Enos’ Book

Enos 1

My dad was a good man, thank God. Not only for how he treated people, but for how he taught them. Language and principle. The two things that make a life, some say.

But you still have to fight with yourself, sometimes, to square your debit and credit sheets with God.

I went hunting in the woods. That’s when my mind is clearest. And this time I felt a hunger, not for the animals I would kill for meat, but for life itself. I knelt down—something you shouldn’t normally do when you’re hunting—and I started to raise my voice, as if I were shouting and sobbing at the same time. I did this for hours. Catharsis. Ecstasy. Some sort of trance. I don’t know what to call it. But all I wanted was for God to hear my voice above my dad’s in the back of my mind.

Finally, it came: another voice. It said, “Anything you’ve done wrong, I can’t see it anymore. Here’s a blessing for you.”

I knew this was God. And if you believe in God, you have to believe he can’t lie. What would be the point otherwise? So all the guilt I’d ever felt burned away like the fog when I began my hunt.

I said: Lord, how is it done?

The voice again: “You believe in the Anointed One, even though you’ve never seen and won’t ever see him. But he will come. And it’s your believing that makes you whole.”

That started a whole new cycle of feelings. I lost consciousness of myself and my needs. I could only think about the people, my people, and what they suffered every day. And I poured out my soul in new prayers just for them.

This went on not so long as my earlier prayers. And the voice again: “You’re good to pray for them. But they will reap what they’ve sown. That’s a principle that always applies. If they conform to my law, this amazing place in which you were born, this place I gave to your grandparents, will grow thick with fruit, and chickens, and vegetables, and cattle, and on and on. If they rebel, let’s just say it won’t go so well and leave it at that. Sorrow from many interwoven surprises.”

So what then? I started to pray hard for the Lamanites.

This time the voice said: “I’m astonished by your commitment. Whatever you say I have to honor.”

Then I surprised even myself with this proposal: if my people (the Nephites) get so bad that you have to destroy them, please spare some Lamanites to keep these plates intact and eventually show them to the world.

This was bizarre: Lamanites were our entrenched enemies. They routinely swore to destroy not only us but our traditions and even our goods, these plates included, which they would melt back down to make jewelry and goblets and such.

But God had told me I’d get whatever good I hoped for. He now promised he’d do as I asked. And I never felt better. Then, though, he gave the promise a twist: my ancestors, including my dad, had asked the same thing. So this was a kind of group insurance plan.

Pretty soon I was the hot new preacher in town. Experiences like mine can change a man just like cooking changes deer meat.

I met enough likeminded people that we banded together to convert Lamanites to our faith in the Anointed One. But it was as if people had become animals, vicious and bloodthirsty, even paint-faced and superstitious, heads shaved, waists slung with animal hide. They had no other clothing.

Oh, and most of them didn’t even cook their meat. They ate it raw.

My people ate mostly grains we grew, fruit we picked, cattle we raised, and so on. Self-sufficient, though always crediting God for what we had and made.

We had more than our share of prophets, though. And we needed them pretty bad, given the rampant misbehavior of (mostly) men. Nothing but blunt, even acid-tongued, knife-twisting threats and mud-soaked imagery seemed to get through to the alleged chosen people that we were. Without that we would never have survived at all, even temporarily.

I hesitate to even mention the wars, gut-devouring wars, that ate our tribes up for years.

I’m feeling too old to dwell on that ugliness. And all within a hundred and seventy-nine years from Lehi leaving Jerusalem.

Let me just say now, writing from my deathbed, that I have done everything I felt God telling me to do. That included preaching my guts out for decades. But I wouldn’t trade any of it. I try to imagine the rest that I’ll find soon. Not the “rest of ” anything. Just rest. And that means seeing the Anointed One face to face. Indulge me, after all these years, in a final thought: we all need someone to redeem us from both our errors and mundanity. That’s what I hope the Lamb will do even before we die.

How we will get bodies again, as Dad always promised, I have no idea. But I want to be wearing a smile when we do.