Mosiah 25: The Children of Amulon and the Seven Churches

When I baptized Lily on the twenty-seventh of June, I got it wrong the first time. Her heel came up off the floor of the font, one of the two men watching from the side raised a finger, and she had to go back down and have the prayer said over her a second time while the water went on being slightly colder than anyone had promised. I'd said her whole name and somewhere in the middle of it my voice went out from under me.

She came up the second time and asked me, in the quietest whisper she owns, whether that one counted. It did.

I've been thinking about names ever since, because Mosiah 25 is a chapter about people receiving them and people turning them down. It's also a chapter about a very big room, and I'll get to the room, but the names are where I stalled this week.

What happens when Mosiah gathers everyone to hear the records?

The chapter opens with a king doing something simple.

And now king Mosiah caused that all the people should be gathered together.

Two crowds show up. The people of Zarahemla descend from Mulek and came out of Jerusalem at about the same time Lehi did. The people of Nephi are the ones who had gone back to the land of Nephi under Zeniff and Noah and Limhi, plus Alma's people who had walked out of Helam. The text says they gathered in two bodies, which I like, because it admits nobody walked in as one people. Mosiah reads the records himself, or has them read. Zeniff's account comes first, from the day his group left Zarahemla to the day they came back, then Alma's account of his people and their afflictions over the same stretch of years. Nobody is told what to feel. The people who stayed home are struck with wonder, and then the chapter says they were filled with joy at the sight of those delivered out of bondage and with sorrow, and tears, for the brethren who had been slain.

I read that and thought about every funeral I've been to in a church gym, where somebody tells a story about the deceased fixing a lawnmower and the whole room laughs and then can't stop crying. Mosiah doesn't give a talk about it. He reads, and the people are left to have both reactions at once.

If you want the backstory, the escape is in Mosiah 22, and I'm going to assume you've read it, because Mosiah 25 mostly stands in the doorway and counts heads.

Who were the children of Amulon, and why did they change their name?

This is the part that caught on me, and it's about one verse.

Amulon was one of the priests of Noah and he turned up again in Mosiah 23 and 24 as the Lamanite-appointed taskmaster over Alma's people, which is as bad as it sounds. The chapter I wrote about last Monday, Mosiah 24, is mostly about what that cost the people under him. Now in Mosiah 25 his children are in the crowd. They had grown up among the Lamanites with Lamanite mothers. As I read verse 12 they were displeased with what their fathers had done and would no longer be called by their names. They took the name of Nephi instead, to be numbered among the Nephites.

I first read it as a tidy little redemption beat, the way you'd read a minor character getting a happy ending in the last chapter of a novel. Then I read it a second time at the counter on Thursday morning with a mug of the herbal tea Melissa buys in bulk, and it stopped feeling tidy. These are the grown children of the man who had just spent years driving the people now standing next to them. Whatever they said to the person on their left, it must have been hard to say. And the person on the left had to decide whether to believe them.

A name can be inherited and it can be taken, and the text gives us one of each in the same chapter. The children of Amulon didn't get to unmake their father. They could only decide what they'd answer to from then on. Verse 23 comes back to this a few lines after the churches, and says that whoever desired to take upon them the name of Christ, or of God, joined the churches of God. That's the one I'd put next to Lily. She wasn't asking me about a name, she was asking whether the water and the words had done what they were supposed to, and I'd have said the same thing to a grown man at the font: yes, and the rest is what you do on the Tuesday after.

I'd like to know what that Tuesday looked like for the children of Amulon. Whether somebody ended up sitting beside one of them at a meeting and what that person's face did. The text doesn't follow anyone home, and I wish it did.

What does Alma actually do at Zarahemla?

Mosiah asks Alma to speak, and Alma goes among the people in large bodies, from one to another, preaching repentance and faith on the Lord. He tells Limhi's people to remember that it was the Lord who delivered them. Then Limhi asks to be baptized and all his people ask with him, and Alma baptizes them the way he'd baptized his own at the waters of Mormon.

That's about two verses for the baptism of a whole people, and when I read the chapter the first time I expected a big scene, and I think I wanted one. Fair enough. The chapter has other work to do. Mosiah grants Alma the right to establish churches through all the land of Zarahemla and to ordain priests and teachers over each. Alma does. The rest of the chapter is about what the people become after the water.

There's something else in verse 13 that I'd read past before. All the people of Zarahemla were numbered with the Nephites, the text says, because the kingdom had only ever been conferred on Nephi's descendants. So the merging of the two peoples that began back in Omni gets its formal paperwork here, in the same chapter as the baptisms. It's an administrative sentence and I suspect most readers skip it. It would have mattered a great deal to the people of Zarahemla.

Why were there seven churches, and why does verse 22 say they were one?

There were too many people for one teacher or one meeting, and verse 20 says so almost in those words. They couldn't all be governed by one teacher, and they couldn't all hear the word of God in one assembly. So they gathered in different bodies called churches, each with its own priests and teachers, and every priest preached what had been delivered to him by the mouth of Alma.

Then comes the verse I'd pick if I could keep only one from the chapter.

And thus, notwithstanding there being many churches they were all one church, yea, even the church of God; for there was nothing preached in all the churches except it were repentance and faith in God.

I spent most of a week reading the first half of that verse as reassurance, a writer worried how seven churches would look. The second half is the reason. They were one church because every priest was preaching the same two things, which is a harder standard than sharing a building. Seven rooms with nothing in any of them but repentance and faith in God. When I teach I can usually find three other topics I'd rather get to, and I've been handed a lesson outline before and wandered anyway.

Seven is also a modest number for a city's worth of people, and I think that's the practical part of the story. A priest can know a name when the room is small.

The chapter ends the way it does for a reason.

And the Lord did pour out his Spirit upon them, and they were blessed, and prospered in the land.

Just before that, verse 24 has a short clause I'd skipped on earlier readings: "And they were called the people of God." Mosiah reads, Alma teaches and baptizes and organizes, and in the end nobody is called after a father or a king. Alma is the man who turned down a crown back in Helam (I wrote about that in Mosiah 23), and here a king hands him the churches.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Alma establish seven churches instead of one?

The people were too many to be governed by one teacher or to hear the word in one assembly, which is how Mosiah 25:20 puts it. Each church had its own priests and teachers, ordained with Mosiah's permission and preaching what Alma had delivered to them. I wouldn't guess at where in the land they met, since the chapter doesn't say.

Who were the people of Zarahemla and how were they different from the Nephites?

They descended from Mulek, a son of the Judahite king Zedekiah, and had their own records and history before Mosiah's ancestor found them (that story is back in Omni). They had been living under Nephite kings for a long while by Mosiah 25, and verse 13 is where the text says plainly that they were numbered with the Nephites.

What happened to Limhi's people in Mosiah 25?

They had escaped Lamanite bondage in Mosiah 22 and made their way back to Zarahemla. Alma exhorted them to remember that the Lord had delivered them, and then Limhi and all his people asked for baptism. Alma baptized them in the same manner he'd used at the waters of Mormon.

Why does the chapter mention the children of Amulon?

Their father had been one of Noah's priests and later a cruel taskmaster over Alma's people. According to verse 12 the children were displeased with what their fathers had done, took the name of Nephi in place of their fathers' names. It's a single verse and easy to read past, but it shows people choosing a new name in front of everyone.

I'll start Mosiah 26 on Monday. Right now there's a golden retriever at my feet and a Saturday that still has a farmers' market in it.

— D.