Alma 6 Is Eight Verses and Not a Filler Chapter

Most of the study outlines I've picked up over the years give Alma 6 a line. Alma organizes the church and ordains some men and goes to Gideon, and then it's on to Alma 7 where the real sermon is. The chapter gets treated as a hallway between two rooms, and the hallway's only job is to get you to the door.

I don't buy that, though there's paperwork in it, sure: ordinations, a baptism clause, a roll. But read the eight verses straight through and the paperwork keeps getting interrupted by something else, and the something else is what I'd underline.

Two groups in verses 2 and 3

Verse 2 is about people outside the church.

And it came to pass that whosoever did not belong to the church who repented of their sins were baptized unto repentance, and were received into the church. (Alma 6:2)

Verse 3 is about people inside it.

And it also came to pass that whosoever did belong to the church that did not repent of their wickedness and humble themselves before God—I mean those who were lifted up in the pride of their hearts—the same were rejected, and their names were blotted out, that their names were not numbered among those of the righteous. (Alma 6:3)

Both hang on the same word, and the outsider has to repent to come in while the insider has to repent to stay. Nobody gets a lower bar for having arrived first.

What caught me was the "I mean." Mormon is writing along, says "wickedness," and then stops to tell you which kind he has in mind, as if he can see you picturing the wrong list. It's pride. That goes back to Alma 4, where the people of the church were "lifted up in the pride of their eyes" (Alma 4:8) over silks and flocks and gold. I wrote about that in Alma 4 and the silk, and Alma 6:3 is the same people two chapters on, with the bill arriving.

Vern and the spiral notebook

Years ago, before we moved to our current ward, I was Elders Quorum president and we had a roll with about forty names on it that I had never once seen attached to a face. The ward clerk was Vern, a retired insurance claims adjuster in his seventies who talked more than anybody in the building and kept a green spiral notebook in his coat pocket besides whatever the computer said. It held what the computer had no field for, like who'd had surgery that spring and whose dog had died.

One Tuesday evening I went to his house with that list, thinking we could tidy it. Vern went down the names with a pencil, and he had something to say about nearly every one. "Lowell's boy, that one moved, his mother gets the Christmas card." For another he said he'd been to the door three Saturdays running with no answer, and the fourth time a man opened it and they spent forty minutes on the man's truck, a '94 Ford with a transmission he'd rebuilt twice. Vern knew more about that transmission than I know about anything. A few months later the man came to the ward barbecue, ate a hot dog standing up and left. That was the whole result for the year.

Nothing came off the list that night, or for months, because Vern wasn't going to do anything to a name until he'd sat in that person's living room. As far as I know he held to it. He also never hurried anyone else's name, which is a different thing and harder.

I thought of him when I got back to verse 3, which reads fast. "Rejected" and "blotted out" sit in one sentence, past tense, finished. But Mormon is summarizing, and the chapter gives you no calendar. Alma 5 is the speech these members had just heard, and in Alma 5:57 the "blotted out" language is spoken to them as a warning, before chapter 6 reports it as something done. So the warning came first. The text doesn't say how many Saturdays it took.

How names come off a membership record today is a question for a bishop and a clerk, not for me. I sit on the Cub Scout committee. I don't keep the notebook.

Verse 5 and the open room

If the church were closing up, you'd expect the next few verses to say so. Instead:

Now I would that ye should understand that the word of God was liberal unto all, that none were deprived of the privilege of assembling themselves together to hear the word of God. (Alma 6:5)

Just before it, verse 4 had said "thus they began to establish the order of the church." Then 5 says the room stays open, and anyone could come and hear. Membership had a requirement and the assembling didn't, which is a distinction I'd have missed if 3 hadn't been sitting two verses up.

After that the chapter turns to the members, and the children of God "were commanded that they should gather themselves together oft, and join in fasting and mighty prayer in behalf of the welfare of the souls of those who knew not God" (Alma 6:6). The people inside get an assignment, and it's about the people who aren't there yet. That's fasting and mighty prayer, often, for strangers. Alma gave that to that church at that moment, and the thing I notice is what it assumes, which is that somebody is thinking about the people outside.

Put 3 next to 6 and the institution looks odd: it takes names off the roll for pride, then tells whoever's left to spend their hunger on people who were never on it.

Gideon, who is easy to skip

The seventh verse is one long sentence about travel. Alma finishes his regulations, "he departed from them," crosses the Sidon and goes into the valley of Gideon, where a city had been built "being called after the man who was slain by the hand of Nehor with the sword."

It's easy to skim, and so is Gideon, until you go back to Alma 1:7-9. He was a teacher in the church, he had helped deliver the people of Limhi out of bondage, and when Nehor came through contending to lead the church astray, Gideon withstood him with the words of God. He was "stricken with many years," and Nehor killed him. The valley carries the name of an old man who said no to a smooth talker and paid for it. Mormon puts that name in a verse about Alma leaving Zarahemla, and the old man gets a place on the map just as the roll in the capital is being cleaned up.

What Alma does there is worth a second look. He preaches to the church in Gideon, and in Alma 7:3 he says he'd hoped they were not in "the awful dilemma that our brethren were in at Zarahemla." By 7:18-19 his desires are "gratified," and he perceives that they are in "the paths of righteousness." So the man who had just removed names in the capital is relieved to find a church where he doesn't have to. And he calls Zarahemla a dilemma. Paperwork doesn't get that word from the man who filed it.

The chapter closes with "And thus it is written. Amen." That's Mormon talking, and it's an odd way to end a chapter that began with a laying on of hands.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the priests and elders do in Alma 6?

The first verse says Alma ordained them by laying on his hands "to preside and watch over the church," and that's the whole job description the chapter gives. Alma 4:7 says that the priests, teachers and elders already in place had been grieved by the wickedness they saw starting among the people, so watching over meant they were among the first to see it.

Does "blotted out" mean those people were lost for good?

The chapter doesn't say that, and I'd be wary of anyone who says it does. The third verse says their names weren't "numbered among those of the righteous," which is about the roll. Whether that's anybody's final word, Alma 6 leaves alone.

Isn't verse 5 a contradiction of verse 3?

It looked like one to me for a long time. Verse 5 is about who may come and hear, and verse 3 is about who is counted as belonging, and a chapter can say both without taking either back.

Do I have to fast "oft" because of verse 6?

Alma commanded that church in that city, and the purpose was the welfare of those who knew not God. I'd read it as a pattern worth noticing and leave the commanding to the people with the keys. What I do with it is smaller.

What I'm doing this week

Vern's in his eighties now and I haven't talked to him in about a year, so this week I'm going to call and ask whether the green notebook made it out of that ward, and what he'd have written next to verse 3.

— D.