Alma’s Meditations on War

The sun hasn’t quite set on America’s vacation from history but for  Alma, as for many souls throughout the history of mankind, mass death was a reality.

And from the first year to the fifteenth has brought to pass the destruction of many thousand lives; yea, it has brought to pass an awful scene of bloodshed.

And the bodies of many thousands are laid low in the earth, while the bodies of many thousands are moldering in heaps upon the face of the earth

–Alma 28

His meditation led him to thoughts on human equality and prepared him for his confrontation on Korihor.

* Equality– Alma appears to have believed in what we would call equality of opportunity, at least with respect to sin.  He believes that everyone has the same opportunity to fundamentally choose their orientation and as a result deep inequality results.

Yea, and I know that good and evil have come before all men

Alma 29:5

And thus we see how great the inequality of man is because of sin and transgression, and the power of the devil, which comes by the cunning plans which he hath devised to ensnare the hearts of men.

Alma 28:13

* Korihor– To understand how Alma’s meditations on war prepared him for Korihor you have to  understand the context for Alma’s ‘O that I were an Angel’ psalm in Ch. 29.  We usually take it out of context and treat it as Alma really wanting to blast out the gospel because he’s so excited about it and then spending the rest of the chapter rebuking his excessive fervor.  That’s not actually what is going on at all.   Ch. 29 is obviously a continuation of ch. 28, they are clearly the same writing, and only the chapter heading distracts us from that.  The over all arc is Alma chronicles the massive death that has just occurred and expresses the contrast between those who mourn but are also comforted that their loved ones are heaven-bound versus those whose mourn for loved ones who seemed to have rejected heaven (Ch. 28).  His horror at all this death of the damned leads him to wish that he could preach all over the world like an angel, but he then he comforts himself that God has given enough knowledge to every nation that they can choose their orientation to good or to evil (Ch. 29).

Now in chapter 30 Korihor comes on the scene denying God and goodness. Alma very confidently proclaims that Korihor has already had sufficient evidence to believe in God, he has just chosen to reject it.  Alma’s confidence is probably because he has just something like a spiritual crisis where he wrestled with people dying in a sinful state and concluded that God reaches out to every person and gives them sufficient knowledge to believe.