Mission to the Zoramites
[Two Zoramite Societies Described]
[Nibley dissertation on faith]
[Importance of Nourishing the Seed]
[Universality of the Atonement in Past Cultures]
[This Life is a Time for Preparation]
437 Alma 35:3; Alma 32:1-4 The Book of Mormon doesn’t dabble around, as historical romances and things like that do. It’s really to the “nitty gritty.” In this chapter 34, Alma is speaking to the other Zoramites. Alma has two missions, you’ll notice, with this people. The first one was a complete failure with the Zoramites proper. There are the excluded ones that are not included in this. They are another society entirely. They’re not even allowed to go to these temples. You remember, he talks about the temples, their riches, their homes, and all this sort of thing. But this is where the other society doesn’t even come near; they are shut out of town after dark. It’s expressed here a little further on in Alma 35:3 where he says, “And it came to pass that after the more popular part of the Zoramites had consulted together concerning the words which had been preached unto them, they were angry because ... it did destroy their craft.” The more popular parts wouldn’t accept it at all. Their craft, of course, was priestcraft. But these [people] are the less popular parts. In fact, they don’t even have citizen’s rights or anything else, as we soon find out. They met on the hill Onidah and “began to have great success among the poor class of people; for behold, they were cast out of the synagogues because of the coarseness of their apparel.... They were esteemed by their brethren as dross.”
337 Alma 32:3,4 You see we have two different societies, the quality and the nothings—the riff-raff, the great unwashed. Of course, because of that condition “they were poor in heart.” Alma spoke to a large throng of them who met on the hill Onidah. They had these general mass meetings then as now; in fact, mass meetings were much more common in ancient times than today. “Upon the hill Onidah, there came a great multitude unto him who were ... poor in heart, because of their poverty as to the things of the world. They came to Alma, and this was their complaint. Their leader said, “Behold, what shall these my brethren do, for they are despised of all men because of their poverty, yea, and more especially by our priests; for they have cast us out of our synagogues which we have labored abundantly to build with our own hands; and they have cast us out because of our exceeding poverty, and we have no place to worship our God; and behold, what shall we do?”
439 Alma 32:5 “The priestly leaders of these great centers [remember, Alma said, ‘and especially by their priests’] in their efforts to outdo each other, to draw more wealth and prestige to themselves, and to bring more worshippers and taxpayers into their particular orbits, must have diverted all possible labor and capital to their aggrandizement.... Add to all this the competition for trade, .. . and we can see the situation brought to a fighting pitch, . .. all leading to a rapid down-spiraling to extinction.” This is where it culminates in the Book of Mormon. We are approaching the long war, the great fourteen-year war. We are not going to be able to go into it this semester, if ever. They (the Maya) didn’t get anywhere. They didn’t collapse and then build up again. It was extinction in every case. The ruins of the cities were never rebuilt. That was just it; they were finished. It’s an amazing picture, and, of course, this is the amazing picture that we find in the Book of Mormon. You don’t find it in Europe; that’s not the way things go there. People go on suffering in Europe and Asia, etc. The same old cities are still there, the same old mobs, troubles, murders, etc. They continue with starvation and all the rest of it. But it’s a different pattern in the promised land here.
439 Alma 32:6 When he saw these people were humble, Alma was filled with great joy. “For he beheld that their afflictions had truly humbled them, and that they were in a preparation to hear the word [he had a new clientele now]. Therefore he did say no more to the other multitude.” See, there were two multitudes, two Zoramite communities. His mission was to the first. Why did he go to the first? Because they were the ones that made the trouble. Remember, the idea was he didn’t want the Zoramites to join in with the Lamanites on the other side of the Ammonites so they would have a “squeeze play.” They would break down the value of their buffer state. In order to discourage them from going away and joining the enemy, he decided, we will go and preach to them. That’s the best way he could think of. So these dangerous people were the ones he wanted to preach to—the influential ones. But he couldn’t get anywhere with them, so then he turned to what he calls “the other multitude,” making it clear that we do have two societies here. He stretched forth his hand and cried unto them and said, “Behold I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only?” Well, they certainly had that ingrained into them. The building of the holy places was of prime consideration. That’s where everything went on; that was the center of holiness. (Every Sunday we thank the Lord for our beautiful meeting houses, etc. We talked about the fashionable religion, where they met only once a week and did the right thing.)
440 Alma 32:12 “I say unto you, it is well that ye are cast out of your synagogues, that ye may be humble, and that ye may learn wisdom.” Of course, they couldn’t go in because they didn’t observe dress standards. Remember, they were cast out because of the coarseness of their apparel. The dress standards were very strict. Notice some things about the Zoramites. A lot is said from here on about the Zoramites in the Book of Mormon. Someone mentioned last time after class that Zoram was a servant of Laban. He was drafted by Lehi’s family, by Nephi especially. Being a servant of Laban, the military governor of Jerusalem, he would not be an Israelite because you can’t enslave or make a servant of an Israelite. The name Zoram is again one of those desert names. It’s from the eastern half of Manasseh. It means a welcome, refreshing, powerful rain. A lot of this stuff has come out of Genesis 13-14, but the people of the Near East are noted for their genealogical awareness. It’s IBN so-and-so. You identify yourself as a son of so-and-so, or ABI so-and-so, or the father of so-and-so, or IBN ABU (the son of the father). But you always trace back your relationships. They could do it many generations by memory, if not in writing. But along with that, even more easy to keep alive, are old grudges and feuds, the times you were wronged, because you had to take revenge when you were wronged. That’s the GHDZA, revenge, the raid. So you would make your raid to get your revenge. They were honor bound to get revenge. You have the chivalric system of honor, revenge, etc. These things are endless. They have gone on how many hundreds of years in Ireland, in the Philippines, and in Lebanon.
440,441 So it is very possible that these Zoramites would keep a sort of aloofness or distinction among themselves. They were proud of their blood, etc. It was not a hundred percent [Zoramite]. They had joined with Lehi’s family and were good friends. The Zoramites were Nephites. They went along, but still they were aware of their ancestry, traditions, etc. Then the tendency comes to break up. After all, Alma started it when he moved out. Nephi started it when he moved out. That was the thing if you had a group with particular aspirations. We’ve seen numerous records of the fact that they had their own dialects, their own manner of speech. They could understand each other, but they were forming [other] languages. These Zoramites were people with their own traditions, and they were remarkable people—you must give them that. Notice down here some of the qualities they had. Well, first they were church builders. They went to regular religious service and gave fervent testimony and thanksgiving. They were very enterprising, very sophisticated, elegant in their dress, insisted on dress standards. They were independent and went off by themselves. The best military officers were always found [among them], we are told. That’s the one thing that threatened the Nephites when the Zoramites joined with the Lamanites, because the best military officers who knew all the Nephite tricks were with them. This greatly endangered the Nephite cause in the long war that followed. They were the best fighters. They certainly were proud and brave. They were hard working and made other people work hard, too, and they were highly successful. They had strict censorship and were very proper. They were ultra conservative, imposing a rule of righteousness on all, we find in chapter 35. They were determined, free enterprising, and had a perfectly beautiful self-image.
441 Alma 32:16 Well, what’s wrong with these people? Just that contradiction. There’s nothing wrong with praying and thanking the Lord for what you have. The pride they had was not wholly wrong. But to say one thing when your heart is really somewhere else. It was all on this vulgar display and how much they could pile up, this invidious comparison. This was what was wrong, and this is what sickened Alma. He said it made him sick. Anyway, he is talking to the other side, which he calls the other multitude. He said, you should be glad you are cast out of the synagogues; I have a surprise for you. You don’t have to go to the sacred centers in order to worship. You are compelled to be humble, and that’s good. If you’re compelled to be humble you seek repentance. This verse 16 looks like an exception: “Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble.” Is that a franchise for riches after all? It does tell us you can be humble without being poor. But remember, to seek riches is to seek power, prestige, influence and luxury, and you are not humble when you are looking for those things—if they are the things that interest you. So I must assert that I am humble if I want to feel right. If I’m too rich I have to make a big shout about being humble. I’ve heard a lot of that from rich friends. “Blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble”—that’s nice, and without talking about it, of course. HUMUS is the earth, and humility means “down to the earth.” DHN & the Egyptians call it—grinding your forehead in the dirt. You are lowering yourself as low as you can get in the dust.
441,442 Alma 32:17 “Yea, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety.” Notice, he’s beginning with the fundamentals with these people. These people are practically slaves. They want to know about the gospel. They don’t know anything. There are things they don’t understand. All the hints they’ve been taking, they’ve been taking from the other Zoramites. They were Zoramites, too, you see. This is a sermon on faith that comes here, and it’s a very important sermon on faith. He begins working from the ground up with these people. He has a new audience, his second audience, the other multitude. He says, shouldn’t we begin by showing you a sign? Because that’s the way it always begins in the Golden Legend and the early Christian legends of the fourth and fifth centuries. The apostles go about, and the only way they convert people is by signs—making a dead fish sign and things like that. They do this and it immediately converts everybody, and everybody becomes good Christians. This is routine. He says, “Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it.”
442 Alma 32:20,21 Well, are knowledge and faith enemies then? If I have something, I don’t have to believe and I don’t have to have faith. There are some people who would tell us that knowledge is the enemy of faith. Will study weaken faith? That’s thought to be so in some quarters. If you know, it’s not the same thing as only believing. “And it shall be unto every man according to this work. And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” You hope it is true. Peter in his argument with Simon Magus says [something like this]. You can imagine an island. It’s an imaginary island; you have never been there. It’s a real island though. Well, you can imagine visiting Mirror Lake, what it would be like up there. It’s imaginary for you. You have faith that it’s there. You are imagining something that’s real, but for you is only imagination. Peter says the same thing: Before I came to Caesaria I didn’t know what it was like. I had an image of what it was like, which was not correct. But it was reality, and here I am [paraphrased].
442 Alma 32:22,23 “God is merciful unto all who believe on his name; therefore he desireth, in the first place, that ye should believe, yea, even on his word.” First you believe on his name. His name is the only tie you have with him. The name is going to identify. The name is the way you “hitch in.” You can start in on this with the name and with the word. “He imparteth his word by angels unto men” and women also and “little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned.”
442 In the old Joseph Smith Lectures on Faith the question comes, “What proof do we have in the first instance that there is a God?” The answer is, human testimony and human testimony only. It’s not actually by looking at the flowers, the bees, the clouds, etc. They testify that somebody’s in charge. But what we have is people who have witnessed, the people who have been in the presence. This is a very important thing.
443 Orson F. Whitney at Eliza R. Snow’s funeral mentioned an interesting thing. You know that passage in Abraham where it says, “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones. And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers.” This was before the creation. He [Whitney] said there were just as many women in that group as there were men. He was speaking about Eliza R. Snow and why she should be one of the most gifted prophets and poets in the school—not just prophetess, but most gifted prophet. She had tremendous gifts and powers.
443 Alma 23:25 It comes down to this witnessing thing—how can you witness this and how do you know it? This is what you do. “For I do not mean that ye all of you have been compelled to humble yourselves.” Some would be humble under any circumstances at all, which means you should be humble all the time. In Alma 34:38 and Ether 12:27, humble really means what it says—humilus “in the dust,” as low as that.
443 Alma 32:27 Faith is not a perfect knowledge, we know that. But it’s not authoritarian here. You can’t command somebody to believe something; you can’t twist a person’s arm. Verse 27: “But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties ...” This is a famous passage. All I’m asking for you to do is to make an experiment. I’m not asking you to believe me. We talked about the kangaroo behind the desk there. If I come down and say, “I just saw a polar bear in Rock Canyon,” what are you supposed to say? “If you say you saw a polar bear in Rock Canyon, Brother Nibley, I believe you.” Well, that’s terrible. I don’t want to hear that. That takes all the wind out of my sails. I want you to go up and see for yourself. Or you might say, “Of course, there’s no polar bear. You didn’t see anything of the sort. No polar bears are found below a certain latitude. Polar bears just aren’t found in these regions, so you didn’t see any polar bear.” Well, I might have; there might have been one that escaped from the zoo. But you don’t know. The thing for you to do is not just take it because I say so, or not to reject it because you are being scientific and you don’t think it can be possible. Find out for yourself.
443,444 Alma 32:27,28 That’s what he is telling us here. It turns out that faith is intellectual honesty. That’s what it is. He makes this very clear a little later. He says, first you arouse your faculties, use your brains, and be willing to make an experiment. You don’t accept it when you make an experiment. You’re going to try it out to see if it is so. Do we have [cold] fusion or not? Some people have faith in it, and some people don’t have faith. The only thing to do is to try it out and see. If you can exercise even a particle of faith, just start out with that. That’s all you need. But “let this desire work in you.” Then you say, “Oh, you believe it because you want to believe it.” Of course, you’re not going to do anything if you don’t have that inducement, to want to believe in something. You say it’s wishful thinking. Of course, everything you want to believe in is wishful thinking. You never discover anything unless you hope it is there or wish it is there. Here he talks about your faith being dormant, but he says don’t fight it. If you have a desire to believe, don’t fight it, “that ye can give place for a portion of my words.” Notice that it comes by degrees; it comes by steps here. There’s more and more reason why you should believe, but no reason why you should believe it completely ever. This is the interesting thing here. It’s like planting a seed in your heart. If it’s a true seed this is what will happen. Don’t cast it out in your unbelief. Give it a chance; let it grow. It will begin to swell within your breast. Then you will feel the swelling motions. You will think something is happening here. Don’t throw it away at all. If it is growing it must be good “for it beginneth to enlarge my soul [this is recognition]; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.”
444 Alma 32:30 Each success leads to another try; it gets better and better. What do you know when you are entirely certain? (We’ll look in Klein’s book here; I brought it along.) You haven’t got the answers, and it’s not one way or the other. As long as you are in the flesh, you can always doubt it. He goes on here, if the seed grows it’s good; don’t cast it away. Because you have tried the experiment and planted the seed and it “swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good.” It’s not dead yet. If it doesn’t work just forget it. This is the whole thing. It will cause a dullness in your breast, a stupor of thought will come over you. Remember, the Lord says if you have worked out a good plan about your fusion or something else, you ask him about it. If it is right he will cause a burning in your bosom. If it is not he will cause a dullness of spirit. This is what happens. But even though you know it’s good and you are wide open for impressions, you are awaiting the next operation. It’s still always on hold, “and your faith is dormant; and this because you know, for ye know that the word hath swelled your souls.” That’s what you do know, that something is happening, but it is still dormant. You keep it on hold. You have to take further steps than that. “Your understanding doth begin to be enlightened [notice, that faith and intelligence go together here], and your mind doth begin to expand.”
444,445 Alma 32:31-34 Then you begin to see possibilities of other things. You ask the question, what will we be doing for the next thousand years? Well, until you get there you won’t know. Until your mind has expanded to a certain degree, you don’t even know what’s beyond. It’s nonexistence. The Egyptians say NT-TLWT-T, “that which is and that which is not.” I live on the “that which is” side. The “that which is not” side is just as big, except I haven’t moved into it yet. You are always pushing out the borders of your knowledge. They will retreat before you. Heraclitus reminds us that they are like dogs. They will retreat before you if you walk toward them, but if you walk away from them they will chase you. If you shrink in and limit your knowledge and understanding and are willing to settle within certain bounds, then the borders will shrink to accommodate your way of life and your self-satisfaction. But as long as you continue to push the boundaries, the boundaries will retreat before you, and you find there are no boundaries. That’s what the horizon is, you see. With the Egyptians it’s the AAKHUT, the great mystery. What’s beyond the horizon? Well, there is something. The horizon is a funny thing. It doesn’t appear to us as a mist or a vague land of nothing. There’s a sharp line against the horizon, especially in the desert. It’s just drawn with a razor. You say, well, that ends it. I can see nothing beyond that line; that’s it. You go up to it and lo and behold there’s more. There’s another nice sharp line beyond, and this goes on forever. He’s talking about this, and he says, isn’t this real, what you see? With every one of these steps, you know that this is real “for ye know that the word hath swelled your souls, and . . . that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your mind doth begin to expand.”
445 Alma 32:35 Well, if this isn’t real, nothing is real. It is something that’s discernible, this knowledge. But he says it’s not a perfect knowledge yet, of course. Verse 35: “Behold, after ye have tasted this light is your knowledge perfect? . .. Nay; neither must ye lay aside your faith [you keep exercising it all the time; you never stop] for ye have only exercised your faith to plant the seed that ye might try the experiment to know if the seed was good.” You don’t know whether it will grow or not yet. That’s what you do. We spend millions of dollars on laboratories, projects, etc. We don’t know whether they’ll work or not. If you knew whether they worked or not, you couldn’t get the money. They’d say, “Well, that’s already done; that’s no problem.” It’s the problems we are working on. “Let us nourish it with great care”—exercise control, discipline, etc., awaiting the next operation. “With much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.”
445 Alma 32:41,42 You must keep it up. If you neglect it, it will shrink to accommodate your own program. It’s not because the seed wasn’t good if that happens, but because your ground was barren and you would not nourish the tree. You have to create intelligence; you have to create faith. It’s a funny thing. You pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, so to speak. You must look forward with an eye of faith. As long as it hasn’t happened yet, you still have to look forward always with faith if you can ever pluck the fruit of the tree of life. You look forward to it with patience, and this goes on. The idea is to pluck the fruit which is most precious. It is worth the try. What else is there? There’s nothing else to look for. It is most precious and sweet, “and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst.”
447 Alma 33:1-11 Well, we have to move along here because Alma is going to get into a very interesting debate on some of these subjects. “They sent forth unto him desiring to know whether they should believe in one God.” They asked him questions, you see. Should they believe in one God? How should they plant the seed he talked about? They didn’t know anything. He was building from ground up, “or in what manner they should begin to exercise their faith.” They want practical instructions here. Well, in the first place don’t worry about being cast out of your synagogues; that’s a good thing. Do you remember the words of Zenos concerning the prayer of worship? We are going to have to pass this by. This is a delightful passage from verse 4 to the end of the chapter. It’s the story of Zenos and how he was cast out. Under certain circumstances certain things are going to happen. They happen this way in the Church many times, “for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me, because of thy Son.”
448 Alma 33:3 He reads them that story because he was the outcast, and they were the outcasts. So he reads them the story of the outcast Zenos. Zenos was an outcast prophet who lived between Moses and Elijah. About 1906 in a work called the Pseudo-Philo the writings of this Zenos were discovered. I wrote quite a bit about them in Since Cumorah. There was a prophet called Zenos. He was cast out and he wrote a long allegory on the olive tree. When Jacob gave his long story of the olive tree, he said he was quoting Zenos. He was a real person, a prophet who was lost and was found again in the early twentieth century.
448 Alma 33:17 “And now, my brethren, ye see that a second prophet of old has testified of the Son of God.” He refers to him as a second prophet. Zenos was never popular with the doctors of the schools. That’s why he was thrown out. They weren’t going to preserve that sort of thing.
448 Alma 33:18 “These are not the only ones who have spoken concerning the Son of God. Behold, he was spoken of by Moses; yea, and behold a type was raised up in the wilderness, that whosoever would look upon it might live. ... If ye could be healed by merely casting about your eyes [why] would ye rather harden your hearts in unbelief and slothfulness— too lazy to exercise a little faith?
448 Alma 33:22 Now this looks like the Essene community here, and this is a very good [summary] of the gospel in a nutshell in verse 22: “begin to believe in the Son of God, that he will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins; and that he shall rise again from the dead, which shall bring to pass the resurrection [for the rest of us], that all men shall stand before him, to be judged at the last and judgment day, according to their works.” The emphasis is on the works. There we have the gospel in a nutshell, which he is giving to these people. They have to be caught up in a hurry because they have gotten way behind. He says, if you plant this word in your heart you will find it begins to swell.
448,449 Alma 34:2 Then Amulek starts and he gives the testimony. He says, “My brethren, I think that it is impossible that ye should be ignorant of the things which have been spoken concerning the coming of Christ . . . [which were] taught unto you bountifully before your dissension from among us.” He is talking about the fashionable group of Zoramites who adopted their own religion. They got very smart and made improvements on it, and they adopted some of the neighboring cults. I’m sure that’s what they did because Alma and his friends were completely astounded when they saw the changes that had taken place, yet they were the changes that prevailed among the other people around there. There were other people around. So he says, it is impossible that ye should be ignorant of these things after you have been taught them before. You had them taught to you before you came out here with the other Zoramites, before your dissension from among us. The Zoramites had dissented from the Nephites, and before the dissension they were taught these things, as well as the other people they built the temples for.
449 Alma 34:4 “Plant the word in your hearts, that ye may try the experiment of its goodness. And we have beheld that the great question which is in your minds is whether the word be in the Son of God, or whether there shall be no Christ. ... My brother has called upon the words of Zenos, that redemption cometh through the Son of God [and Zenock and Moses]. . . . For it is expedient that an atonement should be made ... or else all mankind must unavoidably perish; yea, all are hardened; yea, all are fallen and are lost.”
449 This idea of the atonement you find everywhere because it’s a basic theme. It’s a theme of Greek tragedy, and it’s the theme of the year rites everywhere in the world. I have been catching up on periodical literature the last few weeks. It’s very interesting to see how the formulas of the year rites and the great assemblies are really being emphasized more and more today. What a great part they played, a greater part than anyone ever supposed, in the ancient societies. It was this. In a tragedy when the play begins, things have gone wrong. There is a plague or a war, something very wrong in the society, and destruction threatens. So what do you do? The king gives an opening speech, and someone must be to blame. They must explain it. They cannot stand by and see mischief wrecking things with impunity. Something must be done. Things must be set right. A price must be paid, but who is guilty? Well, we are all guilty. We cannot be probabilists because we cannot ever make payment, and we don’t know how to distribute the guilt. We all share some of it. How do you distribute guilt like that? You have to have someone pay the price. The price is demanded, and nothing short of an infinite atonement will suffice for the sins of the world. Of course, no individual or people themselves can pay that. What’s going to happen? Fixing everyone’s guilt won’t do.
449,450 We said that faith is intellectual honesty. What is that? Know thyself. Remember, that’s the creed of Delphi. Complete intellectual honesty is to know where you stand in the problem, to know your ignorance. The only way you can solve the problem is step by step unbearing and exploring your ignorance. Not what you know, but what you don’t know is what you’ve got to get after. There’s the flaw, and this is a humiliating process—a progressive unbearing of your ignorance—and most people won’t stand it. They want to get a terminal degree, and from then on they’re not going to be reminded of their ignorance. And knowing thyself is repentance. That’s the hardest part of all. You can’t separate faith and repentance. It’s self-knowledge and intellectual honesty. If you are going to solve the problem, if you really want to know whether it’s so or not, you’ll go about the right way trying to find whether it’s so or not. And you won’t draw premature conclusions the way everybody does. That’s the trouble with people who argue about the Book of Mormon. They’ll ask very good questions, and then they’ll leave the room. They don’t wait for an answer. They don’t want to risk an answer every time. The harder and better the question, the better the chance there is to show that the Book of Mormon is true, that it will stand up. They don’t wait for that; they walk out on it. That’s a good line to leave the stage with.
450 Alma 34:16 “He that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law [this is showing that faith is repentance, and the same are intelligence] of the demands of justice; therefore only unto him that has faith unto repentance is brought about th