(Minerva Teichert, ca 1950-51; LDS.org)
Today’s reading, Alma 5, contains another of the Book of Mormon’s greatest sermons.
I think it’s helpful, in reading through this sermon, to think of Alma’s own personal history. Remember his spectacular conversion story, which involved a dramatic appearance by an angel. That angelophany turned his life around and, as he saw it, literally saved him from damnation.
So, when he speaks about captivity and about deliverance from bondage and from hell, about being awakened from a deep sleep, and about being saved from darkness and destruction and the chains of hell (in verses 5-10), it’s impossible to believe that he isn’t speaking from his own autobiography. Thus, too, his emphasis on “a mighty change in . . . heart” in verses 12-14 seems to me clearly to reflect his own conversion, and his deep desire that others experience the transformation that he underwent.
“Do ye not suppose that I know of these things myself?” he asks, rhetorically (in verse 45).
When he speaks about how fearsome and painful it would be to stand before God with in the acute consciousness of one’s guilt (in verses 18-25), he knows whereof he speaks, having, as he later explains to his son, personally experienced something of that terror. (See Alma 36:12-15.)
I suspect that his list of sins in verses 29-31 also has its personal dimension. He had grown up as one of the Nephite elite, son of the chief priest, close associate with the wayward sons of the king. He knew pride at first hand.
More could be said, but I read this sermon as a very personal and heartfelt statement from Alma, who never forgot that he was a brand that had, not a moment too soon, been graciously plucked from the burning.
Posted from Mesa, Arizona
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