You Can't Lay Siege on a City With Inner Provisions

There’s an interesting story in 3 Nephi 4 in the great war between the Gadianton robbers and the Nephites.  The Nephites had gathered together all of their people with enough provisions upon which they could survive for seven years.  They all banded together in hopes that as a single body they could fight off the robbers.  The first time the robbers came against them to battle the robbers lost after a terrible fight, and they retreated for a time.  A couple of years later the robbers came back, but this time they didn’t attack.  Rather, “they came up on all sides to lay siege round about the people of Nephi; for they did suppose that if they should cut off the people of Nephi from their lands, and should hem them in on every side, and if they should cut them off from all their outward privileges, that they could cause them to yield themselves up according to their wishes” (3 Nephi 4:16).  Certainly that could be a very effective strategy for winning the war if the Nephites were obtaining their supply from outside of their city.  But that wasn’t the case—the Nephites had enough food for many years and it was all inside of their city.  So it didn’t do any good for the Gadianton robbers to surround their city and prevent them from getting outside help.  You can’t lay siege on a city that has inner provisions! 

                Perhaps there is a spiritual lesson that we can learn from this.  We know that in these last days we will be bombarded from the outside with temptations, trials, and the seductions of the world.  The world will try to cut us off from our spiritual sources by attempting to crowd our lives with the distractions and sins of the world.  But we have an internal source of strength that cannot be taken away by any “siege” of the adversary: the gift of the Holy Ghost.  We are told that the Holy Ghost “will come upon you and… dwell in your heart” (D&C 8:2).  If we so choose to protect it, not outside source can take that away from us.  I think perhaps the most vivid example of this is what we see in the book of Job.  The adversary took away everything from him, but he could not take away Job’s faith and trust in the Lord—he had the Spirit within him.  When he had lost just about everything, Job said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).  The Spirit had not left Job, and he still knew what he knew about the Lord despite the terrible trials he faced.  When he was plagued with “sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown,” even his wife told him, “Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and die.” But Job still stayed true, and outside forces could not take away the power of the Holy Ghost within him.  We read simply that “in all this did not Job sin with his lips”—he could not curse God but held fast to his faith (Job 2:7-10).

                We know from modern revelation that the adversary’s “bounds are set” (D&C 122:9).  We will continue to be surrounded by wickedness; in fact, the Pearl of Great Price tells us that Satan “veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness,” a spiritual siege that will try to cut us off from the Lord (Moses 7:57).  But the power can be in us and if we so choose no such siege can have any effect on us because “the Holy Ghost shall be [our] constant companion, and [our] scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth” (D&C 121:46).  No outside force can take away the spiritual strength of those who have the Holy Ghost within them.