Sketches from the Book of Mormon: The Expedition of Ammon

THE EXPEDITION OF AMMON.

King Benjamin, after having retired from the throne and office of high-priest, lived three years longer, and had the joy to see his noble son Mosiah II. continuing in the course he had been pursuing himself for so long a time; and it is even said that the young king, in order not to be a burden to the people and to set them a praiseworthy example, cultivated the soil with his own hands.

That the nation of Zarahemla had not quite forgotten, however, those wayward men who had started out in the latter days of Amalecki in search of their former homes, but that even some faint rumors of their existence must have reached the city is apparent from the consent we see Mosiah II. give to a squad of sixteen men under the command of a certain Ammon, a descendant of Zarahemla. This same Zarahemla as applied to an individual may not have been the proper name of the man, but was very likely only the title of the chief, as we see several kings or chiefs of the Lamanites, for instance, called Laman, or in the Bible the kings of Egypt, Pharaoh. The record of Mosiah II. proceeds to tell how these men had arrived on a hill situated north of the country of Shilom, from which place Ammon, with only a few others, started down into the plains to reconnoitre.

The complaint that the narrations of the Book of Mormon are not more explicit in regard to the geographical characteristics of the sections of country in which the various scenes were enacted, so that they might be the readier recognised again in our days), may not be altogether without just foundation; but if we consider, on the one hand, that it was not the intention of the writers to hand to posterity a complete history in our sense of the term, and that on the other the Bible also is topographically and etymologically subject to the same imputation in many instances, we fail to see the logic in making this a point against the veracity of the Book of Mormon, as several wiseacres have attempted to do.

The deplorable condition of dependency in which Ammon discovered the descendants of those that had started out in search of the land of their forefathers, among whom there was also a brother of Amalecki, is another evidence of the foolishness of human calculations, when deviating from the directions of the Holy Spirit; and the Shilom chief Limhi, throwing Ammon and his companions chained into prison, simply because he had found them outside his town, when he himself was on a scouting expedition, taking them for emissaries of his enemy Noah, gives so striking an illustration of the wretched state of distrust and anarchy these people were in, that their consequent joy on discovering their mistake and finding long looked for friends, scarcely was needed to make us understand how heartily they must have repented the secession of their progenitors.

The address of Limhi to his subjects makes it plain to us, however, that they had retained among themselves some glimmering light of Gospel truth, and that the Lord in His mercy had even given them a prophet, to see if this self-separated branch of the main-tree could be nourished into a self-sustaining and flourishing plant; but he had to share the fate of other messengers of truth before and after him, and we soon will see that there was no hope for them save in a reunion with the old stock.

In conformity with the habits of their ancestry, that stray waif of Nephi had kept up records of their sojourn in the wilderness, on plates, the main feature of which will be presented in the next sketch; but there had been made also archaeological discoveries by them of considerable interest, consisting of 24 gold plates, covered with hieroglyphics unintelligible to them, breastplates, arms, &c. but having neither the key to decipher the former, nor the gift of interpretation, they are directed by Ammon to his King and Prophet, Mosiah II., who had the stone of a seer, by which means he could read and understand hidden things.

The warning voice from the ground, of the Book of Mormon, against all astrologers and those that intend to have the gift of seeing through so-called peepstones, is here lifted up in the words of Ammon, in ascribing these powers to the Prophet and Seer, who receives them from God alone, that miracles might be wrought by faith.

Ammon and his companions remained long enough with Limhi’s people to make them thoroughly acquainted with the principles and spirit of Zarahemla, causing quite a revolution in the ideas and feelings of the people; for what an Abinadi had vainly sealed with his blood, and an Alma had left as a hopeless case, these sturdy adventurers, in holding out to the people a tangible temporal blessing in the shape of a reunion with the free and happy people of Zarahemla, to be attained by their previously preparing themselves for it in embracing the truth, succeeded, in a marvellously short time, to have many asking for baptism, which Ammon declines, however, to administer, evidently restrained by the Spirit, but points out to them the necessity of previous deliverance from the yoke of the Lamanites; and it is therefore not to be wondered at that a Gideon soon was found who by his plans, contrived the escape of the people from the surveillance of their tormentors, and the fugitives arrived under the guidance of Ammon in Zarahemla, to be grafted back again into the old tree.