3rd Nephi 1-7: Come Follow Me Book of Mormon with Sam

Welcome! Things are really heating up for the Nephites at this point. It is time for the very last moves, good and evil, before the savior comes. It is a really exciting time and things happen quite rapidly. This is a time of great upheaval in the Nephite government. I am going to make my best analysis based on the situation. If you disagree with me, I would encourage you to not fall back on ideological truisms, but to think about the how and why and what of the Book of Mormon before passing judgement.

We're in the the end game now

As I mentioned before, things begin happening rapidly in the next few chapters before Christ's coming. The first thing is that people can no longer deny the signs of the times coming together. The day and night and day HAPPENS and no one deny's it. This puts the next events in a different frame than anything that happened before. There is a similar situation when the Nephites meet the Mulekites and receive a witness that what Lehi spoke about Jerusalem was absolutely true.

The nastiest shock to the system was to the wicked Nephites and Lamanites. We don't seem to register how bad things are, pre-day/night/day, likely due to the almost casual reference Mormon makes to the gravity of the situation. 'Oh and by the way, all the believers were literally sentenced to death' is the kind of bombshell that usually gets more lead-up. Then again, we shouldn't be surprised. They kicked Samuel the Lamanite out of their city and tried to execute him on the wall, so they are certainly in the right state to try this kind of heist.

Here is a key to understand: a sign as powerful as Christ's coming was impossible to deny, but wickedness that bad doesn't just get wiped off the leger. In many ways, this is comparable to the five Nephites who were so shocked that Nephi had correctly predicted the Chief Judge's murder and fell to the ground. In fact, many of the wicked Nephites actually fell, just like the five. But the sign came to them, they didn't take action, so their intent wasn't there. There were others who couldn't deny the sign, but immediately sought to twist things to deny what happened. 

Here is another key. I believe that the believers were not steadfastly looking for the sign as a testament to their faith, I believe that the believers had a testament of faith, and that made them look steadfastly for the sign. I don't believe they were hoping the sign would come to prove them right. I believe they already had a hope in Christ and were looking to the sign as fulfillment of that hope.

A little more on the Gadiantons

The Gadiantons become the main antagonists in the following chapters. Mormon was hesitant to show us how they worked evil, yet compelled to warn us with all his power against supporting modern Gadiantons. And seriously if you don't believe there are modern Gadiantons, I'm just going to say, you have got to be so blind. And other things too. I guess I'm not going to say those. I can understand a lot of modern day confusion on WHO modern Gadiantons are, but to say they don't exist today is so hopelessly naive that it is hard to have any semblance of a real conversation after that. Here is a really simple example that you probably didn't know and almost everyone can agree on. Most people don't know that predecessing Hitler's rise to power, there was an old guard of the German army determined to hide the rising militarism of a darker Germany to the world. They viewed anyone seeking peace or to pay tribute with former enemies as traitors and collaborators, and yes, they would secretly murder anyone colluding with the former allied powers. This was before Hitler even became chancellor, but reached its zenith in the night of the long knives, where Hitler had completely taken over the government (wow, where have we heard that before) and he set the dogs loose on all those who were in any opposition to him. After that, any semblance of humanity (for anyone who was even half-awake) was gone. There are many other much more controversial examples, but let's please get on the same page that they without question exist. Satan has been planting murder for gain since Cain. He will go as far as he can and as far as people's hearts will let him. Only the gospel is going to get us out of where that goes.

Final note on the subject, first it should be noted that Hitler himself tried to corrupt the churches, sometimes successfully to his gain, so I'm not saying just be a churchgoer and things will be okay. When I say the gospel, it has to be the pure gospel of Christ with no deceit or false pretenses. Those who truly followed Christ in Germany became Hitler's greatest enemies. Hubner, Bonhoeffer, and Hildebrand are a few I highly recommend you look up.

So the point is that we don't know a lot about the Gadianton's actual works besides they murdered for gain, and so we have a little bit of a handicap understanding what they were all about. I'd like to point out some of the trends we can see that we don't pay as much attention to.

Stage 0 - Nehors and King-men? My pet theory is that the Gadiantons' predecessors were the order of the Nehors and King-men. These guys turned from Christ, preached to get gain, and weren't shy about killing people in their way. They also tried multiple times to get enough votes to get the government, or, in Amalekiah's case, to use intrigue and murder to weaponize the Lamanite nation.

Stage 1 - Hidden among people. The Gadiantons first manifested themselves under Kishkumen and the band of Gadianton (yeah, the real kahuna) who killed the Chief Judge. It appears that the band was in the people and among the people but had no formal organization above their secret organization. They would support each other and get gain by intrigue and murder, but they were super on the down-low.

Stage 2 - Take over government. It appears that they next collaborated with lower judges to get seats in the government and carry out their works by corrupting the law, and were ridiculously successful to the point where even the chief judge was a card-carrying member, so to speak. This method took a real beating from Nephi's famine, but seemed to come back again after Stage 3 to some rather unsuccessful extent.

Stage 3 - Create a new government. It seems that a number of forces(the end of Nephite/Lamanite hostilities, the famine, the sign of Christ) deprived the Gadiantons of strategic resources necessary to infiltrate the government. in stage 3, they dissented much as Nephites did to the Lamanites, except for here they dissented to their own nation instead of the Lamanite one. They became quite large to the point where they thought they could take over the Nephite nation by a pure open battle play. They also indicated, per Giddianhi's letter, that they believed a society existed where everyone could be a Gadianton, which raises the question - who would they plunder and how to make that happen? This phase gets quashed by Lachoneus and Gidgiddoni's frankly miraculous leadership, and the righteous effort on the part of the entire people.

Stage 4- Agents of chaos. In the final stage, the Gadianton Robbers go for the lower Judge play again, much like stage 2, but can't pull off a full government heist, possibly for reasons I will talk about below. Instead, they murder the chief judge, disintegrate the government, and flee. These are the most wicked of all the Nephites and the Lamanites so they must have been a real mess. They are ended when Christ burned their city with fire.

P.S. We have all of these stages in our modern world. Check out this lecture for how the KGB did it back in the bad old days. Spoiler alert, the KGB agent tells the group that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing that can stop them. No kidding.

All comes together as at first.

What comes after the great battle of Lachoneus and Gidgiddoni against Giddianhi and Zemnarihah is a small, blessed moment of peace before the end of the harvest. It says 'there was not a living soul... who did doubt in the least the words of all the holy prophets'. The people are finally united like never before. They knew the signs and had been preserved by God's power and "they did forsake their sins".

"...Formed laws with equity and justice"

There is an interesting factor that I believe is here at play. By gathering all the people together, the normal order of things was significantly disrupted. When they then went back to their lands, there was a chance to put a new order to things. I believe that the Nephite law system remained integral overall, but that this episode was like hitting the refresh button. Mormon specifically makes the note that they had formed their laws according to equity and justice.

Equity is a word that is taking a beating right now. It has been really twisted today to justify some pretty awful things. Equity here means impartiality, the idea that God is no respecter of persons. It has nothing to do with equality of outcome, or the pernicious idea that somehow the governing body should decide how to redistribute the fruits of the labor of the free people.

In fact, this scripture warns directly against this exact thing; giving too much power to government, or any power outside the law. It says that there were many merchants, and also many lawyers and many officers. These are the people that were most corrupt and that destroyed the peace. They were the ones who tried to stop the prophets from speaking, and would secretly put them to death, and they would do it in ways that circumvented the laws of the land.

Guys, this is serious. And it is pertinent. I welcome honest questioning but there are absolutely murderous designs behind many secret courts, people's courts, special courts, and any other body of people or organization arrogant enough to abrogate a Constitutional system of law. Once again, its sometimes hard to believe that people are this stupid, and there's always at least one person in the group that knows exactly what they are doing and they want it. After the staged Reichstag fire, Hitler set up the special people's court to try people outside the body of law. This device was intended for murder, and became little less than a death panel for Hitlers enemies under guise of the law. 

I don't care where or how people tell you they need to be above the law. You should be highly suspicious of any organization that claims they can somehow mete out justice better than a constitutional system such as that in the United States. If that body or organization is hunting down people for what they say, there is a good chance that they are following the same pattern as the Gadiantons and the same pattern as the Nazis, and you know that is not the path we want to go down.

Government disintegrates

Have you ever realized that the Nephite government ceased to exist before the coming of the Savior? It was not there at His coming. The Gadiantons killed the chief judge and fled and the government fell apart. Things probably would have gotten very bad very quickly because there was a mass tribal effect where everyone got with the group the most associated with for protection and association. There was probably a massive economic breakdown and intertribal war coming but luckily that never happened.

Then it was time for the last of the best. Nephi II, son of Nephi I, son of Helaman II, Son of Helaman I, Son of Alma II, Son of Alma I - who was taught by Abinadai- and was a descendant of Nephi continued his work in all diligence to the end, and he did so with great power and great faith despite all darkness around him. I mention all the fathers up to the beginning of the founding of the church under Alma because I want you to see the long line of missionary work and continual striving for the people. I also want to point it out because the works of the older generations, like Alma II, Zeezrom, and Amulek blessed the work of Nephi I and Nephi II, and those were blessed by the singular courageous and holy decision of Alma to defy the King and the court and follow the words of Abinadai. Is there any wonder that these prophets made a sacrifice worthy of all acceptation at the Savior's coming?

P.S SUPER EXCITED FOR NEXT TIME!!!!! The Savior's personal ministry is about to begin!