Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Alma 15: Sanctuary in Sidom

Alma and Amulek leave Ammonihah for the more gospel-friendly city of Sidom, where they meet up with some inexplicable and not aforementioned survivors of the Chief Judge's purge.


Zeezrom:  Worried Sick
One of the refugees our missionary dream team encounters is Zeezrom, the lawyer who'd stood up to them during their address to the masses in Ammonihah.  Zeezrom has assumed that Alma and Amulek have both been killed "because of his iniquity."  His guilt has thrown him into a terrible fever, and when he hears that they are alive and well, he sends for them from his sickbed.

Alma then asks him about his faith in Christ, and pronounces a blessing upon him because of the strength of his testimony.  He immediately "[leaps] upon his feet and [begins] to walk."  It is heavily implied that he has been healed by God because of his firm belief.

Assuming this is a true story, though, it seems more likely that his psychosomatic symptoms disappear because he is confronted with a reality that absolves him of his guilt.  This whole time he's been thinking he's somehow responsible for the deaths of two of the Lord's prophets and here they both are, standing front of him, not a scratch on them.  What a relief!  His feverish sweats abate because he's no longer suffering under a crushing sense of guilt for crimes that have eternal ramifications.

But yeah, sure.  A God who just let a whole bunch of his devotees die in a fire cares enough to cure this one self-flagellating guy of his physical afflictions.  That makes perfect sense too.


Ammonihah:   A Portent of Things to Come
The story of Nehor and the effect he has on Ammonihah may be the wisest, most prophetic thing contained in the Book of Mormon.

Nehor was a bad guy who started a religious movement back in chapter one.  He began the movement to gain status in society and amass a following.  His success led him to bolder acts and he eventually had some trouble with the law, resulting in his untimely death. But years after he died, his influence persisted, especially in one pocket of the country where the people and the government were overwhelmingly sympathetic to the movement he founded.  Horrible crimes were perpetrated by those who took up his mantle.  Long after he was gone, the damage that one power-hungry con man could do was still felt across the nation.

Sound familiar?  It's true—the Book of Mormon does prophesy of Joseph Smith after all. Kind of.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for again and again pointing out the absurdity of the Book of Mormon and it's twisted logic.

    God had to preserve Zeezrom so he could become a missionary and save the people. It is better that one man (or a bunch or people) should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief. He had to allow all of those people to be killed and then perform the miracle of the falling prison in order to build faith in Zeezrom so he would become a missionary to the people. Huh? It's a bigger pile of crap than the rubble made by the falling prison.

    But hey, what do I know? I graduated from BYU.

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    1. I'll give Joseph Smith a little credit, though. As far as made up names go, I think Zeezrom is actually a pretty good one.

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  2. Yeah, it's not bad. I'm just glad my parents didn't give me a Book of Mormon name like Nephi, Helaman, or Mahonri Moriancumr like some people I know.

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