Follow Him: A Come, Follow Me Podcast - Alma 39-42 Part 1 • Dr. Adam Miller • August 5-11 • Come Follow Me

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

How does the Book of Mormon change the reader? Dr. Adam Miller focuses on how the Book of Mormon teaches the reader about God and enables us to participate in the redemption that the book describes, as Alma teaches his son, Corianton.TRANSCRIPTSEnglish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM32ENFrench: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM32FRGerman: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM32DEPortuguese: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM32PTSpanish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM32ES YOUTUBEhttps://youtu.be/xYDrJXT2OtYALL EPISODES/SHOW NOTESfollowHIM website: https://www.followHIMpodcast.comFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookWEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletterSOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE00:00 Part I  -  Dr. Adam Miller04:41 How does the Book of Mormon change the reader?07:47 Context in Alma 39-4212:11 Alma’s definition of restoration19:17 Alma 40:1, 23-24 - Resurrection24:49 Alma 40 - Alma discusses the Atonement of Jesus28:10 Alma 41:13 - Justice and restoration31:58 Hank shares a story about patriarchal blessings36:09 Alma 39:7 - Alma  shares examples of punishment being essential to restoration45:39 Glad tidings50:41 Alma teaches Corianton what he learned from an angel54:32 A difficult question about judgment1:00:19 Our desires1:06:54 -  End of Part 1 - Dr. Adam MillerThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name's Hank Smith, I'm your host. I'm here with my proper and perfect co-host, John, by the way. John, that comes from Alma 40 verse 23. You are proper and perfect. Well, oh, attitude ain't bad, right? And we're here with our guest, Dr. Adam Miller. John, we're taking on the second half of Alma speaking to his sons. We had Helaman and Shiblon last lesson with Dr. Welch, and now with

Dr. Miller, we're taking on 39 through 42. What comes to your mind when you think of these chapters? Alma wants to talk to his son about his behavior, but that only gets a few verses in Alma 39. And the rest of 39, 40, 41, 42 is this wonderful doctrine. It's validation for that idea of President Packer that a study of the doctrines of the gospel will change behavior quicker than a study of behavior. We've all heard that one before. I love these awesome doctrines that help him give a framework for everything else that's going on and for his behavior. So I'm looking forward to looking at that today. Yeah. When I think of these chapters, there's no better place, honestly, I can think of

in scripture where you walk through the plan of salvation and your role in it. John, like I said, we have Dr. Miller with us. He's been with us in the past. Adam, what are we going to do today? What are you looking forward to? Adam Soule It's great to be back with you. In Alma, chapters 39 to 42, as you know, Alma writes a really tender, pointed letter to his wayward son, Corianton, and he spends a lot of time talking about the work of restoration, which is key to the plan of happiness. He models that work of restoration on the resurrection, and then I think kind of step by step fashion, he transforms his son's understanding of justice, of punishment and repentance.

Yeah, that's a great way, a great way to put it. You can sense the tenderness. I really like how you put that, the tenderness of this parent to a child. John, like I said before, Dr. Miller's been with us a couple of times, but why don't you introduce him to those who are joining us this year? Absolutely. Dr. Adamus Miller is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas. He has a PhD in philosophy from Villanova University. He's the author of more than a dozen books, including Original Grace, one coming out this Christmas called The Christ Child, one that has a Book of Mormon focus called The Seven Gospels, The Many Lives of Christ in the Book of Mormon.

And that was co-authored with Rosalind Welch. Really excited to have you back. We were talking before, you've got a son on a mission in Bolivia, a daughter in graduate school, and a high school graduate. High school graduate. Dr. Miller and his wife get to be empty nesters. That's so far away from me, not even on my radar, but here it's coming up for you, Adam. Thanks for taking your time to be with us again. Yes. It's really my pleasure. I've had so many people over the past couple of years tell me how much they love your show,

how much it means to them on a weekly basis, and I'm happy to be a part of it. We're happy that you're a part of it as well. Let's look at the Come Follow Me manual, and then Adam, let's find out where you want to go. The title of this week's lesson is The Great Plan of Happiness, taking on these four chapters

of Alma talking to his son Corianton. It says this, When someone we love has made a serious mistake, it can be hard to know how to respond. Part of what makes Alma 39-42 so valuable is that it reveals how Alma, a disciple of Christ who once had his own grievous sins to repent of, handled such a situation. In these chapters we observe Alma's boldness in condemning sin and his tenderness and love for Corianton, and ultimately we sense Alma's confidence that the Savior shall come to take away the sins of the world and declare glad tidings of salvation unto his people. The fact that Corianton repented and eventually returned to the work of the ministry can give

us hope for forgiveness and redemption when we are troubled about our own sins or the sins of someone we love. Well said. I think we learned quite a bit about Alma in the way he speaks to his son. Adam, with that, where do you want to start with these four chapters? I think it's useful to remind people up front here that I'm a philosopher, so as always, sorry. I'm not a historian. I'm not a scholar of ancient scripture or ancient languages, and I'm not especially interested in historical questions. I'm interested instead in what we might call existential questions about what it means to be a sinner, about what it looks like to live a new life in Christ, somebody who has been saved.

So with the Book of Mormon, I'm not especially interested in what the Book of Mormon was, or even with what the Book of Mormon is, so much as I'm interested in what the Book of Mormon can do. Right? Rather than understanding the Book of Mormon as a kind of relic of history, I want to engage with it as a live power. I want to understand what the Book of Mormon is doing to me as I study it and as I try to participate in the redemption that it's describing and enacting. Maybe we'll have a little different focus than some of your other guests. We don't mind that at all and I love that question. What is the Book of Mormon doing to me? What's happening inside of me?

Yeah, I take for granted that it is a live power, and that it's capable of doing many things, especially in relationship to my redemption, my experience of God. I'm not going to offer the one true reading of these chapters, but I'm going to try to pay really close attention to the details of what Alma is saying. And in my experience, when I let the Book of Mormon say what it wants to say rather than telling it what I think it's supposed to say, then some really surprising and powerful things can happen. And I think that may be especially true with these chapters.

So I would recommend to listeners as a basic reading strategy here that they don't read these chapters piecemeal, bits and pieces, pulling out verses from here and there, but to really try to read these chapters as one single conversation between a father and a son so that they can track what Alma is saying and how each of the things that he is explaining to his son is meant to inform and transform his son's understanding of the other parts. Yeah, I like that. Let the text speak for itself. It's a crucial skill when reading scripture because oftentimes we like to take a certain verse, grab it and say, this means I like that. Let the text speak for itself. It's a crucial skill when reading Scripture,

because oftentimes we like to take a certain verse, grab it and say, this means this. It's like an organ. You focus on a single pipe. You got to hear them all together. Yeah, and I think that's especially true here, maybe with these chapters, even especially true with the kinds of things that Alma has to say about the purpose and role of justice. true with the kinds of things that Alma has to say about the purpose and role of justice. I'd like to call it drive by scripture study when we grab one verse and read it and then run away instead of back up and see the whole thing. You also know I like to talk about older Uchtdorf and seeing the big picture first. This is this whole discussion of Alma to his son. See all of it and don't just grab one verse here and there. Context is important here. We get Mormon inserting into his abridgment of the large plates three letters

written by Alma to his sons about 73 years before the birth of Christ. Alma 36 through 37, where you get a letter to Helaman that offers a pretty remarkable first-person and detailed account of Alma's own experience of redemption, of that kind of interior moment of conversion, which is pretty remarkable stuff. We get Alma 38, which is a letter to his son Shiblon, exhorting him to bridle his passions so that he can be filled with love. And then we get this third letter, longer than the others, for today, Alma chapters

39 through 42, a letter to his son Corianton, who had forsaken his ministry and gotten tangled up with Isabel. Alma calls him to repentance and unfolds the mystery of the resurrection by way of what he describes as the work of restoration, and then in the process he transforms his son's understanding of justice and punishment and repentance. I think it's useful here to keep in mind that these letters are pretty tender, pretty personal letters that Alma composed for his sons, not for a kind of global 21st century audience.

He wasn't writing these as the scripture. He meant them in a very targeted way for a very personal, intimate audience. That's useful to keep in mind because we see in this more private context the way that Alma is willing to share personal details that he might not share otherwise, like the kind of thing that we get in Alma chapter 36. And we see too that he's quite willing to admit in his conversation to Corianton the limits of his own prophetic knowledge and to mark when he's sharing his opinions rather than confirmed doctrine.

That's very edifying in so far as we get a peek behind the curtain here to the way that Alma doesn't have to know everything to be a real prophet who is issuing a real and saving call to repentance. Alma doesn't pretend to know everything either. And I think both of those things are useful and healthy. never made before, but he does say that a couple of times. I don't know about this certain topic, but it suffices me to say fill in the blank. Yeah, or sometimes he'll say, I don't know, but my opinion about that topic is this, which is also useful and good. We need to explore, we need to push further into what we don't know in order to learn things that we haven't yet grasped. And that's just as true for him as for the rest of us. By way of overview with respect to our particular chapters then, right in Alma chapter 39 is Alma's urging Corianton to repent and return to the work of ministry. It's pretty personal.

It has a lot to do with the details of Corian's own life. And then in the next three chapters, Alma switches gears to something more like 30,000 feet, where he in chapter 40 explains the purpose of the resurrection and adopts resurrection as a model for what he calls the work of restoration. In Alma 41, he begins then to transform Corianton's understanding of divine justice in light of God's work of restoring all things from a state of corruption to a state of incorruption. And then in Alma 42, Alma completes this transformation of Corianton's understanding of divine justice by explaining how even God's punishments are meant as a blessing, as a good thing, rather

than as a curse. Sometimes in these chapters we refer to what Alma is describing as the law of restoration. That might be a useful shorthand, but it's probably good to note that that's not language that Alma himself ever uses. He never describes restoration as the law of restoration. He just describes the kind of general work of restoration as the law of restoration. He just describes the kind of general work of restoration that God is engaged in. It's also useful to note that in Alma chapters 40 to 42, Alma doesn't start out trying to explain the nature of justice.

Instead, he's trying to explain the nature of resurrection, which leads him to talk about restoration, which then leads him to talk about justice as a kind of subcategory of how God goes about his work of restoration. How would you describe how Alma is using the word restoration? Because we might have a listener going, you mean the restoration of the gospel? And that's not on Alma's radar at all. Yeah, this will be the first thing that I'll want to get to in detail. By way of preview, we can say that what Alma means in general by restoration is what we see modeled in the resurrection, where God restores something to its perfect and natural

order, where God takes something that is corrupted and restores it to a state of incorruption. That I think is kind of Alma's baseline model of restoration. Let me offer one more idea here by way of a frame for our conversation and then we can dive into the details. Rereading these chapters, this time I was thinking about Elder Kieran's talk from this past General Conference. Elder Kieran's talk called The God's Intent is to Bring You Home. And in this talk, Elder Kieran tells a called God's Intent Is to Bring You Home. In this talk, Elder Kieran tells a pretty memorable story about watching a traffic cop

from a nearby window, if you recall this story. Let me read you Elder Kieran's description of that experience. He says, Several months ago, when my wife and I were visiting another country for various church assignments, I woke up early one morning and looked blearily outside her hotel window. Down below on the busy street I saw that a roadblock had been set up with a policeman stationed nearby to turn cars around as they reached the barrier. At first only a few cars traveled along the road and were turned back, but as time went by and traffic increased, queues of cars began to build up. From the window above, I watched as the policeman

seemed to take satisfaction in his power to block the flow of traffic and to turn people away. In fact, he seemed to develop a spring in his step, as if he might be doing a little jig as each car approached the barrier. If a driver got frustrated about the roadblock, the policeman did not appear helpful or sympathetic. He just shook his head repeatedly and pointed in the opposite direction, which is a pretty funny story. But then Elder Kieran draws this conclusion. He says, My friends, my fellow disciples on the road of mortal life, our father's beautiful plan, even his fabulous plan, what Alma will call here the plan of happiness, is designed to bring you home, not to keep

you out. No one has built a roadblock and stationed someone there to turn you around and send you away. In fact, it's the exact opposite. God is in relentless pursuit of you. He wants all of his children to choose to return to him, and he employs every possible measure to bring you back. That's a really useful frame here for reading these chapters, because maybe of all the chapters

in the Book of Mormon, it's easiest here to fall into the trap of reading Amla's description of justice in chapters 39 through 42 as if God were like a traffic cop, as if the law of restoration was designed to keep you out of God's presence, as if the purpose of God's justice was to curse you with more evil, because you had done evil. The truth here is the opposite. I think in context, pretty clearly, for Alma, the law of restoration is not a roadblock, but the work of restoration is the work of atonement itself. To restore a thing is to take something that's broken and to put it back together, to return it to its proper, imperfect frame.

And in this respect, I think God will not be denied, as Elder Kieran says. God is in relentless pursuit of us, and he wants all of his children to return to him. This is the plan, this is his work, this is the purpose of restoration, it's the purpose of justice. It's even, as Alma is going to point out here, though it might be hard to see, the purpose of punishment. This is the good news, as Joseph Smith tells us in section 76. The good news of the gospel is that God means to save us and quote, God's purposes fail not. Neither are there any who can stay his hand. This really is my reading of these chapters that Alma is trying to explain

how the purpose of the work of restoration is to usher us into the presence of God, not to keep us out. Reminds me of Joseph Smith's statement that I absolutely love, talking about Jehovah Jesus. He says, he knows the situation of both the living and the dead and has made ample provision for their redemption. We're not getting by the skin of our teeth here. He has made ample provision for their living and dead. I think that's everyone. Yeah, God's purpose is to save us.

He means to succeed. Yeah. Mighty to save. Our mistake sometimes is taking worldly models that we see and applying them to God. I remember dabbling in some different graduate programs before I found one that I liked. I think it was a mass communications program. And the first day the professor mentioned that only a certain percentage of the class had gotten so high on, I can't even remember what the entrance exam was. Basically, he was saying,

according to stats, only about 35-40% of you will even pass this. And I thought, are you trying to encourage us? And I think if we look at a professor who is trying to see how many students he can flunk and then saying that model is the same as what God's trying to do, then we've missed what Elder Ciarán just taught. Well, actually, his plan is a plan to save you, not to keep you out. Sometimes we look at earthly parents and think God is like that. One of the greatest things we can get from these studies is what is God really like? These chapters are helpful in explaining that. That I would take as a guardrail here for our reading of these chapters. If I read these chapters in a way that lead me to think about God as a kind of traffic cop

enjoying his work of turning me around and sending me back, or as a kind of professor who is enjoying his work, flunking his students, then I think we can take for granted that I've misunderstood what's being said here, and the plane of happiness that Alma is trying to describe, and the account of justice that Alma is trying to give. BF That traffic cop reminds me of what does section 121 say? We have learned by sad experience that is the nature and disposition of almost all men as soon as they get a little authority as they suppose. As they suppose. They immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. But it goes on and Adam I think this is

what you were saying you can correct me, where Joseph Smith goes on in 121 to say, power and influence come from persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, and love unfeigned, kindness and pure knowledge. Is that what you're saying? That's how the Lord works? Yeah, that's how he works. And he works there in line with his own commandment, of course, to love not just his friends, but his enemies, even when we position ourselves as his enemies. His love for us is indestructible and undeniable. You and I may choose to not participate in it or to flee from it.

That doesn't change anything for him. Those verses from section 121 are useful too, because it's not just our disposition to act that way, but it's our disposition as sinners to think that God is like that too. That if God has a little power, he's going to use it like that, just like we would if we had a little power. But that's to misunderstand the whole thing. It's a symptom of the problem that you and I have in the first place. Well, let's take a look at some particular verses here then. We're going to focus here especially on chapters 40 to 42 where Alma zooms out away from the

particular problems that Corianton had to talk about the plan as a whole. You note, for instance, that in verse 1 of Alma chapter 40, then, Alma indicates exactly what the topic at hand is when he says, Now, my son, I perceive that thy mind is worried concerning the resurrection of the dead. That's important here because everything else that Alma is going to say about the plan, about justice, about punishment, all of that is against the backdrop of this larger conversation about resurrection and what it is. They don't start talking about justice. They don't start out, that's not the topic of conversation, they'll get to justice. But they start out talking about resurrection and why it's so important. This matters a lot to me here because I think what it does then is it reframes everything that Alma is going to say about what restoration is and what God's work of restoration looks like.

Because resurrection will turn out then here in chapter 40 for Alma, resurrection will turn out to be kind of the root model for what restoration looks like, for what God is trying to do here with his plan of happiness. In terms of resurrection, to restore a thing Alma is going to say is to change it from corruption to incorruption. You take something broken and you fix it, or you return it to its perfect and proper frame, as he'll also say, just like John, by the way, already in his perfect and proper frame. 0 out of 2, like I said.

For instance, toward the end of Alma chapter 40, we get verses 23 and 24. And there Alma says the following, he says, the soul shall be restored to the body. He's describing the resurrection. This is restoration. The soul shall be restored to the body and the body to the soul Yeah, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body. Yeah, even a hair of the head shall not be lost but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame and Now my son this is the restoration of which has been spoken by the mouths of the prophet. Right, so he's going to say some things about justice later on that I think will be easy to misunderstand if we don't keep in mind the frame for their entire conversation, which is the topic of resurrection.

Resurrection as the model for restoration. What restoration is then modeled on resurrection is this business of restoring things to their proper and perfect frame. Not preventing things from being restored to their proper and perfect frame, but insisting that they be restored to their proper and perfect frame. And I could say that that includes me. Verse 23, that's the Lord's goal, is to get me there. I want to be there, is to get me there. I want to be there and he wants me there.

Yeah, you are part emphatically of all things. Yeah. He's keen on the details here as well. Every limb and joint, every hair on the head, nothing is going to be lost here. Everything will be recovered. All of it will be restored to its proper and perfect frame. That's the work of restoration. It's interesting here in verse 23 that the term soul and the soul be restored to the body. One definition of the soul is the body and the spirit together. Sometimes, and I don't know why, soul and spirit are used interchangeably in the Book of Mormon.

And this is one of those places, but I think that we know what's happening here. The spirit restored to the body, and the body, every limb and joint is restored. Yeah, I think that's right. The Doctrine and Covenants proposes an interesting distinction between spirit and soul, and identifies soul as like the combination of the spirit and body. But the Book of Mormon doesn't seem to make that distinction at all. The Bible doesn't seem to make that distinction either. And it's maybe apropos here with respect to what Alma says in these chapters as well in

terms of what happens to people after they die, that space between death and resurrection. A lot of the things that the Doctrine and Covenants is going to say in general that will greatly clarify what happens in that time between death and resurrection or even in that time after we are resurrected and assigned to different kingdoms of glory. None of that's in evidence here in the Book of Mormon. And it fits squarely under the heading of what Alma describes for himself as still a kind of mystery. Now, before we go any further, Adam, I think you're modeling something for us that I would

like to point out, and that is there might be a tendency for those who are teaching this lesson to young people to focus almost entirely on chapter 39 and talk about sexual sin. And sexual sin is really not even mentioned in the chapter, it is in the heading, but in the chapter itself, it's not necessarily there. I think when we focus on that in this letter, we end up probably with the opposite of what you're telling us here, maybe, which is God wants to save you. Instead, we might have students or youth walking out of a Sunday school class thinking, now I know I'm the worst person ever. Right? Like, there is a place in Scripture to teach

sexuality, Jacob chapter 2 I'm thinking of, or even Joseph of Egypt. But I would say to everyone out there, I think Adam is doing a great job modeling perhaps where you might focus on this lesson. Yeah, in Alma chapter 39, Alma doesn't pull any punches in explaining to Corian how serious his mistakes have been. Though interestingly, he tends to focus on the consequences of that mistake for Corianton's ministry, right, the kind of larger scale consequences are his primary point of focus when he is correcting Corianton there. To invoke section 121 again, what we get here in chapters 39 through 42 might be a pretty good example in general of what it looks like to reprove with sharpness as we get in Alma chapter 39, and then to show forth an increase of love as we get demonstrated

in chapters 43-42. I like that a lot. It's a good way to look at it. When we're helping someone change their behavior or get away from things that are going to hurt them, I don't think it helps to just beleaguer the point. I mean, you could go on for four chapters about how your behavior really hurts you and hurts others, hurts me, but you're right.

He reproves with sharpness, and now let's spend the rest of the time uplifting you, taking you somewhere, expanding your mind. Yeah, let's understand then now how God wants to resurrect you and return you to His presence. I think as Alma wants us to, from Alma chapter 40, if we take resurrection as the model for restoration, then the work of restoration is the work of atonement. It's the work of taking what is bad and making it good. It's the work of taking what is corrupt and making it good is the work of taking what is corrupt and making it whole.

It's probably even the work here of taking what's good and making it better, of restoring things to their proper and perfect frame. This is what God does if we'll let him. And all of this work is modeled on, as we already indicated, God's commandment to love, and especially on his commandment to love even our enemies. The work here is not the work of making sure that corrupt things stay corrupt. It's the work of raising corruption to incorruption. I like that as a model for parenting, that there's a time and a place to talk about behavior

and the consequences of that behavior. But as a parent, much like a patriarchal blessing, they're usually very uplifting to help you see what you can become. Yeah, the plan of happiness. So once we have that backdrop, then for the discussion of restoration, then in chapter 41, Alma moves on to the topic of justice. The first point to make here, I think, is that as I read it, Alma does not think that the law of restoration is the same thing as justice. Justice, he's going to describe

as a part of the work of restoration, but I think there's a tendency to read the law of restoration as if it were something like the law of karma from the Eastern traditions and to think that justice is just the same thing as karma. Karma is the same thing as restoration. When I don't think against the backdrop of chapter 40 that that's the case at all because the model for restoration is resurrection. In Alma chapter 41, in verse 13, you get Alma saying something like this, he says, And now, behold, is the meaning of the word restoration to take a thing of a natural state and place it in an unnatural state, or to place it in a state opposite to its nature? O my son, he says, this is not the case.

But the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back again evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish, good for that which is good, righteous for that which is righteous, just for that which is just, merciful for that which is merciful." Now there's a lot going on in that verse, and it might be easy to get tangled up in it. For the moment, for example, I want to set aside his description of how the work of restoration involves bringing back again evil for evil until we can talk about justice in general for a moment. Because of course that language of bringing back evil for evil sounds a lot like the traffic

cop god that Corianton maybe is expecting, but that Alma is trying to undermine, I think, that expectation. So let's just note a couple things about this verse before we swing back around in a little bit to that maybe more difficult question. Note here first that he says that the word restoration means to place a thing back into its natural state. And this, for example, I think is what resurrection is meant to do. We were meant to be eternal, immortal beings.

Here we are, immortality, but to resurrect a thing is in this sense to restore it to its natural state, to restore us to our original, paradisiacal, Edenic, eternal, immortal condition. Partly what's at stake here in how we read these verses has to do with what you and I assume our natural state is. Do I assume that my natural state is good or do I assume that my natural state is evil? If I assume that I am naturally a son of God, that I am in some sense naturally a divine being, then I think that makes a lot more sense here out of what Alma is saying about restoration, especially modeled on resurrection. What God's aim here is, is to restore me to my natural state, which is a state that is in communion with Him, which is in a state that is both immortal and capable of participating

in eternal life. If though I assume that my natural state is evil, that I am naturally a sinner, of course this verse is going to sound like bad news, because then I'll just be stuck being a sinner. So that's a kind of fork in the road here, I think, in terms of how we read this verse, but I'm inclined to read it in line with chapter 40 where the model for restoration is resurrection and my assumption about myself ought to be not that I'm naturally evil, but that I am naturally good. Adam Lutzer That is my proper and perfect frame.

Adam Felsenfeld That's my proper frame, right. Exactly. David Hicks Adam, what you're saying reminds me of a story I heard from a friend. His name is Steve Dalby. He said he was reading his patriarchal blessing and for some reason he decided to call his patriarch who he didn't really know, had given him his blessing years before, but thought to just call him up and say thank you. So he did so. He called him up and he had an idea. He said, patriarch,

in the blessings you've given over your time as Patriarch, what have you learned? And his Patriarch said, that's a good question. He said, I just finished typing up blessing 999. 999. And he said, one thing I've seen in all 999 of them is that they've all been positive. That fits really with, I am naturally good. God sees me as good. That I think is the truth about who and what we are, and God's aim is to restore precisely that. I thought my patriarchal blessing might say something like, it does not look good. But

we're going to try everything we can here, but the odds are not looking in your favor. Yeah, as if it were a negative weather report. Right. Yeah. Let me suggest one other thing about these verses that I think is quite interesting. Alma is giving us here a long list of examples of restoration. Good for that which is good, righteous for that which is righteous, just for that which is just, merciful for that which is merciful. These are all examples of how the law of restoration works.

Which is to say, justice is not the same thing as the law of restoration. Justice is one example of how sometimes the law of restoration works. Another example of the law of restoration itself, as he gives us here, is mercy. Mercy is not a kind of exception to how the law of restoration works. It's an essential element of how the law of restoration works and is even prime example of the law of restoration Mercy for mercy justice for justice these are both examples of restoration and Justice and restoration are not just two names for the same thing as if they were the law of karma

And now much after 42 then Now I'm going to spend a lot of time trying to transform Orientum's understanding of the purpose and role of punishment. As sinners, we are prone to misunderstand God as a kind of traffic cop. As sinners, we're prone to misunderstand ourselves as if our own natures were inherently evil. and as sinners, I think, we're prone to misunderstand and misread God's punishments. We're prone to misunderstand and misread punishment as if it were God getting back at us for the evil that we had already done. But I think all of Alma chapter 42 is really an attempt here to explain to Corian the way that punishment as a function of the law, as a function of

justice, is a good thing. Punishment is God responding to our evil with the good that we need in order to become good and stop being evil. Say that again. Yeah, punishment is God responding to our evil with the good that we need in order to become good and stop being evil? Of course correction. Of course correction.

That you need. It's come from a place of love. It's intended as a kind of pedagogy, and I think Alma makes this quite clear in chapter 42, especially in his discussion of Adam and Eve and the role that the law plays in their expulsion from the Garden of Eden and how that this is not in fact a punishment, but an occasion for them to be restored. It's part of the work of restoration itself. What a fantastic idea. Rather than seeing punishment as a negative, that God is looking for ways to hurt me, this is coming from a place of love. I'm going to direct

you. I'm helping you get back on track. Yes. Amma emphasizes the fact that punishment is an essential part of justice that can't be denied or ignored. He even uses very famously hyperbolic language about how God would cease to be God if punishment were not in some sense involved here in the work of justice. But he also spends a lot of time trying to explain how this work of punishment is part of the work of restoring us on the model of resurrection to that perfect and proper frame so that we can move from a state of corruption to a state of incorruption and stay in the presence of God once we get back there. Here are a couple examples, maybe. Two of them are from Alma chapter 42, but the first one as a place to start is from Alma chapter 39,

where in Alma chapter 39 verse 7 Alma says to his son, And now my son I would to God that ye had not been guilty of so great a crime. I would not dwell upon your crimes to harrow up your soul, if it were not for your good." It may feel punitive to Corianton as a sinner for his father to bring up his mistakes and to in some sense dwell on them, in some sense to use them to harrow up his soul, but Alma's point here is, you're misunderstanding the use them to harrow up his soul. But Alma's point here is, you're misunderstanding the very nature of what I'm doing here. I'm only bringing this up, and I wouldn't have ever brought it up if it weren't good for you, if it weren't the good that you needed

in response to the evil that you had done. That, I think, is kind of baseline understanding of the role of punishment in the work of justice. Insofar as God punishes us, that punishment is always God only acting out of a desire to respond to our evil with good. That's fantastic. I'm going to quote that to my children the next time. The next time there's a punishment. You're not going to like this, but it's good for you. You're going to have to pony up though and make sure it is actually good for them. That's true. Yeah, that's true. You know what this reminds me of is President Packer talking to seminary teachers or something

and mentioned a check engine light. I think he called it a warning light. I mean, what a blessing that is. If you suddenly know, hey, I've got a bad cylinder. I mean, you could keep driving and throw a rod, ruin your whole engine. But this warning light comes up and says, this needs attention. This needs to be looked at.

That is for your good. That's for the good of your car. For that to come on. Hank, you know, this winter I was trying to get up to Logan where you were and as I left my Sequoia gave me a not just to check engine light, it was flashing, meaning pull over. I had to come up in a different car. When we were coming through Sardine Canyon, it was snowing so hard. The outbound lanes were closed because a semi truck had jackknifed and I thought, oh had that check engine light come on while I was in Sardine Canyon? I mean that was such a

tender mercy. But it came on for my good. I got another car and made it up there. I like that idea of a check engine light in your car you may think that's a bad thing but what is the outcome? What are they trying to help you do? Not damage the engine further and not cause you to be in a spot where you might get in an accident. That's a really nice example. If we think that God is like a traffic cop then then we're going to miss the way that what looks to us like punishment is actually a mercy, right? A tender mercy, as you put it here. That warning light is a tender mercy. We don't see the way that justice and

mercy are both examples of the law of restoration and examples that work together as part of that work of restoration. If we end up thinking that mercy is something like the opposite of justice even, then we'll entirely miss the way that these gestures of punishment are an act of mercy on God's part. They're not him responding to our evil with evil. They're him responding to our evil with the good, the merciful good that we need in order to be transformed. And in this way, mercy and justice are both crucial aspects of this same work of restoration.

There would be nothing less merciful than letting people continue to be evil. That would be evil on my part. Yeah, they're both coming from a place of love. Yeah, I was thinking about membership councils that sometimes have to be held and Elder M. Russell Ballard said, the first purpose of a membership council is to save the soul of the sinner. That's the first purpose. It's for your good.

Might not seem that way, but that is the overarching reason for that whole thing. I think that's good. If that membership council is not an act of mercy, then it has failed in its role as being part of this work of restoration. They can be conducted in the wrong way, which doesn't seem to come from a place of love. Hopefully can be conducted in the wrong way, which doesn't seem to come from

a place of love. Hopefully those cases are rare. We get two other verses here from chapter 42 itself that I think work in this same spirit. In Alma 42 29, Alma says, And now my son, I desire that ye should let these things trouble you no more Only let your sins trouble you with that trouble which shall bring you down to repentance That's the only kind of troubling the God is interested in here God is only interested in the kind of harrowing the kind of troubling that works toward my own good That brings me down to repentance, as he puts it here. It also opens the door to, I think, a really productive way of thinking about repentance,

where repentance is not a kind of punishment process through which I must go as a result of the evil that I have done, but repentance is what it looks like for me to respond with mercy to my own evil. Repentance is what it looks like for me to respond to my own evil with the good that's now needed, in the same way that God is attempting to respond to my evil with whatever good is now needed. And that's the punishment plays a crucial role here in that sense. The way that it troubles us, the way that it warns us, as John put it, that's to our good. And you know, I love verse 30 there. The very first verse in Alma 42, Alma says, you think it's injustice, a sinner should be consigned to a state of misery. He's got this idea of some sort of injustice. And I love verse 30 that says, deny the justice of God no more do not

endeavor to excuse yourself in the least point because of your sins by denying the justice of God here's the phrase I love but do let the justice of God and his mercy and his long-suffering have and look at this word this phrase full sway in your heart. What is it that we let have full sway? Maybe he was so fixated on justice and his understanding of it to the point Alma says, you've forgotten about mercy. You've forgotten about God's patience.

Let all of those have full sway in your heart. I don't know what full sway means. I'm thinking about a swing set where a swing sways. But what do you guys think that means? Is it possible to only have some things have partial sway in our heart? And I think what he's adding is look at these other attributes of God. Don't forget about His mercy and His patience and put that with justice, let them have full sway. I think that's a good description of the kind of tension in the conversation that Alma is having with Corianton, where Corianton thinks justice is one thing and Alma is gradually, carefully trying

to transform his notion of justice to bring it in line with the actual work of restoration, which is something that has to happen for all of us. Because at the heart of what it means to be a sinner is for you and I to misunderstand what God is and what God wants from us, and to be saved from my sinfulness involves that process of education in which I discover the truth about God, I discover the truth about happiness, I discover the truth about what God actually wants from me and what he wants me to join him in doing. That's what the process of redemption looks like. It looks like letting the truth about justice and mercy

have full sway in my heart instead of running from them fearfully. He says that right in chapter 42 verse 1, and now, my son, I perceive there is somewhat more which doth worry your mind, which ye can understand, which is concerning the justice of God in the punishment of the sinner. For you try to suppose that it is injustice that the sinner should be consigned to a state of misery. I like what you said there. He sees the justice of God as a negative, where Alma is saying, No, this is meant to help you.

God wants to save you. Yeah, this thing that Corianton is avoiding, Alma is trying to say, is the good news. It's the good news that he's looking for, not what he should be running from. You called it good news, and that is exactly at the end of chapter 39 he calls it glad tidings in verse 15 he calls it glad tidings in verse 16 he calls it glad tidings in verse 19 which is another way of saying good news with a kind of a Christmas twist to it you know glad tidings of great joy and he's telling him you were supposed to declare glad tidings unto the people about the coming of Christ, the time of his coming.

Yeah, glad tidings. It's easy for us to read these chapters, I think, the way that Corianton would rather than the way that Alma is attempting to introduce to him. Look at the names of the plan. There isn't any time that I'm aware of where it's called the plan of punishment. I don't even think it's called the plan of justice. I think it's called the plan of retribution. When the enemies of the people of God responded to Samuel the Lamanite's prophecy, it says

the great plan of destruction which they had laid had been frustrated, so they had a plan of destruction. But God's is a plan of redemption and salvation and happiness even. It's called a plan of mercy too in these chapters, isn't it? Yeah, I believe so. It's a plan of restoration. Alma tries to illustrate for Corianton here in chapter 42 how punishment is meant to be

a good thing by running him through the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. For instance, in verse 5 of Alma 42, Alma says, If Adam had put forth his hand immediately and partaken of the tree of life, he would have lived forever, having no space for repentance. In this, it turns out, would have been a disaster. If there were no space, no room for repentance and transformation before his enjoying the fruit of the tree of life, then all would have been lost. If Adam had got what he thought he wanted right at the start, instead of having to go through the difficulty of what he actually needed, then the whole plan would have been frustrated. This kind of expulsion from Eden and journey through mortality is in fact a

blessing, not a curse. It's fortunate, as we tend to say. As Latter-day Saints, the fall is a fortunate thing. It's difficult, but it's necessary. And it's necessary here in particular to give us space, to give us time, the gift, the mercy of time, for us to grow, for us to understand really the nature of good and evil, for us to understand that wickedness never was happiness in the first place and never could be all those things are a gift or a blessing that come disguised perhaps in the form of punishment that is easy to misunderstand. I'm reminded of that verse in is it Moses 6 55 and they taste the bitter that they may know to prize the good but the more I think about that the more I love that verse there's a that verse, there's a purpose in opposition. There's a purpose in tasting the bitter. Like the

warning light, I don't want to do that again. I don't like how that felt. They taste the bitter that they may know to price the good. Whereas Lehi famously says, right in 2nd Nephi chapter 2, that Adam felt that men might be and here we are in mortality for the sake of joy. All this is for the sake of joy. All this is essential to the discovery and experience of joy. But it's easy to miss that and it's easy to get trapped in our ignorance about the nature of joy in a way that leads us to choose wrongly again and again. Again and again. Again and again is surely accurate. Maybe the other thing to say about this too is Alma,

as he himself confesses, is murky on some of the details of how this is all going to play out. He knows that mortality is a kind of probationary state. It is a gift. It's space for growth and change and repentance and discovery. But as Alma understands the story, that space for change and growth and redemption ends when we die. But this, for you and I, from our perspective, is a great gift given to us through the Doctrine and Covenants, through Joseph Smith and the fullness of the Restoration, that this space for repentance is actually much bigger than Alma thought that it was. But it doesn't just include our mortal lives here, but it stretches long beyond our mortality into the spirit world, where we will continue, the whole of the human

family will continue to have a chance to accept the gospel, be transformed, discover the truth about God's love for them, and rejoin his presence. In this respect, the good news is even better than Alma, I think, suspected that it was. I've thought perhaps, and I'd love for you to both comment on this, that Alma 39 through 42 could be Alma trying to walk Corianton through and teach him in the same way the angel taught him, that it was very abrupt in the beginning, seek no more to destroy the church of God. But then as you read in Mosiah 27 and then again in Alma 36, he learns, he was wracked with this eternal torment, my soul was harrowed up, I remembered, my father speak of Christ, and now I understand,

I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more. Do you see a little bit of Alma saying, well, I'll play the part of the angel here. You play the part of me. I'll walk you through the same process I went through. I think the parallels are pretty strong. That's a very astute observation. I'll take that. Can I put that on my wall?

The Adam Miller said that's a very astute observation. Yeah, I'll put it in vinyl. Let me add to that Hank, because I love to send this verse to my friends who are on missions, Alma 814, because when Alma comes out of his first attempt in Ammonihah, the angel, another angel stops him and says, blessed art thou Alma, therefore lift up thy head and rejoice for thou has a great cause to rejoice for thou has been faithful and keeping the commandments of God from the time which thou receivest thy first message

from him and then thank you Mormon for leaving this in behold I am he that delivered it unto you the same angel that knocked him over in one place in Mosiah 27 is now saying, you're doing so well. You're doing so well. You have great cause to rejoice even though they kicked you out. You've kept the commandments since you first heard them. And I just love that the angel says, do you remember me?

That was me. I scared you pretty bad. But that was me back then. Right. Nephi describes this as having the tongue of angels. To have the tongue of angels is to minister, to speak by the power of the Holy Ghost, to declare this same message of glad tidings. And then what happens, of course, once you hear the message, is that you start giving the message. The angel comes to you and effectively commissions you as an angel. You'll have heard the

angel's message to the degree that you then participate in it and share it with other people. As you pointed out, Hank, that's a good example of what Alma is then doing here. He's repeating that same angelic work of fulfilling the role here of the angel who is ministering, speaking with the tongue of angels by the power of the Holy Ghost. And the thing that he seems to be saddest about, perhaps to our surprise, in Alma chapter 39, is the fact that Corianton getting tangled up with Isabel led to him forsaking his ministry. That seems to be the sticking point for Alma. And what he wants more than anything is for Corian to repent and take up again the work of ministry Yeah, he says counsel with your elder brothers in your undertakings suffer not yourself to be led away by this vain or foolish things and

Turn to the Lord with all your might mind and strength So you're not leading hearts away from him, but rather to return to God. I like that. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that if an angel comes to me and brings me this good news, I have not actually heard or accepted that news unless I myself then begin to fulfill that same angelic role. Which is what Paul did too. It's the pattern, it's the basic pattern I think. I love that.

Why don't we come back to the more difficult question about judgment that we left aside earlier. I think we're in a better position to try to answer that now in light of what Alma's been teaching. Alma's pretty emphatic that there are two key elements to the work of restoration. One key element to the work of restoration is resurrection, and resurrection is his model for what restoration in general is meant to do, restoring corruption to incorruption and restoring things to their proper and perfect frame. But the other part of the work of restoration is the moment of judgment that takes place as Alma describes it.

When having been resurrected, we are then all of us returned to the presence of God to be judged. Now this is the moment I think that it's easy especially for Corianton to misunderstand what's at stake in this experience of judgment. What God is judging, how he's judging, and why he's judging. But Amon in this same spirit says some pretty surprising and penetrating and transformative things about this moment of judgment once we've been returned to the presence of God.

For instance, in Alma chapter 41 verse 3, Alma says this about this moment of judgment as part of the work of restoration, and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, that they should also at the last day be restored unto that which is good." Now the first part of that description of judgment is not surprising, and maybe what Corianton expects, that if your works were good in this life, then you will be restored unto that which is good in this life, then you will be restored unto that which is good in the next." But the middle part of Alma's description there of what's at stake in judgment pretty

dramatically reframes how this judgment is going to unfold. Yeah, you'll be judged on whether or not your works were good, but also, and perhaps especially, Alma says you will be judged on whether or not the desires of your heart were good and That will decide whether you will have restored unto you that which is good this moment of judgment is not a moment when the Score card is tallied To see what kinds of good things I did and what kinds of bad things I did and whether that balances out to any kind of possibility of reward or redemption in the life to come. Rather it's a moment when the truth about the desires of my heart are revealed and that

at the end of the day will decide what is restored unto me. And if what I wanted was good, then I will be restored unto what is good, Alma says. He repeats that same point in verse 5 when he says that the one is raised to happiness according to his desires for happiness, or good according to his desires of good, and the other to evil according to his desires for evil. This is something that I don't think we often give nearly enough weight to when we think about what judgment is, what's being judged, and how it works. That as part of the plan of restoration,

what's going to be restored to us here are the good or bad things that were our original true desires. And that's going to be the decisive element. Very different from perhaps how we tend to think about it, or maybe how Corey Antin was prone to think about it. I didn't notice how often that word desires comes up. Once he introduces it, it takes center stage and displaces the talk about works pretty significantly. I had that line underlined, and the desires of their hearts were good. The desire of our hearts matter. I'm thinking of few verses. What did King Benjamin do? What did King Benjamin say? If the beggar comes and you don't have anything to give,

I would that you would say in your heart, or I'm hoping this that you say in your heart, I want to give and I would give if I had. The desire of our hearts matter. There's a verse in section 46 of the Doctrine and Covenants verse 9, for verily I say unto you, they, spiritual gifts, are given for the benefit of those who love me and keep all my commandments, semicolon, and him that seeketh so to do." And that to me is like that line. The desire of their hearts were also good. I try and I fail, but that's the desire of my heart. So those two verses I've got footnoted together. Desires of my hearts count and I keep all the commandments and I seek to do so. I mess up, but I seek to

do so. I think that's right. That's very much in the same spirit with what Alma is trying to explain here to Corianton. Our works are important, but our desires in some sense are decisive. John, it reminds me of what you often say about the sacrament. I am willing to keep His commandments. I am willing. I desire to take His name upon me. It's kind of fun to watch for that because God is called able, but we're at the best called willing. The Spirit is willing, the flesh is weak.

Same phrase comes up in Doctrine and Covenants 137, talking about the celestial kingdom, for I the Lord will judge all men according to their works, according to the desires of their hearts. Yeah. It's another one to put in there. Yeah, let me suggest one other thing about this that maybe like Alma, I could mark as my opinion on this issue. This is a really important dimension of what it means to be judged, not just by our works here, but by our desires. It's very, very rare for anyone to actually want evil. Because to want something is, by definition, to think that it's good. If you didn't think it was good, you wouldn't want it in the first place.

Though people want things all the time that aren't good, this isn't because they don't want what's good. It's because they don't know what actually is good. The problem here isn't that I don't want what's good. It's because they don't know what actually is good. The problem here isn't that I don't want what's good. The problem is that I'm wrong about what's good. And Corianton himself is maybe a good example of this. Corianton gets tangled up with Isabel because he wants love. He wants intimacy. These are good things, love and intimacy, but he goes about it the wrong way. He participates them in the wrong way. He pursues them in a way that hurts both him and Isabel and the people that he's supposed to be ministering to. He wants the right thing,

but he's wrong about how to do it, about how to get it. That's true for almost all of us, almost all of the time. That our desires are good, but that we tend to be wrong about what is or isn't good. And if that's the case, then the work of restoration here isn't the work of trying to convince me to give up wanting what's evil and start wanting what's good. But the very work of atonement, the very work of restoration, is the work of educating me about what actually is good. And once I see that, once I know it, I will get on board with it, naturally. To the degree that that's true, that makes me very hopeful for the degree to which God is going to succeed here in his full-scale effort to save all of us, as Elder

Kieran put it. It makes me very hopeful for God's relentless pursuit of us, because the problem here isn't that I'm bad or evil by nature. The problem is that I tend to be wrong about what is or isn't actually good, and if I can discover the truth, then surely I will join God and find myself happy to be in His presence again. I love that. Educate me, help me see more clearly what's good, because I want good, but I might not realize what good is. And we do the same thing as parents to our children. Our children are always choosing things that are good, but maybe not good for them right

then or there. That's the same kind of problem with us. I would rarely choose something that wasn't good, but I often choose things that aren't good for me right then or right there. Yeah. Sometimes when I get frustrated at a little league basketball game it's because I like justice, right? I want things to be just and when that coach, it's usually not the referee, it's the other coach where I'm like that is not just. So I'm glad you said that Adam, from now on I will say what I want is good but my way of acting upon it is not good for me. I do think there's such a thing as having a change of heart. Maybe we want something that we think feels good for a moment, but it's

not long-term good. I like that. If I was going to put it on what Adam is telling us, it's King Benjamin's people finally got to see what was good and committed to it. I've been shown what is truly good. We often talk about one of the things that the Savior does working on our hearts is help us change our hearts so that we desire good. And I guess what you're saying, Adam, is we need to figure out what good is. And sometimes we figure it out by trial and error, maybe. But King Benjamin's people had no more desire to do evil. Was that because they were more educated about what good is and they saw things they wanted

maybe as temporary? Maybe it feels good now but doesn't feel good in the long run. I think we can be sympathetic to the position in which we find ourselves here as sinners because the kinds of things that turn out to be best, not just to be good or even better, but to be best, are pretty counterintuitive things that are not going to be obvious to people on the face of it. It turns out that the very best thing that you can do to experience joy going to be obvious to people on the face of it. It turns out that the very best thing that you can do to experience joy and to be happy is not to save your life but to lose it, which is pretty counterintuitive. And it's no surprise that it takes us time

in space granted to us in this mortal probation to begin to discover the truth of that, to begin to discover that if I try to satisfy my desires, if I try to save my own life, I will do nothing but create misery for myself and other people. But that if I instead stop trying to achieve what is good for me and instead invest my heart and mind in doing what's good for others, then I will find the very good thing that I was looking for. That could take a little time and space to begin to work out. That could take a little time and space for my heart to undergo that kind of transformation and become capable of the kind of good that it was made by God to pursue in the first

place. Coming up in part two of this episode. A pretty surprising twist here that on the day of judgment, if I don't stay in the presence of God, if I don't honor the truth about my desires, it will not be because of something that God judged about me. It will be because of a judgment or even misjudgment here that I have made about myself.