Alma 22

Now back to Aaron. He and his brothers had left Middoni for Nephiland, walking straight to the throne room of the king’s palace—“king” as in Lamoni’s dad-king. Since he happened to be sitting on his throne, they bowed, then said, “We’re Ammon’s brothers. Remember us? Keep us alive and we’ll work as slaves, servants, whatever you want.“

“Stand up and forget the slave thing. I want you to explain why Ammon didn’t come with you. I wanted him to explain some things he said earlier.”

“God told him to go to Ishmael, to teach Lamoni’s people.”

“Okay, explain that to me. I don’t get it. How did God tell him? I also need to know about ‘repentance.’ Do it and I’m ‘saved,’ don’t and I’m ‘cast off.’ What?”

“Let’s start at the beginning. Do you believe there’s someone or something called ‘God’?”

A typical politician-style answer: “The Amalekites say so and I let them hold worship services because I’m so magnanimous. So now if you say so, I’ll say ‘yes.’”

“Fantastic! Let me put it this way: if you live, so does God.”

“Now, by ‘God’ I take it you mean the Great Spirit that led our ancestors here, right?

“Exactly. And he also made everything that exists. How’s that work for you?”

“I’ll bite. Please explain, though. I’ve got all day.”

So, just as Ammon would do, Aaron went step by step through the creation, Garden of Eden, fall of Adam, then jumped up to Jesus and the necessity of faith in him if you want to keep existing. That was the plan: man is worth nothing unless he believes in Christ and then he’s indestructible and the whole mandatory death clause in the plan gets revoked.

“Okay. So what then? Give me more info on how I can live forever, erode my selfish nature down to a nib, and, of course, be happy. Really happy. I’d quit this kingship for a little peace of mind. So help me out.”

“Not necessary. Well, maybe, in this sense: you have to bow down to God and tell him he’s your king and you trust him to make you happy and change you in the ways you’ve said.”

The king not only bowed down, he stretched himself on the floor like a rolled up rug and started praying into the floor tiles: “Okay, God, Aaron says you’re there. If so, show me. I’ll quit sinning, you let me quit dying.” And poof, he seized up as if he were, in fact, dead. Oh great.

The servants ran to tell the queen who started screaming “Off with their heads!” referring, of course, to Aaron and his brothers.

The servants told her to lighten up. They’d seen what really happened. But they dodged the order this way: “We can’t kill them, because any one of them can beat all of us up.”

Well, this shook up the queen. “Go get as many people as you need, then. I want these guys dead. Dead. Dead.”

Aaron knew he had to stop this before a mob formed. He grabbed the king and said, “God or no God, get up, man.” He got up and soon stood on his own two feet.

So the queen and the servants knew that the king wasn’t really dead. Now they were more afraid. The king told them this pseudo-comatose fainting spell was God’s way of purging his innards. That surprised them and even converted them to Aaron’s message.

But by now, crowds gathered at the door because of the queen’s earlier demand for help killing her guests. A big hubbub about what was going on. The king met them at the door, explained, and more or less placated them. Then he told them to shut up and listen to Aaron and his brothers’ message.

Then the big political move. The king issued a proclamation addressed to everyone that might even know who he was or might be anywhere inside of the boundaries of what he presumed was his kingdom (given the poor state of surveying and mapmaking in those days).

A sidebar here, since I’ve short-schrifted the geography. I know a picture is worth a thousand words, but I want this on the record for all literate people.

The king’s land stretched from sea to shining sea, you might say. East side, sea. West side, sea. Above it, a strip of outlaw territory, then Zarahemla. The Sidon River also ran east to west, with Manti near its head on the east.

The frontier Lamanites, ruffians with lazy streaks, lived in that outlaw territory, mostly in tents. They congealed mainly in the west and spilled over into both the north, Zarahemla (Nephite lands), and the south (Lamanite lands, which were paradoxically called Nephiland, because that’s where Lehi, Nephi, et al., had first settled). So basically west coast.

There were also Lamanites on the east coast because Nephites had pushed them there. So the Lamanites were bicoastal and, in that sense, surrounded the Nephites, who controlled the northern land above the outlaw territory. On the top end of the whole continent was Bountiful, which was just like it sounded, followed to the north by Desolation, which was also just like it sounded—that’s where the mounds of bones had been found by the Zarahemlans, about which you read earlier.

The “Bountiful” name, I should add, came from the huge wildlife population that had migrated southward over the years from the cold of Desolation. That made Bountiful a favorite hunting spot, well stocked with wild game.

Distances? Well, it would take a Nephite a day and a half to travel from coast to coast, whether in Zarahemla or Nephiland, which were connected by a bottleneck of land. In other words, the two main territories were like an hourglass in shape.

The Nephites held tight to their Bountiful, because it was. Lamanite immigration was not in the plan. They had to stay south. And the Nephites had the military clout to make it so.

So the Lamanites had Nephiland and the Nephites had not-Nephiland. Go figure. Meanwhile, outlaw territory kept filling with renegades.

Okay, sorry for that digression. But I know this is confusing with the names and all. Back to the story of Ammon, Aaron, Omner, Himni, et al.