Walls are erected as a defense.  People build walls to protect themselves from the elements and from others who might harm them.  Walls form enclosures which become areas of safety.

Some famous walls in history include the walls of Jericho, the walls of Jerusalem, and the walls of Babylon.  All of these were erected as a defense against invaders.  All were effective up to a point.  That point was reached when the wickedness that the walls were enclosing became such that the people inside were beyond redemption.  At that point the Lord penetrated and destroyed what wicked men considered were their impenetrable defenses.

Against Jericho the Lord sent Joshua and the Israelites.  On the seventh day that the army circled the city, the priests blew their rams' horns trumpets, the people shouted, and the walls fell down flat.  So much for impregnable Jericho.

Against Jerusalem the Lord sent Babylon.  Jerusalem was destroyed.  The wall was breached, ninety percent of the people were killed, and the remnant were carried off captive to Babylon.

Shortly before that destruction the Lord warned Lehi to flee from the city with his family.  He then commanded Lehi's sons to go back and save the valuable record that was the brass plates.  The Book of Mormon tells how Nephi's brothers hid themselves outside the walls of Jerusalem as he crept into the dark city not knowing beforehand how he was going to accomplish what his brothers considered an impossible task.

At that point in the translation of the record Joseph Smith turned to his wife, who was acting as scribe, and said, “Emma, I didn't know Jerusalem was surrounded by a wall.”

I love that statement.  It perfectly illustrates how impossibly difficult it would be to write a fictitious work and pass it off as truth.  Minor details of which the writer was unaware would inevitably creep in and expose the work as a fraud.  The enemies of the Church have tirelessly worked for 192 years to find some such flaw in the Book of Mormon, and have found none.  Joseph's limited knowledge and limited education and limited abilities would have prevented him from even making a start at writing such a marvelous work as the Book of Mormon.

Against Babylon the Lord sent Cyrus.  “The city was square, and the Euphrates (River) ran through the middle of it.  According to Herodotus the walls were 56 miles in circumference, 335 feet high, and 85 feet wide.”  (Bible Dictionary).  That would encompass an area the size of Baker Valley.  The city was impregnable.  The city was also the world's standard for wickedness.

One hundred fifty years before Cyrus was born, Isaiah prophesied of him by name.  Isaiah's prophecy says:  “I am the Lord that maketh all things … that saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers.

“That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure …

“Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him …

“I will go before thee … I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:

“ … that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.

“ … I have even called thee by thy name:  I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.”  (Isaiah 44:24-45:4).

Cyrus didn't know that he was doing the Lord's will when he came up with the plan that would conquer Babylon, but his whole plan was spelled out in those verses written by Isaiah 150 years before he was born.

Babylon's walls could not be breached.  Babylon couldn't be starved into submission.  Babylon couldn't be conquered through lack of water because the Euphrates ran right through the city.  Armies couldn't attack the city by using the river as an entrance because gates and bars of iron were installed to reach deep into the river where it entered and exited the city.  It was impossible  to swim under them.

Inspired of the Lord, Cyrus was able to think outside the box.  Isaiah prophesied that he would dry up rivers, and that's what he did.  Upstream from Babylon Cyrus used his army to dig a channel into a low-lying swamp, leaving the bank of the river intact.  He left a part of his army to finish the job of diverting the river by digging through the bank, and sent the rest of his men to position themselves where the river entered and exited Babylon.  He gave them orders to watch the river.  When the water level dropped they were to go under the iron gates and bars of iron, enter the city, and conquer it.  He timed the attack to coincide with a Babylonian festival when the inhabitants would be gathered in the center of the city celebrating.  The city fell with barely a whimper.

My own Irish ancestors built a castle that was such a defensible masterpiece that two families maintained its possession for a thousand years.  I think that no other people in the history of the world can make such a statement.

The castle was a 100-foot-tall, thick-walled, stone, silo-shaped structure.  It was constructed on a stone outcropping.  It could not be undermined.  There was a tunnel that led to the river.  The castle would always have a water supply.  It had two sets of doors.  If invaders were able to penetrate through the first door, they'd find themselves in an entryway where boiling water and oil could be poured upon them from above.

The ground floor was where the cattle were kept.  If invaders made it that far they would then have to ascend the stairs attached to the wall.  The stairs circled upward in a counter-clockwise direction which put the invaders at a disadvantage.  They'd have to hang onto the wall with their right hands and wield their swords with the left, while the defenders from above could use their left hands to hang onto the walls while wielding their swords with the right.

The windows of the castle were mere slits through which the defenders could effectively shoot arrows without much danger of being hit by arrows being shot from outside.

My Condon ancestors maintained control of the castle for hundreds of years until it was taken away by Oliver Cromwell.  It still stands, and now belongs to the Irish government.

The walls of Jericho, Jerusalem, Babylon, and the Condon castle were all made of stone.  Even so, they were eventually breached.

But people erect other stony walls that are seemingly unbreachable.  I'm up against three of them in my own family.  These walls are hard, stony hearts.

My two brothers-in-law are both steadfastly set against anything that has to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  One of them, at my urging, actually prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true.  A high voltage shock went through his system.  He then prayed to know if the Church was true.  He got another jolt.  He was very shaken when he related the experience to me, and asked what he needed to do to be able to join the Church.  I told him that he'd have to meet with the missionaries, give up his chewing tobacco, and then he could be baptized.  He and my sister took the missionary discussions, and my sister was baptized.  But giving up tobacco and alcohol were too hard for him; so he listened to his anti-Mormon friend, decided the Church was false, and became virulently opposed to anything Mormon, and, for that matter, most things having to do with religion.

The other brother-in-law has been a life-long practicing Presbyterian.  He faithfully attends the Presbyterian Church, and reads all the books he can find written by the Presbyterian hierarchy.  He showed me a bookcase filled with the books, said that he'd read them all, but complained bitterly that they contradicted one another.  He threw his head back, and loudly said to the ceiling, “I just wish somebody would tell me what we believe!”

Marjorie said that I should have given him a copy of our Articles of Faith.  I wasn't quick enough  to think of that, but he would have just brushed my offering aside.  He and my sister rejected the subscription that I sent of the church magazines, and turned the missionaries away.  They scoffed at the Book of Mormon that I gave them, considering it beneath their attention.  My sister sent a letter saying that they were shocked that I'd think they'd make good Mormons.  I replied that, yes, I thought they'd make very good Mormons.

I tried to explain the principle of eternal marriage to them.  He snorted, and exclaimed, “We'll know each other over there, but we won't be married!!”

And he was absolutely right.

My sister has since passed away.  I am in no hurry to do her temple work.  I want our other sister to have that privilege, and that can't happen until her husband's heart has either softened or stopped beating.

All my life I've had a goal.  I wanted to someday be in the temple with my wife and all 10 children.  That goal was realized in April 2021 when we were all gathered in the Rexburg Idaho Temple for our youngest son's sealing with his wife.  That was my pinnacle of success.

I now have a new goal.  It is to be in a sealing room with my living sister and brother as Marjorie and I act as proxies for my parents, as two of my children act as proxies for my deceased sister and brother, and as my four siblings are sealed to our parents, and thus to me.

That suddenly has a very real possibility of happening.  My living brother and his invalid wife have been irregularly meeting with the various sets of missionaries for two years now.   It all began when I invited them to join us in our in-home sacrament meetings during the COVID-19 shutdown in the summer of 2020.  They also attended sacrament meetings at our church when that became possible.

Last week I asked the elders if they'd seen my brother.  “We were there just yesterday,” they replied.  “He says he wants to join the Church!”

That is wonderful news.  The problem is the wall that his wife has erected.  All her life she has been adamantly opposed to the Church.  She softened a lot during these past two years, but has apparently built the wall up again.

She is in a wheelchair, due to a stroke, and can neither walk nor talk.  Several mornings ago I awoke thinking about her and about four stories from general conference that dealt with healings people experienced when they were baptized.  I have this feeling (perhaps I should say, conviction) that she would once again be able to walk or talk or both if she had faith to be baptized.  Two of the stories concerned miraculous restorations of hearing that deaf women received when they were baptized.  The other two concerned the restored ability to walk.  One Japanese man had been injured by a hit and run driver.  After many months of treatment and recuperation, he was told that he'd never walk again.  Faith and his baptism fixed that.

The other man was Samoan.  Due to polio he had lain in his bed for 22 years.  He willed himself to get down into the baptismal fount unaided, and thereafter became able to walk with only a cane for assistance.

I made copies of the stories for my sister-in-law, and gave them to her and my brother.  I assigned him to read them to her.

Last Friday he reported that he read three of the stories to her, and that she wanted to hear no more.

“You've got to believe,” he told her, but she waved him away.

Stony walls and hearts.  Walls of stone are sometimes more breachable than hard hearts.