The Lord Receiveth Them Up Unto Himself

I finished listening today to The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom and was left amazed at the incredible person she was.  That she was able to turn to the Savior so completely during such a terrible experience shows that the Lord can be found no matter what circumstance we are in.  I was also reminded of the utter horror that was WWII, especially the concentration camps, and I’m left wondering how a group of people could become so utterly inhumane.  The scripture that comes to mind is the one that Mormon used to describe Amalickiah in the Book of Mormon: “Yea, and we also see the great wickedness one very wicked man can cause to take place among the children of men.  Yea, we see that Amalickiah, because he was a man of cunning device and a man of many flattering words, that he led away the hearts of many people to do wickedly” (Alma 46:9-10).  Surely that scripture could be used to describe Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others of that time period, who were all responsible for the merciless deaths of millions of people and who led their own people.  It is to me impossible to understand how such evil can exist in our world, and I say with Mormon, “Come out in judgment, O God!” (Moroni 9:15)

               One of the things that is hard to understand of course is why God could allow such atrocities to take place against the innocent.  We know that the Lord respects His children’s agency, and yet sometimes He does intervene.  For example, when King Nebuchadnezzar put Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace, the Lord saved their lives.  And yet in the Book of Mormon, when the righteous in Ammonihah were similarly “cast into the fire” they were not saved, and Alma and Amulek watched “the pains of the women and children who were consuming the fire.”  Alma’s explanation for why they didn’t save the people through God’s power was this: “Behold the Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory; and he doth suffer that they may do this thing, or that the people may do this thing unto them, according to the hardness of their hearts, that the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just; and the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them (Alma 14:8-11).  I don’t believe that we are meant to understand why God intervenes in some situations and not in others, but I do believe that no matter the suffering we may face the Lord does see and understand us.  What The Hiding Place recounts is that God was there, even in the concentration camp, helping the prisoners and providing small miracles, even if death was the end result for so many.  Perhaps the only way to understand the terrible experiences that so many have had to pass through in mortality is to know that the Savior “hath descended below them all” (D&C 122:8).  And so, if at times He chooses to stay His hand when evil seems to be triumphing, we can trust that He will know “how to succor his people” even in their extremities.  And when death comes to the innocent, as it has so often, we can have the hope of Alma: “The Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory.”