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Honey From The Rock Psalm 81:16 |
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DON'T BE AN AVENGER! This entry was posted on 02-27-2008 and is filed under uncategorized. "Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath..." (Romans 12:19-a NKJV).
I've been reading "The Mountain Meadows Massacre" by Juanita Brooks (University of Oklahoma Press). On September 11, 1857 a wagon train from Arkansas headed for California was massacred by a band of avengers, Mormons, aided by Indians, in a quiet, beautiful valley in southern Utah. I was shocked to read how many of the mass murderers viewed the massacre as "avenging the blood of Joseph Smith." A total of 120 men, women, and children were shot, stabbed, clubbed to death, and mutilated. Seventeen children "too young to talk" were "spared" the bloody carnage. The Mountain Meadows Massacre remains a sordid stain on the Mormon Church to this day. It is a classic case of doing the very opposite of what the Bible says to do. The Phillips Version says, "Never take vengeance into your own hands." When we become an "avenging angel" we fail to "leave room for God's wrath" (NIV). Although I doubt that God would have wiped out the Arkansas wagon train to avenge the death of Joseph Smith, the Utah Mormons did not even give God a chance. They took vengeance into their own hands and, as a result, their descendants (and the Mormon Church) have been saddled with shame for more than 100 years. The very Indians they set out to convert were told they were "God's battle ax" and given a blessing from Brigham Young himself to pillage and plunder weary travelers. "Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to [God's] wrath."7 |
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