The voice of the Lord to the Saints today is loud and sharply clear:
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Thou shalt not steal; neither commit adultery, nor kill, nor do anything like unto it. (D&C 59:6)
Notice the Lord does not say “murder,” “shed innocent blood,” nor any other euphemism that might suggest He is only talking about not committing murder. Nor does he give any other exemption. Nor are there any problems with translations to cause debates about the meaning of the words in question, a common defense used to interpret the meaning of Exodus 20:13 as allowing bloodshed in self-defense. The Latter-day Saints are forbidden to kill just as we are forbidden to commit adultery or steal. Further, the Lord warns us that Zion, the goal and heart’s dream of every Saint, cannot be built by those who kill:
For Satan putteth it into their hearts to anger against you, and to the shedding of blood.
Wherefore, the land of Zion shall not be obtained but by purchase or by blood, otherwise there is none inheritance for you.
And if by purchase, behold you are blessed;
And if by blood, as you are forbidden to shed blood, lo, your enemies are upon you, and ye shall be scourged from city to city, and from synagogue to synagogue, and but few shall stand to receive an inheritance.
I, the Lord, am angry with the wicked; I am holding my Spirit from the inhabitants of the earth.
I have sworn in my wrath, and decreed wars upon the face of the earth, and the wicked shall slay the wicked, and fear shall come upon every man (D&C 63: 28-33)
Notice where the desire or willingness to shed blood comes from- Satan. This teaching accords well with Christ’s teaching in the Book of Mormon that all conflict and comes from Satan:
For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another. (3 Nephi 11:28)
It has always been Satan’s way to get us to treat each other “without affection, and they hate (our) own blood” (Moses 7:33). Whenever we do so, whenever we choose to engage in violence and bloodshed then we are following after and serving Satan. It was no different in Missouri and it is no different among us now when so many Saints glory in the slaughter of our brothers and sisters in or from different lands because their names sound different, their accents sound strange, or they didn’t bow and scrape before the same political idol the rest of us already here do before crossing an imaginary line on a map.
Returning to D&C 68 the Lord tells us that the way to obtain the land for Zion then, and certainly now, could only come about in two ways: either the Saints could purchase the land or they could fight over it. Yet, these possibilities are only theoretical as His next statements make clear there is really only a single way to obtain the lands for Zion-by purchase. We know this because He says that if we purchase the lands of Zion we shall be blessed but if we try and fight for them, if we shed blood to defend our claim to them, we will be driven from the land by force.
Why? Why would God not come out in the mightiness of His arm and slay the wicked men who were defiling and destroying Zion? Why would the Saints be allowed to be driven from their lands if they fought for them? The Lord explains why:
You are forbidden to shed blood (D&C 63:31)
We are forbidden to shed blood. God has forbidden the Saints to shed blood. Even in the case when we would be doing so would be in the most obvious case of self-defense imaginable. Then comes the warning. If the Saints return violence for violence, if they embrace violent self-defense, then God will allow them to be driven from their lands. They have, after all, broken his express commandment to not shed blood. Indeed, He immediately follows this up by saying that the wicked will destroy the wicked, which seems to suggest that if the Saints engaged in violent defense of their lives and property in Zion against Missouri attacks then He would count the Saints as being wicked and allow the wicked of Missouri to slay the wicked among the Saints, with the survivors being driven away such that barley anyone could be left to have any inheritance in Zion. And this commandment against bloodshed and warning of what would happen if the Saints embraced it was given in 1831, years before the genocidal 1838 Mormon War which saw the issuance of the Extermination Order and the fleeing of the Saints from the last lands of Zion. God had warned and forewarned them as He warns and forewarns us now.
From Heaven, Joseph Smith received this thunderous warning about the spiritual consequences of those Saints who kill:
And now, behold, I speak unto the church. Thou shalt not kill; and he that kills shall not have forgiveness in this world, nor in the world to come. (D&C 42:18)
Read that again and let the weight of it sink in.
he that kills shall not have forgiveness in this world, nor in the world to come
If you’re a member of the church and you kill someone you will not have forgiveness in this world nor in the world to come. Notice there aren’t any qualifiers or exceptions. It doesn’t say murder. It says kill. There are no exceptions for self-defense or defense of others. Killing is forbidden on pains of damnation and under the threat of punishment coming upon the wicked engaged in it, including the Saints.
So, What About War?
The logic follows very clearly here. If you cannot kill then you cannot go to war. This is undoubtedly why the Lord has commanded His Saints today to unequivocally to renounce war and proclaim peace!
Therefore, be not afraid of your enemies, for I have decreed in my heart, saith the Lord, that I will prove you in all things, whether you will abide in my covenant, even unto death, that you may be found worthy.
For if ye will not abide in my covenant ye are not worthy of me.
Therefore, renounce war and proclaim peace, and seek diligently to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children (D&C 98: 14-16)
What is our work in the latter days? To renounce war completely, to proclaim peace, seek to save our dead, and to be worthy unto His commandments even if it costs us our lives. Yes, the Lord has called upon us to prove ourselves worthy of His covenant by proving that we will remain faithful to His commandments “even unto death.” Perhaps this confirms that worst fear broiling away in your guts, that if you truly embrace these teachings, if you refuse to kill, then you could die. It should because that is exactly what that means- whether you die of old age or are killed by a violent attacker who, because you refused to kill them, is able to kill you. Abiding in His covenant even unto death encompasses both these possibilities and more. And loyalty to God could mean our death. But that is the very test of life! It is easy to serve God when times are hard, it costs us nothing. It is significantly more difficult when, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego or the converts of Ammonihah we are cast into a literal fire to die in one of the worst manners possible because we refuse to obey the government and disobey the commandments of God, yet it is exactly in those moments where our faith is tested, tempered, purified, and increased the most. Elder Dennis E. Simmons, then of the Seventy, gave a particularly adroit address on this very subject titled, But If Not…. The chances that we could be persecuted or even killed for our adherence to the Lord’s commandment are not justifications for breaking His commandments. When the government drafts men and women to murder for it, to kill for it, the only place for the righteous is in the furnace with Shadrach, Meschach, and Abed-nego, in the lion’s den with Daniel, or in the pit with the righteous of Ammonihah.
But, you say, I’m not going to be infantry, I’m not going to kill anyone. I’m going to do a side job, like working in the medical bay, cooking, building bridges in the engineering corps, and a thousand other jobs that aren’t strictly combat related. I ask, so what? First of all, you would do much more good for society by joining a charitable society, volunteering your time at a homeless shelter, even sweeping streets or serving food at a deli. If you want to do good for society, the last place you go is to organization most dedicated to destroying it. Second, all of those jobs are ultimately designed with a single purpose- to make it easier for the killers to kill any and all people those in power decide to tell them to kill. You helping to make their job easier just makes you complicit in the crime.
Think of it this way: If I am working for a company and it orders me to load the weapons, polish the boots, make the beds, etc. of its hired guns so they can more effectively go out and kill more people, am I not helping, even in a small way, to kill those people? If I run a store and you walk in with a gun and say, “I’m looking to shoot my spouse and need bullets for my gun,” and I sell you those bullets am I not guilty of aiding and abetting a murderer? Am I not an accessory before the fact because I know what you are going to do and have helped you to do it willingly and knowingly? I am. And so are you when you join the military and knowingly aid in making it easier for the combat soldiers, pilots, sailors, etc. to perform their primary job of slaughtering your brothers and sisters. And this isn’t just something that we recognize today. This same concept of guilt is what got David condemned as a murderer and damned.
In 2 Samuel 11, King David has sex with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite and she gets pregnant. When all of David’s attempts to cover up his adultery fail he sends orders to his field commander Joab saying, “Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die.” And Joab does exactly that and Uriah dies in battle. David probably thought he got away with it until the prophet Nathan showed up in 2 Samuel 12. Nathan catsigates David, saying:
Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. (2 Sam. 12: 9)
There are many important lessons here. But one of them surely is this: God did not care that David was not the one that killed Uriah. David’s intentions and his knowledge before the crime were enough to bring upon him a damning sin and, according to D&C 132:39 cost him his exaltation. The same is true of all of us. Just because you are the soldier responsible for peeling the potatoes doesn’t mean that you are absolved of the part you play in using your labor to make it easier for soldiers to be freed up to have a greater ability to kill others. You may not have pulled the trigger or even have given the order, but some of the blame for helping it to happen rests upon you and you will one day stand before God to account for this evil.
And make no mistake, war is evil and all those who participate in it are participating in and furthering the causes of evil. To but it more bluntly, they are serving Satan. For, not only is contention of the Devil, but contention’s ultimate form -War- is also of the Devil. This was taught by the First Presidency during World War II:
We renew the statement made in our message of the last April conference, that obedient to the direct command of the Lord given to us more than a hundred years ago (directing us to “renounce war and proclaim peace” — D&C 98:16) the Church is and must be against war, for war is of Satan and this Church is the Church of Christ, who taught peace and righteousness and brotherhood of man.
…We call upon the statesmen of the world to assume their rightful control of the affairs of nations and to bring this war to an end, honorable and just to all. Animated and led by the spirit of Christ, they can do it. The weeping mothers, the distraught and impoverished wives, the fatherless children of the world, demand that this be done. In this way only will enduring peace come; it will never be imposed by armed force. Hate-driven militarists and leaders, with murder in their hearts, will, if they go through to the end, bring merely another peace that will be but the beginning of another war.
Notice that the first portion quoted makes it bluntly clear that war is of Satan and that the Church, because it follows Christ, must be against war, which in context means that they are against World War II as well. If opposition to war is following Christ the going along with war must be serving Satan. The second portion quoted condemns the world leaders involved in the war as being hate driven militarists and/or having murder in their hearts. This is hardly the glorious propaganda we often hear about the Last Good War. And, prophetically, the First Presidency notes that engaging in this war will never bring peace, it will only lead to more war- what today we call the Cold War, with its myriad wars for hegemony between rival superpowers racing toward global genocide, which in turn birthed the Global War on Terror, ad infinitum. War, they note, can never create peace.
War is Idolatry
President Spencer W. Kimball summed up well the idolatry of war in his masterful prophetic address, “The False Gods We Worship”:
In spite of our delight in defining ourselves as modern, and our tendency to think we possess a sophistication that no people in the past ever had—in spite of these things, we are, on the whole, an idolatrous people—a condition most repugnant to the Lord.
We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching:
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:44–45.)
We forget that if we are righteous the Lord will either not suffer our enemies to come upon us—and this is the special promise to the inhabitants of the land of the Americas (see 2 Ne. 1:7)—or he will fight our battles for us (Ex. 14:14; D&C 98:37, to name only two references of many). This he is able to do, for as he said at the time of his betrayal, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53.) We can imagine what fearsome soldiers they would be. King Jehoshaphat and his people were delivered by such a troop (see 2 Chr. 20), and when Elisha’s life was threatened, he comforted his servant by saying, “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them” (2 Kgs. 6:16). The Lord then opened the eyes of the servant, “And he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” (2 Kgs. 6:17.)
Enoch, too, was a man of great faith who would not be distracted from his duties by the enemy: “And so great was the faith of Enoch, that he led the people of God, and their enemies came to battle against them; and he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, even according to his command; and the rivers of water were turned out of their course; and the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness; and all nations feared greatly, so powerful was the word of Enoch.” (Moses 7:13.)
What are we to fear when the Lord is with us? Can we not take the Lord at his word and exercise a particle of faith in him? Our assignment is affirmative: to forsake the things of the world as ends in themselves; to leave off idolatry and press forward in faith; to carry the gospel to our enemies, that they might no longer be our enemies.
We must leave off the worship of modern-day idols and a reliance on the “arm of flesh,” for the Lord has said to all the world in our day, “I will not spare any that remain in Babylon.” (D&C 64:24.)”
I have very little to add here. President Kimball lays it out clearly. We are a people who love war. What we call a “patriot” going off to fight and kill in war is a person perverted by Satan and standing in opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our love of guns, tanks, airplanes, bombs, and fortifications-walls- is idolatry. And given the teachings of the First Presidency that war is of Satan and being a soldier is to follow the perverted teachings of Satan, we are left with little doubt about whose idol we worship when we engage in war- Satan himself. This should be nor surprise when we remember that it has always been Satan that has declared his intention rule on the Earth through “blood and horror.”
Juxtaposed to the ways of Satan, President Kimball presents to us the power of God. At all times the righteous are surrounded by the angels of God. Just as in the past, when the Lord used His prophets as the agents of His will, providing through them might miracles that protected the people of God, it can be so today if we abandon our idols and lean upon His almighty arm. Just as Enoch, with but the words of his lips and the faith of his heart, was able to set at naught entire armies, so today God can and will protect us if we choose His path.
Elder Uchtdorf of the Twelve Apostles said it perfectly a few years ago:
As His covenant people, we need not be paralyzed by fear because bad things might happen. Instead, we can move forward with faith, courage, determination, and trust in God as we approach the challenges and opportunities ahead.
We do not walk the path of discipleship alone. “The Lord thy God … doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”
“The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.”
In the face of fear, let us find our courage, muster our faith, and have confidence in the promise that “no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.”
If we abandon the infernal idolatry of war and have the faith enough to trust in God and His promises, to abandon our idols of war, and keep His commandments, then we will receive the promised blessing that no weapon formed against us will ever prosper. God will be our buckler and shield. In doing so we will follow the true Gospel path to mutual salvation. As President Kimball, said, we will be able to “leave off idolatry and press forward in faith; to carry the gospel to our enemies, that they might no longer be our enemies.” Like the brothers Lehi and Nephi in Helaman 5-6, we can have the courage to go to our enemies and preach to them the Gospel of Jesus Christ such that they leave off war and become our friends. Decades of Captain Moroni’s wars had only accomplished bloodshed, death, and the loss of half of everything the Nephites possessed. In a single year’s preaching the brothers Lehi and Nephi had braved the violence of their “enemies” and converted them to their friends by preaching to them the Gospel. The Lamanites, not converts to Christ, laid down their weapons, returned all the conquered Nephite lands, and sought to establish true and lasting peace with the Nephites. Truly, as Alma said, the Word is mightier than the sword.
The Path Forward
Ultimately, the only way to truly respond to evil is with goodness. Peace is not some ephemeral end goal, rather peace itself is the path to Zion. This is why the King of Zion -He who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life- is also known as the Prince of Peace. The only way to end violence is not with more violence; the only way to end violence is with peace. If we choose to answer violence with violence, as the natural man makes it so tempting to do, we will never have peace. Instead we will forever be stuck in the escalating cycle of violence and retaliation, each strike of theirs justifying ours and ours theirs, until millions are dead, civilizations lay in ruins, and wars of extermination have wiped one or both sides out. The only way to have peace is to quit this cycle of violence, to have the courage and Christian love to forgive, to be struck and to literally turn your cheek to be struck again and again until you have absorbed the violence and anger and hatred while also creating something new- a path forward based on love. A great little book on this is When We Don’t See Eye To Eye by J. David Pulsipher, who teaches the History of Peace at BYU Idaho.
In other words we have to do as President Kimball taught, we have to reject the idolatry of war and embrace the only thing which lived will bring peace, the teachings of Jesus Christ, which are the Gospel of Peace. And His teachings are clear. We do not do unto others as they do unto us, we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. When they do evil, we do good. When confronted with hatred, we return love. When they demand our coats we give them also our cloak. When we are demanded to go with them a mile, we voluntarily walk with them two. In other words we love and serve. As President Kimball noted at the end of his address, it is the only war forward to eternal life:
Herein lies the only true happiness, and therefore we invite and welcome all men, everywhere, to join in this work. For those who are determined to serve the Lord at all costs, this is the way to eternal life. All else is but a means to that end.
In places like the Middle East where we cannot as openly peach the Gospel, which President Kimball suggests we should do instead of waging war, our acts of service would then become our ministry. We may not win converts, but we would win hearts, and thus win souls. Instead of destroying our enemies we would be winning lives. There are many ways to do this, perhaps unlimited ways. I imagine something the size of the American army, which is bigger than the entire population of some nations and better funded than almost any other organization on the Earth in any nation, that is not an instrument of death, a giant war machine adept at crushing countries and blowing up civilizations, but is instead a truly humanitarian organization dedicated to improving the lives of all people, everywhere. If America were a “Christian nation” full of a Christian people instead of having Americans volunteer to be brainwashed and turned into death dealers, they would volunteer with an organization that helped rebuild villages, teach farming techniques, helped develop infrastructure, that built schools and trained teachers, and more. How magnificent would that be!
The worth of every soul is great in the eyes of God. Every child of His is worth every effort to save. The words of Christ and the life He lived must be our watch word and example in all that we do.
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:44–45.)
“Renounce war and proclaim peace.” (D&C 98:16)
Zion, where all are one heart and one mind and are at peace, cannot be built any other way.
