[King Lamoni Passes Out]
[Delphic Oracle]
[Other world experiences of the Lamanites.]
[Lamanites Become More Virtuous—Nephites less so]
[Horses for Chariots and Kings Only]
[Aaron Converts Lamoni’s Father & household]
384 We’re on Alma 19. These chapters that follow have a number of unusual things happening in them. But in other ages these things were not so unusual; they were sort of routine. These things sound quite fantastic in the Book of Mormon. You may have heard Brother Packer during conference. He compared our time with just forty years ago. Well, I had already been teaching twenty years, forty years ago. But it’s a different world, he said. Compared with that world, our world today is just a pastiche of crimes and excesses. You wouldn’t recognize it. Unfortunately, I don’t think its reversible either; it just goes more and more. This is the Book of Mormon; that’s where it comes in. It keeps hitting back at us all the time. This was once thought to be utterly fantastic and out of this world—these excessive things, like civilizations destroying each other completely. Such a thing was utterly unheard of. Well, it isn’t unheard of anymore. The Book of Mormon is for our time.
385,386 Alma 19:5-7 Let’s go on here with chapter 19. The king passed out, and Ammon went to the queen. Verse 5: “I would that ye should go in and see my husband, for ... some say that he is not dead, [it’s the same story as Isaiah and King Hezekiah and the prophecy about Mannaseh] but others say that he is dead and that he stinketh ... but as for myself, to me he doth not stink. Now, this was what Ammon desired ... and the light which did light up his mind, which was the light of the glory of God . . .” Notice the imagery that’s used here and how often the word light is used: “... and the light which did light up his mind, which was the light of the glory of God, which was a marvelous light of his goodness— yea, this light had infused such joy into his soul, the cloud of darkness having been dispelled, and that the light of everlasting life was lit up in his soul.” There are six lights in this sentence. Notice that this is imagery, and yet is it imagery? We are still faced with the basic question, what is light? Nobody knows. Protons don’t have any weight or any mass. But what are they? “Yea, he knew that this had overcome his natural frame, and he was carried away in God—” This is EKSTASIS; EK means out, and STASIS means stepping. So you step out of your body when you are in a state of EKSTASIS. In Revelation John says that on the Lord’s day he was in a state of EKSTASIS. He left his body. We are told the same about Abraham. In the Hebrew it’s the TARDEMAH of Old Testament when you pass out. In Genesis 15 the same thing happens. Abraham passes out the same way. His soul is carried aloft and then he comes back and reports.
386 Alma 19:8-14 “He is not dead, but he sleepeth in God [in other words God is taking care of him].... And Ammon said unto her: Believest thou this? And she said unto him: I have had no witness save thy word [but I believe]. And Ammon said unto her: Blessed art thou because of thy exceeding faith; I say unto thee, woman [here’s another one], there has not been such great faith among all the people of the Nephites.” Now this isn’t a paraphrase of the New Testament. After all, Ammon had been a missionary to more Nephites than anyone else; he knew the Nephites by heart. He said we don’t find such faith among all the Nephites as we find here, and these are Lamanites. An interesting thing is about to happen here. He [the king] arose and said, “I have seen my Redeemer.” In the Isaiah text first the king passes out and then Isaiah. Isaiah comes to and says, “I have seen the Messiah.” He has been taken aloft. So we have a sort of standard vision here. Then “he sunk again with joy; and the queen also sunk down, being overpowered by the Spirit.” They were all passing out. This is the way you do when you are completely overwhelmed this way. Verse 14: “He fell upon his knees, and began to pour out his soul in prayer and thanksgiving to God for what he had done for his brethren [Ammon did this because his message has gotten over]; and he was also overpowered with joy [and he fell down, too]; and thus they all three had sunk to the earth.”
386,387 Of course, the hardest thing to contain is joy. Anybody can contain all sorts of pain. It’s amazing what you can put up with when you have to put up with pain. How astonishing it is—there’s just no limit. But joy is a thing that scares the daylights out of you. You can’t contain it and don’t know what to do with it. And yet that’s the purpose of our existence—we “are that we might have joy.” So we are learning to control joy and control ourselves when we have it. We can’t contain it, you see. It’s a hard thing to contain. What do you do? Do you shout and holler and run around? Do you make a fool of yourself, etc.? How can you contain that in yourself? Well, they are all sinking down here and passing out, and that’s the best thing. After all, when pain becomes too great you black out automatically. So that takes care of that. It’s the same thing with joy if you can’t contain it. When you don’t know how to handle a problem psychologically, what do you do? You black out. This is your defense. It’s a form of Pentecost here and very special. It’s a part of initiation times. They are one-time experiences which people attempt to repeat, as in the Sioux sun dance and the Sufis. The Sufis are the most important branch of mystics among the Moslems; they have to pass out. So you have your various dances and dervishes and things like that.
387 Alma 19:16,20 People wondered what was going on; they didn’t understand. Verse 16: “They did call on the name of the Lord, in their might, even until they had all fallen to the earth.” Then this Abish comes along. That’s a very interesting name because that’s the name on a very famous Egyptian mural from a tomb in the Middle Kingdom. It shows a family coming from Palestine to Egypt. It’s a family of bedouins very vividly portrayed, and the leader is Abish. They [in verse 16] had all fallen to the earth. This was Abish “having been converted to the Lord, and never having made it known” to anyone before. When she saw this opportunity she ran forth from house to house making it known, and they began to assemble themselves. It was a great display, “and they all lay there as though they were dead. . . . And now the people began to murmur among themselves.” Something is wrong here. They say, the king has brought this evil upon himself. The central theme of this particular story goes back to the waters of Sebus. “The king hath brought this evil upon his house, because he slew his servants who had had their flocks scattered at the waters of Sebus.” This king has done wrong in doing this.
387 Alma 19:21,25 Now this is the interesting thing that happens. What about the men at Sebus who had scattered the flocks? They were there. Verse 21: “And they were also rebuked by those men who had stood at the waters of Sebus and scattered the flocks which belonged to the king, for they were angry with Ammon.” They were in the crowd. It was part of the game; they were accepted here. A strange crime against the king. They announced their presence here; they shouted out at him. “They were angry with Ammon because of the number which he had slain of their brethren at the waters of Sebus, while defending the flocks of the king.” One of them was the brother of the one that Ammon had killed in the single combat, the only one killed with the sword. He drew his sword and made at Ammon, and he fell dead. So they did have swords after all. Strange goings on here. But it only occurs to them now that what they had been doing there was wrong. Verse 24: “When the multitude beheld that the man had fallen dead . .. fear came upon them all, and they durst not put forth their hands to touch him or any of those who had fallen.” Strange goings on here, aren’t they? Verse 25: “There were many among them who said that Ammon was the Great Spirit, and others said he was sent by the Great Spirit.”
388 Alma 19:25-29 Notice some said that Ammon “was sent by the Great Spirit; But others rebuked them all, saying that he was a monster, who had been sent from the Nephites to torment them.... And they said that it was this Great Spirit who had destroyed so many of their brethren, the Lamanites.” The Great Spirit is on the side of the Nephites. It turned into hysteria. Verse 28: “And thus the contention began to be exceedingly sharp among them. And while they were thus contending, the woman servant ... came” and told them about it. Then they said it was her fault. When she saw the contention that she had caused, she decided she was to blame and “was exceedingly sorrowful, even unto tears [what have I done here?]... . She went and took the queen by the hand” and she arose. This is a critical situation here, isn’t it? “And when she had said this, she clasped her hands, being filled with joy, speaking many words which were not understood.”
388 Alma 19:31,32 This is typical. When the shaman comes out, he talks in riddles and rhymes. Again, the ancient world was governed by the oracles. What was the oracle? The oracle was a woman who was made to pass out. Usually she snuffed bay leaf, which is very powerful. Well, the Delphic Oracle was the woman who governed the ancient world for centuries. Everybody went to Delphi to consult that oracle. She was a woman who sat on a tripod over a pot of bay leaf and passed out. When she was out of her mind, she would utter things. It was uttered in rhyme and sometimes in strange tongues. Sometimes it was in gibberish. So this is a type of institution which we are not familiar with today, but it has ruled the world until very recently. Until very recently we have had these things—these strange gifts and perversions. You’ll find them among the Druzes in Lebanon. For years I went around with an old Druze, and he taught me various things about that, too. Very strange things going on here. So she carried on like this, and then she took King Lamoni’s hand and he arose. “And he, immediately, seeing the contention among his people, went forth and began to rebuke them” for behaving the way they were. “But there were many among them who would not hear his words; therefore they went their way.”
389 Alma 19:33 “If they believe not Moses and the prophets, they will believe not the one that rose from the dead,” the Lord said. This was an anti-climax as far as they were concerned. Verse 33: “When Ammon arose he also administered unto them.” But you notice he didn’t convince everyone; many among them didn’t believe it at all. He went among all his servants, and “their hearts had been changed; ... many did declare unto the people that they had seen angels and had conversed with them.” You notice that angels must get things moving because the point is this. Here we reach a critical point in Book of Mormon history. From this time on the Lamanites start going up in virtue, and the Nephites start going down. The Lamanites become the virtuous people now. It’s a very strong trend we see from here on. This critical moment in history is the turning point. It had to be, and the only way such a thing could happen would have to be by another Pentecost, by an eruption of the spirit, a breaking in or intrusion of the other world. Theologians are talking a lot about this today. They never talked about it before, but they say what you have in the New Testament is an intrusion of the other world into this one—a breakthrough, something that people never could have arranged or suspected, a note of surprise. With the restoration of the gospel then as now, the main theme was surprise. Everybody was surprised because things were happening completely beyond their control. Utter amazement seizes them, and the angels have to say, “Don’t be afraid; we are messengers from God.” So this is not a normal occurrence. The big shift begins here in the Book of Mormon where the Lamanites begin to get a break. We talked about mixing races; from now on you’re not going to be able to distinguish them at all. Many said “they had seen angels and had conversed with them ... and as many as did believe were baptized; and they became a righteous people, and they did establish a church among them. And thus the work of the Lord did commence among the Lamanites.” That’s why this thing is so sensational, so very striking. The work of the Lord begins among the Lamanites. The moral of that, says Mormon, is “that his arm is extended to all people who will repent and believe on his name.”
390 Alma 20:1,2- We have to move right along now, don’t we? Lamoni desired that Ammon should go with him on a trip to see his father. Lamoni. They had a system of nations in which there was a high king and then the lower kings below him. But the Lord said, “Thou shalt not go up to the land of Nephi, for behold, the king will seek thy life; but thou shalt go to the land of Middoni; for behold, thy brother Aaron, and also Muloki and Ammah are in prison.”
390,391 Alma 20:3 “Behold, my brother and brethren are in prison at Middoni, and I go that I may deliver them.” The king said, I have some clout; I’ll go with you and help you get them out. So they made ready his chariots and horses. As I’ve said before, with the exhausting treks of the brethren from land to land that we’ve been reading about in this part of the Book of Mormon, why didn’t they ride horses like cowboys and Indians do? The horse appears in the Book of Mormon as a rare and exotic animal, exactly as the Arab steed appears in ancient, medieval, and modern times. It’s the idea of these strange beasts appearing and being taken care of. This is the picture you get in the Book of Mormon. Only kings have them, and he is taking care of the king’s horses for his chariots. Nobody rides horses in the Book of Mormon. As we said before, nobody rides horses in the Near East, just as nobody rides bicycles—just as we don’t ride water buffaloes here. We would be scared to death to do it, but they do it in southeastern Asia.
391 Alma 20:4 Lamoni said to Ammon, “I will go with thee to the land of Middoni.” There Ammon is making ready the king’s horses and chariots. That’s a thing for only a noble person to do. The equestrian, the one who takes care of the king’s stables, is the constable. Who is the constable of France? He is the one next to the king. The constable is the one who takes care of the king’s stables, and that’s as high as you can get. Remember the great speech the constable of France gives in Henry VI He was the one that settled the peace between England and France; he was the king’s highest representative. So horses are a strange, exotic thing. You can’t generalize about horses too much, as I’m doing here. But in the Book of Mormon they were imported from the plains to the north. As my friend Woodrow Bora found out, all the trade in horses between the continental United States and Mexico was not in taking Spanish horses up to the continent. They brought them down from the plains through Santa Fe to Mexico. They were brought to Mexico, not from Mexico. He finds that significant, along with other things. Well, we won’t bother with horses too much.
392 Alma 20:8 Now here is a very dramatic situation right out of Oedipus. Verse 8: “They met the father of Lamoni, who was king over all the land.” He was the sachem, the high king. He gave a real speech, and this shows you that the Lamanites had a case. They really believed this, and this is the point at which the Lamanites turn. They now start to become the righteous people. They were justified in their own eyes in what they did because here was the king, and he couldn’t stand Nephites. He said they have betrayed us, tricked us, and outsmarted us all the time. This was the point because the Nephites did outsmart them. They would have a great resentment against that.
392 Alma 20:9 “Why did ye not come to the feast on that great day when I made a feast unto my sons, and unto my people?” Well, the feast of the king is compulsory wherever you go. In the last chapter of Zachariah it’s the same thing. From year to year everyone shall come up to Jerusalem to the feast—the feast of the Passover, the feast of the booths this was, the feast of the SUKKOT. You must come to the feast, and you must bring something with you. No one shall come empty handed. You had to bring your offerings of lamb or doves, etc. You had to bring food with you, and they had the great feast. Well, it’s like the coronation in the book of Mosiah, where Benjamin gave his great speech. That’s the strict and correct description of the rite that took place at the feast. It was feasting that they engaged in. If you didn’t come, you were an ULLAGE, outlaw. You were outlawed from the kingdom for three years. You had no citizenship and no rights. You had to come and report and have your name put in the Book of Life, the list of the INCISI.
392,393 Alma 20:10-14 After his father asked why he didn’t come to the feast, “he also said: Whither art thou going with this Nephite, who is one of the children of a liar?” Now this is the case the Lamanites make out for themselves. This is a skillful history, too. It’s like the telling of a saga. The language is, too. “Lamoni rehearsed unto him whither he was going” and what he was going to do because he had to tell him. “And he also told him all the cause of his tarrying in his own kingdom [why he didn’t go to the feast, etc.]. And now when Lamoni had rehearsed unto him all these things, behold, to his astonishment, his father was” not impressed but he was furious. He said, “Lamoni, thou art going to deliver these Nephites, who are sons of a liar [get them out of jail; this is the Lamanite party line]. Behold, he robbed our fathers; and now his children are also come amongst us that they may, by their cunning and their lyings, deceive us.” Here we have these Nephites circulating and spreading missionary news, and Lamoni had given them a free hand. He had given them a carte blanche to do anything they wanted. He goes too far; in fact it causes a revolution a little later on. They robbed our fathers, and you are letting them do anything they want among us—infiltrate us “that they may, by their cunning and their lyings, deceive us, that they again may rob us of our property.” We haven’t been the robbers; they have been the robbers [the king claimed]. The Nephites (men like Alma and Amulek) had consistently outsmarted the Lamanites. The Lamanites had a real grievance. They were not bad as Lamanites anymore than the Russians are bad as Russians. This is an important insight into Lamanite mentality. And we still treat the Indians this way. After all, they still get the dirty end of the stick, you might say. He [the king] ordered him to “slay Ammon with the sword.” He wouldn’t put up with it at all. He was very serious and “mad as a hatter.”
393 Alma 20:15-17 “But Lamoni said unto him: I will not slay Ammon, neither will I return to the land of Ishmael.” He defied his father openly, and to defy the king openly is treason. Verse 16: “Now when his father had heard these words, he was angry with him, and he drew his sword that he might smite him to the earth.” After all, he had openly defied the high king, his father. This was treason, and he should be smitten. But Ammon stood forth against him, to his surprise. He said, “If thou shouldst fall at this time, in thine anger, thy soul could not be saved.” No one dies well who dies in a battle. “If thou shouldst fall at this time, in thine anger, thy soul could not be saved.” Moreover, “he being an innocent man, his blood would cry from the ground.”
394 Alma 20:19 “I know that if I should slay my son, that I should shed innocent blood; for it is thou that hast sought to destroy him. And he stretched forth his hand to slay Ammon. But Ammon withstood his blows, and also smote his arm ... [good old Ammon; he knew how to hit people’s arms, didn’t he?]. Now when the king saw that Ammon could slay him, he began to plead with Ammon that he would spare his life.” The “gun” is in the other guy’s hand now. Remember how quickly they change around in our endless police shows, etc. The person who has the gun has all power. One moment he is insufferably arrogant and the next he is cringing. This happens with the king here because Ammon has the “gun” now and is holding it on him. The king said, I will give you anything, even half the kingdom [paraphrased]. Again, why this old formula “half the kingdom.”
395,395 Alma 20:24-26 “If thou wilt grant that my brethren may be cast out of prison ... [so they spare him],... And when he saw that Ammon had no desire to destroy him, and when he also saw the great love he had for his son Lamoni, he was astonished exceedingly [by his behavior] and said: Because this is all that thou hast desired, that I would release thy brethren, and suffer that my son Lamoni should retain his kingdom [so that was all right], behold, I will grant unto you that my son may retain his kingdom from this time and forever; and I will govern him no more [he gave him a free hand.] And I will also grant unto thee that thy brethren may be cast out of prison, and thou and thy brethren may come unto me, in my kingdom; for I shall greatly desire to see thee.” Come and see me as soon as you can, he says.
395 Alma 20:28 Alma 21:1,2 Then there’s another minor king. Notice that they went to the land of Middoni, and the king of Middoni was another one of those minor kings. Lamoni was a fellow king, so they got along very nicely. It says, “And Lamoni found favor in the eyes of the king of the land; therefore the brethren of Ammon were brought forth out of prison.” If he and Lamoni hadn’t got along they never would have got out; he had influence. But they were really in a terrible condition when they came out because they had had a rough time. Then in chapter 21 it gives a flashback and shows how they happened to get into the prison and what they went through first. They separated themselves, and “Aaron took his journey towards the land which was called by the Lamanites Jerusalem, calling it after the land of their fathers’ nativity [which is a common practice, of course]. . . . Now the Lamanites and the Amalekites and the people of Amulon had built a great city, which was called Jerusalem.” There were three different elements in it. We can’t call them races, but there were three different cultures joined together in it. It tells us here that the “Amalekites and the Amulonites were still harder.” Of the three the Lamanites were the nicest, but it was the Amalekites and the Amulonites [who were the hardest]. One was Nephite and the other was Mulekite. It tells us that apostates are the worst enemies of the church; they always are. They are much worse than any outsiders. They “were still harder; therefore they did cause the Lamanites that they should harden their hearts.” And the Amalekites “had built synagogues after the order of the Nehors.” The good old Nehor church; you are going to find it everywhere. It was the popular church, the popular religion. And it was a religion. Most of these wicked people in the Book of Mormon are very religious, and they were here. And there “arose an Amalekite,” who challenged them and started preaching to them. “Why do not angels appear unto us?” We are as good as you are. That’s a good question actually. “How knowest thou that we have cause to repent?” That’s not such a good question—everybody does. President Benson’s opening talk at the conference was refreshing, wasn’t it? It was the nearest to a talk on repentance I’ve heard for ages. As you know, it was on pride. And whose pride? The wickedness of the Book of Mormon. Whose wickedness? Ours. That’s what he was talking about; it was a call to repentance. He wasn’t accusing other people [non-LDS] at all when he gave that wonderful talk about pride.
395,396 Alma 21:5,6 So “there arose an Amalekite” who said, how do you know we have cause to repent. As soon as people say they are a righteous people, of course, you know they are not. That’s automatic; it’s self-righteousness. “Behold, we have built sanctuaries [we’ve built churches; aren’t we good people? We’ve done that], and we do assemble ourselves together to worship God [we go to meeting]. We do believe that God will save all men.” This is the routine. Incidentally, it’s an interesting thing that repentance is missing from all the ancient religions except the Old Testament. The word repentance doesn’t exist for the Egyptians and the others. I have been reading a lot of Egyptian wisdom literature, and the idea that you should repent [doesn’t exist there]. What you want is luck. They never connect what you have done in the past with your moral behavior. You’ve done what you’ve done, and that’s that. It’s an interesting thing that there is no word in Egyptian for sin. And in America today sin is having the wrong ideology. It’s being on the wrong side. The Ten Commandments are only fifty percent binding. They bind us but they don’t control our behavior toward bad people. We shall not kill, we shall not lie, we shall not steal from good people. But you can do it with bad people all you want [according to this philosophy]. And they do it everywhere else. We call that revenge because they have been bad. Well, notice that we are having a shift at this point. The good and bad are shifting between the Nephites and the Lamanites. We get it here.
396 Alma 21:7-14 “Now Aaron said unto him: Believest thou that the Son of God shall come to redeem mankind from their sins?” How do you know that? “We do not believe in these foolish traditions.” We don’t need them at all—this idea of the Atonement. “Now Aaron began to open the scriptures unto them concerning the coming of Christ,” and the resurrection and the redemption. This summarizes the main points of the gospel. The coming of the Christ brings about the resurrection, which brings about the redemption “through the death and sufferings of Christ, and the atonement of his blood.” He gave them the whole package, and this made them madder than ever. He gave them the straight gospel. Then “they were angry with him, and began to mock him.” They wouldn’t hear it. It sounded utterly ridiculous. So he just left them—that was all he could do—and went over to Ani-Anti. The people there were hard in their hearts just as bad, so he left there and came over to the land of Middoni. The Lord said, if they don’t receive you in one city go to another. This is how they got to the land of Middoni, and this is where they were put into jail. This has been a flashback telling us how they got into jail. Aaron and his brethren were cast into prison, and the remainder of them fled. Verse 14: “And those who were cast into prison suffered many things, and they were delivered by the hand of Lamoni and Ammon.” So this is where we were in the story.
396,397 Alma 21:16-22 And they went forth led by the Spirit after they were out of jail “preaching the word of God in every synagogue of the Amalekites, or in every assembly of the Lamanites where they could be admitted.. . . The Lord began to bless them, insomuch that they brought many to the knowledge of the truth.” King Lamoni has a rather extreme program. He hasn’t converted his people yet, but he really pushes the church. You might say he overdoes it because it is very soon going to bring about a revolution against him. They are going to get rid of him. He had “synagogues built in the land of Ishmael; and he caused that his people should assemble themselves together.... And he did teach them many things.” And any that fled from oppression by the king, his father, went to them. “And he also declared unto them that they might have the liberty of worshiping the Lord. . . . Ammon was thus teaching the people of Lamoni continually.” Then Aaron “was led by the Spirit to the land of Nephi, even to the house of the king which was over all the land save it were the land of Ishmael [these Ishmaelites are a different stock, too]; and he was the father of Lamoni.” The king of the land of [Nephi] was the father of Ishmael, and Lamoni was an Ishmaelite. He “bowed himself before the king, and said, ... we are the brethren of Ammon; ... we will be thy servants.”
397 Alma 22:3-7 The king said, “I have been somewhat troubled in mind because of the generosity and the greatness of the words of thy brother Ammon; and I desire to know the cause why he has not come up out of Middoni with thee.” Aaron said he had gone to the land of Ishmael. Then he asked Aaron questions about the Spirit of the Lord, is there a God, etc. Remember, they are trying to establish a bridge with the Lamanites, who for hundreds of years had been going their own way and had their own version of the gospel. They had kept the Great Spirit, and they still have. They still believe all these things. It’s a complex picture we have here. Verse 7: “And the king said: I know that the Amalekites say that there is a God, and I have granted unto them that they should build sanctuaries [this is the high king].... Behold, assuredly as thou livest, O king [said Aaron], there is a God. And the king said: Is God that Great Spirit that brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem?”
397,398 Alma 22:10-18 If an Indian says, “We believe in the Great Spirit. Do you believe in the Great Spirit?” That’s a legitimate title. Verse 10: “And Aaron said unto him: Yea, he is that Great Spirit, and he created all things both in heaven and in earth.” So we both worship the same Great Spirit after all. Verse 12: “When Aaron saw that the king would believe his words, he began from the creation of Adam.” That’s the starting point, and it’s an on-going history through verse 18—the creation of Adam and the plan of redemption. “And since man had fallen he could not merit anything of himself.” How could that happen? What does that mean? Why do you disqualify yourself once you fall? If you just fall once why do you disqualify yourself? Because you will never again be as pure and as strong as you were before you fell just that once—unless you undergo a complete renovation again. So we have to have the atonement and baptism and all that. But it’s true that if you have yielded once you will never be as strong and as certain as you were before. You may think, “Well, I found out now; I had to learn about sin.” But it doesn’t work that way. Nevertheless, we do have to learn about it, so here we go. That’s what the gospel is. It brings this very powerful medicine in after we’ve got ourselves good and sick here.
398 Alma 22:15 “What shall I do that I may have this eternal life of which thou hast spoken?” He being a king, this is a very interesting thing. But the point is that these great kings, have everything. But what’s the good of having everything if you can’t keep it—if you can only keep it for a very little while? This worries kings more than it worries other people. What does he say here? If I can only be king for a little while it’