Alma 1: Nehor Was Likable, and Gideon Is Gone by Verse 9
Tuesday evening I walked an envelope next door. Inside was thirty dollars, which is two a day for the fifteen days Mrs. Dalton's grandson Tyler spent feeding our chickens while we were at Bear Lake, and he's fourteen and said no thanks before I'd finished holding it out. I said it again. He said no thanks again, looking at the envelope the way you look at a dog you don't know yet, and then Mrs. Dalton called from her porch swing that he'd take it and he was saving for something, and he took it.
Thirty dollars for fifteen mornings of scratch and water is a fair wage by any measure I can think of, and the work was real. It was still awkward for both of us, and I kept turning that over while I read Alma 1, which is a chapter about preaching, money and who is allowed to be paid for what.
What does Nehor teach in Alma 1?
Nehor sounds pleasant, which I'd lost track of since the last time through. Verse 3 has him preaching that "every priest and teacher ought to become popular" and that they ought not to labor with their hands but be supported by the people. Verse 4 adds the part about all mankind being saved at the last day, that they "need not fear nor tremble" and can lift up their heads and rejoice because the Lord had created and redeemed all men. Nothing in that is shouted. You could sit through it with a plate of rolls on your knee.
Then verse 5 says he taught it so much that many believed him and began to support him and give him money, and verse 6 says he got proud and started wearing very costly apparel and set up a church after the manner of his preaching. The order matters. The doctrine comes first and the money second, and the pride waits until the money has arrived.
Alma never argues with the doctrine, and that's the part I keep noticing. Nobody in this chapter refutes universal salvation or explains why the Lord's redemption of all men doesn't mean eternal life for all, and I wouldn't take that silence as a verdict that the teaching was harmless. The only correction Nehor gets is his own, in verse 15, where he admits on the hill "between the heavens and the earth" that what he had taught was contrary to the word of God. The chapter spends its attention on what he did with a sword.
Was Nehor executed for priestcraft or for murder?
People argue about this one, and I can see why when Alma says both. In verse 12 he tells Nehor that this is the first time priestcraft has been introduced among the people, and that Nehor is "not only guilty of priestcraft, but hast endeavored to enforce it by the sword." Verse 13 follows with the blood of a righteous man, and verse 14 condemns him to die "according to the law which has been given us by Mosiah."
Read slowly, though, and the chapter hands you a limit in verse 17, which says that the preachers who came after Nehor "durst not lie, if it were known" and so they "pretended to preach according to their belief," and then it says the law "could have no power on any man for his belief." So the legal machinery of this society could not touch priestcraft as such. It could touch lying that was known, stealing, robbing and murder (verse 18 is explicit that he that murdered was punished unto death), and Nehor had done the last of those.
I work on payments, where the failures that get noticed are the declined charges, because something throws an error and a pager goes off. The transaction that clears cleanly against the wrong account makes no noise at all. Priestcraft was that kind of transaction in Alma's court. Nothing about it was illegal, and the one thing that was illegal was the sword.
Alma still names it, and he thinks priestcraft enforced among the people "would prove their entire destruction," which is a heavy sentence to put in the middle of a trial. The rest of the chapter reads like the aftermath of that gap: verse 16 says the execution "did not put an end to the spreading of priestcraft through the land," and the people who loved the vain things of the world kept going forth with false doctrines "for the sake of riches and honor."
This is also the Alma who, as a young man, had an angel stop him in his tracks. I wrote about that in Mosiah 27: The Angel Came for His Father's Prayers, and it's hard to watch him in the judgment seat in year one without remembering he's been on the other side of a rebuke. He pronounces the sentence. He also lets Nehor talk, since verse 11 says Nehor "pled for himself with much boldness."
Why is Gideon gone almost as soon as he's named?
Verse 7 brings him in as "one of their teachers" without a name. Verse 8 names him, and verse 9 kills him.
All he gets in between is one sentence of résumé: he "was an instrument in the hands of God in delivering the people of Limhi out of bondage."
The résumé gets odder beside Mosiah 19 and 22, because in Mosiah 19:4 this same Gideon is the man who "drew his sword, and swore in his wrath that he would slay the king" and chased Noah up a tower, and he spared the king only after Noah cried out that the Lamanites were upon them. Then in Mosiah 22 he comes forward and says "I will be thy servant" and lays out the plan, the back pass and the tribute of wine for the Lamanite guards, and the people get out by night. So a man who once ran at a king with a sword spent the rest of his life on the people's side and ended up an old teacher, stricken with many years, struck down by someone else's sword.
How does the Church end up rich in Alma 1?
The second half of the chapter starts badly for the church, and that part is easy to skip over. Verse 19 says whoever didn't belong began to persecute those who did. Verse 21 sets a strict law that church members shall not persecute outsiders or each other. And verse 22 says "there were many among them who began to be proud, and began to contend warmly with their adversaries, even unto blows." They were smiting each other with their fists. Verse 24 says the hearts of many were hardened and their names were blotted out.
The turn comes in verse 26, which I think is the best single sentence in the chapter:
And when the priests left their labor to impart the word of God unto the people, the people also left their labors to hear the word of God. And when the priest had imparted unto them the word of God they all returned again diligently unto their labors; and the priest, not esteeming himself above his hearers, for the preacher was no better than the hearer, neither was the teacher any better than the learner; and thus they were all equal, and they did all labor, every man according to his strength.
— Alma 1:26
Set that against Nehor's verse 3 and the contrast is plain, though verse 26 doesn't say how the priests were fed. It says they left their labor to teach and then went back to it, and the listeners did the same, which is a congregation where nobody gets to be the popular one. Nephi gives his own definition in 2 Nephi 26:29, that priestcrafts are "that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world." Gain and praise are two things there, and Nehor had picked up both.
Alma 1:29 is the verse I find harder, the one that says "because of the steadiness of the church they began to be exceedingly rich," with flocks and herds and grain and gold and silver and silk. Alma 1:31 adds that they became far more wealthy than those who did not belong to their church. I wouldn't read either one as a promise to anybody. Verse 30 comes right after them and spends its whole length on who got fed: the naked and the hungry and the athirst and the sick, and it ends with "they did not set their hearts upon riches." The chapter gives the wealth one verse and the people at the door the next.
Verse 33 puts the peace at "until the fifth year of the reign of the judges," which isn't long.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is being paid for church work the same as priestcraft?
Not by the definitions the Book of Mormon gives, but it isn't as loose as I'd like either. Alma 1:20 says the church members imparted the word of God "without money and without price," and 2 Nephi 26:29 ties priestcraft to gain and praise and to not seeking the welfare of Zion. Then 2 Nephi 26:31 says "if they labor for money they shall perish," which is blunt, and I'd read it next to verse 30 before using it on anybody's paycheck.
Is this the same Gideon from the story of Limhi's people?
Yes, verse 8 says so with the line about delivering Limhi's people out of bondage. He proposed the escape in Mosiah 22, and Mosiah 19 is the other half of his story.
Does Alma ever answer Nehor's teaching about everyone being saved?
Not in this chapter, where Alma's reply in verses 12 to 14 sticks to priestcraft, the sword and the law. Nehor's own acknowledgment in verse 15 is the only correction of the doctrine you get, so if you want an argument against it you'll need to look elsewhere in the book.
Why were church members fighting with their fists?
Verse 22 says they were proud and contended warmly with their adversaries "even unto blows," and the chapter doesn't dwell on it. Sorting out trouble inside the church was something Alma had dealt with before, in Mosiah 26: Alma Didn't Know, So He Asked. Verse 24 shows the names being blotted out.
Penny laid an egg on the coop floor this morning, about a foot from the nest box and still warm.
— D.