Wise words from Samuel the Lamanite that describe our day

Samuel’s words to the Nephites in Zarahemla are some of my favourite in the Book of Mormon. I find the turn of language he uses evocative, rich, and just wonderful. The prophecy of riches becoming slippery due to a curse on the land that we find in Helaman, chapter 13, demonstrates this perfectly.

There are two themes in this chapter/prophecy:

1. Listening to flattering words and welcoming false prophets who stroke the egos of the people by telling them they can do whatever they want;
2. God cursing the land because the people ignore Him and the true prophets He sends, so that the people’s riches, which they offer to the flatteringly false prophets, slip away from them, no matter where they hide them or how firmly they try to hold on to them.

I’m just reading an article which explains how the language used for these two themes is connected: they use two closely-related words that mean ‘smooth things’ (translated ‘flattering words’ in The Book of Mormon), and ‘slippery [things]’. Even in English, the wordplay is effective. (In Hebrew, it’s even more obvious: halaqot and halaqlaqqot – this comes from Old Testament scriptures from which Samuel might have taken his wordplay).

My favourite scripture here is verse 38, but let’s start before that.

Samuel tells the people that their ‘great city of Zarahemla’ is only spared from destruction at this time because of the righteous who are in it. The same goes for the nearby city of Gideon (sadly, given the origin of that city’s name). However, there will come a time – soon, we see – when the wicked majority will cast out even those few righteous people from among them, and then the city will be ‘ripe for destruction’. And what destruction came….

Blessing and Curse

Samuel prophesies a curse that will come upon the land (meaning physically and the people living in it): anyone who buries a treasure will lose it, unless they are righteous and bury it ‘unto the Lord’ – perhaps here, the gold and other plates and records that Mormon took his account from would be an example. This curse will come because the people’s hearts are set upon their riches; they don’t thank the Lord who gave the riches to them, or made it possible for them to be acquired, and they use them the wrong way. The Lord has said that He created the good things of the earth for the benefit and use of man, and they must be used in the way He decrees. Turning them to any other use angers God and brings upon the person and land a curse.

Interestingly, if you read Doctrine and Covenants 59, you can see the corresponding blessing and curse for (a) keeping the Lord’s day holy, and (b) using the good things of the earth for selfish and nefarious purposes. The blessing for keeping the Lord’s day (Sunday, in our era) holy is ‘the fulness of the earth’ – all the natural goodness that comes from the earth.

And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgement, not to excess, neither by extortion.

Those who do use them ‘to excess’ and ‘by extortion’ bring down a curse upon themselves, because they don’t ‘confess his hand in all things’. We don’t see the specifics of that curse in this revelation, but Samuel goes into wonderful detail, so it’s all good. He refers to the One who gives all riches, and the necessity of acknowledging their proper source – as the Lord did to Joseph and the saints (D&C 59). Why? In part, because those who fail to do this fall into the sin of pride, boasting, ‘envying, strifes, malice, persecutions, and murders, and all manner of iniquities’ (Helaman 13:22).

Flattering words and false prophets

Because of the people’s wickedness, they want to hear only things that support them in their wickedness. Anyone who tells them otherwise is cast out, ridiculed, or worse. Samuel tells it as it is:

[A]s the Lord liveth, if a prophet come among you and declareth unto you the word of the Lord, which testifieth of your sins and iniquities, ye are angry with him, and cast him out and seek all manner of ways to destroy him; yea, you will say that he is a false prophet, and that he is a sinner, and of the devil, because he testifieth that your deeds are evil.

But behold, if a man shall come among you and shall say: Do this, and there is no iniquity; do that and ye shall not suffer; yea, he will say: Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth – and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a prophet.

Yea, ye will lift him up, and ye will give unto him of your substance; … and because he speaketh flattering words unto you (smooth things), and he saith that all is well, then ye will not find fault with him.

~ 13:26-28

Describing our time

The Nephites in their wickedness at this time, and their final stage at the end of The Book of Mormon reflect our world today. Every time I read the descriptions, it seems to be speaking directly about our time. Samuel’s identification of their deliberate ignorance and swapping of truth and error perfectly describes the actions of the critical social justice crowd, who think that because their religion claims a monopoly on caring and ‘justice’ for society (actually very select groups in society), they are on the side of the right, no matter what they do. They insist upon obedience from everyone to their creeds, welcome and applaud those who stroke their egos with mollifying words (say the emperor has no clothes, whether he does or not, and you will be showered with approbation and avoid death), and harass and villify those who point out the error and illogic of their beliefs and actions, and who preach any other gospel.

So much of the great and spacious building today is filled with this. In a way, it’s awful – the hatred and violence directed at people who speak out against the false creeds of this crowd, or even just hold to the traditional views about things like biological sexes, chastity (i.e. sexual self-restraint and male-female relations), Western values, Christianity, and so on, is intense and constant. People lose their jobs and careers; receive death threats and threats of violence against their children; are shouted down on TV talk shows (not that these are ever really a place for truth to be heard or reasonable discussions); their businesses are targeted – see the response to Elon Musk just trying to save Americans a whole lot of money by reducing waste and corruption in government departments – and all sorts of unmerciful and depraved things. If you hold to conservative principles, you’re called unkind, selfish, racist (and various other -ists and -phobics). ‘[Ye] will be angry with him, and cast him out, and seek all manner of ways to destroy him; yea, ye will say that he is a false prophet, and that he is a sinner, and of the devil’.

Meanwhile, those who give in to the zeitgeist or use it to get ahead – since it’s the way to get ahead these days, as so many organisations are controlled by this crowd, in thrall to the myths of postmodernism and Marxism – are themselves flattered, their egos stroked with high honours, the best positions, lucrative incomes, praise and support in professional circles, government offices, investments, speaking tours, books, TV shows….

It’s all twisted, and it’s so frustrating and difficult to watch, because it feels so unjust – and real good is being destroyed in the name of the ‘new’ good, which is actually ugliness and evil – or just nothing, like the emperor’s pretend clothing. So I feel an affinity with Samuel, and with those righteous few he mentions who live among these increasingly wicked people. (Not because I think I’m righteous and everyone doing this is wicked, but because the difference between principles is so stark, and because these beliefs cause such suffering and destruction to all that is good).

Smooth things become slippery

The other reason I like this chapter is because it’s reassuring, in its pronouncement of doom for those who act this way (again, I don’t want people to experience destruction, but it’s reassuring that these acts will be rewarded justly, in their time; it just looks unjust right now). I’ll finish off with Samuel’s lament and prophecy about the people’s riches and accompanying destruction.

O ye wicked and ye perverse generation; ye hardened and ye stiffnecked people, how long will ye suppose that the Lord will suffer you? Yea, how long will ye suffer yourselves to be led by foolish and blind guides? Yea, how long will ye choose darkness rather than light?

Yea, behold, the anger of the Lord is already kindled against you; behold, he hath cursed the land because of your iniquity.

And behold, the time cometh that he curseth your riches, that they become slippery (like the smooth words they let flatter them, ignoring the wrongness of their actions and desires), that ye cannot hold them, and in the days of your poverty ye cannot retain them. (The devil doesn’t support those who believe and follow him, knowingly or unknowingly; he uses and abandons).

~ 13:29-31

Repent before it’s too late

Then, finally, they will lament and see the error of their ways – they will be terrified at the loss of all the things they thought they held; the unrelenting witness of reality against the false ideas they built their lives and empires around. But it will be too late – ‘everlastingly too late’, in Samuel’s great words (coming up later).

O that we had remembered the Lord our God in the day that he gave us our riches (finally, they acknowledge the real source), and then they would not have become slippery that we should lose them; for behold, our riches are gone from us.

Yea, we have hid up our treasures and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land.

O that we had repented in the day that the word of the Lord came unto us; for behold the land is cursed, and all things are become slippery, and we cannot hold them.

Behold, we are surrounded by demons (the terrifyingly real state of things that they hadn’t noticed before, in all the flattery), yea, we are encircled about by the angels of him who hath sought to destroy our souls. Behold, our iniquities are great. O Lord, canst thou not turn away thine anger from us?

It’s the cry of the damned, both terrifying and heart-rending; people so deep in the grip of false things and the evil they’ve mired themselves in through their self-flattery/deception that no one can save them. It’s like someone caught in quicksand up to their neck. You can’t do anything for them. (It’s a metaphor, but to be accurate, you can lay yourself out to sink more slowly in quicksand – usually a person can be saved; however, I think at the point that a person has sunk up to their neck, the weight of the wet sand is going to probably be too much for them to do that. So it’s actually a pretty apt metaphor).

And so Samuel says (favourite verse!):

But behold, your days of probation are past; ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is made sure (very different to the slipperiness of the words and riches they welcomed, which led them to this state); yea, for ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head. ~ 13:38

Wow! Samuel lays it all out. If you seek, all your days, for things which are contrary to the laws of reality – this is wickedness – you’ll end up with a life of nothing. Your soul will be empty, and there will be, in a way, nothing to be saved. You’ve wasted the days of your probation. Rather than building up truth and light, becoming filled with charity and faith, you’ve given away even what you had in the beginning, which God gave to you. What can He or anyone do? You’re in up to your neck. The weight of your wickedness is too heavy to be reversed. If only you’d listened to those prophets who were just telling you the truth….

Which is why Samuel made their state so clear: this was the prophecy; a vision of things to come, if they remained in their twilight zone of unreality. There was still some hope. This is what prophets do: if the people are righteous, they can give promises and describe the blessings to come. If the people are wicked, they make their state clear, show them what the future will be like if they continue this way, and remind them that there’s still a chance; still time for them to turn around. This is the kindest of things, not the unkindess claimed by the wicked and the spiritually and intellectually blind – or those who let themselves be led by such ‘guides’.

The choice

So, our lovely thirteenth chapter of Helaman makes clear how to live in these days:

Look at the uncomfortable truth and be discerning, going against the prevailing direction of the time if needed, and remain free from the curse; or turn away your eyes and be flattered by the smooth words of those who say you can do and believe whatever thing you want, true or not, and be trapped in the curse of slipperiness, so that all your riches and precious things cannot be held onto; they weren’t yours to begin with, and you won’t retain them if you use them for the wrong purposes.

Thank you, Samuel; wise and clarifying words! 👏 I like your beautiful, effective language.