Jarom’s Really Short Book

Jarom 1

Jarom here. I told my dad I’d keep the family history going. I really don’t have the skill or knack for visions or preaching. Besides, these plates are small. So I’m going pro forma.

I will say this: we need a major cultural reformation. Everything bad that the older folks worried could happen happened. Behaviorally, at least. God has let us live, though. That’s something.

And there are still a lot of people with faith and spiritual fortitude. God’s spirit surrounds them, fills them.

As for the chronology part of this history, it’s been about two hundred years since Lehi got on the boat. All in all we’ve done well, despite my pessimistic tone, which I’d like to revise a little. Generally Nephi’s tribe has kept Moses’ law, kept the sabbath, held their tongues, kept the faith. They spread out. The Lamanites too. There seems no end to this land and no other people to butt heads with. Just each other.

The Lamanites did win the population game, outnumbering Nephites year after year. Conduct-wise, though, they were losers. Killers. Even a little vampiry—is that a word?—because they liked to drink animal blood.

They loved to fight too. Probably all that blood they were drinking and hormones they were begetting with. But it came down to mind over matter: our leaders were smarter, more strategic, and had that edge with divinity too. So the Lamanites would invade and we’d whomp them, on and on, upping our security with each new incursion.

When I say they were more fertile than us, that doesn’t mean we didn’t hold our own. We outgrew every town and kept migrating and colonizing. We were richer too. Precious metals, of course—always our gift and our weak spot—but also schools that could train engineers, craftsmen, architects, even inventors. And unlike our lazy rivals, we built and manufactured like gangbusters. Everything from jewelry to weapons. More the latter, I’d say. It happens when you’re under threat.

So we really beat the Lamanites at everything that mattered, from war to smarts. I credit our faith and that old promise that if we did right by God he’d hand us the keys to the future.

The prophets, of course, always doing their job, kept warning us not to slip up or we’d lose it all. Believe in Jesus as if he’d already come, they added. You’ll be amazed, they said, how it will shape your everyday attitude. And it did. And kept us safer, no doubt. A little guilt never hurt anybody.

Okay, update: It’s thirty-eight years later; I haven’t been writing for all that time. Lots of battles, skirmishes, assassinations, you name it. All this bloodlust in the name of politics. Makes me sick. If you want to read more about it, go to the larger plates.

I now officially pass these plates along to my son Omni. Go to it, boy.