Alma 27

In time the hell-bent Lamanite commandoes gave up and went back to Nephiland.

Tha Amalekites, meanwhile, didn’t give up so easily—poor breeding—and took revenge on those remaining weaponless conscientious objectors, the Anti-Nephi-Lehites, who turned the other cheek and had it sliced off.

Obviously these were faves of Ammon’s, people who had treated him like an angel. So he hung his head with sadness, felt queasy, and urged the king to get up a mass exodus to Zarahemla. The king balked: “The Nephites will kill us, given our history of bad blood.”

Ammon said, “If I ask God and he says, ‘go,’ will you go?”

Despite feeling a little manipulated by the question, the king said, “Sure, we’ll go. But we better say when we get there that we’ll be slaves to work off our past massacres, if that’s possible.”

“We don’t do slavery in Zarahemla. It’s against the law. We do do mercy, though. So that’s your best bet.”

“Okay. But ask God for real first. No more hypothetical.”.

Ammon did and God said (surprise), “You’re right, Ammon. Time to go.

The Amalekites are the devil’s slaves. They’re working the Lamanites to come back for the kill. Tell the king to get himself and his subjects out and I’ll take care of the rest.” Ammon reported this to the king.

The people started herding their animals, walking out to the badlands that divided Nephiland from Zarahemla.

When they got to the border Ammon said he and his brothers would go scout and get some good word of mouth going for the new immigrants. On the way, they met Alma. They all felt drunk with joy. Ammon even fainted. (The others weren’t quite so overcome. But Ammon was always an unusual case.) Alma led them to the chief judge to recount the whole story. The judge liked it and sent out a proclamation calling for a vote on whether to be nice to Anti-Nephi-Lehi immigrants.

They took a vote (multiple-choice answers) and the decision was to give the immigrants Jershon, on the east side, south of Bountiful. A designated homeland. Pretty generous, though still on the east side.

They even voted to put troops on the border to protect the anti-war zealots, who were obviously easy prey but also still suspicious given the tribal history of depredation. Stiff taxes would cover the costs of protection.

Ammon and Alma went back with the news, along with another round of testimonies and conversion stories to whip up the crowd. And whipped up they were. It was like a festival.

They moved to Jershon and renamed it for their hero: “Ammon.” The change of lifestyle and the mass emigration to Zarahemla made them Nephites in all but bloodlines. Indeed they got a distinguished reputation for honesty and square-dealing in business, fair play and equality, as well as faith and churchgoing. What stood out most, though, was still their complete aversion to bloodshed for any reason and at any cost. The thought of it literally made them sick. As for having their own blood shed, that they could deal with. Because they believed in the afterlife so firmly, not to mention the resurrection of even their murdered bodies. Death had its own special terror and charm for them—terror to cause it, charm to experience it. In any fight they could be counted on to be human shields for anyone who did want to fight back. A weird distinction, but you couldn’t help but love them for that particular highminded quirk. Death-wish as worship.