Alma 45

What follows comes from his son Helaman. Mostly more war stuff. Hey, someone’s got to archive this morbid mundanity. And maybe there are some lessons in strategy transferable to non-combat.

Anyway, Nephites chronically rejoiced when spared. Feasts, dancing, speeches, toasts, and, of course, lots of piety overspilling.

In the nineteenth year of the judges Alma asked Helaman if he believed his predictions about these plates.

“I do.”

“Do you believe Jesus Christ will come?”

“Yes. That’s part of the whole package of you I believe in.”

“Will you obey me?”

“With all my heart.”

“Then God bless you and prosper you. But …” he added. Somehow Helaman knew that would be in there. Alma was always pushing him to go further, deeper. “I’m not done. Write this next part down but don’t publish it:

“The spirit in me says that four hundred years after Jesus comes to earth this people will shrivel with doubt, get crushed by war and disease, then completely die off. Extinction by corruption. My descendants will rot from the inside out: sorcery, sex trade. I give it four generations from the onset till the annihilation of the whole culture.

“Nephites will either go to their grave or turn, for all practical purposes, into Lamanites.

except a few. There’s always a few.”

After saying this, Alma put his hands on Helaman’s head and blessed him. His other sons too. He then said a blessing for the whole earth on behalf of those few he mentioned.

Then he said: “God says, I curse every (literally) damn nation with damnation if they behave rudely toward me. I’m sorry, but I can’t look on sin with the slightest tolerance.”

Then he blessed the church and everyone who stood fast in faith.

Alma quickly left Zarahemla, heading for Melek. And that was the last anyone ever saw of him. No news of his death. No burial marker anywhere. Spooky.

Still, he was on God’s side, no doubt, and many said God took him straight to heaven, skipped the dying part. Others said, well, yes, he died, but God himself buried him. Weird stories. But they pay real tribute to the man. So in that sense, at least, they’re all true.

The nineteenth year of the judges’ reign started with Helaman heading out to preach. This itinerant profession had taken strong hold on certain people. For Alma’s family, it was almost a biological need.

Especially now, with wars stinking in everybody’s memory, not to mention stupid debates about every form of nonsense. Some preaching, Helaman felt, was in order. Some cultural stability via inspired oratory.

Discipline and structure went with it. Helaman and his brothers went out trying to restore the church as much as possible. That meant ordaining lots of new priests and teachers—totally necessary, given the decimation of the Lord’s army. They apparently didn’t pick so well, since the new priests turned out worse than the old ones. Pride about personal wealth just won’t fly in pseudo-monastic orders. But it was infectious. Not only in the way it blinded people to economic disparity, but also in the way it slighted God himself.