BM 122 3—Alma 24-30

1. BM 122 3—Alma 24-30 243—Let us all press on

2. Burying Our Weapons Deep President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) taught that abandonment of sins often requires a change in our lifestyle: “In abandoning sin one cannot merely wish for better conditions. He must make them. He may need to come to hate the spotted garments and loathe the sin. He must be certain not only that he has abandoned the sin but that he has changed the situations surrounding the sin. He should avoid the places and conditions and circumstances where the sin occurred, for these could most readily breed it again. He must abandon the people with whom the sin was committed. He may not hate the persons involved but he must avoid them and everything associated with the sin. . . . He must eliminate anything which would stir the old memories” (The Miracle of Forgiveness [1969], 171–72).

3. Alma 24:30—”once enlightened…” A brother Isaac Behuninonce told the Prophet Joseph Smith, “‘If I should leave this Church I would not do as those men have done: I would go to some remote place where Mormonism had never been heard of, settle down, and no one would ever learn that I knew anything about it.’ “The great Seer immediately replied: ‘Brother Behunin, you don’t know what you would do. No doubt these men once thought as you do. Before you joined this Church you stood on neutral ground. When the gospel was preached, good and evil were set before you. You could choose either or neither. There were two opposite masters inviting you to serve them. When you joined this Church you enlisted to serve God. When you did that you left the neutral ground, and you never can get back on to it. Should you forsake the Master you enlisted to serve, it will be by the instigation of the evil one, and you will follow his dictation and be his servant’” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith [2007], 324).

4. “Behold, this is joy…” • Discuss, with a partner, the link between joy and missionary work (Alma 26:11, 30, 35; 27:16-19; 29:14-16; D&C 18:10-16)

5. So can we say: • Missionary work= joy? • Man is that he might…do missionary work? • God’s work & glory (joy)—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

6. “ye have heard that antichrist shall come…” (1 John 2:18) What does the anti-Christ look like? ?

7. Korihor “Today, the world is permeated with philosophies similar to those taught by Korihor. We read them in books, see them championed in the movies and on television, and hear them taught in classrooms and sometimes in the churches of our time. . . . “. . . We see clear evidence of Mormon’s inspiration to give us a full account of Korihor and his teachings. Korihor’s teachings are old doctrine, and yet they are ideas as modern as today’s high-speed printing presses and satellite dishes” (Elder Gerald N. Lund, “Countering Korihor’s Philosophy,” Ensign, July 1992, 20).

8. Identifying Anti-Christs Search Alma 30:6, 12-31 looking for Anti-Christ teachings and tactics and then discuss with a friend evidences of these same teachings and tactics in our society.

9. Identifying Anti-Christs Search Alma 30:6, 12-31 looking for Anti-Christ teachings and tactics and then discuss with a friend evidences of these same teachings and tactics in our society. How can we learn from Alma’s response to Korihor in 30:39-44, 49?

10. The world’s notion of “freedom” President Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency taught to the contrary: “Korihor was arguing, as men and women have falsely argued from the beginning of time, that to take counsel from the servants of God is to surrender God-given rights of independence. But the argument is false because it misrepresents reality. When we reject the counsel which comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence. We choose another influence. We reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Father In Heaven, whose whole purpose, as that of His Beloved Son, is to give us eternal life, to give us all that He has, and to bring us home again in families to the arms of His love. In rejecting His counsel, we choose the influence of another power, whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred. We have moral agency as a gift of God. Rather than the right to choose to be free of influence, it is the inalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever of those powers we choose. “Another fallacy is to believe that the choice to accept or not accept the counsel of prophets is no more than deciding whether to accept good advice and gain its benefits or to stay where we are. But the choice not to take prophetic counsel changes the very ground upon which we stand. It becomes more dangerous. The failure to take prophetic counsel lessens our power to take inspired counsel in the future. The best time to have decided to help Noah build the ark was the first time he asked. Each time he asked after that, each failure to respond would have lessened sensitivity to the Spirit. And so each time his request would have seemed more foolish, until the rain came. And then it was too late” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1997, 33; or Ensign, May 1997, 25).