Done
The word “done” here is more than a simple part of a simple monarchy sentence. Obviously, in a monarchy, the sovereign will of the King is always done. But as King Mosiah pointed out when he switched his society from a monarchy to a reign of judges, a nation will not always have a righteous king who is benevolent and does what is right by his people. Sometimes there are wicked kings who extort high taxes and lead people into sin as their close kin, King Noah had done. Once a wicked king is established, he has his army and his wicked friends in power to support him. King Mosiah not only had King Zeniff’s and Alma’s account of King Noah, but he also had translated the 24 gold plates containing the forest of kings from the Jaredite Kingdom that preceded the Nephites showing many centuries of bad kings followed by a good king or two. There as now, doing the will of a wicked king involved unjust wars, killing enemies, participating the debaucheries of the wicked king and protecting him from justice for his sinful acts. All this wicked king stuff brought misery for the masses and famine, war, and pestilence for the common people who suffered unjust jail time, extortion and extermination.
This is in marked contrast to the rule of a righteous Heavenly King, who said to a pragmatic, people fearing, Pontius Pilate:
“Jesus answered, “My kingdom doesn’t belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. My kingdom doesn’t have its origin on earth.”[i]
But examining the word “done” and “to do” we find much deeper meaning than that God, the Father, and Jesus Christ His Only Begotten Son, not only occupy the same throne in a Heavenly Throne in a Heavenly Kingdom, but that they also are big doers in an earthly sense. After his death, Peter said of Jesus:
How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil;[ii]
The righteous Jaredite Kings had one thing in common. Like the righteous societies of the Jews in ancient Jerusalem, they remembered what great things that God had done for them:
And it came to pass that Shez did remember the destruction of his fathers, and he did build up a righteous kingdom; for he remembered what the Lord had done in bringing Jared and his brother across the deep; and he did walk in the ways of the Lord; and he begat sons and daughters.[iii]
Here righteousness in a king is equated with remembering what great things the Lord God had done for them. In Jewish history, the feasts and the holidays, “Holy Days”, were days in which to remember what greats things a God of power had done for them in the past, things they were commanded to remember by ritual.
- Noah was saved from destruction in the flood, by the hand of God
- Abraham was saved from Pharaoh.
- Abraham was led to a promised land.
- Jacob and his posterity were saved from death by famine by Joseph of Egypt his son, who was promoted by miraculous means to be viceroy of Egypt.
- Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt into the promised land, were saved from the Egyptian army, were fed manna in the wilderness, and given a tabernacle to worship at.
- Solomon created a wonderous kingdom and built a temple for the ages.
- Queen Ester saving her people from destruction.
- The Jews were rescued from captivity by Darius the Great Persian King who was inspired by God to protect them in returning to their land of inheritance and rebuilding the temple.
From this short list of Holy Days that remember the miraculous power of God’s intervention in human history, we see that God is a “doer” of many mighty righteous acts in the history of mankind.
One might think as the Deists did in Benjamin Franklin’s day that God created the universe and the world and walked away from it, then came as Jesus Christ in the meridian of time, and then left again.[iv]
Certainly, the bloody nature of the history of the nations of the world would suggest an absentee God, but as God said, the wicked shall punish the wicked.
But the Bible and modern revelation show a different story:
“To put at defiance the armies of nations, to divide the earth, to break every band, to stand in the presence of God, to do all things according to his will, according to his command, subdue principalities and powers; and this by the will of the Son of God which was from before the foundation of the world.”[v]
“For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.”[vi]
“ For have I not the fowls of heaven, and also the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the mountains? Have I not made the earth? Do I not hold the destinies of all the armies of the nations of the earth?”[vii]
So while the wicked are destroying the wicked nations, God’s will is being done. In times of trouble and terror, righteous people have hope which leads to faith that Jesus will return and put an end to all this bloodshed. Indeed, he will come when all the armies of the world are gathered together against his people to destroy them. His final act of “doing” will be to stop the wars on this planet for 1000 years or more.
[i] John 18:36 God’s Word Translation see https://biblehub.com/john/18-36.htm
[ii] Acts 10:38, King James Version
[iii] Ether 10:2, Book of Mormon Intellectual Reserve Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
[iv] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/06/28/how-benjamin-franklin-a-deist-became-the-founding-father-of-a-unique-kind-of-american-faith/?noredirect=on
[v] Genesis 14:31 Joseph Smith Translation Intellectual Reserve Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
[vi] Isaiah 34:2 King James Version
[vii] Doctrine and Covenants 117:6 Intellectual Reserve Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints