Mosiah 27

Some people didn’t like that. But no one you should be worried about.

Still, the ill-will heated up. It went from jokes to threats. Church members complained to Alma about it. In turn Alma took it up with Mosiah on the grounds that some were “disturbing the peace” they’d worked so hard to reach. Mosiah passed the buck to his priests—the birth of bureaucracy?

Soon Mosiah put out a proclamation—remember how much he liked things in writing—saying that non-church people couldn’t mock church people. He went on to forbid church members mocking each other. We’re all equal, he said. So act like it.

He even tried to outlaw pride and selfishness on the one hand and paid clergy on the other. This was the quick route to social grace, he said.

Peace resumed. The proclamation seemed to work. And there was a sudden rise in the birthrate, no one knows why. More and more people started to move out of the city into suburbs and neighborhood development projects in all directions. The quasi-socialist system also seemed to work. Everyone got wealthier.

Unfortunately, Mosiah’s sons were notorious peace-disturbers. One of Alma’s sons hung out with them as well. His name was … Alma. Always tough on a kid to have a recycled name. Alma Junior had a gift for gab, which he spent on flattery and general salesmanship for bad behavior. A very persuasive guy.

He eroded the church a lot. He started debates, got people to skip Sabbath services, even got them to do things about which I’d rather not write. He helped the devil, who generally doesn’t need any.

He never felt he was doing enough. The world would be better off without a church at all, he thought. Mosiah’s sons felt the same way. So how they earned an angelic visit is a bit of a mystery.

Anyway, an angel did appear to the whole group. He came in a cloud, voice like thunder, little earthquake, all the special effects meant to scare you. And he did scare them. Literally knocked them over.

The angel said, “Alma, get up. What’s your problem? You think puny you can destroy this church? You can’t be serious. Even I couldn’t do that—not that I would. Only the church can destroy the church.”

However, he said, Alma Senior had prayed so hard for his son to straighten out that the angel had come as a sign that God answers prayers. The effects were to get attention. “Scared sacred” you might call it.

The angel then reasoned with them about the effectiveness of those effects: Didn’t bodily trauma suggest divine power? Isn’t sight plus hearing better than hearing alone? Etc.

“So, Alma Junior, start using your brain for good. Remembrance of deliverance. Humility, not hubris. Attitude of gratitude, if you’ll pardon the cliché. If nothing else, get right for your dad’s sake. Then when he’s dead, if you personally don’t care for religion feel free to stray to your heart’s content.” Then the angel vanished. Poof.

Well, that was something. All of them, these big macho bruisers, fainted. And when they quickly came to, Alma was literally speechless. Dumbstruck. And semi-paralyzed so he not only couldn’t do crude sign language, but he actually had to be carried away on a stretcher. Where to? His dad. Oh great.

Alma Senior started applauding at what God had pulled off. That shows you how estranged he was from Alma Junior. He called in the neighbors to see his blighted son and rejoice in God’s goodness.

Then he called in all the priests to fast and pray that his son would get better. Showtime was over. Although a quick recovery would start the second act in grand style.

That happened after two full days of fasting and prayer. Alma Junior’s first words? “I’m better now. And not just in the way we usually mean that.

I actually am better. Repentant, redeemed, reborn. I even heard a voice, God’s voice, saying, Don’t be surprised at this dramatic brain-shift. It has to happen to everyone at some point. If not, they’re useless on this planet.

“I actually feel like I was useless, too. But God had other plans for me and snatched me out of my old, ashen life then parachuted me into a new one, this one I’m seeing clearly through right now.”

He went on in his typical loquacious style, only now hyperbolically describing the huge change in his outlook and prospects. People recognized the eloquence, just not the content. He really was a new guy.

He wound up his first post-conversion monologue with this: “I rejected the idea of a Redeemer. Who needs one?—I thought. But I have to confess that God has flown me across the generation gap. I get what the old folks were saying. Every knee will have to bow to the Creator. Every tongue will have to speak a new language, one of hope and forgiveness and progress. Try to avoid that and you’re skidding into the pit. ‘No country for old men,’ they say—or young men either, among which I’m glad to still be counted.

“Let’s just say that God looked so hard at me it wilted the bad person I was. What you’re seeing now is the replanting of Alma Junior.”

True to his word, he and Mosiah’s boys went on an evangelical tour of the whole country, telling their story, teaching brass-plate concepts, and attracting huge crowds, including a fair share of nay-sayers who, in some cases, went to blows with the new religious hotshots.

But what’s a church for, if not to get you through opposition? And the church did its job on this account, which only bolstered the young men’s devotion to it.

Alma and Mosiah’s sons (Ammon, Aaron, Omner, and Himni) spoke to every citizen of Mosiah’s kingdom, sometimes in a confessional mode, sometimes exhortational, sometimes exegetical.

God, one might say, played them like his own harp, singing his song about Jesus and the Great Reconciliation.

And did their amazing change fulfill an earlier generation’s prophecies? I think you know the answer.