Today's Favorite Verse: Alma 54:8, 17

Today's Favorite Verse: Alma 54:8, 17

"But as ye have once rejected these things, and have fought against the people of the Lord, even so I may expect you will do it again.

For behold, your fathers did wrong their brethren, insomuch that they did rob them of their right to the government when it rightly belonged unto them."

Angry words are shared in epistles between Moroni, captain of the Nephite armies, and Ammoron, king of the Lamanites. I sat and pondered on each side's anger. The first verse are Moroni's words. Moroni is angry because the Lamanites keep coming to battle against the Nephites. He tells Ammoron that the wrath of God will come against them if they attack them again. He is calling them to repent, but he knows that they will attack again. They are incapable of anything else unless they repent.

The next verse is Ammoron's words. I realized the issue he says he is angry over happened 525 years earlier. He still thinks the Lamanites and Nephites need to be one group of people and he is to have power over them all. That Nephi shouldn't have left his brothers when they had sought to take his life. This act divided them into two separate nations. That rational would be like the British government trying to attack the United States still after 240 years of us fighting the Revolutionary War. How could our two governments separate and all these years later be allies, and the Lamanites and Nephites are not?

The only answer I can seem to think of is a belief in God. Ammoron even says he doesn't believe there is a God in his reply to Moroni. When God has left people's heart there is no ability to forgive others. No ability to move past previous offenses. Hearts just don't mend when God is out of their life. That hatred and disbelief in God has been passed down to untold generations. That is why 525 years can pass and still the Lamanites want to destroy the Nephites. What a witness to the wickedness and hardness of hearts when God is not in their lives. The only hope to heal these two nations would be for them to repent, exactly what Moroni was asking them to do.

Day 328 Tami Fitzgerald Harris