Sign 11 - God’s Direct Intervention

Year:1775

Scriptures:

1 Nephi 13:18-19

18 And I beheld that the power of God was with them, and also that the wrath of God was upon all those that were gathered together against them to battle.

19 And I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles that had gone out of captivity were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations.

“Power of God Was With Them.”

During the war a preacher from New England said “How wonderfully God did fight for us… in all which the hand of God is most visible (Stout, New England Soul, 303).“

Concerning the war George Washington also said “The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations (Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of George Washington, 12:343).”

“Wrath of God Was Upon Those That Were Against Them”.

The colonists should not have won their war of independence with Great Britain who had more equipment, were better trained and had more experience in leadership. Winston Churchill said of the war that “Rarely has British strategy fallen into such a multitude of errors. Every maxim and principle of war was either violated or disregarded ‘Seek out and destroy the enemy’ is a sound rule. ‘Concentrate your force’ is a sound method. ‘Maintain your objective’ is common sense. The enemy was Washington's army. The force consisted of Howe's troops in New York and Burgoyne's columns now assembled in Montreal. The objective was to destroy Washington's army and kill or capture Washington. If he could be brought to battle, and every man and gun turned against him, a British victory was almost certain. But these obvious truths were befogged and bedevilled by multiplicity of counsel (Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking People:The Age of Revolution [New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1962] 3:193-94).”

“They Were Delivered By the Power of God.”

The pioneers and pilgrims had fled from the tyranny of Great Britain. There was no typical resistance by the colonists in the revolutionary war. They should not have won but their battles were fought by God who delivered them.

“The meaning of the narrative opens itself to the reader only after he lays aside his American preconceptions about the Revolution and recognizes that the dramatic structure in Nephi's account is fundamentally different from the familiar one in Independence Day orations. The point of the narrative is that Americans escaped from captivity. They did not resist, they fled. The British were defeated because the wrath of God was upon them. The virtue of the Americans was that ‘they did humble themselves before the Lord.’(1 Nephi 13:16) The moral is that the Gentiles that had gone out of captivity were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations. The theme is deliverance, not resistance.” ( The Book of Mormon and the American Revolution by Richard L. Bushman , BYU Studies, vol. 17 (1976-1977), 8)