“THEY WERE STEADFAST AND IMMOVABLE”
Thanks to the wisdom of their humble king, Mosiah, the Nephites learned to value the liberty of self-rule over the safety of a monarchy. But liberty of any kind is a threat to Satan, and so the Nephites learn not only the value of liberty, but its cost as well.
I’m Mark Holt, and this is Gospel Talktrine.
Welcome again to Gospel Talktrine, your “Come Follow Me” podcast. And should you have a question you’d like answered on the program, you can send me an email at gt@gospletalktrine.com. Also, you can visit us on our website at gospeltalkrine.com , where I put up our content, and sometimes – we have two and a half years of content – sometimes I put up the notes that I used to prepare my lessons, and I’m in the process of adding over a year’s worth of content. So check our website for regular updates.
Today’s lesson is Mosiah 29 through Alma 4, “They were Steadfast and Immovable”. So Mosiah 29 begins with – actually, last week I was a little bummed out that I didn’t get to cover Mosiah 29 as part of that lesson, because it fit in so nicely. But this week, I realise how nicely it fits in with this lesson as well. So, I’m covering it both times.
But this is a wonderful lesson about freedom. And, it’s also a reminder that the prophet is often criticised. I’m going to take a little aside here. The prophet is often criticised for making statements, or the Church is criticised for making statements that might be seen as political. And here in this lesson we see that politics is very often a spiritual matter. And the politics of a region, a country, a people, it falls into the purview of a prophet’s mandate, things about which he can speak.
No prophet is obliged to stay out of the political realm. The Church today stays out of politics in the sense that it doesn’t endorse a particular candidate or party. And that is true across the world in all the countries in which it is established.
However, it does take stances on issues which are deemed political. And that’s because freedom, spirituality and God’s will are so intimately tied up. There is nothing wrong about a prophet weighing in on a matter that other people deem political, if that matter is also a spiritual matter.
And we have plenty of examples throughout the scriptures, throughout history, of prophets involving themselves in politics. In fact, in ancient Israel, prophets were heavily involved in politics for almost the entirety of the Old Testament. Jesus Christ was almost surely killed because of his insistence in making statements which the Jewish leaders of the time viewed as political statements. That is why he died. We’ll be talking a little bit more about his martyrdom as part of the lesson.
So, the last chapter of Mosiah outlines what I think is a unique event in human history. I could be wrong, but I racked my brain a little bit, and I wasn’t able to come up with any other examples of a peoples who had been governed by a king, where the king voluntarily ceded power and said, “At the end of my reign we will be” – for all intents and purposes, although he doesn’t use this word – “we will be a democracy.”
And there are some very interesting innovations in political science that Mosiah makes. He introduces a system of checks and balances where the people would be ruled or governed by judges, and the judges would be chosen by elections. And they would also, the higher judges would be balanced against lower judges, and anyone could be removed from his place in accordance with the will of the people, should they desire it. And so nobody would have the position of a king, and no-one would have too much power.
And part of the lesson that Mosiah teaches at this time, is that you’re all going to have to be responsible for the choices that you all make. You can see that having a righteous king is very good for you, and in fact Mosiah echoes a lot of the arguments that Alma had made. I’m going to show you a couple of examples of people that were so popular that the people wanted them to be king.
So, one of them was Alma. You remember that when Alma the Elder escaped from the rule of King Noah, they travelled for several days into the wilderness, and they established their own civilisation in the land that they called Helam. And the people said to Alma, “We want you to be our king. You’ve done so much for us, you’ve delivered us.” And Alma said, “Look, look at all the terrible consequences that come from having a king. Sure, when you have a righteous king, it’s great. But it’s so easy for a righteous king to be supplanted by a wicked king. And then you’re not getting rid of that wicked king without paying the ultimate price. And if you don’t get rid of him, he brings you into wickedness and bondage.” And that is in Mosiah 23:7-13 .
The arguments that Alma makes against monarchy there are echoed here in chapter 29 by Mosiah. So Alma and Mosiah have become friends, and Mosiah has learned a lot about political science and freedom from Alma. Just as everyone has learned so much from Alma. Alma is the founder of their Church, as it says in the end of this chapter. The end of the book of Mosiah is the death of Alma the Elder, and Mosiah the Second. They both find their end, and they both die peacefully as old men.
And those arguments that are echoed are: one, it’s not good to esteem one flesh above another. When you have a king, you naturally promote the idea that all men are not equal. And so, Mosiah is basically saying, all men are created equal, or all men and women are created equal.
Number two: One wicked king can undo all the good works of all the righteous kings before him. So, like in the case of wicked King Noah, there can be no resistance without bloodshed to a king who is wicked, because he installs his cronies in power, and he undermines the very rule of law, in order to: number one, cement his own power, and number two, pave the way for all of the wickedness that he desires to accomplish.
So the third argument against kings: it might be good to have a king when he’s righteous, but even the most righteous king can have a wicked son. And he can have wickedness in his past. And he can have wickedness in his past, and can be very quickly brought back – power can corrupt, and he can be very quickly corrupted.
And just as later philosophers would recognise, Mosiah can see that there is a corrupting influence that power exercises over the heart of someone.
And number four: when your king is wicked, then you’re in bondage, and you will be in bondage, spiritually, militarily and economically.
Now as I did last week, I want to bring up a couple of scriptures that I think are maybe subtext to what is going on in Mosiah 29. First is Deuteronomy 17 , which is the paragraph of kings, found in the law of Moses. And this is the later part of Deuteronomy 17, is directions to kings. Here are all the things that a king must do. He must study the scriptures, each and every day of his life. He must copy out his own copy of the scriptures. He must never multiply to himself horses or wives or gold. And this is meant to be a check on the power of the king. The word of God is directing kings to never take too much power unto themselves.
And I think Mosiah probably read that and said, it was basically God’s admission that he can’t stop the people, or he won’t stop the people of Israel from appointing a king unto themselves if they really want to. But the subtext of Deuteronomy 17 is that he thinks it is a really bad idea. So here are all the safeguards around this terrible thing that you’re about to do. You’re taking gasoline into your hands, so you can’t have any matches around. And that is basically what Deuteronomy 17 is saying.
A couple of other chapters from the Old Testament. One is Judges 9 . And this is this excellent, excellent story, it’s a powerful story, of what happens after another popular man refused the kingship. So the story of Gideon you might know from the Bible. It’s interesting because we have another Gideon show up in the lesson today.
But Gideon was the leader of the armies of Israel, and he conquered the Midianites; he stood up to an army of ten thousand people with only three hundred men. And that was through subterfuge, and sneaking into their camp in the middle of the night, and breaking their lamps. You may remember the story. [ Judges 7:15-23 ]
So Gideon was so popular, and he was so wise and righteous, that he was offered a kingship and he refused it during his life. [ Judges 8:22-23 ] When he was dead, one of his sons – he had many sons because he had many wives – he had over seventy sons. One of his sons killed all the others. And he missed one. [ Judges 9:5 ] And so the one surviving brother said of the first brother, he rose up onto a tower, almost like Samuel the Lamanite, and he said “Listen, and let me tell you an allegory about what is going to happen.” And then he gives this wonderful allegory of the bramble. His name is Jotham.
And he talks about how one day all of the trees wanted a king. And of course, they started with the most noble of trees, and they started with the olive tree, and then they went to the fig tree. And both the olive tree and the fig tree, and even the vine, they all say, “You know what? I‘m too busy. I’m creating wonderful things. I’m creating olives and figs and I’m creating grapes. So I don’t have time to be a king.” Finally, the trees say, “We still want a king. So we’re going to ask the bramble.”
And the bramble says, “Alright, if you really do want me to be your king, then yes, shelter yourselves in my shade.” And obviously we know what the shade of a bramble is like. It’s prickly, and it’s low to the ground. “And if you don’t choose me to be your king, then fire will come out from the bramble and devour all of you.” [ Judges 9:8-15 ]
And so that is what a wicked king is like. This is a wonderful example of how one wicked king can destroy everything. And that principle would reign, that principle would govern over almost all of the Old Testament. Whether it was that event, or it was the slaughter that preceded it, the Israelites seemed to have heeded his warning for several years, until 1 Samuel 8; the Israelites again want a king.
And the reason they want a king is not because they have a popular leader that they love and they trust. It’s because the nations around them have kings, and they have prestige and they have wealth, and there is a display of military might, and of fine things, and – obviously, as I said before – of prestige and power. And they want this display.
And so Samuel, who has been the judge of Israel until this time, asks God about it. He feels hurt. And God tells Samuel, “They haven’t rejected you, but they’ve rejected me.” [ 1 Samuel 8:4-7 ]
So all of these warnings against the power of a king seem to have sunk in, from Alma, and from the Old Testament, they seem to have sunk in to the heart of Mosiah. And then the final kicker was, his son Aaron refused the throne.
So it’s almost a perfect storm. Mosiah thinks to himself, “Ok. If my son ever has a change of heart, he changes his heart back. We know that he was a wicked man, and he’s been converted to God. He’s on a mission. Thank goodness he’s changed his life. But I’ve seen people backslide before. And if my son should ever be converted back into his prideful ways, nothing would be more likely to do that to him, than to be put on a throne. And if he shouldn’t be, then maybe one of my other sons would. All of my sons basically have to perfect in their conversion from now until the end of their life because of the position we’re in. If we give the throne to anyone else but my eldest son.”
So what a dangerous, precarious position to leave his people in. And he realises this, and the spirit works on him. And he gives them this spontaneous gift of free government by the people, with checks and balances in it. It’s a wonderful chapter about what we talked about last week, how first people make… not only can people can make steps forward, spiritual steps forward, and evolve and change their personal nature through the power of Jesus Christ, but whole societies can do the same.
So this is a step forward for all of Nephite society, that they will step from the precarious situation of being in a monarchy, to the wonderful place of having freedom.
But then, quickly they learn the cost of freedom. One of the warnings that Alma gave was that a king would put you in bondage, spiritually, militarily and economically. So those three types of bondage are immediately displayed. Satan attempts to put the Nephites back into one of those forms of bondage.
The first is in Alma 1, and a man named Nehor is brought before Alma. And we learn what he has done. He’s brought before Alma to be judged. Alma is now the first of the chief judges, the head of government, even though it’s an elected position, and he’s the head of the Church. And as we will learn in succeeding chapters, he’s also the general of the armies.
So Alma is much like Gideon in the Old Testament, in that he is popular enough, the people would probably choose him to be king as well. Although, of course, Alma would never choose that. He’s already had that opportunity and turned it down. So he is like Gideon of old, in that he turned down the kingship. And he’s like Mosiah; he loves the people so much it comes far above how he would try to take care of his own needs and his own desires for power.
And that’s the difference between him and this man who is standing in front of him. Nehor, a powerful man both personally – he described as a large man, and so we can guess that he uses his personal presence to bully people – but we also learn that he wise. So he’s exceedingly cunning. And what I would guess, I’ve made a couple of guesses about Nehor, from what I read and don’t read in Alma chapter 1.
The first thing that I’ve guessed is that he has won, or largely won, every argument that he’s been part of. And the reason is, we find out why he is in front of Alma, he lost an argument and killed someone. So, the fact that he hasn’t done this before, and he’s gained a ton of power, and a ton of popularity, leads me to believe that he mostly wins his arguments. If not completely, then he makes several converts. He doesn’t completely lose the argument whenever he speaks.
No-one has ever utterly withstood him verbally, that’s my assumption. And so he’s gone throughout the land of Zarahemla and the other lands of the Nephites making tons of converts. And he has two messages. One of them is a message that still exists today, and has for at least a couple of hundred years, which is called “universalism”. And that’s the idea that everyone will be saved.
Now this idea, in and of itself, doesn’t lead to bloodshed. As we see from the universalists, even among us today. I have them in my own family, in fact. It’s a doctrine that is not very ennobling. Because, when God calls upon you to struggle against sin, then that changes you. You need then to go back to God, and say “Give me the strength.” Sin is very difficult sometimes to resist. There are some sins that I find it very easy to resist, and then there are other sins that are so difficult and I need the help of God, so that’s the position people find themselves in when God requires of them that they change.
And universalism denies people that struggle. Now, the good thing about universalism in today’s world is, the people who are universalists don’t realise this. But they are swimming in the waters of Christianity, and they happen to think they are walking in the air of universalism. And so they actually do believe that they need to change, and that they need to repent, and that God needs to help them live a good life. And then they think everyone will be saved.
But the universalism of Nehor was different. He thought everyone would be saved, and therefore – the implication is, perhaps, I’m reading between the lines, I don’t read this in the chapter. He didn’t teach people you can do whatever you want. We find in the Book of Mormon the doctrine of Satan, “that whatsoever a man doeth is no crime.” But Nehor isn’t described as teaching that specific doctrine.
However, we also learn something else about him. Which is that he thinks that priests should be popular. That they should make money. So this is called priestcraft . This is the selling of spiritual ideas for some sort of gain, whether It be financial, or popularity, or both. And he gains a certain amount of power.
So, as I said, I believe he didn’t lose too many arguments. And the reason I think that is, we have the story here of another Gideon. This is the Gideon that resisted King Noah. He is also a man of action. He threatened King Noah’s life. He was so sick of King Noah’s wickedness that he swore, in his wrath, that he was going to kill King Noah. And either he had enough popularity himself to get past the guard, or maybe he had enough personal might to get past King Noah’s guard, or maybe he was one of the guards. But in any case, Gideon was about to kill King Noah, and King Noah said, “Oh look, the Lamanites are coming.” And so Gideon spared his life.
He comes into the story again, when he suggests that “Here’s the way we get away from the Lamanites. We allow them to get drunk on our tribute of wine. They forced us to give them half of everything that we create. Let’s give them specially prepared wine, in its strength, and they’ll all get drunk, and we can get away.” And he’s the one that comes up with the plan that frees the people of Limhi from their bondage.
So here he is in his old age, and he’s still fearless. And he’s a follower of Jesus Christ, he’s been fully converted, as were – as far as we know – all of the people of Limhi, and he’s a teacher in the Church of God, in the Church that was established by Alma.
So he meets Nehor along the way, wherever he’s travelling, and Gideon is travelling as well, and he resists him in all of his words. So this is a new experience for Nehor, which is, to lose an argument so utterly and so completely that he has nowhere left to run, verbally, logically. And maybe he had followers around, or maybe he just personally couldn’t bear the thought of losing this argument.
Now what is the last refuge of the defeated idea? It’s violence. So when you see someone get angry, when you see someone threaten violence, or get violent, because of words, you know that they are afraid that they are wrong. And Nehor is so afraid that he is wrong, that he has to shut down one side of the argument.
So even though we don’t have the exact philosophy of Nehor alive today, we see today the same tendency, that we need to shut down the other side of the argument. In this process we have a very good example, which is the war in heaven, of how God and Satan would handle this exact scenario.
So God allowed Satan to try and convince other people to follow him, to spread his ideas. And God didn’t counter him with violence, even though God had the power to shut Satan down without violence. We don’t know what form of violence would have had reign in the spiritual world, in any case. But what Satan wanted to do was shut down the argument. And what God wanted to do was expand the argument. Because he knew that his ideas – he had no doubt, he had no way to doubt – that his ideas would eventually prevail. Because he knew that he was right. God knew all of those things.
Jesus Christ treated discussions in the same way. It was the people who were opposed to Jesus Christ who felt that they had to shut him down with violence. Because if they let him speak, he would always be proven right. That seems to be the way that Nehor felt.
Another interesting aspect of Nehor’s behaviour is the entitlement that he felt. He felt like, “Because I am me. Because I’m the leader of this church, and people like what I say, and they’ve given me money to preach to them, and I’ve told them that everyone will be saved, I get to kill Gideon for winning the argument.” And that sort of entitlement is an interesting aspect. So we can look for all of these things. We can look for, today, the idea that nothing anyone does is wrong. We can look for the idea that I get to use violence to shut down people who oppose me.
And violence is any form of force. When you shout down an opponent from speaking, it’s violence. In one sense, right? It doesn’t mean it needs to be opposed with violence. But shutting down an opponent, not allowing the argument to continue, not being willing to resist with logic and ideas, another set of logic and ideas, these are aspects of Nehor’s philosophy that we see alive today.
And finally, the entitlement that goes with it. The idea that because “I’m me. Because I, Nehor, am above you, Gideon, I get to kill you.” And we know that he feels this entitlement, because when he’s in front of Alma, he pleads for himself with “boldness.” And why would you plead for yourself with boldness? Rather than say, “You know what, I know I committed murder, it was the wrong thing to do. I ask for mercy.” He doesn’t ask for mercy. He seems to be saying, “You should let me go. I get to do this. It was justifiable, because…” what? We don’t know what his argument was. In fact, the book of Mormon gives his argument no exposure whatsoever, because it was garbage.
And Nehor meets, what the Book of Mormon describes as an ignominious end.
Another interesting thing about the death of Nehor – so he’s put to death for killing Gideon – but also, before he dies, he’s willing to recant his ideas. And here is where I want to go back to the martyrdom of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine Jesus Christ – at any point during his trial, his several trials, during his Via Dolorosa, this terrible walk of pain where he carries the cross, and then his crucifixion – can you imagine him recanting his ideas while suffering those things or being threatened with death?
The fact that he didn’t seals his testimony with his blood. And that is the ultimate proof that you believe what you are saying. So many prophets have gone through this as well. So all of the martyrs, all of the Christian martyrs, religious martyrs throughout the scriptures, throughout history, they all believed what they were saying truly. Or else they would have recanted when threatened with death.
Stephen, the first martyr of the New Testament, when he testified before the Sanhedrin, much like Christ did, he kept saying what he believed until the moment of his death. He never abandoned his ideas. Because those ideas were that he could expect a better world to come. And he truly believed in them. And that was the evidence. And each one of the anti-Christs in the Book of Mormon all recant their ideas before their death. And Nehor does the same.
Now, an interesting idea is – I believe that Nehor was probably stoned to death, which was what the law of Moses would have had in store for someone like him. And that is a shameful death. In the culture of the Israelites, to be stoned to death is something that is an ignominious end. But in any case, it doesn’t say more about Nehor.
It also doesn’t say this about Nehor, the Book of Mormon does not. But my guess is that he becomes a martyr to his people. Even though he recanted or reneged on his ideas before dying, his ideas do continue. We have one example in the very next chapter.
So the first chapter is an example of the Nephites freedom being threatened by a form of spiritual bondage. So this is one of the warnings that Alma and Mosiah both gave, which is: a king threatens you with spiritual bondage.
The second chapter is a threat of military bondage. So Amlici is one of the followers of Nehor. Nehor’s philosophy didn’t die out when Nehor did, and Amlici, he flatters his people that life is going to be better if he is king. So the lie of Nehor is that everyone is going to be saved. It is direct contradiction to what Mosiah taught, and what was revealed to Alma in Mosiah chapter 26.
If you remember, there were people who wanted to leave the Church, and then it is revealed to Alma, “Yes, let them leave the Church, because in the last day, the people who have chosen to be part of my Church, and have chosen to repent of their sins and allowed me to save them, those are the people who will be on my right hand. And then the second trump will sound, and then this terrible moment will come, when they all are forced to see the truth” – much like Gideon forced Nehor to see the truth, on the road where they met. “And in that day, they will then have to depart from me, because that is what they have chosen, is to live a life without me.”
In other words, sins have terrible consequences. And it is a supreme act of love to tell people that sins have consequences. So Alma had already contradicted the lie of Nehor, which is that everyone will be saved, that there are no consequences for sin.
And the lie of Amlici is that things will be better if he were king. But we find out quickly that: number one, he takes his followers, and he’s willing to engage in armed conflict. So Amlici loses an election to be king. He puts it before the people, “Are you willing to go form this system of judges, that you’ve had for less than five years, back to a monarchy?” Some of them are. And those people are willing to take up arms to conquer the rest of their brethren.
So, what I read in this is, the reason those people were willing to do that is because Amlici had promised them some sort of dominion over the people that they were going to conquer.
And what seems readily apparent as well – so the Amlicites are defeated in their initial battle, and they run away. And they meet up with an army of Lamanites. So, it seems readily apparent that Amlici had some sort of correspondence with the Lamanites before this time. So he is willing to invite a foreign army to invade his own land, in order to gain power over his own people.
So, his lie is exposed in this way. Life would not have been better under Amlici. What he wanted was power, and not to make anybody’s life better. Except the very few who were in his inner circle.
The other threat of Amlici was that he was going to destroy the Church.
So just like Nehor before him, Amlici hates the Church because the Church is capable of withstanding his ideas. Just like Gideon withstood the ideas of Nehor. And if Amlici is going to be in power, he has to get rid of the Church. So through military means, the people’s freedom will be ended, and political means.
So first, freedom was threatened spiritually. Now it is threatened militarily and politically.
Luckily, Alma was there. And Alma resists – first spiritually and then politically – these threats against the people of Nephi. This tells you why it is important that prophets get involved when political matters threaten the freedom of the people of the Church. It’s because, if the prophet does not get involved, then the people lose their freedom.
This is simply a fact, that God has the right, and God has the privilege, of instructing us on how to deal with matters that affect our freedom.
Now it is often the case, it is most often the case, almost always the case, that an election will not threaten our freedom to the point where the prophet has to say, “Look, we have to vote against this guy.” But if the prophet ever did, you wouldn’t find my voice among those people complaining about it. I would say, “Wow, this is an indication to me that this election is so important that the prophet would be willing to speak.”
Now I’m not saying the Church would ever do this. They’ve said it is their explicit policy that they don’t endorse any political candidate. But my point is, if you ever did hear about that happening, in my view, the correct response would not be to complain about the prophet’s behaviour, but to immediately realise how serious the situation was. And get in line with the prophet’s instruction. And that has happened with some political issues. It has never happened with a political party or candidate.
If the Church ever does endorse a political position, you may rest assured that it’s one that effects freedom, that directly impacts the freedom of the people that are involved in that issue.
So we find after the Amlicites are defeated, not once, not twice, but three times. First the Amlicites are defeated alone. Then the combined army of the Amlicites and the Lamanites is defeated. And then the Lamanites come in, and they’re defeated. Three times in one year. They have terrible battles, and the Nephites when they fight, if they lose even once, then they are completely wiped out as a people, right? They can never lose. This is the problem of the Nephites.
If the Lamanites lose, the Nephites don’t hunt them to destruction. But the Nephites have this assurance that if they lose, the Lamanites will hunt them to destruction. And all of their freedom will be destroyed. So every battle of the Nephites is one for survival. And this is reflected in the prayer of Alma, when he’s fighting against Amlici personally, one on one on the battlefield, they find each other.
And Alma prays to God, and says, “God spare my life, and let me be an instrument in protecting the freedom of this people.” [ Alma 2:30 ]
So the powerful message of these first few chapters in the book of Alma is that God wants us to be free! Isn’t that a strange thing? Because the tendency of history is to enslave human kind, and take their minds, and their bodies, and their labour, and put them under the constraints of some powerful leader. That is by far the rule of governments throughout history.
And the exception is when people are able, somehow, to work themselves into a position of freedom. And economic, political freedom today enjoys a spread over more of the world than it has at any point in human history. But the position we all find ourselves in today is very much the exception. By far the most common state of human kind throughout history is one of some form of oppression. And when oppression shows up, it’s usually in all three of these ways. It’s spiritual, and it’s political, and it’s economic.c
So after the victory of the Nephites, they learn something about the Amlicites. The Amlicites had marked themselves. This is one of those explicit messages, the lessons, that Mormon desires to teach by the way he wrote his story. And he even comes out of the narrative, he shows himself as a narrator, and he says, “Look, here is a message that I want you to see. The Amlicites marked themselves.”
Now it was prophesied, when the Lamanites separated themselves from the Nephites or vice-versa, it was prophesied that there would be a mark on them. And some people make a lot of this, that the way that the Book of Mormon is written, and the people in the Book of Mormon, it’s an endorsement for racism. This is emphatically not the case.
So the mark on the Lamanites was a mark of dark skin. But the Book of Mormon doesn’t say that the dark skin was the problem. In fact, this very passage is what proves that this wasn’t a racial separation. Or at least that the race was not important. The means of separation was not important. It was the separation of ideas that was important.
So we learn that the Nephites were separated from the Lamanites by a curse on the Lamanites. And the Amlicites, now we find, also had made themselves voluntarily part of this curse by setting a mark upon themselves. And this mark would have served – this mark of red on their foreheads – it would have served to separate them from the Nephites. “We are not followers – we Amlicites – we are not followers of your ideas, you Nephites. And here is how you can know that: because we have put this mark upon ourselves. And because we are separated from you, we are separated from your ideas, then we don’t participate in the blessings that come, because of your ideas.”
So God had given the Nephites an easy way to tell when someone did not believe the way that you believed, or someone was likely to threaten your freedom. This is the purpose of the separation. So the fact of this curse upon the Lamanites is not an endorsement by any means, of any way, of the ideas that lead to racism and bigotry. And here’s the proof in Alma chapter 3, because the Amlicites had a mark that was not related to race whatsoever. And it served the same purpose.
So, the point of the curse is that there is a separation between people who believe that they should follow the ideas of God, and people who believe otherwise.
You’ll notice that the Lamanites, throughout their history, their philosophy is described as the same entitlement that Nehor shows. They – the Lamanites – believed that they were entitled to rule over their brethren. And this rule could extend even to killing them. Nehor believed the same thing, which is why he was willing to defend himself with boldness.
So this is the separating element, is this feeling of entitlement. And this willingness to separate themselves from the worship of God. And as I’ve implied before, people who want freedom, they don’t feel the need to stamp out the lives of people who would threaten their freedom. They just want to get away from them.
So Nephi, what did he do to Laman, when his life was threatened by his brother? He didn’t feel like he had to kill his brother. He just said, “You know what, I just don’t want to let my brother kill me.” So he left. Rather than fight his brother, and kill him in the night-time, he left. He left with whoever would follow him.
That is what Mosiah the First did, from the land of Nephi, the land of their first inheritance. That’s why the Nephites left it in the first place.
It’s what Alma did to the forces of King Noah. He took his people and they left into the wilderness, rather than oppose with force, with violence.
It’s what the Mayflower pilgrims did. They realised that they would not be allowed to worship in the way that they wanted in England, so they left. They left, and eventually they found a place where they could start a life on their own, and just be left alone.
So this is what people who want freedom want. They want to be left alone. They don’t need to force you to believe what they believe. They just want to have the freedom to believe it. They want you to do what you do, and let them do what they do.
And what Satan wants is to find you, wherever you ran away to, he wants to find you and come conquer you. And the results of him conquering you might be that you die. It might be that you’re in bondage. In either case, he can’t allow you to get away and have freedom. And this is a very timely message, because these physical and military, these outward manifestations of the dominations, the dominions, the bondages of Satan, they have their spiritual and their social analogues today. And you can see them if you know what you’re looking for.
And so the Book of Mormon, Alma chapter 1 through 3, is teaching us what to look for. These are the attacks that Satan makes upon freedom. And the final attack is the most insidious. It is the only one that Alma cannot defeat, in Alma chapters 1 through 4. And that is an economic attack. And rather than economic privation, the attack is economic prosperity.
So the people of the Nephites, they have been brought low so much by their struggles, that they repent, they take care of each other, they fast and pray. And then, within just a few years, within three or four years, they find themselves in a position of great wealth and prosperity.
And then separation that arises is not one of people who want a king, and people who don’t, it’s people who are wealthy, and people who are not. So people who believe that they are better than their brethren because of the fact that they’ve prospered.
Now all of these threats, all of these forms of bondage, all of these threats to freedom, are going to show their faces again – many times – throughout the book of Alma. In fact, we did a little analysis of what the point of the book of Mosiah was last week. And this week we can talk about what the point of the book of Alma is. And it’s shown right here at the beginning: it’s all the ways that people can be bought into bondage. and we have them right here. So it’s spiritual, it’s political and military, and it’s social and it’s economic.
So this social economic threat is the one that is often called the pride cycle. So first there is great prosperity. And then pride arises. And then comes some form of sinfulness, destruction, humility, obedience, and then prosperity again, This is the cycle that many people call the cycle of the Book of Mormon, or the pride cycle.
Now, this is only one of the ways in which people can be brought into bondage, as we’ve seen. But it is so powerful, and it lasts so long, and it does seem to be the one that eventually spells the end of the Nephites. And so it is the one that gets named the Cycle of the Book of Mormon. This idea of economic prosperity leading to bondage.
And in each case, Alma the prophet has been the source of the Nephite’s salvation from their threats. And we get a hint at the end of chapter 4 that this particular threat Alma is also going to counter. And the way that he’s going to counter it is with ideas. He is going to take the spirit of God, the word of God, and bear down in pure testimony against the pride of the people who believe that they are better than their brethren, who are lifted up because of their wealth and their success.
So in each case, in the example of all three of the threats that face the people of Nephi throughout this week’s lesson, the Nephite’s had the information that they needed to see through the lies that empowered the attacks.
In the case of Nehor, Nehor didn’t believe what he was saying. We know that because before he died, he was willing to recant. But we also know that, because when Gideon resisted him verbally, he was wiling to meet that resistance with violence. That means that deep down, he had a fear that he was wrong. He knew that he was lying. And he had to shut anyone up who was capable of resisting him.
So the Nephites could have seen that, they could have understood that he was lying, and many of them did. Many of them were not willing to see that. They liked his message, they liked the fact that he was popular, so they didn’t want to see that he was lying.
Amlici, it was obvious that he was lying. because, as much as his message may have been about “Life will be better if I’m king,” it was also about, “Some people will have dominion over others, if I’m made king. I will end the freedom of religion that exists among the Nephites. And I don’t care if I have to make an alliance with the Lamanites to do it.” It was possible for the Nephites to see through the lies of Amlici as well.
And the final threat, the economic threat. Mormon takes trouble to say, in this chapter, that there were those who continued to remain humble, and to serve each other, to mourn with those that mourned. Even while others were being lifted up in pride by prosperity.
One of the great examples of characterisation in the Book of Mormon is the prophet Alma the Younger. Later on in his ministry he will teach it is better to humble yourself because of the word, that to be compelled to be humble by circumstances.
And on the first reading of the Book of Mormon, you wouldn’t really realise this. But, on subsequent readings you would realise that Alma has taught that lesson because he has had to learn it so many different times in so many different ways. He probably had some of those examples imparted to him by his father, Alma the Elder. But in other ways… So here are several examples, just in these few chapters, of ways in which people can either humble themselves, or be compelled to be humble.
They imagined every time he prayed, he thought about the way he was brought to the truth, versus the way his father was. He would contrast his own story with that of his father. His father who listened to Abinadi, and gave everything away in one moment. And himself, who was actually working to destroy the truth of God, and to bring people into bondage, and was forced by an angel to change his ways.
And I believe that what must have animated him, with every encounter, with every testimony that he bore, with every lesson that he taught, was the idea that “I am asking these people to do something that I myself could not do.” Which was change, because of the word.
And I think that’s why he tried to make his testimony as powerful as possible. Because he wanted to be more and more like the angel who converted him. He wanted to have that testimony, the spirit that people felt while listening to him. He wanted it to be so powerful that it would – proverbially if not literally - shake the earth. It would shake them down to their very core. And the spirit would be so strong that they could not deny it. Because that is what worked for him.
So at the end of this lesson, what we find is Alma is willing to give up the political power he enjoys, as well as, presumably, the military power, the leadership over the army, as well. He leaves it behind, for ever. And he dedicates himself now full time to his ministry.
Now to us, in modern time, this seems like an obvious choice. There is no way somebody can be the head of the government, the head of the Church, the head of the army, and do all of them well. But the Church is a new institution in their time, and they haven’t had somebody to just fulfil this role for very long. It seems clear that because Mosiah was willing to have a job, besides being king, that Alma probably had a job, besides being prophet. They were maybe farmers or builders or something. They worked with their own hands for their sustenance. And Alma probably did the same thing.
It may be true that he was not supported in his leadership roles by the taxes of the people. He may have had to labour for his own sustenance. And so they were discovering, at the time, they were still in the process of discovering how to run the Church. It was very much in its infancy. And we see the same confusion in the New Testament, the ways in which the apostles struggled to understand how they were to govern the Church, and how best to handle the various aspects of leadership that came up during the ministry.
And like it did to the Apostle Paul, it occurs to Alma that the best way to do that is to become a travelling apostle, to take the word of God to everyone who has accepted it, and to keep reinforcing it. And to strengthen the Churches by the power of the spirit.
So, a few lessons to take from the scriptures that we read today.
First of all, God wants us to be free. God is willing to sacrifice a great deal to provide freedom. He is willing to allow us to suffer. He is willing to watch his own Son suffer. He is willing to risk the idea that we wouldn’t come back to him. Freedom is worth everything to God.
And consequently, acting against freedom, opposing freedom, is worth everything to Satan. He’ll attack God’s words and God’s ideas directly, to put us into spiritual bondage. Failing that, he’ll act with force, to attack us militarily, to put us into political bondage.
And if none of those work, he’ll use the very blessings that God gives us for obedience – those of prosperity – to attack us economically, to put us into social bondage.
In each case we have the tools we need to see through his lies, the lies that threaten freedom, if we will follow the prophet, and listen to the voice of the spirit. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.