Jehovah's Witnesses and War

An earlier post mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses incidentally and I was unfair. I merely mentioned them to describe how my system of taking ideas to the extreme worked. I thought of the Jehovah's Witnesses example years ago, and posted it again without giving it another thought.

Of the responses I've received, one said that they would be able to subdue a violent man with peaceful means, or at least without weapons of murder.

The other said that my point was flawed because if everyone was a Jehovah's Witness there wouldn't be violence at all.
So let's put it this way. Let's say an entire nation converts to their church, and that other nations turn against them in war. Or, if perhaps the nations within which they live decided to wipe them out on a mass scale, what would happen?

The Savior taught us to turn the other cheek when attacked. So-called Christian nations have reverently set that aside as unrealistic. But what really happens if a people follows this advise on a large scale? What if an army marches against a peaceful crowd, and the crowd lets the attackers sacrifice them without fighting back?

This happened on one occasion that I can think of. It is found in the Book of Mormon:
Alma 24: 21-25

"Now when the people saw that they [their enemies] were coming against them they went out to meet them, and ^aprostrated themselves before them to the earth, and began to call on the name of the Lord; and thus they were in this attitude when the Lamanites [their enemies] began to fall upon them, and began to slay them with the sword.

And thus without meeting any resistance, they did slay a ^athousand and five of them; and we know that they are blessed, for they have gone to dwell with their God.

Now when the Lamanites saw that their brethren would not flee from the sword, neither would they turn aside to the right hand or to the left, but that they would lie down and ^aperish, and ^bpraised God even in the very act of perishing under the sword—

Now when the Lamanites saw this they did ^aforbear from slaying them; and there were many whose hearts had ^bswollen in them for those of their brethren who had fallen under the sword, for they repented of the things which they had done.

And it came to pass that they threw down their weapons of war, and they would not take them again, for they were stung for the murders which they had committed; and they came down even as their brethren, relying upon the mercies of those whose arms were lifted to slay them."

And this has made me change my mind on my former conclusion. I think a world where violence was met by non-violence could work. It worked for Ghandi. It worked for Martin Luther King Jr. And the Savior commanded it.

It is no easy thing to rely "upon the mercies" of those who want to kill you.

The U.S. spends over $400,000,000,000 annually on weapons. That's two times more than Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea combined.

We don't have massive armies because we are the courageous defenders of liberty. We do it because we are cowards, afraid that the Lord won't really protect us. We lack the faith necessary to truly call ourselves a Christian nation.

Unless, perhaps, you are a Jehovah's Witness.