Alma 37

Now, I don’t like to command people. But I command you to take good care of these records and extend them with your own narrative. This is wise. Use Nephi’s plates. Also, take good care of the brass plates. It’s tough, I know, to have all these hefty, clattering books around. But I feel they’ll be worth a lot some day—genealogy, inspiration, history. I know, that’s what books mainly are. But these are so sturdy, they’ll last longer than that papyrus from the old country.

Our ancestors predicted as much. Someday this’ll get translated and copied and published in ways we can’t imagine to people who don’t even exist yet. These books will be as much a mystery to them as they are to us. But that’s a good thing.

Let me add a prediction: these plates, because they’re so full of light, will never get clouded over with patina. They’ll stay bright and polished. Call me a nut—you’ve done it before. But it’s the little things that make for endurance. And it’s the tiny, magical details that completely unstring the thinking of “scholars.” Mark my words. Literally, I mean. Scratch them onto the plates. They don’t look like much now, but you can’t imagine what I foresee in their future.

Memory is finite. But it can be stretched. These plates help. Guilt fades. But sometimes it needs plates like these to spur it when the perpetrator forgets to change.

Without good history we could have kissed our missionary work goodbye. But we had these records and used them to convince thousands of Lamanites that their traditions were bunk. More important, to sway them to Christ and the joy he gives.

Who knows what’s next for these plates? Thousands more of them? Maybe the backsliding Nephites will take a turn getting right with God. I can’t say for sure, of course. But God allows speculation, especially when it’s on his side. He’s always got some plan brewing, usually one we can’t sniff out at the time. Only later.

Still, he’s strict with us, even when he leaves us in the dark. He finds it suffices to say, “Obey and live, disobey and die—or live really badly.”

God, through me mostly, has trusted you with these plates and the ideas and feelings that fill them. “Sacred,” we call them, which means separated, walled off from commonality. I think they’ll go long term.

So, friendly warning, courtesy of my friend, God: if you transgress God’s rules, you’ll lose any sense of sacredness. The devil will hurl you like wheat chaff into the winds of change. And then you’ll see that the line between sacred and scared is fine indeed.

Now, his promise: if you follow his rules, stay in the boundaries and play fair, no one and nothing can derail you. And he’s as strict with himself as he is with the rest of us. So he’ll keep his promise. (He always does.)

Lamanites reformed? Check. Future Lamanites reformed? Check. He’s got it all under control.

You, though, he can’t control. You have to do that for yourself. So get it done.

Back to the plates. Twenty-four plates, to be precise. Keep them for an archive of the secret crimes of the people: murder, robbery, fraud, all the weak-kneed, abominable crap that goes down behind the scenes. The plates are private, but the content public. The plates are shiny, but that’s only a fake chrome for the content, which is dark indeed. Secrecy is the endless paradigm for human behavior.

God’s said it before and he’ll say it again: Enough. “I will prepare for my servant Gazelam [don’t ask] a stone that will glow and illuminate the secret lives of the über-respectable.” If you put two such stones together, you’ve got one crazy pair of glasses. Let’s call them “interpreters,” because they not only magnify, they explain. And Lord knows, literally, there’s a lot that needs explaining. In time everyone will get the explanation.

People in high places plot and connive. But they don’t fix their hearts. We’ve got the evidence. We have to let it out. Every detail has to be disclosed. Every actor in this weird drama must be exposed. Document all their oaths, rituals, schemes, technologies, communications devices. But keep the methods secret or people might adopt them and wreck the culture even more.

These players have essentially doomed themselves, as you know. They’re ready to fall like overripe fruit from the tree of consumptive desire. But I’m trying to save the remnant of good people. So while you expose the shoddy, filthy actions of the worst players, don’t share the mechanisms by which they act. Too tantalizing for some. Details could pollute the audience, warp their own deeds. Reveal the moral potholes, explain the consequences of hitting them, but don’t help people gallop toward them.

Teach them to hate the sin but love the ignorance about committing it. Teach them to stop up any inclinations to violate the oath of humility God has forged in our hearts. Teach them to punch temptation in its ugly face. Teach them to blow off the devil’s foul breath. Teach them to resist the potential boredom of habitual good works. Teach them that the line between boredom with righteousness and the peace that comes from doing it is a very fine line. Don’t be afraid to cross it in either direction.

You’re still young. So you’ve got a better chance than many to reshape your life toward divinity. Cry to God for help. Scratch that. Cry to God about everything, up, down, left, right, mental, spiritual, emotional, physical, manual labor, head games, loves, hates, indifferences … whatever. Do this at night, in the morning—round the clock wouldn’t hurt. I’m tempted to say: If you fall asleep doing it, he’ll rouse you up at the end of time.

Now, about “the ball” (what they called the Liahona, the compass). You can’t replicate its craft, let alone its magic properties. It worked for the old-timers in proportion to their faith. If they believed it would work, the spindles would turn and point a new route.

It’s a good example not only of God’s many miracles on the trek to the new continent, but also of the principle: little things mean a lot. A little faith and the big ball swivels. Let doubt creep up your spine and the miracles stop. That happened a lot to the old-timers. They wandered, starved, dehydrated, because they got proud and ornery.

The typology is obvious. I don’t think I have to explain it.

But I will, sort of. Take heed to the teachings of and about Christ and you’ll sail the most direct sea route to bliss. Throw those teachings overboard for ballast and the ship sinks.

But don’t let the apparent ease of taking heed fool you. People get complacent. Human nature. Our forefathers (though not our foremothers, I think) would get lazy about the rules. Don’t take that route.

Keep sacred things safe—by use, not by hiding them. Thus, your teaching mission continues. Stay true to it. Farewell.