One City at a Time

One of the lessons from the war chapters in the book of Alma that I have heard someone make reference to has to do with the fact that as the Nephites sought to retake their cities from the Lamanites, they only focused on one at a time. We see this in particular in the account of Helaman and his battles on the western front. He told Moroni at the beginning of his letter that the Lamanites had taken four cities: “The land of Manti, or the city of Manti, and the city of Zeezrom, and the city of Cumeni, and the city of Antiparah.” After first describing their miraculous defense of the city of Judea, he told about the recapture of these other cities. First, they “began to make preparations to go against the city of Antiparah” (Alma 57:3). This preparation caused the Lamanites to decide to abandon the city and Helaman was able to capture it. After this city, they decided to focus on Cumeni: “And it came to pass that it was our desire to wage a battle with the army which was placed to protect the city Cumeni” (Alma 57:7). This they then proceeded to do by surrounding the city and cutting off Cumeni from receiving supplies from other Lamanites. The army there eventually “began to lose all hopes of succor; therefore they yielded up the city unto our hands; and thus we had accomplished our designs in obtaining the city Cumeni” (Alma 57:12). After a subsequent terrible battle in which the Nephites miraculously held their ground and kept the cities they had obtained, Helaman wrote, “And behold, now it came to pass that our next object was to obtain the city of Manti” (Alma 58:1). After much struggle, and lack of support from Zarahemla, Helaman was able to lure the Lamanites out of the city, lead them away from it, and then beat them back to it and take it. And so, focusing on the cities one by one, Helaman was able to retake them all (no mention is made of the city of Zeezrom, so perhaps the Lamanites simply gave that one up as well). Surely if Helaman had tried to focus on all of them at once he would have failed, but concentrating on just one at a time eventually he was able to retake them all even with his much smaller army than the Lamanites.

                We see a similar strategy with Moroni on the eastern front of the war. In the 28^th year when “Moroni and Teancum and many of the chief captains held a council of war,” the focus was not on trying to win the whole contest against the Lamanites (Alma 52:19). Rather, they concentrated their efforts on retaking a single city, Mulek. They developed a masterful plan to lure them out of the city and retook it with the coordinated help of Lehi, Teancum, and Moroni’s armies. After this, Moroni was focused on freeing the Nephite prisoners, and so he worked to take the city of Gid. With another brilliant strategy, he got the Lamanites drunk, armed the prisoners, and retook the city practically without a fight. What did Moroni do after this? He focused again on a single city: “And now it came to pass that it was expedient for Moroni to make preparations to attack the city Morianton” (Alma 55:33). This retaking of this city was not recounted, but soon Moroni’s attention was brought to the city of Zarahemla and he left the eastern front and focused on retaking the government with Pahoran. After successfully doing this, “they pursued their march towards the land of Nephihah” and concentrated on retaking that city (Alma 62:18). With another masterful strategy climbing the city walls at night, he took the city and went after the Lamanites “from city to city” until he ultimately drove them from the land (Alma 62:32). He put his energy into winning one city at a time, and eventually that strategy led to the retaking of the whole Nephite land from the Lamanites.

                So what is the lesson for us? It seems that this too should be our strategy in the gospel as we fight sin in ourselves and seek to help others come unto the Lord. We need not try to improve all of our weaknesses and overcome all our sins at once; rather, we can focus on one at a time as we try to better ourselves and become more like the Savior each day. Similarly, when we try to help others come unto the Savior, whether through missionary work or ministering or seeking to invite others back to the faith, we need not feel like we have to help everybody all at once. We can find one person to help—our city of focus for the time being—and channel our energies for that person for the time being. Rather than getting discouraged at the enormity of the task before us in improving ourselves and assisting others in the gospel, we can find our single “city” to concentrate our efforts on and try to symbolically win. And, doing that day by day and throughout our lives, surely we can like Moroni ultimately win the whole war—at least for ourselves—against sin.