He Will Fight Our Battles

When President Nelson invited us to “make a list of all that the Lord has promised He will do for covenant Israel,” he quoted one example of a promise from the Lord. He said, “And what is the Lord willing to do for Israel? The Lord has pledged that He will ‘fight [our] battles, and [our] children’s battles, and our children’s children’s [battles] … to the third and fourth generation’!” That scripture is found in Doctrine and Covenants 98:37: “And I, the Lord, would fight their battles, and their children’s battles, and their children’s children’s, until they had avenged themselves on all their enemies, to the third and fourth generation.” He repeated a similar promise in another revelation to the Prophet Joseph: “For behold, I do not require at their hands to fight the battles of Zion; for, as I said in a former commandment, even so will I fulfil—I will fight your battles” (Doctrine and Covenants 105:14). In the prayer dedicating the Kirtland Temple we find similar language: “And if they shall smite this people thou wilt smite them; thou wilt fight for thy people as thou didst in the day of battle, that they may be delivered from the hands of all their enemies” (Doctrine and Covenants 109:28). The Lord has promised covenant Israel today that He will fight their battles.

                While I see this promise as mostly figurative for us in our time, the idea that the Lord will fight Israel’s battles comes from the real combats that took place between Israel and other nations as recorded in the Old Testament. The people in that land “had rejected every word of God, and they were ripe in iniquity; and the fulness of the wrath of God was upon them” and thus the Lord had promised to give the land to covenant Israel (1 Nephi 17:35). But this was only to be if Israel truly kept their covenant with Him, for according to Nephi they were only favored over the other people in the land if they were righteous. To Joshua He gave them instructions about what Israel had to do as part of this covenant: “Be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or to the left; That ye come not among these nations, these that remain among you; neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves unto them: But cleave unto the Lord your God, as ye have done unto this day.” If they would do this, then the Lord gave them this assurance: “For the Lord hath driven out from before you great nations and strong: but as for you, no man hath been able to stand before you unto this day. One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the Lord your God, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you.” To have His protection against their enemies, they needed to do all that was written in the law and not let the influence of other nations turn them to idolatry. They were to “cleave unto the Lord” and, most importantly, “love the Lord [their] God” (Joshua 23:5-11). Surely this covenant is the same for us; He will fight for us in our personal battles if we will keep His law, remain unspotted from the world, and cleave unto Him with all our hearts. The people of Israel at the time of Lehi forgot this; they assumed the Lord would still fight their battles (against Babylon) even when they were not keeping their covenant with Him. But that was not the case and the Lord let their city fall because “they [had] become wicked, yea, nearly unto ripeness” (1 Nephi 17:43). As we seek the Lord’s help in fighting our individual battles, we can be sure that He will indeed fight for us and our children and our children’s children if we keep our covenants with Him and “do all that is written” in His law to us.