War

Alma 2:21

"And Alma sent spies to follow the remnant of the Amlicites, that he might know of their plans and their plots, whereby he might guard himself against them, that he might preserve his people from being destroyed."

Many people wonder why the war chapters in the Book of Mormon exist. I think this scripture has much to do with one of the answers to that school of question. I like to think of stories as parables, meaning that whenever I hear a story I try to discern an eternal principle from it, learn and grow from it. When I read that scripture I thought to myself. "Hmm, that's very interesting how Alma chose to approach this war-time dilemma that he was in. He was pursuing his enemy in hopes to end the battle quickly, and so instead of just sitting around and waiting for the battle to come to him, he went and investigated his enemy so that he would be better prepared for the next encounter."

This obviously is nothing that is earth-shakingly brilliant, but it's rather quite obvious as far as war-strategy goes. But what I drew from it is that it parallels our battle with sin and temptation. What did Alma do while he was caught up in making sure that he won the battle at hand? He studied his enemy and figured out the best ways to prepare and encounter them. So I got to thinking, why don't we do that? The parallel I drew, as I mentioned, had to do with sin, and more specifically in thinking about what preparations we do in our daily lives to combat sin.

We truly are in the midst of a war, a war with Satan and his devils. Every day we are tempted, who do you think that tempation comes from? Certainly not our loving Father in Heaven, rather it comes from Satan, the father of all lies. He constantly assails us with temptaion in every shape and size, at all times of the day, and from places that we least expect it. So how does all of this tie into Alma's decision to do a little bit of espionage on the Amlicites? Well, simply put, why don't we do a bit of espionage on Satan and his tactics? Why don't we figure out what he's up to so that we can better fortify ourselves from his assaults? Better yet, in what ways CAN we fortify ourselves? And an even better question, if we have the ability to fortify ourselves against temptation, why don't we?

Well, it is late as of now.. I will probably expound on this in more detail in a future blog, but I need time to think and pray about it. I think I'm on to something here, and I want to take time to collect my thoughts on the subject.