Latest / Scripture Central / Alma 5–7 | Scripture Study Insights with Tyler Griffin | A Come Follow Me Resource

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Alma 5–7 | Scripture Study Insights with Tyler Griffin | A Come Follow Me Resource · Scripture Central

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  Hello there, my name is Tyler Griffin.
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  And I'm Kevin Prince. And this is Scripture Study
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  insights by Scripture Central today, ALMA Chapters 5-6 and
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  seven. And I'm excited to welcome Kevin
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  to join me today. Kevin is the Chief Technology
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  Officer here at Scripture Central, working on all kinds of
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  fun, fun projects in that role. Yeah, there's some great things
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  that are happening here, some apps that we're creating that
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  we're going to talk about today. Yeah, we're going to give you a
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  kind of an extended look at one of the, the amazing apps that
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  Kevin and his team have produced called the Gospel Learning App.
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  And we'll, we'll show you how it could enhance your, your
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  scripture study efforts. So looking forward to that as we
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  dive in to these chapters. There's there's a perspective we
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  wanted to start with, and I'll put it in a little, a little
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  table of sorts here. What you have is Alma is going
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  to teach in four different cities.
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  So you're going to have cities that are basically mostly
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  members of the church. You're going to have two cities
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  that are mostly not members of the church.
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  And you have some people who do really well and who are who are
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  really successful in, in what's going on in life.
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  And you have those who are really struggling.
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  They're they're not doing well. And watch what happens.
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  Elma is going to begin his missionary journey in the city
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  of Zarahemla. This is the city that is the
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  capital of the nation, but it's also the center part of the
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  church. And they're struggling.
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  And so he's going to teach them in a way that is that is a
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  little bit different than these others.
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  Leaving Zarahemla, he's going to go to the land of Gideon.
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  Gideon, mostly members of the church.
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  He arrives there and finds out, wow, they're doing very, very
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  well. And so he gives them a different
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  sort of a message, and that's in Chapter 7.
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  This one's in chapter 5. Then he goes to Milek where he
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  has incredible success, but Mormon only gives you 3 verses
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  in chapter 8, three or four verses total, where a whole
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  bunch of people who weren't members of the church, they do
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  very well. They come and they get baptized.
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  And then he leaves and goes to Ammonihah in chapters 8 through
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  14, where you've got people mostly not in the church who are
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  really struggling. And we get a completely
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  different set of teachings and experiences and struggles, quite
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  frankly, with Alma and where we meet Amalek.
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  And it's just beautiful to see how the Lord uses his prophet to
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  teach all of his children, regardless of what's going on in
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  their life. So one of the beautiful things
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  about the Gospel Learning app that we discussed is there are
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  tons and tons of of videos and content that meet everybody's
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  need no matter where they are. Kind of like Tyler has expressed
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  here, if you are doing well in the church and your life is
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  going OK, there's some things that can amplify and build your
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  faith. But at the same time, if you're
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  kind of like in the city of Zarahemlin, you're you're
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  struggling. There are some great videos from
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  for you there too. In fact, a lot of the videos
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  that are in the app are meant to be for people who are struggling
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  or on that need help with some of the sensitive topics or
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  things that we're struggling with in the church today.
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  At the same time, if you are not in the church or not of our
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  faith, there's some great videos and content out there that could
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  help everybody no matter what it is.
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  There are in fact about 5 or 6000 videos that are being from
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  all of the best scholars, teachers, prophets, apostles
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  that are all there and they're indexed on and the index is
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  about 6 times bigger than the topical guide in the Bible.
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  And so you can search on anything you want and find
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  videos from the very best teachers that can teach you.
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  Thank you, Kevin. That's awesome.
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  The the the that resource is is incredible what you've prepared.
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  So now as we look at this overview, as Kevin already
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  mentioned it, it's amazing to see how it doesn't matter what
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  you're experiencing or what you're going through.
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  God loves you and he has provided teachings and prophetic
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  guidance and scriptures to shore up your faith and to help you
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  move forward. So while the technique might
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  shift depending on the audience, the underlying message is the
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  same, the underlying focus and the overlaying doctrines,
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  they're the same. And they're all rooted in the
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  Lord Jesus Christ and his everlasting gospel.
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  And it's beautiful as we now dive into chapter 5 and watch
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  that unfold as we go with Elma. He left the judgment seat last
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  week in Chapter 4, now devoting all of his time, energy and
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  effort to building up the faith of these people in the capital
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  city. And by the way, that's a good
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  place to start. Cleanse the inner vessel first
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  before you start going to the outlying regions of your life.
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  So if you look at the lands of the Nephites there in Zarahemla,
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  as this is a symbolic overlay for our life, you can say I want
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  to start with the heart. What is the capital city of My
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  Life, of my Soul and Zarahemla? Is that chapter here, Alma 5,
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  where you get asked more questions than any other chapter
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  of scripture that exists? This is an amazing chapter.
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  I love Kevin How how you referred to it as the midterm.
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  Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you, you know, from a
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  schooling perspective, if you, you know, you can think of the
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  final exam and in the final exam, that's it.
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  That's what your grade is going to be based on in, in very large
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  measure. But there's a midterm that you
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  have too, which is I think designed to help you prepare for
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  the final. And so this feels like ML55
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  feels like the midterm exam, the questions that you really know
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  are going to be on the final exam.
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  And these are questions of the heart and of the soul and of
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  your character. And he's asking these questions
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  to help us be prepared for that final exam.
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  I love this perspective because so often, if we're not careful,
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  we'll live our life in fear of that final exam, which stifles
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  my ability to pass the daily quizzes or to work on the daily
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  assignments, which are not there to punish us.
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  They're there to teach us to shape and mold us and to soften
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  us and to prepare us to become those kinds of people so that by
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  the time you get to the final exam, you don't have to be
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  afraid. And like you're saying, you
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  know, so many people are fearful of that final exam.
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  And I think part of that is what's going to be on it.
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  What? Who do I need to be?
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  What do I need to be? He lays it out perfectly.
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  He's, he's given us the CHEAT SHEET for how to prepare for
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  that final exam when the stakes aren't quite as high on that
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  day. When I can, I can work on these
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  things. Another way to look at at Alma
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  Chapter 5, if, if exams and and tests make you uncomfortable,
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  would be to say it's simply a, a heart check.
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  It's, it's to get a spiritual pulse.
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  Here we are coming, coming into this beginning part of Alma and
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  it's a moment to stop and to reflect how am I really doing?
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  Not, not how does the world think I'm doing?
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  Not how does anybody else perceive me as how I'm doing,
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  but this is a moment to connect with the Savior, to connect with
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  the Lord, and to very meekly and humbly say I want to sit down
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  and have a personal interview with thee.
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  With Alma being the one who's delivering those questions,
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  which is not dissimilar to when we go and sit with a Bishop or a
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  stake president and have an interview.
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  It's not about what the stake president or the Bishop think
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  they're sitting in symbolically as a placeholder for the Lord
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  asking us these questions on a temple recommend interviewer,
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  another worthiness interview. And so it's that it's that
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  moment to pause and reflect and say, how am I really doing?
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  And to be able to engage with these questions that come along
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  because there's so many of them that are that are powerful.
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  It's almost like, you know, Christ has his Sermon on the
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  Mount and they're all questions that you can only ask and answer
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  for yourself. This is Alma's Sermon on the
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  Mount. Beautiful so let's dive in.
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  So in Elma chapter five, he starts and it says that he began
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  to deliver the word of God unto the people first in the land of
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  Zarahemel and from thence throughout all the land again.
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  Let's cleanse the inner vessel before we start worrying about
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  the the other parts of the land. And he he declares his authority
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  in verse three, the power and the authority from God to do
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  these things. Again, it's a it's a reminder
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  that if, if Alma were here today, I don't think he would
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  say I'm here on my own authority.
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  Nobody, nobody can accomplish what God needs us to accomplish.
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  Cut off from God's power. That is what his his authority
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  and his power are priesthood. And it's given to all of his
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  children to function in their callings, in their families that
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  that priesthood power and authority to be able to do God's
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  work in God's way. So you jump down to verse five,
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  and he introduces this reminder to the people.
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  Behold, they were brought into bondage by the hands of the
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  Lamanites. He's Speaking of his father's
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  group of people at the waters of Mormon back in King Noah's time.
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  Yeah, I sent you. They were in captivity.
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  And again, the Lord did deliver them out of bondage by the power
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  of His word, and we were brought into this land.
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  And here we began to establish the Church of God throughout
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  this land also. I love that before he gets into
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  any questions, before he gets into any part of his sermon,
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  he's reminding them of God's goodness of where we would be if
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  God hadn't intervened. So now let's jump into verse
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  six. And now behold, I say unto you,
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  my brethren, you that belong to this church, have you
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  sufficiently retained in remembrance the captivity of
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  your father's? That's an interesting first
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  question of many. Have you remembered the
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  captivity of your father's? And some of you may be sitting
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  here watching this thinking, well, my father's weren't in
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  captivity. And if you recognize the fact
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  that the history of the the dispensations of the gospel
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  throughout time, from Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses,
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  Jesus Christ's dispensation, Joseph Smith opening the 7th and
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  last dispensation, our ancestors through many, many, many parts
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  of the earth's history have found themselves in captivity.
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  And I love the fact that Alma is starting his speech to people
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  who are struggling in the church with a look back in time.
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  So what I love about this when we think about looking
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  backwards, a lot of my family comes has a church history
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  background from early church history.
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  And to me bondage many times feels like spiritual bondage
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  that we had before we had the gospel of Jesus Christ in our
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  life. So from that standpoint, we are
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  we are kind of getting being pulled out of bondage through
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  the gospel. So I love that.
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  So I think that in many ways you know that this is more recent
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  from a bondage standpoint than thinking back to Moses time or
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  something like that. Another thing I really love
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  about Alma 5 because this is the questions chapter, more
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  questions in this chapter than any other question chapter in in
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  all of Scripture from what I understand.
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  And what I really like about this is that every single
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  question either will be a question of looking backward or
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  will be a question of looking inward or be a question of
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  looking forward. And that's a big deal because we
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  want, God wants us to look backward to understand where we
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  came from, have gratitude for his blessings and love in our
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  life, looking inward to be able to change and become like our
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  Savior. And then looking forward with
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  not just a direction and and how to get there, but with hope.
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  I love that Kevin. And honestly, it's, it's this
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  idea of these two parts of an arrow that is bidirectional.
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  We have this part and we have this part.
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  So this is what we get from the Lord, and this is what the Lord
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  gets from us and what we give to other people.
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  And this perspective that you've just shared, it helps us
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  recognize God's hand. What has he done for us, for our
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  fathers, our our ancestors, for our families in the past?
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  What is he doing for us in the present?
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  So this era was really focused on having eyes to see, to
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  recognize God's goodness, to recognize his miracles, his
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  mercy, and His grace, which doesn't end there.
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  I love the fact that many of these questions point us now
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  forward not just to seeing the Lord, but seeing ourselves more
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  the way the Lord sees us as instruments in His hands to be
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  able to carry forth His work. And these questions are going to
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  be helping us on both ends of that bidirectional arrow.
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  Beautiful. So as he finishes verse six, it
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  says, yeah, here's question #2 have you sufficiently retained
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  in remembrance His mercy and long-suffering towards them?
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  And now #3 and moreover, have you sufficiently retained in
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  remembrance that he has delivered their souls from hell?
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  So in all these these first three questions, we're looking
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  backward. We're trying to gain that
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  perspective, which any backward view is going to empower our
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  agency in the present to act in the me here now to prepare me
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  for those opportunities that God will bring into my life in the
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  future. It's it's this beautiful,
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  beautiful opportunity for us to step out of ourselves a little
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  bit, step out of our our daily grind with our mortal blinders
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  on and to be able to see our life more similarly to the way
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  God sees us. And he's not bound by time past,
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  present and future like we are. So that's really what's going on
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  here. That brings us to verse 7.
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  Behold, he changed their hearts. Yeah, he awakened them out of a
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  deep sleep and they awoke unto God.
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  So notice they, they go to sleep as a natural man or natural
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  woman. And when they're in that sleep,
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  they're changed, they have new hearts.
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  And when they awake, they awaken unto God.
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  They have a new life. So again, back to the the grid
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  at the beginning, it even if you're struggling deeply and
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  terribly, there's there's hope for God helping to make this
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  change. You and I can't make the change.
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  And even says how that change happens.
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  Behold, they were in the midst of darkness.
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  Nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the
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  everlasting Word. It's the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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  It's the word. It's it's this very thing, the
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  scriptures and the gospel that illuminates and wakes us up.
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  Which is one of the reasons this verse was one of the reasons I
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  wanted to build the Gospel Learning app in the 1st place
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  was to be able to better share the gospel of Jesus Christ with
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  the world. So you you notice as he shifts
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  from the the everlasting chains of destruction that await them,
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  the chains of hell and bottom of verse seven, he then says in
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  verse nine again I ask, were the bands of death broken in the
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  chains of hell which encircled them about?
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  Were they loosed? It's kind of a rhetorical
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  question. I say unto you, Yay.
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  So this is one of the questions that he answers for them.
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  They were loosed and their souls did expand and they did sing
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  redeeming love. And I say unto you that they are
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  saved. Speaking of that generation that
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  came right before him, Alma's father, and and those people.
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  And then he asked this really important question.
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  And now I ask of you, on what conditions are they saved?
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  Yeah. What grounds had they to hope
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  for salvation? What is the cause of their being
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  loosed from the bands of death? Yeah.
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  And also the chains of hell. Are you noticing the pattern
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  here, Alma, with these people in the church who are struggling in
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  their faith? He's not lecturing them in this
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  instance. He's not telling them what to do
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  at this point. That that will come.
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  He's, he's trying to activate their agency.
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  He's trying to get them to open their hearts to, to ponder
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  deeply these questions so that they'll respond appropriately.
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  So he could have, instead of asking questions in verse 10, he
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  could have just told them on what conditions they were saved.
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  He could have told them what grounds they had to have hope.
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  He could have told them how the bands of death in the chains of
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  hell were loosed. He didn't do that.
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  Instead, he's planting seeds kind of in the parable of the
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  sower. He's he's casting out these
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  seeds to the people, hoping that they'll provide a place for
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  those seeds to germinate and grow and produce fruit.
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  Which which now brings us to verse 11.
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  Behold, I can tell you, did not my father Elma believe in the
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  words which were delivered by the mouth of the Beneda?
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  Do you notice the parallel? My dad was a wicked priest of
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  King Noah. He was struggling as much as
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  anyone's, struggled in, in a spiritual sense.
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  And Abinadai came and planted some seeds and they grew in my
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  father's heart. And he was changed by God
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  through this, the the teachings of this prophet Abinadai.
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  And now here's Alma the Younger, the beneficiary of Abinadai's
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  teachings to his Father all those years ago.
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  And now he's doing the same thing as a Benedi, which in
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  essence is doing the same thing as what Jesus Christ models
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  throughout his entire life. They're just, they're symbolic
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  placeholders for the Savior Himself sharing this glorious
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  message. You know what I love about this
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  too is I love in scripture where you see prophets learning from
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  other prophets just like we're supposed to be learning from
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  from prophets. We have an example here where
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  Alma the younger is saying, I learned from my father, who
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  learned from a Bennett I and then later in this chapter we're
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  going to see him talk about faith, hope and charity, which
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  are topics and and themes that Moroni and Mormon really speak
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  to at the end of. So you have this chain right
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  here in Alma 5, this chain of prophets learning from prophets.
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  But that means we have to take the time to engage with the
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  words of prophets, both living and past.
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  If we don't know what they said, if we, if we don't see their
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  life examples, it's pretty hard to to have those seeds grow if
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  we don't even allow those seeds, those prophetic seeds to be
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  planted in our heart. So I love verse 12.
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  It says according to his faith, there was a mighty change
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  wrought in his heart. Behold, I send to you that this
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  is all true. Which is how, how do we, you
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  know, how do we have change in our heart?
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  It's, you know, we talk about a lot of things, but he's saying
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  we have to have faith. Faith makes the change in our
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  heart. Absolutely.
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  So Now verse 13, behold, He preached the word unto your
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  Father's, and a mighty change was also wrought in their
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  hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust
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  in the true and living God. And behold, they were faithful
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  until the end. Therefore they were saved.
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  So if you notice what just happened there, He started in
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  verse 10 with the question on what condition are they saved,
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  followed by a couple of other questions having to do with
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  their their mighty change. He allows them to think about
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  that, formulate some of their own thinking 1st and then he
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  gives them his perspective. And it's all rooted in finding
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  ways to amplify the prophetic voice.
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  God loves his prophets. He speaks to people through his
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  prophets and he upholds their words.
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  And here Alma isn't just quoting the prophets.
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  He's he's amplifying their words and he's holding them up and
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  using them in the present to best help the people who are
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  struggling right there in Zarahemmah in front of him on
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  that day. And thanks to Mormon including
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  this of of all the things that he left out, he chose to include
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  Alma 5, which I'm so grateful for.
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  It's one of my it's on the shortest of shortness of
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  favorite chapters all time in the Scriptures because now watch
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  what he does. These are three of my favorite
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  questions in the entire set of of interview questions verse 14
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  And now behold, I ask you, ask of you, my brethren of the
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  church, have ye spiritually been born of God?
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  Have ye received his image in your countenances?
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  Have you experienced this mighty change in your hearts?
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  There's a lot of crossover between those three questions as
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  far as what he's trying to get at.
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  I love the fact that if if we're careful, we can get a little bit
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  beneath the surface of the Scripture page here and
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  recognize that you don't have to have these questions be either
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  true or false, either yes or no. Those are two extreme answers.
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  It can actually be on a scale. You can you can rethink these
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  questions to this degree where you say to what degree have I
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  been spiritually born of God? How much have I received his
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  image in my countenance? To what degree have I
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  experienced this mighty change in your hearts?
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  Which means it's not an either or.
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  It's a process. It's not an event.
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  This is going to happen over time.
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  And there may be times you may be going through one right now
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  where you're saying it's I'm struggling.
• 24:21
  I'm I'm at a three out of a 10 on feeling like I've I've been
• 24:26
  born of God. Or you might be saying, wow, I'm
• 24:29
  I'm doing great. I'm at 9.
• 24:31
  I'm I'm everything's wonderful, but life has these ups and
• 24:36
  downs. Like you said, Tyler, you know,
• 24:39
  you really kind of use this as self reflection and
• 24:42
  introspection, but sometimes we can be pretty hard on ourselves
• 24:46
  too as we read these these questions.
• 24:49
  But you know, I love this because when it says you've been
• 24:51
  spiritually been born of God, have you received his image in
• 24:54
  your countenance? If you were to ask yourself, you
• 24:56
  know, who do I know in my life in my ward that really expresses
• 25:02
  Christ countenance? I bet we all immediately have
• 25:05
  people that we think about that that jump out at us as to, Oh my
• 25:09
  gosh, that person, that individual really reflects the
• 25:12
  light of Christ, really has that, that image.
• 25:15
  And I think sometimes it's hard for us to look at ourselves and
• 25:17
  know, but it's easy to do that. And then we can emulate those
• 25:20
  people, what they do in their life, which is what I really
• 25:23
  love about this verse. So now he gives us a series of
• 25:29
  of what you mentioned, Kevin, these forward-looking questions
• 25:34
  that, that again, whether it's a backward looking or a
• 25:38
  forward-looking question, it's intended to help us in the
• 25:44
  present to be able to act in greater faith.
• 25:48
  So now some forward-looking questions.
• 25:51
  Verse 16, I say unto you, Can you imagine to yourselves that
• 25:54
  you hear the voice of the Lord saying unto you, and that day
• 25:58
  come unto me, blessed for behold, your works have been the
• 26:01
  works of righteousness upon the face of the earth.
• 26:03
  There's a lot packed into one question there.
• 26:05
  Can you imagine God saying this to you?
• 26:08
  This is a powerful teaching technique that Elma's using this
• 26:13
  asking people to use their creativity, their imagination,
• 26:18
  but now they're imagining themselves standing before God.
• 26:22
  I'm glad you read verse 16 because verse 17 probably more
• 26:25
  applies to me, which says or do you imagine to yourselves that
• 26:29
  you can lie into the Lord in that day and say Lord, our works
• 26:32
  have been righteous works upon the face of the earth and that
• 26:35
  he will save you All these forward-looking statements that
• 26:39
  are really important. And then verse 18 or otherwise,
• 26:42
  Can you imagine yourselves brought before the tribunal of
• 26:44
  God with your souls filled with guilt and remorse, having a
• 26:48
  remembrance of all your guilt? Yeah, a perfect remembrance of
• 26:51
  all your wickedness. Yeah, your remembrance, you've
• 26:53
  said it defines the commandments of God.
• 26:56
  He's again back to your idea of midterm versus final exam.
• 27:00
  This is a good time to be asking yourself those questions because
• 27:03
  it isn't the final exam. There's still time.
• 27:05
  There's still opportunity to make those changes that are
• 27:08
  needed so that in verse 19 you can look up to God with a pure
• 27:13
  heart and clean hands. I love this perspective that
• 27:17
  Alma's not teaching the people you should never mess up.
• 27:21
  You should always be perfect. He's acknowledging the fact that
• 27:25
  we're guilty as charged on every one of these verses.
• 27:29
  Check, check, check, check, check.
• 27:31
  We know how to check those boxes.
• 27:32
  We're good at that. We all do it.
• 27:35
  But his point is there's hope through our Redeemer.
• 27:40
  There's hope only in and through Jesus Christ.
• 27:43
  So there is where salvation comes.
• 27:46
  And one of my favorite parts in this chapter is verse 19 where
• 27:50
  it says, I say unto you, can you look up having the image of God
• 27:55
  graven upon your countenances? I love that word graven because
• 27:58
  look, this is a people that to make something last, it had to
• 28:02
  be graven, typically in a plate in a metal.
• 28:07
  And things that were graven would never go away.
• 28:10
  Things were graven lasted. And that's the word he uses
• 28:13
  here, because we need to have, we need to have these things
• 28:16
  graven upon our countenances. It's beautiful things that the
• 28:20
  devil can't take away or wipe away.
• 28:24
  Verse 20 I said, can you think of being saved when you have
• 28:26
  yielded yourselves to become subjects to the devil?
• 28:28
  If you're doing that, you're not engraving the the Lord's image
• 28:32
  on your countenance or on your heart.
• 28:34
  So instead of now doing these forward-looking to, to remind me
• 28:40
  of my fallen nature of of my, my carnal, central and devilish
• 28:44
  aspects and tendencies, he now shifts to more case.
• 28:49
  So what is the solution? Verse 21 I say unto you, You
• 28:53
  will know it that day, that you cannot be saved, for there can
• 28:56
  no man be saved except his garments are washed white.
• 29:01
  Yet His garments must be purified until they are cleansed
• 29:04
  from all, stained through the blood of Him of whom it has been
• 29:08
  spoken by our fathers who should come to redeem His people from
• 29:10
  their sins. So now we come to Jesus Christ
• 29:14
  as that solution. And it's the blood of Christ.
• 29:16
  It's the redemption of Christ that he offers us through his
• 29:18
  infinite atonement. So for the sake of time, you can
• 29:21
  keep reading through verse after verse after verse loaded with
• 29:25
  these good questions, whether they're backward, inward, or
• 29:28
  forward-looking questions. But keep in mind the perspective
• 29:32
  is it's not to make you feel guilty.
• 29:34
  It's not to make you feel like like you're never going to be
• 29:39
  good enough. It's intended to help godly
• 29:43
  sorrow, bring us to that level of meekness and humility where
• 29:48
  we increase our faith in Christ to the point where we now turn
• 29:53
  to him in in more more power than ever before.
• 29:57
  Now if you jump down to verse 26, he says, now, behold, I say
• 30:02
  unto you, my brethren, if you have experienced a change of
• 30:05
  heart and if you have felt to sing the song of redeeming love,
• 30:11
  I would ask, can you feel So now there are many of you watching
• 30:17
  or listening who probably think to yourself, wow, back when I
• 30:22
  was on that mission or back in that part of my life or back
• 30:25
  when I was experiencing this, life was so good and and I was I
• 30:30
  was moving forward with such such faith on the covenant path.
• 30:34
  But I've been struggling lately and and verse 26 is such a
• 30:39
  beautiful question to say, can you feel so now?
• 30:45
  And the message here, the underlying message here is if
• 30:47
  you can't, there's a reason why that's probably happened.
• 30:54
  And there are things you can do to now move forward on that
• 30:58
  covenant pass. So as you turn the page to to
• 31:01
  verse 27, these are these are some powerful questions.
• 31:05
  I I love some of these these are great Nuggets.
• 31:09
  Verse 27, you know, have you walked keeping yourself
• 31:11
  blameless before God. Could you say if you were called
• 31:15
  to die at this time within yourselves that you have been
• 31:18
  sufficiently humble. I mean, you know, back to the
• 31:22
  midterm and final exam. If you were called to die at
• 31:24
  this time. But I love how he says here,
• 31:26
  have you been sufficiently humble again, in the in the
• 31:29
  interest of time, jumping down to 28, are you stripped with
• 31:33
  pride? Look at those these terms.
• 31:35
  And then in, in 29, have you been stripped of envy?
• 31:38
  You think of in terms of pride and envy.
• 31:41
  You know, pride is me thinking I'm better than other people.
• 31:45
  And envy is me thinking other people might be better.
• 31:48
  And I want what they have. I mean, they're the perfect
• 31:51
  dichotomy of of these these things.
• 31:53
  And he's teaching these these principles and, and how to stay
• 31:56
  centered in our lives and with a focus on Christ.
• 31:59
  I love that neither one of those is going to motivate a person or
• 32:04
  an individual to move forward on the covenant path or to strive
• 32:06
  to become more like God because we're not focused on God with
• 32:10
  pride and envy, we're focused on other people.
• 32:13
  When we turn our gaze heavenward, when we look to God,
• 32:18
  when we look at the Saviour, Jesus Christ's perfect example,
• 32:22
  when we look to his prophets, there's no pride, there's no
• 32:26
  envy. There's just inner commitment to
• 32:30
  strive to try a little harder, to be a little better.
• 32:34
  A phrase that that President Hinckley and artist Cap used to
• 32:37
  use all the time. I love that.
• 32:39
  Try a little harder to be a little better.
• 32:41
  We can all do that. Especially if we are humble,
• 32:44
  which is how he begins that section.
• 32:46
  That's right. And then in verse 30 he adds one
• 32:49
  more. Is there one among you that does
• 32:52
  make a mock of his brother or that he puts upon him
• 32:55
  persecutions again because of pride or envy?
• 32:59
  If you now persecute another individual, another child of
• 33:04
  God, if you've done it unto one of the least of these, my
• 33:06
  brethren, you've done it unto me.
• 33:08
  And that applies with both good things, good deeds and
• 33:13
  persecutions. And let's jump down to verse 43.
• 33:17
  He says, And now my brethren, I would that you should hear me,
• 33:22
  for I speak in the energy of my soul.
• 33:24
  For behold, I've spoken unto you plainly that you cannot err or
• 33:27
  have spoken according to the commandments of God.
• 33:31
  So he's clarifying. Look, this is I'm not speaking
• 33:34
  in code. This is, there's no hidden
• 33:36
  agenda here. This isn't a difficult puzzle
• 33:40
  you have to solve. I'm speaking very plainly.
• 33:42
  For I am called to speak after this manner according to the
• 33:45
  holy word of God, which is in Christ Jesus.
• 33:47
  Yeah. I'm commanded to stand and
• 33:49
  testify unto these people the things which have been spoken by
• 33:52
  our fathers concerning the things which are to come.
• 33:55
  That is what our prophet Sears and revelators today are
• 33:58
  commissioned by the Lord to do. They are not commanded to go to
• 34:02
  the podium and to be able to try to win people's hearts to them
• 34:06
  or to build up their Kingdom. They're on his errand and his
• 34:11
  errand alone. They are accountable to him, not
• 34:14
  to us. They're going to represent him
• 34:18
  to us. And they also plead to heaven in
• 34:23
  behalf of us, of course, as part of their prophetic role.
• 34:27
  So to summarize there, if a leader, whether it's a Relief
• 34:31
  Society president or whether it's a Sunday school teacher
• 34:36
  who's been called to teach that class, or the prophet himself is
• 34:40
  teaching something, teaching a truth from the Scriptures or
• 34:44
  from the gospel, and it's hard to hear, hard to bear.
• 34:48
  Instead of being frustrated with that individual, what if we
• 34:52
  turned heavenward and pled for God to bless us with the
• 34:57
  inspiration that he gave to that individual in that setting to
• 35:03
  help us understand? And now we shift gears In verse
• 35:06
  4045, he says, and this is not all.
• 35:10
  Do you not suppose that I know of these things myself?
• 35:13
  Behold, I testify unto you that I do know that these things
• 35:17
  where I have spoken are true, and how do you suppose that I
• 35:21
  know of their surety? Now keep in mind this is coming
• 35:24
  from Elma the Younger, the guy who had a pretty rebellious past
• 35:28
  and saw an Angel who changed the whole course of his life.
• 35:33
  Heavenly manifestation made the ground shake.
• 35:36
  Amazing. And he's saying, how do you
• 35:39
  suppose that I know these things are true?
• 35:41
  It's not from that. It's not from being in a coma
• 35:43
  for three days. It's he says I have fasted and
• 35:47
  prayed many days that I might know these things of myself, and
• 35:51
  now I do know of myself that they are true, for the Lord God
• 35:56
  hath made them manifest unto me by His Holy Spirit.
• 36:00
  If we want revelation in our lives, it gives us the key right
• 36:03
  here. I have fasted and prayed many
• 36:05
  days not getting an Angel. This this testimony building,
• 36:09
  this conversion establishing it's it's really not an event,
• 36:15
  is it? It's it's this is a process.
• 36:18
  Alma had an amazing event with an Angel and he doesn't even
• 36:21
  mention it as part of the reason why he knows with a surety.
• 36:26
  Brothers and sisters, remember that if you're one of those
• 36:30
  sitting in a in a fastened testimony meeting or in a lesson
• 36:34
  and you're feeling discouraged because you're hearing other
• 36:36
  people say things like I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, or I
• 36:40
  know with every fibre of my being.
• 36:42
  Some of these phrases we've used in the church and they're
• 36:45
  speaking with such certainty. And you're, you're sitting there
• 36:49
  feeling a, a sense of, of inadequacy, saying I, I've never
• 36:54
  had those kinds of experiences and I don't know the way they
• 36:58
  know. Keep in mind, it's a gift of the
• 37:02
  Spirit to be able to believe, to be able to believe the words of
• 37:09
  those who know, especially the prophets and of the Lord himself
• 37:13
  in in the scriptures. Even if you can't stand at a
• 37:17
  podium and say, I know there's something powerful about being
• 37:22
  able to stand at a podium and say I believe or I choose to
• 37:29
  believe in whatever, whatever it is that you want to say this is,
• 37:35
  this is a powerful reminder that we're in a process.
• 37:40
  We're not at that final exam yet.
• 37:42
  We haven't crossed the finish line.
• 37:44
  There's time and God is patient with us.
• 37:48
  And yet I'm not always patient with him.
• 37:52
  He has much more long-suffering and tender kindness over time
• 37:57
  than I have with my loved ones and my colleagues and
• 38:01
  associates, and especially more than I have with that guy
• 38:04
  looking at me in the mirror every day.
• 38:07
  I want to be more like Jesus. I'm part of becoming more like
• 38:10
  Jesus, is becoming more more comfortable in that covenant
• 38:16
  connection with him. That takes time that I have to
• 38:20
  read my scriptures every day. I have to pray constantly.
• 38:24
  I have to go to church to worship these connecting points
• 38:28
  with heaven and with loved ones. I go to the temple to connect
• 38:32
  with God, and I do it again and again and again, because Jesus
• 38:38
  showed us what it's like to do good things over and over and
• 38:43
  over again. I want to be more like Him.
• 38:46
  So to conclude that, look at verse 48.
• 38:48
  I say unto you that I know of myself that whatever whatsoever
• 38:51
  I shall say unto you concerning that which is to come is true,
• 38:56
  that that prophetic testimony is, is beautiful.
• 39:00
  And I say unto you that I know that Jesus Christ shall come.
• 39:05
  Yeah, the Son, the only begotten of the Father.
• 39:08
  Notice all of these titles and roles and attributes and
• 39:14
  descriptors of Jesus Christ, the man with more than just many
• 39:18
  names, the man with, with all of these perfected characteristics,
• 39:23
  He is full of grace and mercy and truth.
• 39:27
  And behold, it is he that cometh to take away the sins of the
• 39:30
  world. Yeah, the sins of every man.
• 39:33
  And we would add woman and child who steadfastly believeth on his
• 39:38
  name. And that includes me, that
• 39:42
  includes you, that includes all of us.
• 39:44
  That I can't take away my own sins.
• 39:48
  I can't do it, but He can, and he will if we meet that
• 39:55
  condition, if we steadfastly believe on his name.
• 39:59
  One of the keys I love about verse 48, Tyler is where is what
• 40:03
  he's basing this on. He goes, I shall say unto you,
• 40:07
  concerning that which is to come is true.
• 40:10
  He's basing his belief and what he's calling his knowledge that
• 40:14
  he knows on truth, but a truth of Christ's coming.
• 40:18
  Christ hadn't come yet. And yet he knew it to be true.
• 40:22
  I think the lesson here, one of the ones I take from this is we
• 40:26
  need to base our testimonies on truth.
• 40:30
  And when we base it on truth, we are going to that's the firm
• 40:33
  foundation that we can go with. And I love what you're you're
• 40:37
  saying about, you know, the this is how we can make it through
• 40:40
  dark times. This is the test of our faith
• 40:43
  and how we do it because so often This is why we're here,
• 40:47
  Is, is going through these trials.
• 40:49
  And how are we going to stay true and faithful when we go
• 40:52
  through trials? Yeah, like you're saying, it's
• 40:54
  easy to stay true and faithful. We're on the mountain peak when
• 40:56
  everything's going easy. It's easy to show up to the
• 40:58
  temple and church. But when things are hard, when
• 41:01
  problems are happening in our families, when problems are
• 41:03
  happening at work, when we're struggling, are we still staying
• 41:07
  true and faithful? We're doing all of those good
• 41:09
  things. And one of the things I would
• 41:10
  love to see if you're open to it is, you know, there's a comment
• 41:14
  section down below here in YouTube, if you're watching it
• 41:18
  on YouTube and you can go down to the comment section.
• 41:21
  I would love to read people what they have done in order to stay
• 41:26
  true and faithful, to stay strong in those valleys of of
• 41:31
  depression and those dark times and those trials and those
• 41:34
  struggles. What they've done to stay true
• 41:36
  and faithful, that might help other people, you know, what if
• 41:41
  they are going through something right now that they can maybe
• 41:44
  learn something from it? I love that Kevin.
• 41:47
  So now we shift into the the invitation.
• 41:53
  So he's given a whole bunch of of questions and his own
• 41:57
  experience. And then look at verse fifty.
• 41:59
  Yeah. Thus saith the Spirit.
• 42:01
  Repent all the ends of the earth, for the Kingdom of heaven
• 42:04
  is soon at hand. Yeah.
• 42:06
  The Son of God cometh in his glory and his might, majesty,
• 42:09
  power and dominion. You keep seeing the attributes
• 42:11
  of God throughout Alma's, Alma's teaching here.
• 42:16
  Alma has experienced every single one of these attributes
• 42:20
  back in verse 48, grace, mercy, truth.
• 42:23
  He's experienced in verse 50, God's glory, his might, His
• 42:26
  Majesty, his power, his dominion to a small degree, as much as
• 42:30
  you can in a, in a mortal context.
• 42:33
  And I love that he says, behold, the glory of the King of all the
• 42:37
  earth, and also the King of heaven shall very soon shine
• 42:40
  forth among the children of men. He's bearing an absolute
• 42:44
  testimony and a witness, a prophetic witness.
• 42:47
  And now the people have the decision.
• 42:49
  They have a choice to make. Am I going to exercise faith in
• 42:53
  him? Am I going to believe the words
• 42:55
  of this prophet, or am I going to reject them?
• 42:57
  And you'll notice that whatever I decide to do doesn't change
• 43:04
  the reality. It doesn't change the truth.
• 43:07
  It doesn't change the statements made by the prophet or the
• 43:10
  teachings brought forth by the prophet.
• 43:13
  It only changes me. And if I choose to respond like
• 43:17
  the people in Amaniah are going to respond next week, then
• 43:24
  that's not going to end Will. But if I choose to respond as
• 43:27
  the people in Milic or Gideon or some of the Saints in Zarahemla,
• 43:31
  then that's a beautiful opportunity to continue to press
• 43:35
  forward on that covenant path. And one of the things I love
• 43:37
  about this is we have to remember this is just after Alma
• 43:41
  gave up the judgement seat. And in a judgement seat, you can
• 43:45
  force people to do things. Pass laws and throw them in
• 43:48
  prison if they don't keep them. Right.
• 43:49
  And here he has given that up to influence people to use their
• 43:54
  agency properly. And here is a key for parents,
• 43:58
  because parents are in both roles too.
• 44:00
  They can lay down laws, they can enforce, they can do things, or
• 44:04
  you can teach the gospel, encourage them to use the agency
• 44:08
  properly and grow and do it. So this is a great learning
• 44:11
  experience for parents to kind of learn from Alma.
• 44:14
  It's a beautiful insight and now there some some additional
• 44:20
  teachings here and and some additional questions beautiful
• 44:23
  ones in 535455 and you jump down to the conclusion here in verse
• 44:29
  60. I love how he ends this, this
• 44:32
  sermon to the people in Zarahemla.
• 44:34
  And now I send to you that the Good Shepherd does call after
• 44:38
  you. I just, I don't know why, but I
• 44:41
  just love that imagery of a Good Shepherd.
• 44:44
  Not an angry shepherd, not somebody who's waiting to to
• 44:48
  beat us down, but a Good Shepherd who's willing to lay
• 44:51
  his own life down for us because he shows us the example first
• 44:56
  willing to consecrate everything for us, and then in return,
• 45:00
  looking at the flock of us, the sheep saying, will you just
• 45:04
  trust me? Will you?
• 45:06
  Will you rely on me for your safety, for your your
• 45:11
  protection, for providing for your needs?
• 45:15
  And he says, he does call after you.
• 45:17
  And if you will hearken unto his voice, he will bring you into
• 45:21
  his fold. And you're his sheep.
• 45:24
  And he commandeth you that you suffer no ravenous wolf to enter
• 45:27
  among you. The may not be destroyed.
• 45:30
  And ravenous wolves come in a variety of formats.
• 45:33
  Sometimes they come in the form of of temptations, sometimes in
• 45:39
  doubts, seeds of doubt, sometimes in contention and
• 45:45
  argument and spirit of dissension.
• 45:49
  Lots of ravenous wolves out there.
• 45:51
  But he's saying if you'll come safely into the fold of Christ,
• 45:56
  there's there. That's where all the promises
• 45:59
  are fulfilled. I think this is the verse that
• 46:00
  illustrates when you showed earlier with this He literally
• 46:03
  says, And now I say unto you, that the Good Shepherd that does
• 46:06
  call after you, and you will, and if you will hearken unto his
• 46:10
  voice, you will bring you into his fold.
• 46:13
  And then he, he says in verse 62, I speak by way of command,
• 46:18
  and to you that belong to the church and unto those who do not
• 46:21
  belong to the Church, I speak by way of invitation, saying, Come
• 46:26
  and be baptized unto repentance, that ye also may be made
• 46:31
  partakers of the fruit of the tree of life.
• 46:35
  I love that ending where he says to to you members of the church,
• 46:39
  this is a commandment. You're, you're accountable for
• 46:41
  this. And to you who aren't a member
• 46:43
  of the church, it's that tender invitation from a prophet of God
• 46:47
  saying, will you please come and enter into the fold of Christ
• 46:53
  and be baptized as you repent of your sins, come unto him.
• 46:58
  Make that covenant connection with Him and be a part of this
• 47:01
  fold because we need you and you need Christ and you need what
• 47:06
  this fold provides. We're all in this together and
• 47:10
  we can strengthen one another because Christ for strengthens
• 47:13
  us to allow us to then reflect and magnify His love for us that
• 47:19
  then becomes love for others. That's why we go to church.
• 47:23
  That's why we come into the fold of God together is to allow
• 47:28
  heaven to strengthen us not just individually but collectively.
• 47:32
  That's beautiful and I love here at the end even says they may
• 47:35
  also be partakers of the fruit of the tree of life.
• 47:37
  Or where did you learn that from?
• 47:39
  Another example of prophets learning from prophets Nephi and
• 47:43
  Lehigh in this case. Isn't that beautiful?
• 47:45
  And if you watch General Conference, how often are
• 47:48
  prophets quoting other prophets and scriptures?
• 47:51
  Prophets from the past. It's the way we should all
• 47:54
  learn. That's, that's how they do it.
• 47:56
  So as we conclude this part of this week's lesson, we wanted
• 48:01
  to, to give you more of an idea of this resource that Kevin and
• 48:07
  his team have developed this gospel learning app.
• 48:11
  And so take a second and walk us through what a what a person
• 48:16
  could experience if they if they use this app.
• 48:20
  So the Gospel Learning app is a free app.
• 48:23
  It's available to everyone. You can download it off of
• 48:25
  wherever you get your apps from. And it's got a Liahona symbol on
• 48:29
  it that's blue. And when you download it, you
• 48:31
  can start seeing that it's meant to be a trusted application for
• 48:35
  members of the church to get all the answers from the best
• 48:38
  teachers and scholars in the church.
• 48:40
  It's got videos from General Conference addresses, BYU
• 48:44
  speeches from spliced Scripture Central videos, and many other
• 48:50
  sources of great content. So on the main screen, there
• 48:52
  will be suggested videos based on your previous searches in the
• 48:56
  app. If you click on the index button
• 48:58
  there at the bottom, you can see a list of topics.
• 49:02
  There are almost 6000 topics, many, many more, six times more
• 49:06
  than what's in the topical guide in the Bible.
• 49:10
  You can search on any subject you want, even sensitive
• 49:12
  subjects that might be difficult for you to explain or learn
• 49:16
  about yourself. You can also, up at the top,
• 49:18
  click presenters. If you have a favorite
• 49:20
  presenter, you can see all of the videos across hundreds of
• 49:23
  different presenters. Or if there's a particular
• 49:26
  YouTube channel that you like, you can click on channels and
• 49:28
  search by that and look for that content.
• 49:30
  So it's very customized to what you want to see.
• 49:33
  If you click on the tracks button at the bottom, you can
• 49:36
  see a number of pre made learning tracks that are on a
• 49:40
  number of different topics. This is essentially a playlist
• 49:43
  of the very best videos on these given topics.
• 49:48
  And there are several, several topics, more than 100 topics
• 49:51
  that you can see these very condensed playlists on if you
• 49:57
  click the classroom feature. This deserves, you know, a whole
• 50:00
  video by itself, but it's how you canmore effectively teach,
• 50:04
  whether you're teaching Gospel doctrine or Relief Society,
• 50:06
  Sunday school, young men's, young women's, if you are in a
• 50:09
  teaching environment, if you're a teacher, you can use this to
• 50:13
  create a classroom digitally and then share it with the class and
• 50:17
  everybody can follow along. So they can not only see the
• 50:20
  lesson after, but they can follow along, read quotes or
• 50:23
  scriptures as you're going through it.
• 50:24
  They can take notes and they can save it for later.
• 50:28
  The Explore feature is probably the most interesting part of it
• 50:32
  because it pertains to the Come Follow me study that you do each
• 50:36
  week. If you pick the week that is
• 50:38
  associated with with this week's study or whatever week that
• 50:41
  you're on, you go into it and you'll see a pathway and then it
• 50:45
  breaks off by topic or by subject into different learning
• 50:49
  paths or different pathways that include videos or other content.
• 50:54
  It might be a ends an article. It could be a new era article.
• 50:58
  It could be another speech from BYU or something like that.
• 51:01
  And you can go down by topic and learn from the very best
• 51:04
  teachers on that topic. It goes through.
• 51:06
  It also has some ancillary items.
• 51:08
  You might see a know why or you might see evidences of, of
• 51:13
  things or other ancillary content that will help you in
• 51:16
  your study of come follow me this week.
• 51:19
  And you can follow this as you as you go down, as you complete
• 51:22
  each pathway, or if you complete everything on the screen, you
• 51:26
  earn badges and achievements. So we wanted this to be
• 51:29
  something that especially the younger generation could get
• 51:31
  excited about learning and studying the gospel and earning
• 51:34
  those achievements and sharing them with other people.
• 51:36
  So you can see if you click on the profile, you can actually
• 51:39
  see profile, You can see badges. You can see these other
• 51:43
  achievements for various things that I've done within the app.
• 51:48
  We're going to go into much greater detail on this.
• 51:50
  That was a very high level summary, but we want to be able
• 51:52
  to share that. So there's going to be a link
• 51:54
  below where if you click on that, you'll go to a video that
• 51:57
  gives you a much more in depth tutorial on everything in Gospel
• 52:00
  Learning and the Gospel Explorer to help you enhance your study
• 52:04
  of Come Follow Me. That's wonderful, Kevin, and
• 52:07
  thank you for all the work that you and your daughters and
• 52:10
  others on your team have put into developing this incredible
• 52:13
  app. There's a little feature that
• 52:16
  you you have this survey question that I think is a fun
• 52:20
  feature that's going to begin with this particular episode.
• 52:24
  Yeah, in fact, it's just going to be released right now.
• 52:27
  And so if you go into gospel learning and if you go to that
• 52:31
  explore feature, that bottom right hand corner and open up
• 52:34
  this week's Come Follow Me, Explore and you go and you see
• 52:37
  the video, Tyler's video, this video right up at the top to the
• 52:40
  right of that video is going to be a little square that you can
• 52:44
  click on with a survey question. And the question that we want to
• 52:47
  ask is, how would you rate your own ability to recognize God's
• 52:54
  goodness in your life of that downward error?
• 52:58
  How how tuned in to seeing God's hand and to filling this love
• 53:04
  for you? Do you feel like you?
• 53:05
  Are it will actually present the results of of everybody in
• 53:08
  aggregate on a chart that you can see.
• 53:10
  So we all get to share and see how everybody's responding to
• 53:13
  this. Thank you, Kevin, for all of the
• 53:15
  incredible work you've done on developing that app.
• 53:17
  It's a, it's a great resource on many levels for individuals,
• 53:21
  families, for, for organizations, groups, classes.
• 53:26
  Wonderful. Thank you and thank you for
• 53:30
  joining us as we've as we've studied these incredible
• 53:35
  questions and their potential answers in chapter 5.
• 53:41
  So we will conclude this first half by just reminding all of us
• 53:46
  that God's love for us, God's faith in US, God's patience with
• 53:52
  us is not in question. It's in place.
• 53:56
  We may not always be able to fill it, we may not always
• 53:58
  recognize it, we may not always acknowledge it even if we do
• 54:01
  recognize it, but it's always there.
• 54:04
  The thing that's in question is my love for Him and for others,
• 54:09
  my faith in Him, my trust in Him, my belief in Him, and my
• 54:15
  willingness to dedicate and devote my life to Him.
• 54:20
  He already dedicated and devoted His entire life to us.
• 54:24
  Now it's our turn to return and become more like him by showing
• 54:29
  him. And as that happens, his image
• 54:31
  will increasingly become engraving on our countenance as
• 54:35
  he increasingly touches our heart and changes that heart and
• 54:40
  softens that heart and purifies that heart.
• 54:44
  So this particular set of chapters is fascinating because
• 54:49
  Alma, who had been confined using his word, confined to the
• 54:53
  judgment seat for for years, seven or eight years, he hadn't
• 54:57
  been able to go out and and visit the members of the church
• 55:00
  in outlying regions because of his need to be the chief judge
• 55:05
  as well as the high priest of the church.
• 55:07
  But since he gave up that chief judge seat, now he's beginning
• 55:11
  this this long ministry and and mission out to these outer outer
• 55:16
  lying regions of Zarahemla beginning with Gideon.
• 55:20
  So before he goes to Gideon, he needs to finalize things from
• 55:24
  his experience with the the the people in Zarahemla.
• 55:27
  Look at verse four. And thus they began to establish
• 55:30
  the order of the church in the city of Zarahemla bringing
• 55:34
  things back into order. And now I would that you should
• 55:36
  understand that the word of God was liberal unto all that none
• 55:41
  were deprived of the privilege of assembling themselves
• 55:43
  together to hear the word of God.
• 55:46
  I love that that all inclusive everybody has a place in the
• 55:52
  fold of God, in the Kingdom of God on the earth.
• 55:55
  And why are we going to church? Why is that work?
• 55:57
  To hear the word of God. That's it verse 6 Nevertheless,
• 56:02
  the children of God were commanded that they should
• 56:04
  gather themselves together OFT and join in fasting and mighty
• 56:08
  prayer in behalf of the welfare of the souls of those who knew
• 56:12
  not God in in our invitation from our prophets to invite all
• 56:19
  to come into Christ and to to gather Israel on both sides of
• 56:23
  the veil, not just in our family and our temple work, but in our
• 56:27
  missionary efforts. I love this that we're fasting
• 56:30
  and offering mighty prayer in behalf of those who knew not God
• 56:35
  and what a what a powerful reminder we're trying to get
• 56:39
  them to join us not just so that we can increase the numbers of
• 56:42
  church membership. We're trying to get them to join
• 56:45
  us because it's by entering into that covenant connection with
• 56:49
  Christ and entering into the fold of God that he can now give
• 56:54
  them access to a a wider range of all of the blessings and
• 56:59
  promises that he has to to offer them within that covenant and
• 57:03
  consequently within a covenant community.
• 57:05
  We all become stronger when new people join us on either side of
• 57:12
  the veil. We are collectively stronger and
• 57:16
  and more capable of of carrying forth the work of God.
• 57:19
  And I love how he says what how we should direct some of our
• 57:22
  fasting and praying for the welfare of the souls of those
• 57:25
  who knew not God. Exactly.
• 57:29
  Now he leaves their hamlet, goes out to the valley of Gideon east
• 57:33
  of the Riverside, and, and he starts preaching there.
• 57:36
  And it says he went and began to declare the word of God unto the
• 57:40
  church which was established in the valley of Gideon according
• 57:43
  to not just the wisdom of men, but according to the revelation
• 57:49
  of the truth of the word which had been spoken by his fathers.
• 57:53
  And according to number 2, the Spirit of prophecy, which was in
• 57:57
  him, according to #3 the testimony of Jesus Christ, the
• 58:02
  Son of God who should come to redeem his people from their
• 58:05
  sins, and the holy order by which he was called #4 So he's
• 58:11
  got that authority, that priesthood power and authority
• 58:13
  to go. So revelation, Spirit of
• 58:16
  prophecy, testimony of Jesus Christ, and with that proper
• 58:20
  priesthood authority. And some of you might be
• 58:23
  listening and thinking, OK, so that's for the men.
• 58:26
  Remember, President Dalanie chokes, gave an incredible talk
• 58:29
  on the power and the authority of God, the priesthood power.
• 58:33
  He says this. We're not accustomed to Speaking
• 58:36
  of women having the authority of the priesthood in their church
• 58:39
  callings. But what other authority can it
• 58:42
  be? When a woman, younger or old, is
• 58:45
  set apart to preach the gospel as a full time missionary, she
• 58:48
  is given priesthood authority to perform a priesthood function.
• 58:52
  The same is true when a woman is set apart to function as an
• 58:55
  officer or teacher in a church organization under the direction
• 58:59
  of one who holds the keys of the priesthood.
• 59:01
  Whoever functions in an office or calling received from one who
• 59:05
  holds priesthood keys exercises priesthood authority in
• 59:09
  performing her or his assigned duties.
• 59:14
  I love that is it is it comes through loud and clear here Alma
• 59:18
  letting these people in Gideon know by what authority he's he's
• 59:24
  going to deliver this message at the end of chapter 6, which now
• 59:29
  brings us to Chapter 7. I love how in Chapter 7 he
• 59:32
  starts out observing kind of getting a pulse on the the group
• 59:38
  there in Gideon. Wondering are you struggling
• 59:42
  with the same things as the people in Zarahemla were
• 59:45
  struggling with Now are you noticing a pattern for scripture
• 59:50
  study overlay for lifelong learning and teaching overlay?
• 59:54
  He didn't go in with a pre packaged plan that's A1 size
• 1:00:00
  fits all he went in. And he first observed he did the
• 1:00:07
  same thing in Zarahem like he lived among those people.
• 1:00:09
  He he had a pretty good pulse on what they were struggling with
• 1:00:11
  and what they were doing well with.
• 1:00:13
  He doesn't have the same benefit with Gideon.
• 1:00:16
  So he doesn't go in with a with a prepackaged lesson.
• 1:00:19
  He goes in with a lot of water in a very deep gospel.
• 1:00:23
  Well, that he spent lots of time studying the Scriptures,
• 1:00:26
  fasting, praying, preparing himself to now be an instrument
• 1:00:29
  in the hands of God so that when he first begins, he can sense
• 1:00:34
  what they need, not assuming that he already knows what they
• 1:00:39
  need. And I love those, those first
• 1:00:42
  six verses where he's making that assessment and he says, oh,
• 1:00:47
  you're not struggling with the same things they were in
• 1:00:49
  Zarahemla. You guys are much more
• 1:00:52
  righteous. You're doing better.
• 1:00:53
  Let's do a different lesson now instead of the prepackaged
• 1:00:56
  lesson that we gave in Alma 5. And I love this.
• 1:00:59
  And So what is the message that this group who's doing a little
• 1:01:03
  bit better or maybe a lot better, what do they get?
• 1:01:08
  Look at verse seven. For behold, I say unto you,
• 1:01:11
  there be many things to come. And behold, there is one thing
• 1:01:16
  which of which is of more importance than they all.
• 1:01:20
  And what is that thing of all the things that are going to
• 1:01:23
  happen in the future? And by the way, I would say not
• 1:01:26
  just forward-looking from Alma's day and perspective, but from
• 1:01:29
  our time and our perspective. This is a powerful lesson that
• 1:01:35
  when I'm leading, when I'm teaching, when I'm parenting,
• 1:01:39
  when I'm in a relationship with with loved ones, there are a lot
• 1:01:44
  of things that we could focus on.
• 1:01:46
  There are a lot of lot of things to come and a lot of things that
• 1:01:49
  have happened in the past from our perspective, but there is
• 1:01:52
  one thing which is of more importance than they all.
• 1:01:54
  And what is that one thing? Well, that one thing has a name.
• 1:01:58
  It's a person. It's the Savior.
• 1:02:00
  He says for behold, the time is not far distant that the
• 1:02:04
  Redeemer liveth and cometh among his people.
• 1:02:08
  And now from 7:00 down to verse 13, we get his description of
• 1:02:16
  that one thing that is of greater and more importance than
• 1:02:19
  all the other things to come. Exactly.
• 1:02:21
  And I mean, if you're ever in a teaching, calling a role like
• 1:02:25
  that and you're ever struggling with what you should teach about
• 1:02:28
  or on, I think Elma just gives it to focus on Jesus Christ.
• 1:02:31
  Go back to the Savior, tell me the stories of Jesus.
• 1:02:34
  I love to hear things I would ask Him to tell me if he were
• 1:02:39
  here. That beautiful primary song.
• 1:02:43
  So he begins by saying in verse 8, I, I love this.
• 1:02:47
  I love the the reality, the authenticity, whatever word you
• 1:02:51
  want to put on this. I love Alma as the prophet, not
• 1:02:55
  trying to to paint a picture that's unrealistic.
• 1:02:58
  He's he's giving them the reality here.
• 1:03:02
  He says, behold, I do not say that he will come among us at
• 1:03:05
  the time of his dwelling in his mortal, mortal Tabernacle.
• 1:03:08
  For behold, the Spirit hath not said unto me that this should be
• 1:03:11
  the case. I don't think he's going to be
• 1:03:14
  among us when he's in His physical mortal life.
• 1:03:20
  I don't know that, because the Spirit hasn't whispered that to
• 1:03:23
  me, and no prophet before me has said he'll come and visit us
• 1:03:27
  here in His mortal Tabernacle. But notice what he says now as
• 1:03:30
  to this thing I do not know, but this much I do know.
• 1:03:36
  Now that is a pattern for all leading and teaching and
• 1:03:40
  relationship building is don't oversell an agenda.
• 1:03:45
  Don't oversell what we what we want to be.
• 1:03:49
  True belief does not determine truth.
• 1:03:52
  Truth is independent of our belief.
• 1:03:55
  So we act on what we know as well as what we believe, and we
• 1:04:01
  keep moving forward as more and more of that truth becomes more
• 1:04:06
  revealed. And it shifts from a faith in or
• 1:04:09
  trust in or a belief in to a knowledge of category.
• 1:04:14
  And He's telling you, look, I don't know, but this much I do
• 1:04:17
  know. I will tell you what I
• 1:04:18
  absolutely know, that the Lord God hath power to do all things
• 1:04:23
  which are according to His Word. If He wants to come here in the
• 1:04:27
  flesh, He can do that in his mortal life.
• 1:04:30
  But I don't know that He will. And turns out He didn't, based
• 1:04:33
  on our record, And that's great. And I think another thing too, I
• 1:04:36
  think is a great key for testimony bearing.
• 1:04:39
  You know, you can get up and say lots of things, but if you
• 1:04:42
  focused on, but this much I do know, it doesn't have to be, it
• 1:04:46
  can be a lot, it can be a little, but just share what you
• 1:04:50
  know and believe. And that's what a testimony is
• 1:04:52
  really all about. Now we we jump down to verse 10
• 1:04:57
  it says and behold, he, this Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ
• 1:05:03
  shall be born of Mary at Jerusalem, which is the land of
• 1:05:09
  our forefathers. I love the fact that here we are
• 1:05:14
  8 plus decades before his birth and Elma the younger is giving
• 1:05:21
  us the name of his mother. The general geographic location.
• 1:05:24
  Notice it says he was born at Jerusalem, not in Jerusalem.
• 1:05:29
  Jerusalem is a capital city. Everybody in the Book of Mormon
• 1:05:33
  knows that they came out of the region of Jerusalem.
• 1:05:36
  Everybody knows that name. Nobody would have known the name
• 1:05:38
  Bethlehem in in the Book of Mormon.
• 1:05:41
  So I love the fact that he's meeting the people where they
• 1:05:44
  are and he doesn't say Jesus is going to be born in Jerusalem,
• 1:05:47
  but at Jerusalem. It's it's 5 miles South.
• 1:05:50
  It's in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.
• 1:05:53
  So we've got the name of his mother, the the name of his
• 1:05:56
  birthplace or the location in the land of our forefathers, and
• 1:05:59
  then his description of Mary, she being a virgin, a precious
• 1:06:03
  and a chosen vessel who shall be overshadowed and conceived by
• 1:06:06
  the power of the Holy Ghost and bring forth a son.
• 1:06:10
  Yeah, even the Son of God. There is so much power wrapped
• 1:06:16
  into that one verse that Jesus Christ is going to be born.
• 1:06:23
  His pedigree chart is different than anybody else's.
• 1:06:29
  God the Father gives him the abilities that are necessary for
• 1:06:35
  him to accomplish his unique and and sole mission of infinite
• 1:06:43
  atonement. And he inherits from Mary, his
• 1:06:45
  mother, all of the things that we've inherited from Adam and
• 1:06:49
  Eve, from the fall. That ability to suffer, that
• 1:06:53
  ability to die, that ability to to feel pain, He gets all of
• 1:06:58
  that from Mary and the infinite capacities to endure those
• 1:07:04
  things from his Father. That's an amazing verse 10.
• 1:07:09
  So now he's born in this unique capacity.
• 1:07:13
  What next? Verse 11 And he shall go forth
• 1:07:17
  suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind,
• 1:07:23
  and this that the word might be fulfilled, which saith, he will
• 1:07:26
  take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
• 1:07:32
  There are a lot of ways to look at this verse.
• 1:07:35
  He was born into mortality. He, he breathes our air, He
• 1:07:38
  walks our soil. He, he understands the human
• 1:07:41
  condition. He's going to experience
• 1:07:43
  sickness and and natural physical and mental and
• 1:07:47
  emotional struggles and pains like we all do to 1° or another.
• 1:07:54
  But this takes it to a new level when it says he will take upon
• 1:07:58
  him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
• 1:08:03
  It's not just the normal pains of mortality that that everybody
• 1:08:09
  experiences to 1° or another. We have had multiple prophets,
• 1:08:13
  Sears and revelators talk about this concept of Jesus's
• 1:08:19
  empathetic nature of being able to succor us or come to us, run
• 1:08:26
  to us, because he understands what we're going through,
• 1:08:31
  because he took upon him as part of his, his role as our Savior
• 1:08:37
  and Redeemer, all of our sicknesses, 65921 all of the
• 1:08:43
  pains of every man, woman and child, That's expansive.
• 1:08:49
  In essence, what he's saying here is nobody will be able to
• 1:08:54
  come to Jesus Christ someday and say, let me teach you about what
• 1:09:01
  it's really like to experience conditions XY and Z in
• 1:09:08
  mortality. Jesus won't look at people with
• 1:09:12
  a questioning look on his face when he sees them.
• 1:09:16
  He's the only one who knows perfectly well all aspects of
• 1:09:22
  this human condition, all aspects of pain and suffering
• 1:09:26
  and afflictions and temptations and hunger and thirst and
• 1:09:29
  fatigue. All of it.
• 1:09:31
  He will look with knowing eyes, not questioning eyes.
• 1:09:35
  You know, when I was at Sacre meeting this week, the youth
• 1:09:38
  speaker got up and talked about this and said in seminary they
• 1:09:41
  call this, oh, thank heaven for Alma 711.
• 1:09:44
  And and then he talked about it and yeah, there's like you say,
• 1:09:48
  there's nothing that we can feel, nothing that we can do or
• 1:09:52
  experience this life that Christ hasn't done.
• 1:09:54
  But what I find this interesting is when we think about Christ's
• 1:09:58
  afflictions, we often just immediately go to the atonement,
• 1:10:02
  which is certainly the greatest of of all of that that anybody
• 1:10:06
  could ever experience. However, when Paul talks about
• 1:10:10
  his afflictions and especially his temptations, he talks about
• 1:10:13
  that prior to the atonement, the things that he did.
• 1:10:16
  And if you do a study, I found it very interesting to a study
• 1:10:19
  of the pains, the afflictions and the temptations that that
• 1:10:23
  Christ endured and suffered prior to that final week of his
• 1:10:26
  life, and you get some remarkable insights.
• 1:10:29
  Absolutely. And then culminating, as you
• 1:10:31
  said, with the infinite agonies of His atoning sacrifice, Now
• 1:10:37
  getting it in Elder Maxwell's words, the awful arithmetic of
• 1:10:42
  the atonement. Now notice verse 12.
• 1:10:45
  Because Alma gives us some clarification here.
• 1:10:48
  And He will take upon him death, that He may lose the bands of
• 1:10:53
  death which bind His people. And He will take upon him their
• 1:10:57
  infirmities, that His bowels may be filled with mercy according
• 1:11:02
  to the flesh. That or so that we may, He may
• 1:11:08
  know according to the flesh how to succor His people according
• 1:11:12
  to their infirmities. That's a beautiful concept.
• 1:11:16
  And He clarifies for searching. Now the Spirit knoweth all
• 1:11:19
  things. In other words, cognitively
• 1:11:21
  Jesus could have understood all of this.
• 1:11:24
  But the phrase here is according to the flesh, repeated a couple
• 1:11:29
  of times up there in verse 12. Why the Son of God suffereth
• 1:11:33
  according to the flesh. There it is again, that or so
• 1:11:38
  that He might take upon him the sins of his people, that or so
• 1:11:44
  that he might blot out their transgressions according to the
• 1:11:48
  power of his deliverance. Now we hold this is the
• 1:11:51
  testimony which is in me. So now we've concluded that
• 1:11:54
  initial thought to these incredible people in Gideon
• 1:11:58
  saying of all the things to come, there's one that's more of
• 1:12:01
  more importance than all of them put together, probably even.
• 1:12:04
  And it's everything that we just covered.
• 1:12:07
  So there's a pattern. Have you noticed how when
• 1:12:10
  prophets teach these big lofty doctrines, they don't just teach
• 1:12:14
  them and say, OK, just just thought you wanted to know,
• 1:12:18
  good, good luck with your life. Now they don't do that.
• 1:12:22
  Prophets are called to reveal the plan, to teach these big
• 1:12:26
  doctrines, but then to expound, exhort, testify, and give God's
• 1:12:33
  commandments. And what is the command that
• 1:12:35
  always seems to be repeated more than any other after big
• 1:12:40
  doctrines have been taught? Well, look at verse 14.
• 1:12:43
  Here it is. Now I say unto you that ye must
• 1:12:46
  repent. Every time there's been a big
• 1:12:49
  doctrine taught, it comes down to So now your job is to repent.
• 1:12:56
  Don't feel bad. Don't feel like you need to beat
• 1:12:59
  yourself up because you've fallen short.
• 1:13:01
  It's plan A. It's part of the plan.
• 1:13:04
  Repent and be born again. For the Spirit saith, if you're
• 1:13:09
  not born again, you cannot inherit the Kingdom of heaven.
• 1:13:12
  Therefore come and be baptized under repentance.
• 1:13:15
  You may be washed from your sins, that you may have faith on
• 1:13:19
  the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, who is
• 1:13:22
  mighty to save and to cleanse from all unrighteousness.
• 1:13:25
  I love that we're now in Gideon. We have a righteous group of
• 1:13:30
  Saints. And what's the message?
• 1:13:32
  Repent. When he was in Zarahemla, when
• 1:13:35
  they were struggling, it was repent.
• 1:13:38
  It's going to. Be repent.
• 1:13:40
  It's repent. It's it's probably not
• 1:13:43
  surprising. And during general Conference,
• 1:13:44
  what are we going to hear? Repent.
• 1:13:47
  And I love the fact that he, he's showing us the role of
• 1:13:51
  baptism in these, in these first principles and ordinances of the
• 1:13:55
  gospel. Here the baptism is one of the
• 1:13:58
  first, it's not one of the last things we need to do.
• 1:14:03
  It's a beginning point. And and he clarifies that.
• 1:14:07
  Look at verse 15. Yeah, I send you come and fear
• 1:14:10
  not. Look at the verbs.
• 1:14:12
  Come, fear not. Lay aside every sin which easily
• 1:14:17
  does beset you. Makes you wonder if you'd been
• 1:14:19
  reading second ephi chapter 4, which doth bind you down to
• 1:14:25
  destruction. Ye come and go forth and show
• 1:14:29
  unto God that you're willing to repent of your sins and enter
• 1:14:35
  into a covenant with Him to keep his commandments and witness all
• 1:14:40
  of that by going into the waters of baptism.
• 1:14:44
  I love that that he's putting baptism where it belongs, which
• 1:14:47
  is that initial beginning covenant connecting point with
• 1:14:53
  God for all people. It is the gate whereby we enter.
• 1:14:58
  It's not the finish line whereby we, we cross once we've figured
• 1:15:02
  out how to be good ourselves. So if you're, if you're working
• 1:15:06
  with people who are struggling feeling like, well, I'm not good
• 1:15:08
  enough to be baptized yet, or I, I don't feel like I'm, I'm who I
• 1:15:13
  need to be in order to be baptized.
• 1:15:15
  These verses here, 14 and 15 are excellent because it reminds us
• 1:15:21
  that the answer is no, you're not who you need to be.
• 1:15:24
  And you won't be who you need to be until you connect with Christ
• 1:15:29
  in this covenant tool committed way that is given to us through
• 1:15:35
  Christ from Heavenly Father, which is baptism, Faith in
• 1:15:41
  Christ, repentance of our sins. And baptism is literally a
• 1:15:45
  beginning point of a lifelong process along that covenant
• 1:15:50
  path. Ordinances endow us with power
• 1:15:54
  in our lives, and with that power we can be better.
• 1:15:57
  We need the ordinances, we need baptism to get the power to help
• 1:16:02
  us be who we need to be. We can't become who we need to
• 1:16:05
  be without it. Absolutely.
• 1:16:06
  Now for those of you who are, who are listening or watching
• 1:16:10
  and thinking to yourself, well, I got baptized years ago or in
• 1:16:13
  some cases decades ago. I love the fact that there's a
• 1:16:17
  beautiful ordinance that the Lord has provided for all of us.
• 1:16:21
  And it's the only ordinance that we repeat more than once for
• 1:16:25
  ourselves. And it's that sacrament
• 1:16:28
  ordinance that we get to participate in on Sundays where
• 1:16:32
  you get to renew the previous covenants you've made, not just
• 1:16:36
  in baptism, but in the temple in some cases.
• 1:16:39
  But you also, according to President Russell and Nielsen,
• 1:16:42
  you make a new covenant every week that is exactly the same as
• 1:16:48
  the baptismal covenant you made X number of years ago.
• 1:16:52
  And so it's this beautiful process to see this eventual
• 1:17:00
  progression along the covenant path as we grow closer and
• 1:17:03
  closer to Christ in that covenant connection with him.
• 1:17:07
  I love the sacrament prayers and you know, if you think about it,
• 1:17:10
  what does it ask us to do? And if if I said, how many times
• 1:17:14
  does it tell you to remember? How many?
• 1:17:16
  What would you say? There's four times.
• 1:17:18
  He just says remember remembrance.
• 1:17:20
  And what does he want us to remember?
• 1:17:21
  He wants us to remember Him, our Savior, to reconnect with Him,
• 1:17:26
  recommit to Him, re covenant with Him to get that power back
• 1:17:29
  into our lives and move forward. That's amazing and and just for
• 1:17:33
  fun, a little play on words, look at verse 16 to tie in
• 1:17:35
  exactly with what you said there.
• 1:17:37
  Whosoever do with this and keep us the commandments of God, from
• 1:17:42
  thence forth the same we'll remember that I say unto him,
• 1:17:46
  yeah, he will remember that. I have said unto him, He shall
• 1:17:49
  have eternal life. So he's even using the word
• 1:17:52
  there you're going to remember all these things, the sacrament
• 1:17:55
  and this baptism, even though he's not referring to the
• 1:17:57
  sacrament specifically here, but look at the word remember for a
• 1:18:03
  moment in English, the re is again.
• 1:18:08
  So we become a member again. We come into that, that
• 1:18:16
  relationship, that covenant connection with Christ, anew
• 1:18:20
  again every single week. And not only do we remember
• 1:18:25
  become a member of the church, but now what are we a member of
• 1:18:30
  the body of Christ? We are his hands, his feet that
• 1:18:34
  wants to do the things that he would do if he were here.
• 1:18:37
  I love that. And now you come down to 17.
• 1:18:39
  And now, my beloved brethren, do you believe these things?
• 1:18:43
  So now he's, he's going back into question mode with the the
• 1:18:45
  people here in Gideon. Behold, I say unto you, yeah, I
• 1:18:49
  know that you believe them. And the way that I know that you
• 1:18:53
  believe them is by the manifestation of the Spirit
• 1:18:56
  which is in me. And now because your faith is
• 1:18:58
  strong concerning that. Yeah, concerning the things
• 1:19:01
  which I've spoken, great is my joy.
• 1:19:05
  I love it and I love how he tells us what he finds joy in is
• 1:19:09
  in teaching these things to these people.
• 1:19:11
  If I had to ask you Tyler, like what you enjoy more, the
• 1:19:14
  administrative part of your job or the teaching part of your
• 1:19:18
  job? Cuz Alma just left the
• 1:19:20
  administrative part of being the ruler of the land and now he is
• 1:19:24
  the prophet. And he did both for a while and
• 1:19:27
  he gave up the one. And he specifically says it
• 1:19:30
  wasn't a joy to do that. It was, you know, it was
• 1:19:32
  difficult. And now this is where his joy
• 1:19:34
  is. Is it the same for you?
• 1:19:35
  I I love the fact that those two words, the way it comes out in
• 1:19:38
  English is ministering and administering.
• 1:19:42
  It's amazing. If you look at the
• 1:19:43
  administrative aspects of your life, whether it's callings or
• 1:19:47
  in the home or in your career, that administering has to be
• 1:19:52
  done. But just make sure that when
• 1:19:55
  it's done, it doesn't become the end all be all.
• 1:19:57
  It's add to your administering, Add ministering.
• 1:20:03
  I love the way that play on words in English works out that
• 1:20:09
  in all of my establishing order, it should be setting up a
• 1:20:12
  foundation whereby true ministering can take place
• 1:20:17
  because I'm with you. That's where the greatest joy is
• 1:20:20
  manifest. But it's hard to do effective
• 1:20:22
  ministering. If we don't do effective
• 1:20:26
  administering. So now he goes on and tells us
• 1:20:32
  in verse 19 and 20, you'll notice he says, for I parse,
• 1:20:37
  perceive and beginning in verse 20, I perceive that it has been
• 1:20:42
  made known unto you. So a lot of his teaching is
• 1:20:46
  actually rooted in perception, in listening, observing,
• 1:20:52
  sensing, seeking revelation in behalf of the people sitting in
• 1:20:56
  front of him so that he can know exactly where they are and what
• 1:20:59
  they need and then respond appropriately to those needs.
• 1:21:02
  He's showing a beautiful example of of Christ like leadership and
• 1:21:07
  parenting here. And teaching.
• 1:21:09
  And this is the pattern for being the most effective
• 1:21:12
  teacher. Now let's turn over to verse 22.
• 1:21:15
  I love this because he gives in. In verse 22, you get this
• 1:21:22
  concept of what can you do? So these are the action verbs of
• 1:21:28
  what you do. Verse 22.
• 1:21:29
  Now my beloved brethren, I've said these things unto you that
• 1:21:33
  I might awaken you to a sense of your duty to God, that you may
• 1:21:38
  walk blameless before Him, that you may walk after the holy
• 1:21:41
  order of God, after which you have been received.
• 1:21:44
  So this is your duty. This is the you've got to do
• 1:21:47
  these things. This wasn't just a bedtime
• 1:21:50
  story. I wasn't just trying to
• 1:21:51
  entertain you or fill your time. I'm trying to help you sense
• 1:21:55
  what your duty is. Here's an invitation.
• 1:21:58
  Go back and pick any session of general conference from the past
• 1:22:03
  and watch it or or re listen to it with an eye to duty.
• 1:22:09
  What are the imperatives that the commands, the invitations,
• 1:22:13
  the actions that they're asking us to to engage with in our
• 1:22:17
  life? And you'll notice there are a
• 1:22:20
  lot of them. But then verse 23, he shifts to
• 1:22:30
  a different level. These duties lead to something.
• 1:22:34
  And now I would that ye should be humble and be submissive and
• 1:22:39
  gentle, easy to be entreated, full of patience and
• 1:22:43
  long-suffering, being tempered in all things.
• 1:22:45
  And I'm gonna push pause here, take a time out because often
• 1:22:50
  what happens when a person is reading a long list of good
• 1:22:54
  attributes in a scripture like this, it's very easy for the
• 1:22:57
  brain to zone out. It's like it starts to sound
• 1:23:00
  like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:23:03
  And we don't gain anything from that.
• 1:23:06
  Can I invite you to consider what would happen if every time
• 1:23:11
  you come to a long list of good attributes like this, you stop
• 1:23:15
  seeing them as black words on a white page and you start seeing
• 1:23:20
  them as lenses through which you can see various aspects of Jesus
• 1:23:26
  Christ, His characteristics, His attributes, His perfections.
• 1:23:30
  So consider verse 23's list again through the lenses of
• 1:23:35
  Christ. I would that you should be
• 1:23:37
  humble. Nobody was more humble than
• 1:23:40
  Christ. So he shows us the example.
• 1:23:44
  First he gives us the ideal and then he tells us, come do the
• 1:23:50
  things which you have seen me do, so that we can become who we
• 1:23:55
  were born to become. And so Christ is the most
• 1:24:00
  humble, He is the most submissive, He is the most
• 1:24:04
  gentle and the easiest to be entreated.
• 1:24:06
  He is the one who's full of patience.
• 1:24:09
  Thank heaven for that. And long-suffering, being
• 1:24:13
  temperate in all things, being diligent and keeping the
• 1:24:15
  commandments of God at all times.
• 1:24:18
  Nobody was better at it than Him.
• 1:24:19
  He was perfect. I want to be more like Him.
• 1:24:22
  So what you're getting in verse 23 is this blueprint for a
• 1:24:27
  Christ like life, for a Christ like set of attributes that I
• 1:24:32
  want to incorporate. And again, this isn't going to
• 1:24:36
  be an event. This isn't something you decide
• 1:24:39
  to do today. And all of a sudden, because you
• 1:24:41
  made the decision, now you, you have acquired all of those
• 1:24:45
  attributes. Mortality is the perfect set up
• 1:24:49
  from a perfect loving heavenly Father to give us every
• 1:24:53
  opportunity to work on developing these abilities and
• 1:24:58
  these these characteristic traits over time and we're going
• 1:25:02
  to mess up. But thank heaven for his long,
• 1:25:05
  long-suffering and mercy. Notice he then says we need to
• 1:25:09
  ask for whatsoever things we stand in need of both spiritual
• 1:25:12
  and temporal, always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever
• 1:25:16
  thing you do receive. Kevin, you've done a lot of
• 1:25:19
  amazing things in this life. How many of them have you done
• 1:25:23
  because Kevin Prince did them and not because God empowered
• 1:25:27
  Kevin Prince to do? Exactly 0.
• 1:25:30
  Exactly 0 It just doesn't happen.
• 1:25:33
  Whenever success comes in our life, we've got to be careful
• 1:25:37
  not to pat ourselves on the back and and feel like, wow, look at
• 1:25:42
  what I did because we're not building our Kingdom.
• 1:25:46
  We're trying to seek to bring forth and establish the cause of
• 1:25:49
  Zion to build his Kingdom on the earth.
• 1:25:53
  And then he says, see that you have faith, hope and charity,
• 1:25:57
  and then will you always abound in good works?
• 1:26:00
  Exactly this is that it sums it all up right there.
• 1:26:03
  And now he finishes this incredible address to these
• 1:26:07
  incredible people. They're not perfect, but they're
• 1:26:10
  striving to to do the things that they need to do in order to
• 1:26:15
  become who they need to become. And so notice the conclusion
• 1:26:18
  here, verse 25. And may the Lord bless you and
• 1:26:22
  keep your garments spotless, that you may at last be brought
• 1:26:25
  to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the holy prophets
• 1:26:30
  who have, who have been ever since the world began having
• 1:26:32
  your garments spotless, even as their garments are spotless in
• 1:26:36
  the Kingdom of heaven, to go no more out.
• 1:26:41
  That's kind of the conclusion for for most prophets desires
• 1:26:45
  for why they do what they do. It's to that end.
• 1:26:49
  And then he says, And now, my beloved brethren, I've spoken
• 1:26:51
  these words unto you according to the spirit which testifieth
• 1:26:55
  in me, and my soul doth exceedingly rejoice because of
• 1:26:58
  the exceeding diligence and heed which He have given unto my
• 1:27:03
  word. Again, he's pursuing his
• 1:27:05
  audience. They've stayed with him.
• 1:27:07
  And the spirits testifying, they're, they're internalizing
• 1:27:11
  this. There is such a power that takes
• 1:27:14
  place when leaders under the direction of the Spirit can
• 1:27:18
  share a vision and you feel the group responding rather than
• 1:27:22
  rejecting. I love it.
• 1:27:24
  And, and as a parent too, aren't those paydays when you teach
• 1:27:28
  something and then your your kids repeat it back or you see
• 1:27:31
  something in their lives that show that they learned what you
• 1:27:34
  did? There's no greater joy than
• 1:27:36
  that. And that's what he's expressing
• 1:27:37
  here. It's beautiful.
• 1:27:38
  And now his last verse. And now may the peace of God
• 1:27:43
  rest upon you, and upon your houses and lands, and upon your
• 1:27:47
  flocks and herds, and all that you possess, your women and your
• 1:27:52
  children, according to your faith and good works from this
• 1:27:55
  time forth and forever. And thus I have spoken.
• 1:27:59
  Amen. It feels to me like what the
• 1:28:02
  apostles and prophets will occasionally do in granting an
• 1:28:05
  Apostolic blessing on a group of people.
• 1:28:08
  This feels very much like that, that closing benedictory
• 1:28:12
  blessing on the people, that God will bless all aspects of your
• 1:28:16
  life. It doesn't mean that
• 1:28:17
  everything's going to all of a sudden be perfect and.
• 1:28:20
  It also says based on their faith and diligence continuing,
• 1:28:23
  which is always true. So as we conclude, we would love
• 1:28:27
  to to see your comments in in the comment section below.
• 1:28:32
  What are some things that you do today to stay on the covenant
• 1:28:37
  path? Not just stay on it, but but
• 1:28:39
  move forward and invite others to move forward on it in order
• 1:28:43
  to become more like Jesus Christ, to fulfill these
• 1:28:49
  attributes that we've been reading about.
• 1:28:50
  You know that I I again, I love Alma 724 saying have faith,
• 1:28:56
  hope, charity and abound in good works.
• 1:28:59
  I, I see so many people around me and you're a great example of
• 1:29:03
  that, that just abound in good works that I, I look to strive
• 1:29:06
  to be more like those people and to abound in good works.
• 1:29:10
  And as I have done those when in the times in my life where I've
• 1:29:13
  done it, that's where I find the greatest joy, the greatest
• 1:29:15
  happiness, And I feel the most connected to my savior because I
• 1:29:18
  feel like that's what's keeping me on the path that that is
• 1:29:21
  doing his will and what he would want to do.
• 1:29:24
  And, and I, I, I so feel that in my soul and that that is the the
• 1:29:29
  right thing. And I say that in the name of
• 1:29:31
  Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen.
• 1:29:33
  Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate you coming and
• 1:29:35
  sharing these these insights with us for these important
• 1:29:39
  chapters. And thank you for your work as
• 1:29:41
  the the Chief technology officer here at Scripture Central.
• 1:29:45
  And as we finish this up, I want to just share one more time,
• 1:29:49
  something I never get sick of sharing and it's what I know.
• 1:29:53
  I know that God lives. I know that Jesus is the Christ,
• 1:29:57
  and I know that He has provided everything we need in order to
• 1:30:01
  connect with Him early and often at the beginning, the middle,
• 1:30:06
  and the end, and throughout our life.
• 1:30:09
  And He is willing to forgive us. I know that's true.
• 1:30:13
  And I love Him with all my heart because of His goodness.
• 1:30:16
  And we leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
• 1:30:20
  Know that you're loved.