Post by Ammon – Son of King Mosiah – Missionary having served fourteen years in the Land of Nephi among the Lamanites.
My brothers and I were, as Alma said, “the vilest of sinners.” That sounds dramatic on the surface. After all, the only thing we did was destroy people’s testimonies of our Savior, and cause contention and trouble for both the church and the peace in the kingdom. Now in hindsight “vilest of sinners” is an understatement. We individually had destroyed our own standing with God and His Son Jesus Christ. We also brought many under that same condemnation. Alma describes the inexpressible horror of it. He is good with words. Now these many years later, he is still good with words, but now we say he is good with good words.
Anyway, I say this so you can see from what perspective I tell of our sufferings and successes which we experienced in the wilderness and among the Lamanites. One more thing to remember, we were raised by a king, in a king’s household. Alma’s father was the High Priest when we were the agents of hell. It truly was the mercy and love of a just God to send an angel to shake the earth. The least we could do is serve as angels to others lost.
In the following entries of this blog, you will read my view of the events the Lord orchestrated in the redemption of Lamanite souls. I and my brothers are sons of a king and we served in the courts of Lamanite kings. We therefore have a different view of the power struggle that takes place in a king’s court, regardless if it’s a Lamanite, Nephite or other court. We know power. And regretfully, we know rebellion, and blessed be the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, we know redemption.
Following the redemption just mentioned, we did everything in our meager power to undo the spiritual and material damage to our communities and the Lord’s church. That is not an easy chore. You can imagine how someone will take our apology and reversal of testimony of the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, when earlier we’d persecuted, hated, and destroyed testimonies with our clever and cunning arguments. And “vilest of sinners” not only includes our fight against the truth; consider our former lifestyles and their rebellion against the very commandments of God. How could we ever undo the immorality in our treatment of the precious daughters of a loving Father in Heaven. Repentance is hard. Restitution is impossible in many cases. If not for the very atonement of Jesus Christ, all hope would be lost.
Glory be to God for his inexplicable mercy, a mercy I hope one day to understand. So, with all of that said, the afflictions, the hunger, thirst and fatigue, along with laboring in the spirit was nothing compared to the mercy and grace of Christ.
Each of us having refused the kingdom which our father King Mosiah desired to confer upon us, not to mention, the people wanted one of us to become the next king (which made no sense to me) we packed up and departed into the wilderness with a handful of fellow missionaries to go up to the land of Nephi to preach the word of God to the Lamanites.
Alma already wrote about the reorganization of the affairs of the kingdom and the reign of judges, so I won’t repeat any of that history. The one regret we experienced in our journey was the death of our father the king while we were away. He did however send us with His and the Lord’s blessing.
We were no novices with the tools of survival, we didn’t plan to go hungry. We packed spears, slings, bows and arrows, to provide food for ourselves while in the wilderness. We did wonder how we would be received by the Lamanites, us being so heavily armed.
Alma 17
