Alma 42: Probation Is a Time Granted

Anjali Rao sits two desks down from me, and on Wednesday she stopped me on the way back from standup and said, "Okay, but if God already knows how I turn out, why does it have to be a test? Why not skip to the end?" She wasn't poking at me. She had a coffee in one hand and seemed to really want to know.

I said something about agency and she nodded politely, which told me it hadn't helped, and I've been chewing on her question since. It sent me to Alma 42, the chapter where the word "probationary" does most of its work. Our Book of Mormon reading hasn't reached it yet. The last chapter I wrote up from that book was Alma 19 and chapter 42 is a good way down the road, so call this a Sunday look ahead. Most of what I've heard from it is two verses, and I wanted the other twenty-nine.

Does Alma 42 call life a test?

Here is the verse most of us know.

And thus we see, that there was a time granted unto man to repent, yea, a probationary time, a time to repent and serve God. (Alma 42:4)

Anjali's question has the word "test" in it and Alma's chapter doesn't, and I went through all thirty-one verses looking, and it isn't there. What he says is "probationary," three times (verses 4, 10 and 13), and the first time he says it he explains it in the same breath: a time to repent and serve God. Verse 10 gives the second name, "a state for them to prepare," and verse 13 puts the two together as "this probationary state, yea, this preparatory state." One stretch of time with two names, and each name comes with its own gloss.

Alma says nearly the same thing to Antionah in Alma 12:24, and I went through that exchange in the Alma 12 post. Alma 42 is the idea told a second time, to his own son, with the reasoning laid out.

The test idea has a source. At work everything goes through staging before it ships, and Abraham 3:25 reads like that: "we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them." It's a different passage with a different speaker, though, and Alma doesn't borrow its word. His reasons are of another kind. I'm not sure yet that they answer Anjali, though they beat what I told her.

What was Corianton actually asking?

Alma 42 is a father talking to his son, and Alma 42:1 says what is bothering the son. He is troubled "concerning the justice of God in the punishment of the sinner," and he supposes "that it is injustice that the sinner should be consigned to a state of misery."

The name Corianton isn't in these verses, but Alma 31:7 names Shiblon and Corianton as the two sons Alma took with him to the Zoramites, and Alma 39 is Alma talking to the son who went along and did badly there. He says the boy "didst not give so much heed unto my words as did thy brother" (verse 2) and that he "didst forsake the ministry, and did go over into the land of Siron among the borders of the Lamanites, after the harlot Isabel" (verse 3). So the young man asking in chapter 42 has a personal stake in whether punishment is fair. He is not working out a puzzle for a Sunday School class.

His answer, when he gets to it, comes as three questions in a row.

Now, how could a man repent except he should sin? How could he sin if there was no law? How could there be a law save there was a punishment? (Alma 42:17)

Read that backward and you get his argument, which says there has to be a punishment so there can be a law, there has to be a law so there can be sin, and sin has to be possible so repentance means something. Verse 18 says the punishment and the law "brought remorse of conscience unto man." Verses 19 through 21 run the reverse experiment: with no law given, "men would not be afraid to sin," and justice and mercy "would have no claim upon the creature." Verse 22 is where it comes back around: "there is a law given, and a punishment affixed, and a repentance granted."

The last word there matters, because the thing the law and the punishment are for is repentance, and the chapter calls repentance something "granted." Verse 13 says the plan of redemption "could not be brought about, only on conditions of repentance of men in this probationary state." So the probation is where mercy has anything to do. Take the state away and the plan has no room to run. Verses 13 through 26 are dense and I've only summarized them, so read them yourself.

Time that was granted

Much of the chapter's first half is about time, and verses 2 and 3 set the scene at Eden, with the cherubim and the flaming sword, and then verse 5 says what would have happened if Adam had reached for the tree of life right away. He "would have lived forever, according to the word of God, having no space for repentance," and "the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated." Alma 12:26 says the same thing from the other side, "having no preparatory state."

Lehi says it too, to his son Jacob, in 2 Nephi 2:21: "the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh," and "their time was lengthened." Alma's word is granted. Lehi's are prolonged and lengthened. Those are words about how much time a person gets, and I didn't find one in either place about examining anybody.

I keep thinking about a man in our ward. Everett Hale is seventy-four and retired from heating and air conditioning. He had a stent put in last March, and the cardiologist told him to come back in six months and they'd look again. He told me in the foyer a few Sundays ago that he spent the first two months taking his pulse in the shower and weighing his oatmeal, and that around May his wife Lorna got tired of it and told him to go for a walk.

So he started walking the canal road behind their house, a mile the first week and four by August. The September visit went fine, and he mentioned that about as briefly as I just did. He spent longer on a neighbor's dog that has started walking with him, uninvited, and that he'd like to know the name of.

That's a stent and not the Fall, so I won't push it. But when I read "granted" in verse 4 I think of those six months, and how he nearly spent them on a kitchen scale.

Verse 6 is the other half of it, since it was "appointed unto man to die," and verse 8 says it wouldn't have been expedient for man to be reclaimed from that death, because it would "destroy the great plan of happiness," so the time has an end on it. S. M. Carlson's Finding God in the Unexpected makes a related point in chapter 11 (pp. 268-297), tying the hope of an afterlife to how a person lives now.

Disclosure: the publisher of this site is connected to the book mentioned above.

What the probation is not

I made a short list while reading, mostly of things I'd have said before I read the chapter closely.

Alma 42 gives no reason in terms of God finding out about us. The reasons it gives are repentance, justice and mercy, plus the plan that holds the three together. Anjali's question is about why God would need the result and Corianton's is about whether the result is fair, and Alma 42 only answers the second. Abraham 3:25 is where the language of seeing whether people will do what they're commanded lives, and I'd leave it there without stretching it over Alma.

I used to talk about mortality as if it were a sentence, and the chapter doesn't. Death is appointed, but verse 4 calls the time granted and verse 10 calls it a state to prepare. The hard words are there, "destruction and misery" in verse 26 among them, but they're pointed at a person who "has not repented in his days" (verse 28), not at ordinary mortal life as such.

Verse 15 rules out doing this alone: "God himself atoneth for the sins of the world." Verse 23 says "mercy claimeth the penitent, and mercy cometh because of the atonement." Verse 24 has the sentence that sounds hardest, "none but the truly penitent are saved," and the same verse says justice "exerciseth all his demands" while mercy "claimeth all which is her own." Verse 27 sits beside it: "whosoever will come may come and partake of the waters of life freely." Both are in the chapter. I don't think you get to quote one and skip the other.

I also went looking for when the time runs out and didn't find it. For that you have to go to Amulek in Alma 34:32-33, where he says "this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God" and tells the people not to "procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end." That's Amulek talking to a crowd, and Alma 42 doesn't give a date.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Alma 42 say life is a test?

Not in those words, since "test" doesn't appear in the chapter and "try" in verse 1 only means attempt. Verse 4 defines the probationary time as a time to repent and serve God. The nearest thing to examination language that I found is Abraham 3:25, which is a different passage.

Are "probationary" and "preparatory" two different things?

I read them as one thing with two names, because verse 10 says "this probationary state became a state for them to prepare; it became a preparatory state," and verse 13 sets them side by side in one phrase. The first name stresses that the time was given for repentance and the second stresses that it's the time to get ready to meet God, which is how Alma 12:24 puts it.

Who is Alma talking to in Alma 42?

His son Corianton, and Alma 31:7 names the two sons he took to the Zoramites, and Alma 39 is addressed to the one who forsook the ministry there. Alma 42 is the answer to his worry in verse 1 about whether punishment is just.

When does the probation end?

Alma 42 doesn't say. Amulek warns in Alma 34:33 against putting off repentance "until the end," and that's the nearest thing in these chapters. I wouldn't add a date Alma never gave.

Where Alma leaves him

The chapter doesn't close on a verdict. Verse 29 tells his son to let his sins trouble him "with that trouble which shall bring you down unto repentance," and verse 30 says to stop denying the justice of God and let "the justice of God, and his mercy, and his long-suffering have full sway in your heart." Then verse 31 says, "ye are called of God to preach the word unto this people," and sends the son who forsook the ministry back out to "declare the word with truth and soberness," so "that the great plan of mercy may have claim upon them."

— D.