Alma 5

He started his “bearing down” tour in Zarahemla. Here is his own transcript of the sermon he delivered there, a sermon some call “The Oration of Questions”:

You will recall that my father, Alma Senior, established the church, and was its head and chief missionary, baptizing many people, many of whom are here today. You will also recall that he made me his successor.

The people he baptized at Mormon got out of the clutches of King Noah by God’s mercy and power,

only to be enslaved by Lamanites, from whom God also liberated them and led them back here.

With that in mind, I want you to ask yourselves these questions: Is your memory of these things good enough, useful enough? Your memory, I say, of your ancestors’ enslavement and God’s liberation not only from those clanking earthly chains, but from sin’s knotty spiritual ropes?

They lived a nightmare. God woke them up. The sky was dark till God torched it with his version of freedom.

More questions: Did God let them die? No, he didn’t. Did he saw through their chains and untie their ropes? Yes, he did. And their souls rose like balloons. They sang like infants on their father’s knee. On what condition did God scoop them out of moral and physical slavery? What were the grounds for this act?

Let me answer that by reminding you—because all religion is a memory game—that my dad changed from hearing Abinadi. He was a prophet, a reliable one. Dad felt his words and that changed his heart—not to mention the hearts of those who believed Dad’s message. They shortchanged their pride, relied on God for grace, and dug in for life. That’s why God could trust them with freedom, a new city, a new future.

So what about you? Have your hearts changed? Have you been reborn to the extent that one could see God in your own faces? Faith—do you really have it? Hope—can you really feel it? Can you see through spiritual eyes to a day when you will rise from death and look God in his face and he’ll say, “It’s like looking in a mirror”?

Do you realize that I’m not your judge, he is? And will his verdict be complete exoneration from any crimes, severe or slight?

On the other hand, if you lie to people do you think that will trick God? Can you fool him like you’ve fooled people you’ve cheated or lovers you’ve spurned?

Can you imagine looking him in the face, yours filled with shame—because you remember what you did when you weren’t remembering him, every detail, every moment of breach, every impulse of rage or lust, every spiritual cataract of disregard?

Or when you glance into his face will you see your own? Will your heart beat with his zeal? Can you appeal to him as your master if you’ve sold your souls to another?

Only the unjustly spilled blood of God’s Anointed One can wash souls clean—a paradox that should keep you fixated on him for your whole lives.

But how will you feel if the white garments you allege to wear show permanent stains of your bad conduct? If those stains could speak, what would they say? Tales of murder? Secret diaries of sexual affairs?

If you believe that heaven is a feast do you think you’d be ready to sit next to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob at the table?

You may think you can get away with lies, but don’t try to turn the tables on God and make him the liar: he wouldn’t even let you in the door of the feasting hall.

But another perspective: if your lusty brothel-songs have turned to sacred arias in the past, are you now mute? If you once felt God’s music in you, can you still?

Could you say you’re still walking in his path, the narrow, constricted one you once stepped onto? Do you see yourselves honestly, with flat, polished mirrors? Bluntly: are you ready to die as well now as you’d think to be later?

Pride is a cloak—have you thrown it off your back?

There isn’t time: God’s kingdom comes to us all sooner than we expect. He walks into our house and detonates the walls.

And beyond pride, what about envy? God hates that attitude as much as the foulest deed.

What about mockery? Shame on you. You’ll be damned for it.

Sin is a hall of mirrors. You think you see more with them, but you see less and less that’s real. Reflections of reflections, all image and no substance. That’s how you get lost.

God’s message? Turn around, walk back out the way you came in and he’ll be waiting at the door. “I’m ready to feed you the fruit in Lehi’s vision, no charge. Show me you’ve changed for good (in both senses), that’s all I ask.”

He offers fruit, but he requires it too—the fruit of decent lives, the nourishing food that grows naturally from right-thinking behavior.

There is another kind of music in heaven: wailing, howling, sobbing, shrieking. The score to that music is found in your little hypocrisies.

Or, to change the metaphor: God sings to you, like an adoring shepherd. The lyrics are your names. If you don’t follow his voice, good luck with your rambling through the pastures.

The best would be to hear your own name in the syllables of Jesus’. That is when you know you’ve taken his name for your own in true and vivid ways.

The devil is also a shepherd. His is a ragtag flock, easy to get into, hard to get out of, full of bugs and worms, wool disease and stench—no one will have you. Without a severe washing, at least.

Two ways, two masters, two shepherds: the good one is always God, the bad one always the devil. Do good works and you’ll know which shepherd is yours. Act twistedly and you’ve earned the other shepherd’s constant attention and ownership. You’ll actually respond to different voices depending on how you act.

To vary the metaphor again: Your life is a factory. What determines your wages is not how long you work but what you build in that factory. Build rightly and the check is written out with date saying “forever” and the amount “countless.” Build wrongly and it reads “always” and “zero.”

Am I passionate enough for you? Plain enough? Because as a priest, I know that’s my job. I preserve things of the past that are, in fact, eternal. I speak of things that are old and will never age. Haven’t you read anything of our history of culture? Can you seriously believe I’m making up new demands or fudging on the essence of life?

I’m not only parroting things I’ve heard and read from wise men. God’s spirit rings in my voice. I know the words are true more because of that than any historical validation or imprimatur from ecclesiastical authorities. Fasting, prayer, and a constant openness to new thoughts allows God to speak to me.

We sometimes say “true enough” as a pat reply to clichés. But understand: what I’m telling you is true enough to save your lives, baptize your spirits in the way that Dad baptized your bodies. “I have it on good authority,” we sometimes say as a preface to rumor or speculation. But what I have is on the best authority possible. If you allow me to judge anything, let me judge that.

God’s Lamb leads me, from his ambling in Jerusalem to reaching the doorway of heaven above. He’ll be killed, his blood leaked, just as we do with actual lambs. But ours is a pretense. His is real. That’s the only story that matters. And so he leads me to you today and to others tomorrow and the next day and the next, until I’ve testified to every citizen, from young to old, servant class to freemen, that one must submit to God in the ways I’ve explained. Rebirth for everyone, no matter their age or social status.

I’ll give it to you plainly, as if from the spirit’s dictation: change, everyone, because God’s kingdom is at hand. Jesus will come, majestic and unstoppable. Kings don’t work, I and my father have insisted. But this one will, because the earth and the cosmos are already his by birthright. He has nothing to prove and no credentials to show, other than the beauty that surrounds you, wherever you turn, if you look for it.

God’s spirit usually whispers. But sometimes it shouts. And that’s what it seems it’s done to me. That’s why I’m here.

One more metaphor (he gives them to me so fast I have to grab for them or they fly by): God hacks out the roots of every tree that doesn’t produce as it ought. (Think of Jacob’s allegory.) He’s all too happy to throw the wreckage of bad trees onto the fire, no matter how slowly they burn.

Ah, more questions come to mind. For example, Do you dare resist what I’m saying? Do you think God’s spirit is a thing that allows itself to be trampled? And do I need to bring up the shocking offensiveness of your decisions in what to wear? My friends, it’s all pride. You’re drenched in it.

Will you keep up the pretense of superiority to satisfy pride’s ugly hunger for domination? Good people can always succumb to arrogance. God will judge that too. But what right do bad people have to be arrogant?

And what right do rich people have to hoard? God’s shared his all with you. Try the same principle with one another.

I know we always think there’s time to change. But one never knows. And we never change as quickly as we should.

So, returning to the metaphor of shepherds, if you want to be in the right flock you have to scamper away from the wrong one. Stop bleating with the voice of the chronically dissatisfied. Stop gobbling on weeds that make you sick.

There is a sheep-roll the good shepherd keeps. Any sheep who don’t respond when he sings their names get stricken from the roll. He might go on the hunt for some whose sheeply voices bleat from a distance. But silence leads him to accept his losses and cut them.

Wolves, by the way, hunt sheep. He knows that and guards accordingly. But don’t wander off and assume he’ll protect you. He kills wolves but accepts that unkilled wolves have their shot at dinner now and then. So stick with the flock—and not at the margins, where the wolves scout.

Accept that God’s given me this message and he’ll accept that you’ve heard it and will respond well. He’s anxious to share the most delicious fruit with you.