and countrymen so profoundly influenced the rise of my own native homeland in the United States of America.

On this Pioneer Day my prayer is that we, as Latter-day Saints who are U.S. citizens, may always remember the need for a robust First Amendment and always engage ourselves in its protection. May Latter-day Saints in other countries and societies always raise their voices in favor of such protections of freedom of conscience and religious expression and devotion, whether under the European Convention on Human Rights or the individual constitutions of nations around the world. Above all, may we American Latter-day Saints give pause before joining forces with elements that would hope to weaken the separation of church and state that has been established in our inspired political system and which protects us in our freedom to worship as we please from the aims of those of other religions or of no religion who are not favorably disposed towards Mormons and who would expressly prefer the Church to cease its very existence or who would desire to greatly restrict our ability to practice our religion as our conscience dictates. May we always be free to rejoice, as my daughter in the picture above, in the sight of the Tabernacle organ and what that represents for us as Latter-day Saints.

Part III, Part II ½, Part II, Part I.

My great-great-great grandfather Alfred Parker Balls lived the early part of his life in a Dickensian nightmare. We celebrated Memorial Day this year in his old haunts in the Lowestoft area, England’s most easterly point, where he experienced a combination of Great Expectations, Hard Times, and Bleak House during his childhood.

We were on a fact finding mission, of sorts. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera so the resulting pictures were taken with my blackberry and are quite grainy and washed out. The picture above shows the decoration on a gravestone in the graveyard of a meaningful village church in our family history, as described below.

Born in 1829 in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, young Alfred was orphaned at age 10 in 1839 when his father left him and his siblings to take care of themselves six years after his mother died when he was only four years old. He ended up with his father’s sister and her husband, who were the Board of Directors of a work house (it appears that the master and matron of a work house earned approximately £80.00/year at the time, whereas by comparison the warden of a prison earned closer to £600.00 per year). Unfortunately, because his aunt and uncle did not want to take care of him, they placed him in the work house itself as a poor orphan rather than bringing him into their own household. We can imagine that his existence was dreary and bleak at the very least during this time.

Luckily, he attended the local parish church (possibly a condition of living in the work house?), which we discovered was almost certainly the Church of St Michael in Oulton (pictured), one mile from Lowestoft, with the other boys from the work house. While attending church one Sunday sometime between 1840 and 1843, Alfred saw his sister sitting with an aunt (his mother’s sister) in another pew. Apparently, Alfred had had bad luck in ending up with Balls relations but his sister had fared better landing with Parker relations. The next Sunday Alfred “broke ranks”, as the family history puts it, after church and “made his way to the door that his sister would come out of, and spoke to her”.

Our girls at the church door where Alfred likely met his sister.

Telling the tale in 1915, Alfred remembered it as a joyous meeting because his mother’s family (Parkers) had lost touch with him after his father had abandoned the children he had had with Alfred’s mother, Susannah Parker. They sent him back to the work house but got him out the following Wednesday to live with them.

The first part of our fact-finding mission was to locate the church where this occurred, if possible. The history recorded by Alfred’s grand-niece Hazel Ballard Jones in 1915, who wrote it down as Alfred told it to her, referred to the village where the church was located as “Altoan”. We had searched high and low in maps and on the internet for a town called Altoan, first near Lowestoft but then in all of England and the UK but unsuccessfully. Only after searching in vain for “Altoan” did we look more closely at the immediately surrounding environs of Lowestoft, at which time the village of “Oulton” seemed to jump right out of the map at us. Considering that Hazel, an American, recorded the story in 1915 from the lips of her great uncle, an 86 year old Englishman only months or weeks before his death, it is entirely understandable that Oulton was recorded as Altoan. This discovery allowed us to focus our search on Oulton to find the actual village or parish church where this happened. The good people at the Lowestoft Museum assured us that there was only one church in Oulton for hundreds of years before the Methodists set up there in 1901 — the Church of St Michael. Based on this information, we felt confident that we had found the actual site of an important event in our family history when we pulled up to St Michael’s.

Finding St Michael’s was more than a sentimental effort. One dead end in our family history is with Susannah Parker’s parents (as noted, Susannah was Alfred’s deceased mother). We are searching for the name and details of Alfred’s Parker grandfather — Susannah Parker’s father. In recounting his history to his grand-niece in 1915, Alfred mentioned that after he was taken from the workhouse to live with his maternal aunt and his sister, he immediately went to work in a flour mill owned by his Grandfather Parker, his deceased mother’s father. In an effort to find out who this Grandfather Parker was, we first thought to look in the graveyard of the village church in Oulton. We arrived in Lowestoft too late to get actual cemetary plot details or death records from the county office so we thought we would just look around the graveyard ourselves. We were pleased to find both Parkers and Balls in the graveyard of St Michael’s, although not anyone that could have been Alfred’s Grandfather. We will find out his details by searching for the owners of flour mills in the area during the time period, so we feel one step closer by having straightened out the “Altoan”/”Oulton” issue.

Searching the graveyard at the Church of St Michael's in Oulton.

Alfred soon left the flour mill to become a sailor (convenient considering Lowestoft’s prominent position on England’s eastern coast) and apprenticed on a ship for over six years, crossing the Atlantic nine times (mostly to Quebec). He married Elizabeth Boyd of North Shields, Northumberland, England in 1849 and ended up having ten children with her. Around this time he gave up sea life and began working on tug boats in the North Shields area instead for several years, during which time he met and was baptized by J.J. Foster, President of the North Shields branch, in 1854, together with his wife and mother-in-law. He became a fireman and then worked for 23 years as an engineer at the Billy Mills Water Works before emigrating to Utah in 1896. In Utah he settled down in Sugarhouse with his daughter Mary Ann, working for five years at the Granite Lumber Mill before retiring. He then worked at the temple until he was too unwell to do so.

Spending the day looking for and then finding the Church of St Michael in Oulton felt like a magical experience considering the life-changing import of his encounter with his sister in that church. In fact, he might never have found the Restored Gospel if he had not been found by his family at that time and removed from the work house — instead, it is not unrealistic to think that he might have met an untimely death from hardship or malnutrition in the work house.

As an added treat, as we drove from Oulton to Lowestoft to find the road back home to London, we unexpectedly came upon the local ward house, with Union Jack proudly flying.

The Union Jack was waving above the Lowestoft Ward Building as we left the area.

I have always loved the Doctrine & Covenants and am excited for this year’s focus on that book of scripture in Sunday School.

In anticipation of this new course of study, I have been reflecting on the revelations, doctrines, and covenants recorded in the LDS Doctrine and Covenants and their genesis in the tumultuous early years of the Church. Many of the revelations originated in the first few years after the Church was established in 1830 while the institutions of the Church including the various offices of the priesthood were still developing through the ongoing guidance that Joseph Smith was receiving throughout the process. The result was an organization that developed very organically, step by step.

Along the way, Joseph Smith was receiving revelations that coupled the divine with the mundane — a natural fit for a religion that was so wholly focused on establishing Zion. Historian Richard Bushman aptly describes how the text of many of the revelations reflects this eclectic ensemble:

In December 1832, three months after the priesthood revelation [D&C 84], Joseph received a lengthy, conglomerate revelation that took two days to complete [D&C 88]. Begun during a meeting in the “translation room” above the Whitney store in one of the three rooms where the Smiths were living, it broke off about nine o’clock. The minutes report that “the revelation not being finished the conference adjourned till tomorrow morning 9 oclock AM.” The next day, Joseph “proceeded to receive the residue of the above revelation.” When he mailed it to William Phelps in Missouri, Joseph called it “the Olieve leaf which we have plucked from the tree of Paradise.”

Like other revelations, the “Olive Leaf” [D&C 88] moves from subject to subject. Nothing in nineteenth-century literature resembles it. The writings of Swedenborg come closest, but they were much less concerned with millenarian events. The “Olive Leaf” runs from the cosmological to the practical, from a description of angels blowing their trumpets to instructions for starting a school. Yet the pieces blend together into a cohesive compound of cosmology and eschatology united by the attempt to link the quotidian world of the now to the world beyond. The revelation offers sketches of the order of heaven, reprises the three degrees of glory, delivers a discourse on divine law, offers a summary of the metahistory of the end times, and then brings it all to bear on what the Saints should do now

[. . . .]

A revelation in May 1833 [D&C 93] put Christ, rather than nature, at the center of salvation. The incarnate Christ, the revelation said, received “not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace.” Eventually, “he received all power, both in heaven and on earth; and the glory of the Father was with him, for he dwelt in him.” The Saints were to follow the same course. “If you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness and be glorified in me as I am in the Father: therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace.” The fulness promised to humans, in other words, was the same as the fulness bestowed on Christ: “all power, both in heaven and on earth.” The Saints were to follow the path of Christ toward this fulness, not to search nature for signs of divinity.

[. . . .]

Exaltation also meant intelligence, equated by the revelations with light and truth. In a sense, the central purpose of life was to absorb light and truth, the basis of judgment. Rejecting light was the great error. Living in darkness meant living on the side of evil. “Light and truth forsaketh that evil one.” Since the glory of God was intelligence, growing in intelligence was progress in godliness. Later in Nauvoo, Joseph would use the word “intelligence” as a name for the primal essence of the human spirit, and would elaborate the history of God and the free intelligences.

In a characteristic transition, the concluding verses of the May revelation [D&C 93] descend from the heavens into the everyday concerns of Joseph and his friends. The Lord scolds them for not keeping order in their families. Joseph is told, “You have not kept the commandments, and must needs stand rebuked before the Lord.” Sidney Rigdon and Newel Whitney are admonished for not keeping better track of their children. Ordinary daily concerns mingle with the grand structure of the universe. While taking care of their children, it was implied, the Saints could be growing in glory and intelligence. (Richard Lyman Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling (2005), 205-210.)

Bushman’s description of the nature of these revelations is so effective because it is also descriptive of the larger project of Mormonism. Reading the revelations contained in the Doctrine and Covenants, we begin to realize that our daily lives are indeed part of the very structure of the universe — the experiences that we have and the intelligences unto which we aspire are building blocks of something that stretches into eternity, with an unlimited potential reflecting God’s desire to endow all of his children with the greatest blessings he has to offer.

Kudos to a New York University journalism student in Prague for an interesting story that involves Mormons and religion (ht:T&S).

The story notes the difficulty experienced by Mormon missionaries in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in getting people interested in the Church but also touches on religion in these countries more generally. The articles notes as follows:

In a 2007 survey conducted by the STEM polling agency, 48 percent of Czech respondents identified themselves as atheists, making the country home to the highest percentage of atheists in Europe, if not the world.

It is no wonder that the Czech Republic presents a difficult working environment for missionaries such as Trost and Mack.

“I would say that Czechs do not like to talk about religion too much,” said Petr Mucha, a professor of religious studies at New York University in Prague. “A lot of it comes from the education under communism. They were taught that religion was bad and led to bad results.“

These bad results, according to the communist doctrine, included the domination of Habsburg Empire, which backed by the Catholic Church, squelched Czechoslovak aspirations during its rule from the mid-16th century until World War I.

Fifty-five percent of Czechs mistrust all churches and only 28 percent trust them, according to the STEM poll.

Having served a mission in a post-Communist country myself, I can add my own anecdotal support to the assertion that many people’s atheism was a direct result of their education during the Communist regime. After the fall of the various Communist dictatorships the misinformation propagated by the Communist regimes became painfully apparent, but many people did not reevaluate what they had learned in this one aspect.

It would seem logical that if the Communist regimes had been manipulating their citizens with regard to other information concerning political theory, economics, history, and other social sciences (it is beyond argument that the regimes were indeed doing this with their education programs and propaganda), it was also doing so with regard to religion. It would therefore seem prudent to be wary of the former regimes’ viewpoints on religion. That this reevaluation has not been undertaken by many people is an interesting phenomenon in and of itself.

The effect of this decades-long educational program provides a hint as to one of the main reasons why the Communist regimes were so objectionable to Church leaders — the state-sponsored atheism hardened large numbers of people against developing a relationship of whatever nature with their Maker, whether within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or otherwise. This article notes what anyone who has served a mission in Eastern Europe or Russia already knows: that these ffects are still pronounced today, nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet slave empire.

It’s funny but with this new WordPress dashboard all of my drafts appear to have been redated January 1, 1970.

In England they start kids off on an activist career very young, it seems.

By the summer of 2007, my oldest was a six year old tree hugger, as evidenced by this picture. After only half a year at her English primary school, she was regularly lecturing us that driving is bad for the environment (even though we hardly ever drive — we take public transportation to drop her off and pick her up from school).

Occasionally my wife has been known to do the unthinkable for this young activist: she shows up in the car to pick her up from school if it is pouring rain at the time school is ending. The truth is, most of the time she goes on the bus with our two year old to pick up the older girls from school, even when it’s raining. But every once in a while, it just works better to pick her up in the car. On one such occasion, I am told that our little activist disappeared up into her room that afternoon and emerged with this stern reminder for what she apparently considers to be her oafish parents:

I am proud that my daughter is so interested in this, particularly since I am on board with the impulse to drive less. My sense is that Mormons ought to be acutely aware of proper stewardship of and responsibility for the cleanliness and general health and well being of the planet (we need look no further than the Doctrine and Covenants to find encouragement in this regard). Pollution of our environment, whether of the air, land, or water, or the derivative endangerment or extinction of species should concern us greatly and be condemned roundly as very bad things in themselves (i.e., outside of a political context).

At the same time, however, I wonder whether political lessons are appropriate for the very young. As we all know, kids’ minds at this age are very impressionable. In this case, the fact that my daughter has been turned into something of a mini-activist by her school lessons isn’t a big deal because care for the environment is an issue I happen to agree with. (Of course, it appears from the way that my daughter is expressing her concern for the environment that it might be the politicized face of the issue of a clean environment that is being taught at my daughter’s school, which I think is too bad.) The risk, of course, is that at some point the kids might come home as activists for causes that you find morally reprehensible. I would imagine at that point that it transitions from being cute to distressing.

This is all the more reason to make sure that the home is a refuge from the world and a place where values and priorities are discussed openly and early. Perhaps a good start is to teach kids early on to recognize the use of important issues for political means and distinguish that from the issues themselves. Hopefully, we all want our children to be able to decide their own politics for themselves based on issues. A home focused on values and priorities can be a rich foundation for a child’s own exploration of political issues as he or she grows up and begins to become aware of how those issues are used — and whether such uses are effective, divisive, disingenuous or sincere, etc.

The Federal Republic of Germany turns eighteen today — at least in its reunified form. On October 3, 1990 the official Reunification of a country divided for 45 years by what seemed an insurmountable geopolitical estrangement took place in Berlin, the besieged city at the very heart of the Cold War. The scene played out on the steps of the famous Reichstag building upon which the words in the title of this post are inscribed just below the pediment: DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE — “To the German people”.

Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers (Isaiah 1:7).

In the early 1990s there was a display in the bombed out ruins of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche — a cathedral located on the popular Ku’Damm street in the heart of West Berlin that was destroyed in cataclysmic bombings of the city in 1943 — that conveyed a powerful and sobering message. The verse from Isaiah quoted above was placed in the caption under a panoramic picture of a completely bombed out Berlin. (For comparative translations of this verse, see here.) The picture above looks out from what was left of Dresden’s Frauenkirche over the ruins of Dresden after allied bombing raids at the close of World War II. Many other German cities had experienced similar devastation and destruction.

Berlin, however, had not only been the target of brutal bombing raids. It was also the scene of brutal street to street fighting during Russia’s 1945 Assault on Berlin as the Red Army pounded at the last defenses of Hitler’s crumbled dictatorship. After the boys and old men defending the city surrendered, the Red Army raped tens of thousands of German women trapped in Berlin as the Russians sought to establish their domination through unleashing the brutality of conscripts drafted from Russia’s vast expanse of client nations. The ultimate result of Hitler’s Napoleonic delusions in Europe was the entire destruction of the German economy and many of Germany’s major cities, as well as the death of millions across Europe and particularly in Germany. The stage was also set for 45 years of continued oppression of Germans who had ended up in what became East Germany as families were divided when half the country fell behind the “Iron Curtain”.

In 1948, as the writing on the wall had become clear based on the Soviet blockade of Berlin and the draconian measures adopted in the Russian zone of Berlin, West Berlin’s mayor Ernst Reuter stood at the destroyed Reichstag building and famously declared in biblical overtones, “Ihr Völker der Welt, schaut auf diese Stadt!” (“People of the world, behold this city!”). The world looked, as it had been looking, and saw Soviet intentions unveiled. The Cold War was inevitable as allied forces shored up the line dividing East and West against Stalin’s aggression.

Berlin was still on center stage of the Cold War in 1963 when U.S. President John F. Kennedy, just five months before he was assassinated in Dallas, stood in Berlin and gave a speech in which he made the following rousing statement which he had devised right before delivering the speech:

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum [I am a Roman citizen]. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’. . . . All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’

As a single city “divided” by an atrocious wall built by the Soviet client-state of East Germany (cynically called the “anti-fascist protective wall” by the East German government that erected it), Berlin was the very symbol of the Cold War. John F. Kennedy had presciently captured the spirit of the age with his impromptu statement. All free peoples had an interest in the well-being of West Berlin. West Berlin was the very symbol of the Cold War because the city itself was located as an island right in the middle of the country of East Germany — West Berliners were essentially in a stockade vigorously defended by American weapons of war against the threat of being subsumed by the hostile state surrounding it. In truth, the Berlin Wall was not an “anti-fascist protective wall” but an act of oppression perpetrated by a government on its own people: the Berlin Wall actually encircled West Berlin to keep East Germans from escaping the totalitarian regime in East Germany through West Berlin.

By the end of the 1980s, the Berlin Wall was as indelibly etched in the mind of millions of people around the West as the massive caption DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE was above the pock-marked facade of West Berlin’s imposing Reichstag building. A few hundred meters away from the Reichstag stands the Brandenburg Gate — one of the most recognizable Cold War symbols of all. In 1987, just two years before the unanticipated “fall” of the Berlin Wall, U.S. President Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg gate and made the following controversial but now famous statement:

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Even though the leader of East Germany Erich Honecker stated in January of 1989 that the Wall would stand for another 100 years, events that took place that year (as the culmination of 45 years of repression in East Germany) lead to an occurence that virtually no one had thought was possible — the opening of the border between East and West Berlin, more dramatically known as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Video images of Germans standing on top of the wall and streaming over it and through breaches in it will remain with anyone who has seen them as an outpouring of humanity’s desire for freedom and unity.

* * *

In 1945 a new republic was born on the ruins of Hitler’s Germany. But it would not be until October 3, 1990 (apart from the brief interlude of the Weimar Republic preceding Hitler’s rise to power) that the words inscribed on the Reichstag building in 1916 would finally be realized in a lasting republic: DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE. Though my endorsement means nothing, I salute Germany today on this Day of Reunification.

Cross-posted at BCC

The sons of mothers and fathers who prostrated themselves before a hostile army to be slaughtered at will for their religious beliefs (Alma 24:21) knew that there were worse things in this world than dying firm in their faith — for instance, breaking a solemn covenant to God (Alma 24:16) or, even worse, actually being one of the butchers before being “stung for the murders which they had committed” and joining up with those offering their necks to the sword (Alma 24:24-25; Alma 25:14). The sons and daughters of the latter inherited perhaps an even greater sense of humility from their mothers whose husbands had committed such atrocities and then repented, joining the Anti-Nephi-Lehis in “vouching and covenanting with God, that rather than shed the blood of their brethren they would give up their own lives” (Alma 24:18). This observation was shared by a sister in my wife’s home ward as part of the enriching discussion that I enjoyed as I attended Sunday School in the Edgemont 14th Ward while visiting family on vacation at the end of August. We were blessed by the efforts of a conscientious Sunday School teacher who engaged closely with the text and did not shy away from actually teaching us from the insights, experiences, and knowledge that he has gained from the messages of the Book of Mormon.

Theodicy reared its head during our 45 minute study of Helaman’s army of 2,000 sons of those same Anti-Nephi-Lehis who had made the covenant to bury their weapons of war and “suffer death in the most aggravating and distressing manner which could be inflicted by their brethren, before they would take the sword or cimeter to smite them” (Alma 27:29). I came away grateful for the profound homily on deliverance that we find in this episode of the Book of Mormon.

Another class member pointed out that Helaman’s decoy mission with his army of 2,000 Anti-Nephi-Lehis (Alma 56:30) occured during the High Holy Days of the Hebrew liturgical year (the High Holy Days are the first ten days of the seventh month, culminating in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on the tenth day) — Helaman notes that the famous battle in which none of the 2,000 soldiers were killed took place on the third day of the seventh month (Alma 56:42). In fact, this means that the Lamanite army that had been in possession of the city Antiparah, which was the strongest Lamanite army in the occupying force (Alma 56:34), was in hot pursuit of Helaman’s little band (Alma 56:38) on the first day of the seventh month. The first day of the seventh month (Leviticus 23:24) is the Biblical “day of blowing the horn” (Numbers 29:1) that is now known as the two-day Holy Day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish “Day of Judgment” or “Day of Remembrance”, which is fast approaching at the end of this month (September 29, 2008). As such, it seems appropriate to reflect on the Rosh Hashanah setting of the deliverance of Helaman’s army of 2,000 from their enemies.

Writing as editor of the various records that had come into his possession nearly 500 years after the events he is summarizing relating to this scene from the history of his people, Mormon noted that the Nephites had granted refuge to the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, among whom were the parents of Helaman’s 2,000 soldiers. They had also promised to protect them with Nephite armies in exchange for a tribute to cover the costs of such protection so that the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, whom the Nephites called the people of Ammon, would never find themselves in a situation where they would feel obligated to break their solemn covenant to God to protect their families from Lamanite armies (Alma 27:21-26). Despite this arrangement, about a decade later the people of Ammon began to feel like they should assist in defending against invading Lamanite armies (Alma 53:13). Helaman and the Nephites convinced them not to do so in an effort to assist them in keeping the covenant they had made with God (Alma 53:14-15). Mormon explains, however, that the people of Ammon had many sons “who had not entered into a covenant that they would not take their weapons of war to defend themselves against their enemies; therefore they did assemble themselves together at this time, as many as were able to take up arms, and they called themselves Nephites” (Alma 53:16). Mormon proceeds to give the following well-known description of these sons:

17 And they entered into a covenant to fight for the liberty of the Nephites, yea, to protect the land unto the laying down of their lives; yea, even they covenanted that they never would give up their liberty, but they would fight in all cases to protect the Nephites and themselves from bondage.
18 Now behold, there were two thousand of those young men, who entered into this covenant and took their weapons of war to defend their country.
19 And now behold, as they never had hitherto been a disadvantage to the Nephites, they became now at this period of time also a great support; for they took their weapons of war, and they would that Helaman should be their leader.
20 And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for acourage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all — they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted.
21 Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him. (Alma 53:17-21)

Later we find that Mormon’s description here was an accurate summary of Helaman’s own description in his epistle to Captain Moroni, which Mormon chose to include verbatim in the record he was creating on the Golden Plates (Alma 57:20-21; 27).[1]

The righteousness and purity of faith of the 2,000 Ammonites, together with the faith and teachings of their parents, contributed to their famous deliverance. With Helaman the High Priest as their chosen captain (Alma 53:19), the Ammonite soldiers were delivered from the reach of the pursuing Lamanite army on the actual day and night of Rosh Hashanah (Alma 56:38). The Holy Day timeframe of this deliverance is potentially meaningful considering that this Biblical Holy Day became a time to reflect on God’s Judgment and, by rabbinical times, was said to entail the heavenly opening of three books, one for the righteous, one for the wicked, and one for those granted time to repent during the ten High Holy Days preceding Yom Kippur. On Rosh Hashanah, therefore, the names of the righteous are recorded directly in the book of life and the righteous are thereby sealed to life. Helaman’s 2,000 soldiers certainly seemed to have been sealed to life on the first day of the seventh month as they outran the Lamanite army from the city of Antiparah.

When they finally faced the Lamanite army on the third day of the seventh month, it was their affirmative decision to do so and not because they had fallen prey to the Lamanite army:

42 But it came to pass that they did not pursue us far before they halted; and it was in the morning of the third day of the seventh month.
43 And now, whether they were overtaken by Antipus we knew not, but I said unto my men: Behold, we know not but they have halted for the purpose that we should come against them, that they might catch us in their snare;
44 Therefore what say ye, my sons, will ye go against them to battle?
45 And now I say unto you, my beloved brother Moroni, that never had I seen so great courage, nay, not amongst all the Nephites.
46 For as I had ever called them my sons (for they were all of them very young) even so they said unto me: Father, behold our God is with us, and he will not suffer that we should fall; then let us go forth; we would not slay our brethren if they would let us alone; therefore let us go, lest they should overpower the army of Antipus. (Alma 56:42-46)

It was up to Helaman to decide whether to take the young soldiers back to where the Lamanites were presumably confronting the Nephite army of Antipus. Helaman reported to Captain Moroni his reasoning for deciding to do so:

47 Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them.
48 And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it.

The outcome is well known among Latter-day Saints, as it is a favorite story of primary children and adults alike. Helaman and his small force discovered that the Lamanites were about to defeat the army of Antipus. “For Antipus had fallen by the sword, and many of his leaders, because of their weariness, which was occasioned by the speed of their march — therefore the men of Antipus, being confused because of the fall of their leaders, began to give way before the Lamanites” (Alma 56:51). Helaman’s army attacked the Lamanites from behind by surprise, halting the Lamanites’ pursuit of Antipus’s army and rousing Antipus’s men to join with Helaman’s soldiers in surrounding and defeating the Lamanites (Alma 56:52-55). Most importantly, however, Helaman reported of his 2,000 soldiers that “there had not one soul of them fallen to the earth; yea, and they had fought as if with the strength of God; yea, never were men known to have fought with such miraculous strength; and with such mighty power did they fall upon the Lamanites, that they did frighten them; and for this cause did the Lamanites deliver themselves up as prisoners of war” (Alma 56:56).

In the aftermath of this battle, Nephite reinforcements arrived, including 60 more Ammonite soldiers for Helaman’s army (Alma 57:6). Once again, they faced a larger Lamanite army and were delivered from death at the hands of their enemies:

19 But behold, my little band of two thousand and sixty fought most desperately; yea, they were firm before the Lamanites, and did administer death unto all those who opposed them.
20 And as the remainder of our army were about to give way before the Lamanites, behold, those two thousand and sixty were firm and undaunted.
21 Yea, and they did obey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their mothers had taught them.
22 And now behold, it was these my sons, and those men who had been selected to convey the prisoners, to whom we owe this great victory; for it was they who did beat the Lamanites; therefore they were driven back to the city of Manti.
23 And we retained our city Cumeni, and were not all destroyed by the sword; nevertheless, we had suffered great loss.
24 And it came to pass that after the Lamanites had fled, I immediately gave orders that my men who had been wounded should be taken from among the dead, and caused that their wounds should be dressed.
25 And it came to pass that there were two hundred, out of my two thousand and sixty, who had fainted because of the loss of blood; nevertheless, according to the goodness of God, and to our great astonishment, and also the joy of our whole army, there was not one soul of them who did perish; yea, and neither was there one soul among them who had not received many wounds.
26 And now, their preservation was astonishing to our whole army, yea, that they should be spared while there was a thousand of our brethren who were slain. And we do justly ascribe it to the miraculous power of God, because of their exceeding faith in that which they had been taught to believe — that there was a just God, and whosoever did not doubt, that they should be preserved by his marvelous power.
27 Now this was the faith of these of whom I have spoken; they are young, and their minds are firm, and they do put their trust in God continually. (Alma 57:19-27)

In verse 21 Helaman reflects on the fact that the Ammonites’ faith was rooted in what they had said their mothers had taught them. Before Helaman had decided to give the order to rescue the army of Antipus back on the third day of the seventh month, they had told him that “they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them” (Alma 56:47). After telling Helaman what, specifically, their mothers had taught them (which Helaman does not record in detail) they reinforced this salient point by saying to Helaman that “We do not doubt our mothers knew it” (Alma 56:48). Helaman’s reaction was perhaps not too different than my own in reading this assertion: when the children of co-religionists who have delivered themselves up to be slaughtered for their beliefs say that they do not doubt that their parents knew that God would deliver them if they did not doubt, their perspective is worth listening to and learning from. This is true even though it is likely that Helaman was aware that the parents of some of his 2,000 soldiers had probably been butchered as a result of their desire to keep the covenant they had made with God.

Returning to the Sunday School class I attended, the teacher asked what granted these women a sure knowledge of the deliverance of their sons, and why their sons would believe them. I was grateful that he pointed us to what he believed was the answer — 1 Nephi 1:20:

But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance.

I think he is right.

We cannot overlook the fact that the mothers of other Nephite soldiers, for instance those in Antipus’s army, were also likely praying for the deliverance of their sons, and yet many of them died. The 2,060 Ammonites, however, represented an exceptional case of unwavering faith and, notably, exact obedience to the commandments of the Lord and the words of Helaman, the prophet/High Priest. They also had come to know that their mothers knew that God would deliver them if they had faith and did not doubt that they would be delivered. It is reasonable to conclude that Helaman reports the remarkable experience and deliverance of his 2,060 soldiers — and Mormon includes it in such detail in the Book of Mormon — as a realized ideal that has the potential of teaching all people that which the Ammonites had learned from their exceptional parents.

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*Book of Mormon Blogging

[1] It also seems reasonable to guess that Mormon’s description of Helaman’s 2,000 soldiers is not without a trace of envy considering Mormon’s own position as the general of an army that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the righteousness, faith, and courage of the 2,000 Ammonites. Would the Nephite civilization have collapsed in Mormon’s time if the people and their soldiers had shared the characteristics of the 2,000 Ammonites? Earlier, in his parting prophecy an aged Alma the Younger implied that it would not but that such an outcome would be the result of their having become the opposite of what the Ammonites represented:

Behold, I perceive that this very people, the Nephites, according to the spirit of revelation which is in me, in four hundred years from the time that Jesus Christ shall manifest himself unto them, shall dwindle in unbelief.
11 Yea, and then shall they see wars and pestilences, yea, famines and bloodshed, even until the people of Nephi shall become extinct –
12 Yea, and this because they shall dwindle in unbelief and fall into the works of darkness, and lasciviousness, and all manner of iniquities; yea, I say unto you, that because they shall sin against so great light and knowledge, yea, I say unto you, that from that day, even the fourth generation shall not all pass away before this great iniquity shall come.
13 And when that great day cometh, behold, the time very soon cometh that those who are now, or the seed of those who are now numbered among the people of Nephi, shall no more be numbered among the people of Nephi.
14 But whosoever remaineth, and is not destroyed in that great and dreadful day, shall be numbered among the Lamanites, and shall become like unto them, all, save it be a few who shall be called the disciples of the Lord; and them shall the Lamanites pursue even until they shall become extinct. And now, because of iniquity, this prophecy shall be fulfilled. (Alma 45:10-14)

Compiling the records 400 years after Christ’s visit to his people, Mormon was certainly aware that Alma’s prophecy was fulfilled and realized that his own son Moroni, a disciple of Christ, would be pursued by the Lamanites as part of their (Nehor-inspired?) campaign to kill all disciples of Christ. Although Alma’s prophecy has been fulfilled with regard to the Nephites, there is reason to believe that the curse that he communicated on behalf of the Lord remains in full effect: “Thus saith the Lord God—Cursed shall be the land, yea, this land, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, unto destruction, which do wickedly, when they are fully ripe; and as I have said so shall it be; for this is the cursing and the blessing of God upon the land, for the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance” (Alma 45:16). Whether this curse pertains only to the lands of Central America that were inhabited by the descendants of Lehi or to the entire Western Hemisphere is perhaps somewhat unclear, but it is worth noting the content of this warning nonetheless.

Bookslinger is still on the Lord’s errand, slinging his books and other Gospel materials.

He puts every single one of us Latter-day Saints with a desire to bring all of God’s children to a knowledge of restored religious truth and priesthood authority seriously to shame. Thank you for doing so Bookslinger.

His latest experience with bookslinging is a prime example:

08/20/2008. 1057. I stopped for supper at a Chinese restaurant on my way to an appointment with a client. I don’t remember eating here before, but if I did, it’s been a long time. I ordered, paid, sat down, and put some material on the table. When the cashier/waitress/owner brought my food, she didn’t seem to notice the material.

When I finished eating, I was the only customer in the restaurant, so I stopped by the cashier counter and struck up a converstation with her. She accepted a Chinese and English Liahona, a Simplified Chinese copy and an English copy of the Book of Mormon, and the “Finding Happiness” DVD, which is only about 5 minutes long, and has a Chinese Audio and Video track. Their small children immediately started flipping through pictures in the magazines and in the book of Mormon.

Your dedication exposes many of us Latter-day Saints for the hypocrites that we often are, claiming as we do the privilege of identitying ourselves as children of Christ, having been “spiritually begotten” of Him through the covenants we have entered into (Mosiah 5:7), beginning with baptism, and yet often shrinking from such opportunities to share our testimonies and Gospel materials with those around us. You are setting an excellent example for us all. Keep up the good work.