Alma Is Rejected, but Then Returns and Finds a Companion - Book of Alma, Chapter Eight (Alma 8)

You can read the entire chapter at the following link: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/alma/8?lang=eng.

After having a very successful and heartening teaching experience in the land of Gideon, Alma takes a rest and then finds additional success in the land of Melek—an area further removed from his home in the Nephite capital of Zarahemla. We hear of baptisms “throughout all the land” (verses 3-5). If past patterns provide any hint, Alma may have put priests and teachers in place to watch after the newly baptized.

He then travels to a city called Ammonihah. From the specific mention of “city” in the record it sounds like Ammonihah was a thriving center of Nephite life (verse 6).

Alma begins to preach here too, as he had done successfully in Zarahemla, Gideon and Melek. But the people here are in a very different spiritual place. Our narrator Mormon says that “Satan had gotten great hold” upon their hearts (verses 8-9).

We can imagine that this may be a shock to Alma’s system. Most people can relate to the experience of sharing deeply-held views with someone they expect would have some reason for sympathy or connection and getting not only disagreement, but heated disagreement in response.

Yet, Alma is no stranger to opposition. From his own experience of rebellion, he knows that people with the closest possible access to the loving truth of God’s gospel can be those who—in a sad irony—most boldly reject it. Sometimes rejection can be a way we deal with something we know to be true deep down but don’t want to face for one reason or another. We try to get as far away from it as possible, in the naïvely mistaken hope that we can outrun our own conscience.

So Alma deals with this widespread rejection using the best means available to him—fervent prayer and redoubled effort. Mormon writes that Alma wrestles “with God in mighty prayer, that he would pour out his Spirit upon the people” and lead them to repent and be baptized (verse 10). The image of wrestling with God in prayer helps us recognize that stretching past our comfort zones is a natural part of the Lord’s plan for us. Sometimes we’ll need to really reach out to Him to help us deal with a tough situation. It is an interesting thing because at some level we need to accept that we may not be able to solve every problem the way we’d like to, but at the same time, the Lord is inviting us to expand our vision of what is possible beyond what we comprehend as our limits. 

Wrestling in prayer is often the prelude to renewed effort and even struggle to see if we can accomplish something that we may shrink from at first. It is healthy for us to remember that the Lord can be a partner and ultimately the difference-maker, but that success is more linked to how we grow in the process rather than whether the people we’re trying to influence accept our efforts. 

And in this case, the people of Ammonihah certainly don’t accept Alma’s efforts. Instead, they harden their hearts (maybe the most tragic phrase found in the scriptures) and taunt Alma, essentially saying “You’re not the chief judge anymore, so you have no authority over us. We don’t have to listen to a word you say! So what if you’re the high priest? We’re not a part of your foolish church!” To make sure Alma has no confusion about their disdain, they spit on him and cast him out of the city (verses 11-13). 

No matter who you are, when other people—especially a big group—are so rabidly negative toward you, it’s hard to stay focused on the bigger picture of God’s truth and eternal perspective. As faithful as he is, Alma is weighed down with sorrow, much tribulation and “anguish of soul” due to the people’s wickedness (verse 14). 

For the second time in our scriptural account of Alma’s life, we read that an angel appears to him. It’s the same angel who rebuked him and his friends and helped save him from his earlier rebellion against truth. Now the angel has a different purpose to his visit: to lift Alma from his sorrows. The angel insists that Alma has every reason to rejoice instead of sulk. Because he has faithfully followed the Lord’s direction, he is being blessed—with the angel’s visit a sure sign of that (verses 14-15). 

With that blessing comes both expanded perspective and greater resolution to keep going. The angel helps Alma understand two things to motivate him to go back to the very people of Ammonihah who have so violently abused him. First, they are in great peril of spiritual and physical destruction because of their disobedience to the Lord’s commandments. They need to be warned, and the Lord is counting on Alma to do that. Second, the people of Ammonihah are plotting to destroy the liberty of all the Nephites. So just leaving them alone won’t work, because the negative consequences of their wickedness will have much broader effects on all the people (verses 16-17). 

This is a powerful lesson to each one of us who is tempted to simply ignore wickedness in our midst or give up after an initial try with a situation. Each situation is different, so the right response can depend on a number of factors, but sometimes we need to keep trying to remind people of the way of goodness and light. How do you teach peace in peace? It probably starts with remembering that every person has light in them already because they are a child of God. And then seeking guidance to understand as best as you can how to appeal to that inner light, even if it’s hidden away very deeply. 

Inspired by the angel’s reappearance to him—after all, the angel has been such a powerful agent of positive change in his life thus far—Alma returns to Ammonihah. And he doesn’t just trudge back hesitantly. He speedily returns (verse 18). 

And then the story REALLY gets interesting. Alma enters the city by a way he hasn’t used before. Not surprisingly, he is famished because he has been traveling, and before that the people treated him inhospitably. He asks a man he encounters for some food (verses 18-19). That man, whose name is Amulek, turns out to be exactly who the Lord has prepared for this moment. 

Amulek not only agrees to take Alma to his own home and give Alma much-needed nourishment, he declares that Alma is a prophet of God. Why? Because Amulek shares that an angel appeared to him (Amulek) and told him to receive Alma (verses 20-21). While the chapter doesn’t tell us specifically, it seems logical that the angel who appeared to Amulek is the same one who appeared twice to Alma. 

Once Alma is refreshed, he thanks God and blesses Amulek and his house. He then explains to Amulek who he is (high priest of the church) and his divine mandate to preach the gospel and cry repentance. He tells Amulek about his initial rejection by the people of Ammonihah, and the command for him to return and testify against the people’s iniquities. He stays with Amulek for several days, presumably to regain his strength and prepare spiritually for the daunting task ahead of facing a hostile crowd who has already tried to get rid of him once (verses 22-27). 

This time though, Alma won’t be preaching alone. He receives revelation from the Lord to direct Amulek to declare repentance alongside him. As the chapter ends, our narrator Mormon assures us that Alma and Amulek will be filled with the Holy Ghost and will be given power from the Lord to escape death and imprisonment, which gives us hints at what is to come (verses 29-32). 

Here and here are two short video clips summarizing this chapter. 

Alma Teaches the Core of the Gospel: Christ Takes away Pain and Death - Book of Alma, Chapter Seven (Alma 7)

You can read the entire chapter at the following link: https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/alma/7?lang=eng.   

Alma anticipates that the people of Gideon will be more prepared to listen to his teachings than the people of Zarahemla, though he rejoices in the turning of Zarahemla back to righteousness (verses 3-6). Perhaps because the people of Gideon are more open, Alma is able to share details about the mortal life of the coming Christ.

He shares that Jesus is the Son of God and will be born of the Virgin Mary in the “land of Jerusalem” (verses 7-10) Bethlehem, being a short distance south from Jerusalem, can easily be said to be part of the land or vicinity of Jerusalem. 

More importantly, Alma teaches that Jesus will suffer “pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind.” And He won’t do it for show or for its own sake, but in an effort to understand and ease the suffering of “his people,” which means all of us. Alma indirectly alludes to Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 53:3-5) that the Messiah will somehow take upon Him the pains and sicknesses of his people (verses 11-13). Isaiah’s poetic words: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” As one of the priests of the wicked King Noah, Alma’s father (Alma the Elder) heard these same lines from the great Abinadi (in Mosiah 14) as Abinadi courageously stood for truth in front of King Noah and his priests. Indeed, this was the crucial moment in Alma the Elder’s life, as he chose then and there to defend Abinadi in King Noah’s presence and risk his own death in doing so.

Lest we gloss over what this truth means to us, it can help to pause and really consider what it says. We have someone who knows and cares about us enough that he wants us to be able to cast out any feeling of pain or anguish—physical, mental, emotional—and he is willing and able to take it upon Himself. How grateful are we for someone who gives a dollar to the cashier when we discover we are just short? How grateful are we for someone who helps carry a box or a suitcase that we realize is more burdensome than we expected? Without downplaying the gratitude we should feel in these situations, do we appreciate the degree to which what Jesus does for us goes beyond these other instances? “Wow” is a word that comes to mind, but it doesn’t really even begin to get at the scope of what His willing acceptance of our difficulties means. 

Alma shares some important, specific points about what Jesus’ efforts entail and how He accomplishes them. First, He lifts death from us (verse 12). It’s hard to imagine. Through His own suffering and death, He gained power from His and our Father in Heaven to become immortal through Resurrection. While the Resurrection demonstrated His power, it was not just intended as an awesome miracle to astonish those of Roman Jerusalem. It accomplished the purpose of God’s plan to give all people a chance to reunite with their bodies after their spirits leave mortality—and importantly, once reunited in this way with a body that is perfect in form and function, we are never to experience death again. 

Then Alma explains that Jesus takes our infirmities, or weaknesses and sufferings, upon Him for two specific reasons. First, that He may be filled with mercy, or a desire to make our suffering go away. Next, that through his experience with these infirmities of ours, He may learn how to “succor his people” (verse 12). The word “succor” certainly means to bring relief, but one of our Church’s apostles, Jeffrey R. Holland, explains that in its word origins “succor” quite literally means “to run to.” I love the image in my mind of Jesus my Savior running to me to help take away whatever it is that is causing me pain! At the same time, I recognize that He wants me to think about whose pain I might be able to help lift. If I honestly search myself and my desire and willingness to give so that others might find relief, I recognize I have a very long way to go, but I am also inspired to keep trying and learning about how I can help. 

Finally, Alma tells us (along with the people of Gideon) that the Son of God (Jesus) suffers in the flesh in order to take our sins upon Him and blot out our transgressions (verse 13). He has this unique power to erase our wrongdoing so that its effects no longer separate us from union with God or prevent us from feeling peace and joy. To have access to this cleansing, Alma reminds us that we must be born again through faith in the Lamb of God, repentance (or true change), and baptism by someone with authority from God. By taking these actions, we “enter into a covenant with [God] to keep his commandments” (verses 14-15). 

What Alma describes helps us understand the different ways that Jesus saves us. As mentioned, our spirits and bodies reunite because of His Resurrection. This is a free gift to everyone. We all will have an immortal existence with a spirit and a perfected body, regardless of our actions. What kind of immortal existence we have, however, is a different question. The fullest way in which Jesus saves or redeems us is that He has suffered for our sins. If we embrace Him by following the pathway He outlines for us, His suffering takes ours away. It’s as simple as that. If we exercise faith by acting consistent with Jesus’ teachings, we can spend our eternal existence in the company of God, because if we are cleansed and sanctified we are like Him. Conversely, as the Bible teaches, God cannot dwell with us if we are “unholy temples.” 

Alma points out a very important connection between keeping the Lord’s commandments and remembering His promises of eternal life. Our remembrance is strengthened as we follow God’s teachings. And vice versa, as we remember better, our desire and capacity to keep those commandments expands (verse 16). 

Alma has some special discernment from the Holy Ghost that allows him to perceive how the people of Gideon are receiving his message. On the whole, he senses that they believe him and are on the path leading to the kingdom of God (verses 17-20). He then provides some of the best advice in recorded scripture to the people on how to stay on the right path: 

“And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive. And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works” (verses 23-24). 

Finally, Alma leaves a generous blessing on the people of Gideon (verses 25-27). It is important to have a chapter like this, where we can witness that the prophets are called not only to turn the wayward back to the path of righteousness, but also to encourage those who are already on that path to continue. It’s also clear that this experience is essential in strengthening Alma in between his other interactions with more troubled peoples. We grow and learn by having to explain our deepest beliefs when they are questioned and challenged, but there is also an important need for those beliefs to be validated and reinforced occasionally by others who share them—especially when they are also open to revelation from the right source—God. How to strike the right balance between standing for truth and having it reinforced probably depends on each person’s situation. 

Here is a short, four-minute clip dramatizing this chapter.