Alma 8:21-32
8:21-26 – Yesterday we had just met a citizen of Ammonihah, a man who had been commanded by an angel in a vision to receive Alma into his home. I wonder if in the ancient language of the Nephites, if it was standard to spend much time describing a person and what they did before naming them. We’ve seen this many times throughout the Book of Mormon, with Amulek, Nehor, Gideon, etc. What he says and does is detailed in 3 verses before Mormon gives us his name. Sometimes it will introduce the person in the beginning of the account saying something like “and this man’s name was…” then going into the story. But not here, it would be really interesting to look into ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and Arabic and see if there are any similarities there. Also interesting to me is the fact that, even though Amulek confesses that he knows that his guest is “a holy prophet of God,” Alma doesn’t introduce himself or explain his mission until after he “ate bread and was filled.” I wonder why that was; if it was it unimportant or if was some sort of test for Amulek, though I can’t see how. They eat, Alma “blessed Amulek and his house, and he gave thanks unto God,” and so now Alma begins to tell Amulek and I assume his family, who he is and that he had been to this city before “to preach the word of God among all this people… and they would not receive me, but they cast me out and I was about to set my back towards this land forever.” I wonder if the phrase “set my back towards this land forever,” is symbolic in the same sense that they used in the Old Testament, like when the prophets dusted off their feet when rejected by a people and this signified a cursing or something like that. We have sort of a flash back to when Alma and Amulek first met and get an important detail that wasn’t given to us at first, and that is that Alma “had fasted many days,” before coming back to the city of Ammonihah. The IM says “Alma fasted to prepare his mind and soul to preach to the inhabitants of Ammonihah. Fasting often indicates to the Lord the seriousness of our request. President James E. Faust… taught: ‘At times fasting is appropriate as a strong evidence of our sincerity… When we fast we humble our soul, which brings us more in tune with God and His holy purposes.’ Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin enumerated some of the blessings that flow into our lives when we add prayer to an appropriate fast: ‘Fasting, couple with mighty prayer, is powerful. It can fill our minds with the revelations of the Spirit. It can strengthen us against times of temptation. Fasting and prayer can help develop within us courage and confidence. They can strengthen our character and build self-restraint and discipline. Often when we fast, our righteous prayers and petitions have greater power. Testimonies grow. We mature spiritually and emotionally and sanctify our souls. Each time we fast, we gain a little more control over our worldly appetites and passions… Fasting in the proper spirit and in the Lord’s way will energize us spiritually. It will strengthen our self-discipline, will our homes with peace, lighten our hearts with joy, fortify us against temptation, prepare us for times of adversity, and open the windows of heaven.’” It’s interesting while reading this because again, like prayer, fasting is not my strongest factor either, I like food too much and I really hate feeling hungry, like I hate it a lot. But recently, I’ve been having a need that, while reading this I realized that if, while fasting “our righteous prayers and petitions have greater power.” If that is the case and if fasting can “open the windows of heaven,” then maybe the Lord is just waiting for me to actually do it, it would seem like it from the feelings that I got while reading that passage. Here’s why I haven’t considered it in the past. I love my job, I’m so very blessed, I made plenty of money, and most single moms have to work at least 2 jobs to make ends meet, and I only have to work one job. I have great benefits and I really like the facility in which I work. But my hours are very difficult on me and my kids. I sleep in 3 hour increments, from 3am to 6:30am then from 8 to 11am. So basically I get 6 hours of split sleep a night and it’s terrible, I’ve been doing that for 16 months now and I think that it’s really starting to take a toll on me physically, my brain power has significantly decreased, I’m forgetful and almost always exhausted and have headaches constantly. But I also don’t have much time with my kids during the day. I pick them up from school at 2pm then I have to leave for work by 3:45pm, and we usually spend 45 minutes at the school playing with friends because they need to get their wiggles out or they get grumpy, and then we have a 20 minute car ride home, in which we listen to the scriptures and the kids fight in the back seat. My kids come and go with problems relating to this, overall I feel like we are doing ok, but I think that we all are hanging on for dear life. So my solution is trying to get my work to create a new shift that’s common most other places, but for some reason we don’t have one here. I’m trying really hard to convince them that it’s a good idea, and yeah that sounds selfish but it would be much better for the department that I work for, saving us a few thousand dollars a month, and provide better service to the people, so it really is a good idea, and it would be awesome for all of us, but with any large company there is red tape and hassles, and convincing, etc. and that’s what I’m dealing with now. And I pray for it sometimes, but honestly, I don’t know what God’s will is so I don’t pray for is that much because I want him to decide what’s best for me, and I don’t want to push it too much because then I will feel like I’m being ungrateful for what I already have. The thing about fasting is similar, I am afraid that if I fast for it and it’s not God’s will, then it won’t happen and I’ll just be frustrated and hungry. Does that make sense? I know that God’s will prevail, and I’m just really hoping that it’s this but I don’t understand how fasting and prayer will change God’s will. I guess maybe that’s the lesson that I need to learn. How does fasting and prayer help us, when God’s will will prevail no matter what. Interesting. Then there’s the aspect of “Fasting often indicates to the Lord the seriousness of our request.” I guess this whole time I’ve been saying “I really want this, but not enough to give up food.” I’m going to have to think about this a little bit more.
8:27-32 – So we can see that when the angel commanded Alma to return, he did, quickly but first he took time preparing. The fact that Alma didn’t go into the city for several days might indicate that he took his sweet time going back, maybe trying to convince himself to obey, but Mormon tells us that he returned speedily, so how does someone return speedily yet not actually go into the city he was supposed to for several days? I guess the difference might be the mindset. If Alma took, say 5 days, to go back into the city, the difference between him returning quickly vs. not would be what he was thinking. If he was trying to convince himself that he should actually go back, or is he was just building up courage, then I wouldn’t consider that immediate obedience. But if he spent those days mentally and spiritually preparing to go back and to be in tune with the Spirit so that he could truly do God’s will, then I would say that was a quick return. It would be like me making a birthday cake, someone tells me to make the cake, and I spend 5 days watching TV, talking on the phone, checking my email, I wouldn’t say that I was truly engaged in making that cake to the best of my ability or to the way the person ordered it. On the other hand, if someone tells me to make a cake and I spend the same 5 days planning, designing, gathering ingredients, studying the recipe, getting all the tools together, then even though making the cake took the same amount of time, imagine the end result of the first, time starved cake vs the cake that was 5 days in the making. This is the difference between mediocrity and excellence in a bakery, but is it the same thing spiritually? Did Alma hide in the bushes and cry and hope against hope that the people didn’t kill him as soon as he got there? I doubt it, he walked in and declared to Amulek, whom he didn’t know, that he was a servant of God, there was no fear in him, there was only the boldness of gospel declaration. That power and confidence didn’t come from cowering and debating the mission, it came from several days of prayer, fasting, scripture study, and meditation, planning and preparation, it came from devoted discipleship to the Lord Jesus Christ. So I believe that we can accurately assume that the time that passed between the angel and entering the city, Alma was completely immersed in the mission at hand with full confidence that, as Nephi said, the Lord provides a way to keep his commandments. While Alma “tarried many days with Amulek… the people did wax more gross in their iniquities.” I guess the lacking information in this is the amount of time that Alma stayed with Amulek. If the “many days,” means weeks or months, then perhaps this is a natural decline of a wicked society, but if patterns are to be followed, then surely Satan knew that Alma was back and what his mission way, he knew of God’s promise of destruction. And not to be out done, Satan probably hastened his efforts to destroy just like God hastened his efforts to redeem, this would explain why even though it had one been days since Alma has been back, the moral decline sped up exponentially. Another point that I think is worth mentioning is that the time Alma spent preparing to enter the city and the time that he spent probably recuperating in Amulek’s home is similar to the time that Alma spend earlier in the chapter where Alma “returned to his own house at Zarahemla to rest himself from the labors which he had performed.” Interesting, remember when we were talking about Gideon and how surely the people of Zarahemla and the people of Gideon knew a lot about each other and the ways in which they lived, maybe these other cities that Alma planned to visit weren’t so well known. Maybe he spent that time not only resting from what he had done, but also preparing for what he was about to do. He left Zarahemla and went to Melek, the to Ammonihah, the was going to go to Aaron before he was commanded to return, so he had clearly set out a route to follow and he knew that it was going to be a long trip and he was probably going to some places that he wasn’t super familiar with, so his need to prepare himself spiritually was probably pretty significant. I’m trying to think of other stories in which the prophets had taken so time to prepare, or at least when it was so important that Mormon pointed it out to us. I think that this was the first time we see the rest and preparation that preaching the gospel takes. So while he’s resting and the people are increasing in their wickedness, “the word came to Alma, saying: Go; and also say unto my servant Amulek, go forth and prophesy unto this people.” Alma is told that it’s time to go and to take Amulek with him. This is an interesting sentence, “the word came to Alma,” that’s not a phrase that is used commonly, usually it’s more clear cut, such as “and it came to pass,” or “and behold,” but the phraseology “the word” seems almost military in nature. But it also brings up the Old Testament in which “the word” meant Jesus Christ. It just seems like such an odd phrase that rings so close to a reference from ancient scripture, I wonder if, and this is pure speculation on my part, I wonder if this might be implying that Christ came to Alma to personally tell him that it was time to start. Maybe that’s a stretch, I know, but if that was the case than Mormon definitely was able to put that information forth in a subtle and somewhat “coded” way. Because how would this have changed if Mormon had said “and Jesus came to Alma, saying: Go.” I think that that might skew the intention of the story a little bit. I mean with Nephi and Jacob, they both saw Christ, but we aren’t given privilege information about that, Nephi simply states that they had seen him. But to show that Jesus came to Alma and gave him a specific message, that moves the focus a little bit I think. Wow, I had never considered that before. Anyway, Alma and Amulek both, together, went forth “among the people, to declare the words of God unto them; and they were filled with the Holy Ghost.” The Book of Mormon Sunday school study guide teaches “when Alma went alone to the city of Ammonihah, the people said, ‘who is God, that sendeth no more authority than one man among this people?’ The peole were later astonished when Amulek preached to them, ‘seeing there was more than one witness…’ Note how Alma and Amulek continued to support each other’s efforts by preaching similar doctrines… What are the benefits of having more than one witness when sharing the gospel? How can we sustain each other in these endeavors?” If we look at the methods in which the Lord has used to preach his gospel before, he can go with the one person, alone approach, but he clearly prefers to do send pairs. I wonder why he prefers two people going together, having 2 witnesses, as it were. It’s interesting because on my way to work today I listened to an article from the September 2010 Ensign entitled “The Gospel Shall Be Preached to All the World,” and it addresses this very issue. It says that “we can look to our Savior as an example of how to share the gospel. He taught the gospel clearly. He took advantage of simple unplanned moments to share the gospel. And He showed genuine love and concern for others.” As disciples of Christ, we can do the same thing, but why would this be more effective in pairs, as opposed to single teachers? Well, this might sound crass, but if one person comes and is happy and helpful and joyful and nice, we can usually chalk that up to that person just being crazy, it’s really easy to dismiss the actions of one person, good or bad, as them just being “different.” But when there are two people who are both happy and helpful and joyful and nice, then it’s a little bit harder to dismiss them both as just being “different.” People have different personalities, believers and unbelievers alike, and so there are always those who you connect with easier than others, and everyone’s speech and word usage, point of view and train of thought are different and different people can relate. It’s like your favorite author, your favorite actor, your favorite movie, they are all your favorite because they all speak to you in different ways, the same with people teaching of Jesus Christ. That’s what two witnesses can do for the work, there’s also the aspect of what two witnesses can do for each other. In the same September 2010 Ensign there is an article entitled “To Returned Missionaries,” that speaks to this. The little blurb at the top says “What we need is a royal army of returned missionaries reenlisted into service.” I love that, I’m military and so I love that reference and it’s something that speaks to me personally about taking the role of “member missionary” seriously, because it doesn’t ask for clerks or passive observers, it’s asking for soldiers, well trained and mission focused, and to some that my make no sense whatsoever, but to me it was very simple and powerful. In the article Elder L. Tom Perry speaks of his own missionary experience where he “prayed with my companion each morning as we began a new day… the guidance of the Holy Spirit seemed to be magnified the more times we appealed to Heavenly Father for direction on a given day.” If the power of one righteous person’s prayers is significant, imagine the combined power of two righteous persons’ prayer. I would imagine that this would be a similar concept of having family prayer, scripture study, etc. There’s perspective, selfless service and accountability as a team, it would be easy to rationalize disobedience individually, but it’s less likely to happen when you are with another person. Elder Perry continues speaking of companion scripture studying saying “(God’s) words are always positive and direct, revealing the blessings that come through following His law and His way. We would also take an hour or more each day to study as companions together. Having two sets of eyes examine the doctrine of the kingdom seemed to multiply our understanding. We would read together, then share our insights. Our minds were sharpened as we followed the daily practice of individual and companion study. The practice brought us closer together as companions and increased our understanding of the doctrines of the kingdom.” Two people share insights with each other and help each other grow closer to God. He continues “when we leave the mission field, we no longer have companions to help us discipline our study habits,” companions help each other stay accountable, motivated, and focused. And finally as Alma and Amulek go forth to teach the people, “they had power given unto them, insomuch that they could not be confined in dungeons; neither was it possible that any man could slay them,” this makes me wonder if they immediately faced these afflictions, did people really try to kill them right away? Did people really try to put them into prison immediately? Or is Mormon foreshadowing the next couple of chapters, yeah he’s probably foreshadowing. But the mistreatment didn’t dissuade them, for “they went forth and began to preach and to prophesy unto the people, according to the spirit and power which the Lord had given them.”
8:27-32 – So we can see that when the angel commanded Alma to return, he did, quickly but first he took time preparing. The fact that Alma didn’t go into the city for several days might indicate that he took his sweet time going back, maybe trying to convince himself to obey, but Mormon tells us that he returned speedily, so how does someone return speedily yet not actually go into the city he was supposed to for several days? I guess the difference might be the mindset. If Alma took, say 5 days, to go back into the city, the difference between him returning quickly vs. not would be what he was thinking. If he was trying to convince himself that he should actually go back, or is he was just building up courage, then I wouldn’t consider that immediate obedience. But if he spent those days mentally and spiritually preparing to go back and to be in tune with the Spirit so that he could truly do God’s will, then I would say that was a quick return. It would be like me making a birthday cake, someone tells me to make the cake, and I spend 5 days watching TV, talking on the phone, checking my email, I wouldn’t say that I was truly engaged in making that cake to the best of my ability or to the way the person ordered it. On the other hand, if someone tells me to make a cake and I spend the same 5 days planning, designing, gathering ingredients, studying the recipe, getting all the tools together, then even though making the cake took the same amount of time, imagine the end result of the first, time starved cake vs the cake that was 5 days in the making. This is the difference between mediocrity and excellence in a bakery, but is it the same thing spiritually? Did Alma hide in the bushes and cry and hope against hope that the people didn’t kill him as soon as he got there? I doubt it, he walked in and declared to Amulek, whom he didn’t know, that he was a servant of God, there was no fear in him, there was only the boldness of gospel declaration. That power and confidence didn’t come from cowering and debating the mission, it came from several days of prayer, fasting, scripture study, and meditation, planning and preparation, it came from devoted discipleship to the Lord Jesus Christ. So I believe that we can accurately assume that the time that passed between the angel and entering the city, Alma was completely immersed in the mission at hand with full confidence that, as Nephi said, the Lord provides a way to keep his commandments. While Alma “tarried many days with Amulek… the people did wax more gross in their iniquities.” I guess the lacking information in this is the amount of time that Alma stayed with Amulek. If the “many days,” means weeks or months, then perhaps this is a natural decline of a wicked society, but if patterns are to be followed, then surely Satan knew that Alma was back and what his mission way, he knew of God’s promise of destruction. And not to be out done, Satan probably hastened his efforts to destroy just like God hastened his efforts to redeem, this would explain why even though it had one been days since Alma has been back, the moral decline sped up exponentially. Another point that I think is worth mentioning is that the time Alma spent preparing to enter the city and the time that he spent probably recuperating in Amulek’s home is similar to the time that Alma spend earlier in the chapter where Alma “returned to his own house at Zarahemla to rest himself from the labors which he had performed.” Interesting, remember when we were talking about Gideon and how surely the people of Zarahemla and the people of Gideon knew a lot about each other and the ways in which they lived, maybe these other cities that Alma planned to visit weren’t so well known. Maybe he spent that time not only resting from what he had done, but also preparing for what he was about to do. He left Zarahemla and went to Melek, the to Ammonihah, the was going to go to Aaron before he was commanded to return, so he had clearly set out a route to follow and he knew that it was going to be a long trip and he was probably going to some places that he wasn’t super familiar with, so his need to prepare himself spiritually was probably pretty significant. I’m trying to think of other stories in which the prophets had taken so time to prepare, or at least when it was so important that Mormon pointed it out to us. I think that this was the first time we see the rest and preparation that preaching the gospel takes. So while he’s resting and the people are increasing in their wickedness, “the word came to Alma, saying: Go; and also say unto my servant Amulek, go forth and prophesy unto this people.” Alma is told that it’s time to go and to take Amulek with him. This is an interesting sentence, “the word came to Alma,” that’s not a phrase that is used commonly, usually it’s more clear cut, such as “and it came to pass,” or “and behold,” but the phraseology “the word” seems almost military in nature. But it also brings up the Old Testament in which “the word” meant Jesus Christ. It just seems like such an odd phrase that rings so close to a reference from ancient scripture, I wonder if, and this is pure speculation on my part, I wonder if this might be implying that Christ came to Alma to personally tell him that it was time to start. Maybe that’s a stretch, I know, but if that was the case than Mormon definitely was able to put that information forth in a subtle and somewhat “coded” way. Because how would this have changed if Mormon had said “and Jesus came to Alma, saying: Go.” I think that that might skew the intention of the story a little bit. I mean with Nephi and Jacob, they both saw Christ, but we aren’t given privilege information about that, Nephi simply states that they had seen him. But to show that Jesus came to Alma and gave him a specific message, that moves the focus a little bit I think. Wow, I had never considered that before. Anyway, Alma and Amulek both, together, went forth “among the people, to declare the words of God unto them; and they were filled with the Holy Ghost.” The Book of Mormon Sunday school study guide teaches “when Alma went alone to the city of Ammonihah, the people said, ‘who is God, that sendeth no more authority than one man among this people?’ The peole were later astonished when Amulek preached to them, ‘seeing there was more than one witness…’ Note how Alma and Amulek continued to support each other’s efforts by preaching similar doctrines… What are the benefits of having more than one witness when sharing the gospel? How can we sustain each other in these endeavors?” If we look at the methods in which the Lord has used to preach his gospel before, he can go with the one person, alone approach, but he clearly prefers to do send pairs. I wonder why he prefers two people going together, having 2 witnesses, as it were. It’s interesting because on my way to work today I listened to an article from the September 2010 Ensign entitled “The Gospel Shall Be Preached to All the World,” and it addresses this very issue. It says that “we can look to our Savior as an example of how to share the gospel. He taught the gospel clearly. He took advantage of simple unplanned moments to share the gospel. And He showed genuine love and concern for others.” As disciples of Christ, we can do the same thing, but why would this be more effective in pairs, as opposed to single teachers? Well, this might sound crass, but if one person comes and is happy and helpful and joyful and nice, we can usually chalk that up to that person just being crazy, it’s really easy to dismiss the actions of one person, good or bad, as them just being “different.” But when there are two people who are both happy and helpful and joyful and nice, then it’s a little bit harder to dismiss them both as just being “different.” People have different personalities, believers and unbelievers alike, and so there are always those who you connect with easier than others, and everyone’s speech and word usage, point of view and train of thought are different and different people can relate. It’s like your favorite author, your favorite actor, your favorite movie, they are all your favorite because they all speak to you in different ways, the same with people teaching of Jesus Christ. That’s what two witnesses can do for the work, there’s also the aspect of what two witnesses can do for each other. In the same September 2010 Ensign there is an article entitled “To Returned Missionaries,” that speaks to this. The little blurb at the top says “What we need is a royal army of returned missionaries reenlisted into service.” I love that, I’m military and so I love that reference and it’s something that speaks to me personally about taking the role of “member missionary” seriously, because it doesn’t ask for clerks or passive observers, it’s asking for soldiers, well trained and mission focused, and to some that my make no sense whatsoever, but to me it was very simple and powerful. In the article Elder L. Tom Perry speaks of his own missionary experience where he “prayed with my companion each morning as we began a new day… the guidance of the Holy Spirit seemed to be magnified the more times we appealed to Heavenly Father for direction on a given day.” If the power of one righteous person’s prayers is significant, imagine the combined power of two righteous persons’ prayer. I would imagine that this would be a similar concept of having family prayer, scripture study, etc. There’s perspective, selfless service and accountability as a team, it would be easy to rationalize disobedience individually, but it’s less likely to happen when you are with another person. Elder Perry continues speaking of companion scripture studying saying “(God’s) words are always positive and direct, revealing the blessings that come through following His law and His way. We would also take an hour or more each day to study as companions together. Having two sets of eyes examine the doctrine of the kingdom seemed to multiply our understanding. We would read together, then share our insights. Our minds were sharpened as we followed the daily practice of individual and companion study. The practice brought us closer together as companions and increased our understanding of the doctrines of the kingdom.” Two people share insights with each other and help each other grow closer to God. He continues “when we leave the mission field, we no longer have companions to help us discipline our study habits,” companions help each other stay accountable, motivated, and focused. And finally as Alma and Amulek go forth to teach the people, “they had power given unto them, insomuch that they could not be confined in dungeons; neither was it possible that any man could slay them,” this makes me wonder if they immediately faced these afflictions, did people really try to kill them right away? Did people really try to put them into prison immediately? Or is Mormon foreshadowing the next couple of chapters, yeah he’s probably foreshadowing. But the mistreatment didn’t dissuade them, for “they went forth and began to preach and to prophesy unto the people, according to the spirit and power which the Lord had given them.”
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