Renounce War and Proclaim Peace

[Separatist]

Nibley:
http://publications.maxwellinstitute.by ... 4&index=11" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Renounce War, or a Substitute for Victory

Editor:

Recently the doctrine has been propagated hereabouts that there is no substitute for victory—military victory. May I call attention to a very strong statement on the subject in the Doctrine and Covenants: "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; and again, the hearts of the Jews unto the prophets, and the prophets unto the Jews; lest I come and smite the whole earth with a curse, and all flesh be consumed before me" (D&C 98:16—17).

"Renounce" is a strong word: we are not to try to win peace by war, or merely to call a truce, but to renounce war itself, to disclaim it as a policy while proclaiming (that means not just announcing, but preaching) peace without reservation. But if we renounce war, how shall we defend and advance our interests? We are told that, too: after the clear statement of what we must renounce comes the equally clear statement of what we must put in its place—the substitute. Instead of playing with fireworks we are to "seek diligently" to advance the work of salvation for the living and the dead, and to make a serious effort to influence the Jews. That is a full-time job and our whole assignment. Next after the prohibition and the command comes the penalty: if we do not take this course "the whole earth" will be cursed, and all flesh consumed (D&C 98:16—17). The alternative is not just a substitute suggested for our consideration, but an out-and-out command, accompanied by a resounding ultimatum: either to renounce war or to be totally destroyed—there is no third choice.

Thus we have the mandate to renounce military action, the order to substitute something very different in its place, and the terrible penalty for failure to do both. A few years ago such an extreme proposition sounded quite fantastic, the consuming of all flesh belonged to the category of wild apocalyptic nightmares. Today, however, the best scientists all over the world are repeating the same alternatives with ominous urgency and insistence: it is to be either no more war or mutual annihilation. Those two verses of the Doctrine and Covenants revealed almost 140 years ago are standing alone, enough to prove Joseph Smith a true prophet.

The Jaredites, thoroughly convinced that there was no substitute for victory, kept hacking away at each other until they demonstrated the truth of the maxim "Destroy them and they will destroy you." When the Nephites, after a series of brilliant military successes, declared "that they would go up to battle against their enemies, and would cut them off from the face of the land" as the only solution to the Lamanite problem (for there is no substitute for victory), their great general Mormon instantly resigned his command and "utterly refused" to fight with them, but "did stand as an idle witness" (Mormon 3:16) to record what happened next for our benefit. His message to us is an impassioned plea "to repent and prepare to stand before the judgment-seat of Christ" (Mormon 3:22), substituting the work of salvation for the work of destruction. If we persist in reversing the words of the Savior, Who takes up the sword shall die by the sword (cf. Revelation 13:10), to read, perversely, Who does not take up the sword shall perish by the sword, we shall deserve what happens to us. This is not a protest, just a timely reminder, that we may remember when it happens that we have been warned and forewarned.

Hugh Nibley
Professor of Ancient Scriptures
--------------------------------------------
* Reprinted from the Daily Universe, Letter to the Editor, 26 March 1971, entitled "Renounce War."

[Separatist]

We Are A Warlike People:
http://warlikepeople.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Robin Hood]

I think Nibley is great.
I wonder what the church would be like today if he had been an apostle and eventually president of the church?

[Sandinista]

Where do you separate "war" from the "self defense" of ones home, family, and freedom? IN all the standard works of scripture where war is "renounced" on the one hand as dealing with nations and peoples the right to self defense is also reiterated. So where is the line between the two?

[Robin Hood]

No wars of aggression for a start.
Eg. Iraq

[Serragon]

Where do you separate "war" from the "self defense" of ones home, family, and freedom? IN all the standard works of scripture where war is "renounced" on the one hand as dealing with nations and peoples the right to self defense is also reiterated. So where is the line between the two?

War as a military action, or war as the solution to a problem, is different than defending your life and liberty. I don't believe he would be against people organizing for defense.

However, the larger point is that the Lord would have us use love and persuasion to change hearts and minds as opposed to military force.

[Sandinista]

Where do you separate "war" from the "self defense" of ones home, family, and freedom? IN all the standard works of scripture where war is "renounced" on the one hand as dealing with nations and peoples the right to self defense is also reiterated. So where is the line between the two?

War as a military action, or war as the solution to a problem, is different than defending your life and liberty. I don't believe he would be against people organizing for defense.

However, the larger point is that the Lord would have us use love and persuasion to change hearts and minds as opposed to military force.

OK, I agree with that. Thanks.

[David13]

Renounce war and proclaim peace is exactly what we want the world to do. However, certain people don't necessarily want to do that. For instance, the Russians perhaps, the Moslims, perhaps, and we know that Nazi Germany didn't really want to do that either, did they. I suppose there are other examples, both in history and currently.
dc

[Serragon]

Renounce war and proclaim peace is exactly what we want the world to do. However, certain people don't necessarily want to do that. For instance, the Russians perhaps, the Moslims, perhaps, and we know that Nazi Germany didn't really want to do that either, did they. I suppose there are other examples, both in history and currently.
dc

You are correct. Most of the world does not want peace. Or their definition of peace means everyone forced to live according to their standards. We in the US are not excused from this.


However, I often wonder.. Would things be different if we flooded countries with millions of missionaries preaching the simple doctrine of Christ? What if we replaced each soldier with 5 humble preachers of Love and Charity? Would libya, Iraq, and Syria be any different than now?

[Separatist]

I wonder what the world would be like if we just adhered to Washington and Jefferson's ideal on non-intervention.

[Desert Roses]

I wonder what the world would be like if we just adhered to Washington and Jefferson's ideal on non-intervention.

Formalized as the Monroe Doctrine. Yes--really, we might dislike and even abhor what is happening elsewhere, but I have always felt that when people want liberty enough, they will find a way to get it. It's not our business (oh, wait...that's why our nation keeps intervening--to keep those doing big business with them happy) to intervene in other nations to make them "democratic." But, I suppose our founding fathers didn't necessarily want war, either. I guess at times, it becomes either submit or fight. It's a real dilemma to determine when it's right to fight--but I don't think Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Korea or Vietnam or any of the many places around the world US men have fought and died in the last 150 years is the time to fight.

[Separatist]

From
J.REUBEN CLARK,JR.:
POLITICAL ISOLATIONISM REVISITED
MARTIN B. HICKMAN AND RAY C. HILLAM
http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-conte ... N01_39.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


[pg 38]"[W]e have entered into new fields to impose our will and concepts on others. This means we must use force, and force means war, not peace."

[pg 38]"meddlesome busybodiness"

[pg40]Given man's fallibility, therefore, it ill behooves any nation to seek to impose its ways upon the rest of the world. The desire to do so, Clark believed, was "born of the grossest national egotism," and the result could only be an "unholy tragedy"

[pg 40]"What we do to others, we must permit others to do to us"

[pg 43]"If we are to be the Savior of the world," he wrote, "we must come to our task with the spirit and the virtues of a savior"

[pg 43]He reacted to our plans at the end of World War II to occupy and reconstruct our defeated enemies on the basis of the Atlantic Charter by asking the hard question, "Who is going to occupy us to see that we keep the standards?"

[pg.45]The American mission, he believed, was not to impose its solutions upon the world but to set an example of justice, freedom, and peace which would be a compelling attraction to other nations. For the United States
to seek to impose its will on the rest of the world was to resort to force and abandon moral principles, a course which would be a denial of the mission itself. Clark, therefore, accepted the oft-repeated maxim that no matter how good the end, it does not justify the means. He seemed to sense clearly that if the United States insisted on being Rome it would require its citizens to be Romans. He saw a higher goal for Americans: not to be Romans but Christians.

[pg 45]"We must come to the task of decision that now [1944] faces us, with the purest motives. Avarice, greed, selfish ambition, the thirst for power and place and dominion, must all be thrust from our hearts. We must come with the loftiest patriotism, with a single allegiance, undivided, unshared, undefiled, for the Constitution under which we live—so in effect runs the oath of office of each of you who grace the Bar of this commonwealth. Our hearts and hands must be clean of all foreign isms and alien political cults. The Constitution and its free institutions must be our ensign. For America has a destiny—a destiny to conquer the world,—not by force of arms, not by purchase and favor, for these conquests wash away, but by high purpose, by unselfish effort, by uplifting achievement, by a course of Christian living; a conquest that shall leave every nation free to move out to its own destiny; a conquest that shall bring, through the workings of our own example, the blessings of freedom and liberty to every people, without restraint or imposition or compulsion from us; a conquest that shall weld the whole earth together in one great brotherhood in a reign of mutual patience, forbearance, and charity, in a reign of peace to which we shall lead all others by the persuasion of our own righteous example."

[Separatist]

John Quincy Adams, July 4th, 1821:
Full text here:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/libr ... dence-day/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One of the more popular excerpts is this speech is in regards to foreign policy:

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of mutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, what has America done for the benefit of mankind? let our answer be this–America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the inde-pendence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

[marc]

We Are A Warlike People:
http://warlikepeople.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I've had that banner on my FB header for a long time.

[marc]

Where do you separate "war" from the "self defense" of ones home, family, and freedom? IN all the standard works of scripture where war is "renounced" on the one hand as dealing with nations and peoples the right to self defense is also reiterated. So where is the line between the two?

The answer is found in D&C 98.