Alma 8

Like I say, that’s only a sketchy account. It doesn’t give the flavor of the man’s oratory, which is always impossible to get in writing. In any case, after Alma finished in Gideon, where he’d not only spoken but updated the church rolls and hierarchy, he went home to bed. A fitting way to end the ninth year of the judges’ collective reign.

The tenth year started and Alma was off again, this time to Melek, west of Zion, on the fringes of settled land. He taught, more people got baptized, and he headed far north—three days to get there— to a city called Ammonihah, so called because the first settler was Ammoni, and that’s how they named places back then.

Alma started preaching but it was like trying to pry open hearts that Satan had welded shut. Alma stuck to his spiritual guns, prayed as though he were arm-wrestling with God, asking him to revoke their dissatisfaction with him, chip away at their stony dispositions. But there’s only so much God can do. The people wouldn’t budge, partly because of their cultural isolation and a sense of self-sufficiency. “Just because you’re a big high priest, don’t think you can dictate to us,” was the general response.

They were also hyper-rational. They spit on the sanctity of traditions they couldn’t verify by reason. Beyond that, they knew Alma had no real legal clout any more. So they terrorized him, bullied and beat him up, with saliva in his face and fists in his gut.

Alma limped away and headed for the city called Aaron, apparently named after someone named Aaron without the “hah” added. He was depressed, of course—who wouldn’t be? So, as if on cue, an angel met him on the road.

“It’s not so bad, sir,” he said. “Look on the bright side”—you thought that was a cliché, but angels actually say that. “You’ve kept the faith,” he said, “spoken the message I personally gave you,” though Alma probably didn’t recognize him, given the remarkable affinity angels share and the excess light from their faces.

He then told Alma to go back to Ammonihah and threaten them with full-scale destruction if they didn’t listen up and change. Because, he went on, these people are plotting against the Nephites, hoping to upend their political and social structure. God’s no fan of that.

So Alma hurried back to Ammonihah, though he went through the city’s south corridor. Less risky for a gospel outlaw. As he walked onto the first street he came to, he asked a man for some food in a kind of tricky way: “Will you give some food to a humble servant of God?” By which he humbly meant himself.

The man astonishingly said, “Wait—you’re the guy the angel told to come back after you just got run out of town. I also think,” he said, smiling, “the angel told you I’d give you some food. Come to my house. We could use a visit from a servant of God, humble or not.” They went to the man’s house, the man—Amulek—fed him well, and Alma blessed the house.

After dinner, Alma tried to recoup from his faux pas of never properly introducing himself: “I am Alma, the highest priest in the church. God called me to preach, though he told me people wouldn’t receive my message. I preached then quit, since people not only wouldn’t accept me, they wanted to kill me. But God wouldn’t let me off the hook for long. So I’m back. And the message hasn’t changed much. Bless you, Amulek, for the meal and—you’ll put me up, won’t you?”

Amulek did and held practice sessions with Alma for his big new revival meetings in Ammonihah.

This time people not only didn’t improve, they got worse. So Alma asked Amulek for help. Tell them to repent, Alma told Amulek, or face God’s endless ferocity. They both went out, filled with God’s spirit, and used that message. They became known as “The Untouchables”: you couldn’t kill or even incarcerate them. They were God’s “made men.” Gangsters for the Lord.

They started their revival tour.