Honestly, following a thread in my mind of "Jews", as to what is meant by that term in the Book of Mormon is more on my mind at the moment (though I don't really have any answers at this point, just some hints to follow based on our story so far), but I wanted to get this Ammonites post out first since I mentioned it before and have too many loose ends I haven't gone back on already.
I posted my "Part 2" words from early 2022, which included one day where only one word was captured: Milkommen. My best guess was that this was German for "Welcome" with the twist of "Milk" being substituted in for the first syllable, and associating that with the Promised Land.
I still think a pretty good guess, but as with maybe much of this, there could be multiple layers of meaning, or additional things a person might see or think of, depending on the person, their circumstances, and probably timing.
In the comments section of that post, WJT creatively associated 'Milkommen' with Ammonites by splitting the word as Milkom Men. I had to look this up as I had no idea who Milkom is/ was, and it turns out that he was the God of the Ammonites, a group mentioned in the Bible.
Anyway, I really liked the association he made, and my mind started going down a path with a different set of Ammonites - those found in the Book of Mormon.
I am admittedly a hammer going around looking for nails in some of this, so there is the obvious risk that I am seeing things in much of my thinking and writing that isn't actually there. This thought path, though, let me connect a few additional dots and seemed to support at least some of the developing story so I thought it was worth a post just to log some things.
The term 'Ammonite' is used exactly twice in the Book of Mormon as far as I can tell. Once in Alma 56 and the other in Alma 57. In both instances, it is Helaman who uses the term, both times in the context of the 'Stripling Warriors'. Here is Arnold Friberg's take on some sample Ammonites with Helaman on horseback:
This fairly direct tie between Helaman and the term Ammonites caught my attention since both Helaman and the stripling warriors have come up before. For example, on WJT's post on the "Little Skinny Planet", I brought up these Ammonites in the comment section, when I suggested that Stripling means, literally it seems, "long, narrow piece":
Interestingly, I just learned that 'stripling' was used to describe young people likely from the combination of strip + ling, meaning a "long, narrow piece". Per Etymonline:
late 14c., a word of uncertain origin, possibly from diminutive -ling + strip (n.) "long, narrow piece" on the notion of one who is "slender as a strip, one whose form or figure is not yet filled out."
This concept of long and narrow things keeps coming up, as I mentioned in my recent post with my son's drawing of a monkey holding a banana that he named Spaghetti. A piece of spaghetti is the definition of a 'long, narrow piece', right? Thus, in a very real sense, another form of the name for my son's monkey is "stripling" based on a couple step translation from spaghetti = long and narrow = stripling.
Am I saying that my son drew something 8 years ago that was meant to represent, even directly refer to, these Ammonite striplings - at least one of them? Yes, I am.
And he wouldn't have been the first child that I have heard of to do something like that. Laying more of my own cards on the table, I currently interpret many things from the stories and experiences that WJT has shared on his blog relating to "Little Skinnies" from which the world, Little Skinny Planet, derives the name he gave it, and even associations he made as a child with these Beings with Africa (i.e., people with darker skins), as story elements all pointing to these Ammonites, among a larger group of people that we know of from the Book of Mormon as Lamanites. Here is one excerpt from WJT's post that I linked above:
Little Skinny Planet was not a name I coined for this story. I used to talk about the Little Skinny Planet when I was a toddler. I have no memory of this, but I know it from the journal entries I used to dictate to my mother before I was able to write. This was a name comparable to "Black Africa" -- not a description of the place itself, but a reference to its inhabitants. It was where I imagined the Little Skinnies must come from.
It is these Ammonites - WJT's "Little Skinnies" - that I currently have placed on Eressea #2 who have forgotten who they are but, based on Eru-Jesus' promise and the blessings of those like Lehi, need to be reminded and saved. These are the Lamanite 'remnant'. Among the potentially several different but related 'rescue missions' underway, the rescue of these Ammonites must be included, and it seems that this will be part of Eressea's, or the Promised Land's, restoration.
Early Mormons (and perhaps Joseph Smith, also - I don't know) figured Lamanites were Native Americans. Associating Native Americans with "Israel" in one form or another was a fairly common practice or belief back in the day, even before Mormonism. One of the commissions that Thomas Jefferson gave Lewis and Clark, for example, as they went out to explore the significantly expanded United States almost 30 years before the Book of Mormon came out, was to look for and collect evidence of Hebrew influences among the Native Americans they would come in contact with, in determining whether they were the Lost Tribes of Israel.
But, any searching on this world for these Lamanites is in vain, I think now, for reasons I have continued to explore on this blog. I now place them on another world, and thus unreachable to those in the 1800's, just as they remain unreachable to us right now.
So that will need to change, and it is events that will be put in motion by Stones, Beings, and all sorts of things, I guess, that will open a door or path for this to happen.
I do want to be up front about one more thing relative to why my mind so readily goes down the path of these Ammonites, or another possible reason why I have so quickly used WJT's stories around this "little skinny planet" to build this new story (to me at least) of Lamanites living on a separated world, and this world being the Promised Land.
After I had just started this blog, one morning as I was waking up a woman's voice in very clear English mentioned a few things following a dream, with one of those things being a reference to the "Sons of Alma". It was actually a strange enough phrase (you won't find any reference to the "Sons of Alma" in the Book of Mormon like that), that as the voice was saying this, I kind of auto-completed it with "Mosiah", since the "Sons of Mosiah" are a very well known group of brothers referred to as that. But no, the voice was pretty clear this was the "Sons of Alma".
I looked it up later, and felt (again, rightly or wrongly - even when things come in English, it isn't as straightforward as I would like, at least - things are never more than the best guess I can pull together) that this must have to do with Alma the Younger's 3 sons: Helaman, Shiblon, and Corianton. Helaman, in particular, caught my attention based on Alma's parting blessing/ words to him found in Alma 37. In these words, Alma entrusts sacred records and objects to Helaman, including the Anor Stone (Liahona), Ether's 24 plates, and the Brass Plates. In addition, I believe he makes a reference to the Sawtooth Stone in talking about a stone "which shall shine forth in darkness unto light".
As these things were and began to be increasingly top of mind to me, I kept this "Sons of Alma" connection and words from the morning in the back of my mind for a few different reasons. It is because of this, for example, that I was so interested in the Tom Petty 'syncs', such as the 'Wildflower' references and the sun shining from the piano for the "Wake Up Time" artwork that was like my dream. "Alma" was top of mind because of that phrase, and so it was interesting to see the Tom Petty references build.
Additionally, however, I had completely overlooked or not paid attention to the other part of Helaman's story: these 'stripling' Ammonites. It would take WJT's stories, references, and syncs to draw my attention to this part of the story, which was completely surprising and unexpected for me. But even though unexpected, I found myself almost naturally taking some of the details he was sharing, and folding them into my current story, and, more importantly, expanding the story into some of these equally unexpected, and somewhat strange, places the story has gone.
In any case, going back to where this post started with "Milkommen", I think both proposed meanings work and tie into each other, as well as the larger story of Eressea being reunited, and even Brigham-Omar's name becoming 'dark'. Milkommen likely does refer to the Promised Land, which is also populated with "Milkom Men" - Ammonites. These Ammonites are waiting for redemption, though they probably don't know they are waiting for it. My guess is that they don't know because, just as with some here on this earth, they have died and been reborn, perhaps several times since the days of the Book of Mormon, and have no memory of those times.
In addition to being reminded and rescued, they will likely have a role to play in Brigham-Omar and his fellow conspirators' downfall on that land, according to Jesus' words at Bountiful:
Therefore it shall come to pass that whosoever will not believe in my words, who am Jesus Christ, which the Father shall cause him to bring forth unto the Gentiles, and shall give unto him power that he shall bring them forth unto the Gentiles, (it shall be done even as Moses said) they shall be cut off from among my people who are of the covenant.
And my people who are a remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles, yea, in the midst of them as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he go through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.
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