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Alma was a wicked priest. It wasn’t just a church calling either, it was actually his job. He was a professional wicked priest. And, from what we read in Mosiah chapters 17 & 18, he was good at it. Still, he wasn’t great at it, because he was not wicked enough to withstand the words of Abinadi, which caused him to change his mind about the whole wicked priest thing, flee for his life, and end up being just a regular priest—the good kind—and not for his job either, but for the people of the Lord who flocked to hear him share Abinadi’s words and were themselves converted. As just a regular priest, he was about as good as they come.

I don’t relate to Alma the Elder in all aspects, but I do have to acknowledge being a wicked priest myself at one point, when I was about sixteen. I wasn’t a professional wicked priest, only an amateur. I don’t suppose I was even all that wicked, no more than the other priests in my ward, but I did have a few ways I was holding out on the Lord. One of those ways, that I wasn’t even aware of at the time, was pride.

President Benson hadn’t yet given his great discourse on pride so it wasn’t something I thought about. My pride was in thinking that I knew things—that I understood things—better than some other people did. Including Alma. This time, Alma the Younger.

I was making my way through the Book of Mormon word by word, much like some people climb a mountain, putting one foot in front of the other and thinking they are accomplishing something, but not looking up from their feet (or in my case, the words) to see the expanding view that should be one of the rewards of the journey.

When I got to Alma chapter 30, Alma is speaking to Korihor and sets out to prove there is a God. But he didn’t seem to prove anything—at least not to me. Alma said in verse 44, “The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.”

“Oh Alma,” I thought, “You are from a pretty backwards time. The fact that there is an earth only proves that there is an earth, not that there is a God. Everything upon the face of the earth and the motion of the earth and all the planets only proves that there are things on the face of the earth, that the earth moves, and that there are planets. Their existence doesn’t prove there is a God.”

I found myself wondering what good the Book of Mormon was to me, now, in the days of exploration and science and discovery, when we know so much more than Alma and those others who lived in the dark ages of history.

What Can They Have to Say?
Sung by Roger Hoffman and Choir
© copyright 1990 Steven Kapp Perry

Soloist:
I am a child of the modern age
I am a son of the present hour
What can these words from so long ago
Mean to me now?

What can they have to say to me?
We live so differently today.
What can they have to offer me?
They lived so far from me,
So many years away.
What can they have to say?

Choir:
We are the prophets, years gone by
We spent our days we gave our lives
For a record which was written not for us but for you
And every word is true.

Each word chosen prayerfully
Laid down carefully in its place.
For here from so far away
We have seen your day
And we pray

Hear what we have to say.

(Sing parts together)

Hear what we have to say to you.

It was many years later, in October of 1988, that my friend Brad Wilcox and his wife Debi sat with me and my wife Johanne during General Conference. President Benson had given several talks in the previous conferences about the importance of the Book of Mormon, but now President Benson said something new—something that made the four of us sit up and look at each other in amazement:

“I challenge our Church writers, teachers, and leaders to tell us more Book of Mormon conversion stories that will strengthen our faith and prepare great missionaries. Show us how to effectively use it as a missionary tool, and let us know how it leads us to Christ and answers our personal problems and those of the world.”

Click here to read President Benson’s full address.

He had challenged church writers! That was us! But challenged us to do what? The part that stuck in our minds was the charge to “let us know how it leads us to Christ and answers our personal problems and those of the world.”

We left that conference determined to accept and meet that challenge, but how? How did the Book of Mormon answer our problems and those of the world? There were many important verses and stories in the Book of Mormon I recalled, but I also remembered my experience of reading about Alma and how backwards he seemed.

“Okay,” we thought, “President Benson says the Book of Mormon answers our questions, now, today, so there must be some scripture in here that does that, and by George we are going to find it!”

AlmaHidingI’m embarrassed to say that I thought it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Instead, reading with the intent to find the connection to our day, every chapter, every story seemed so obviously applicable—so easy to liken to us, now. Nephi’s brothers discouraging him from trying to do something difficult seemed to ring true for difficult things I had tried to do, depending on the Lord’s help. King Benjamin’s sermon on becoming the Children of Christ, beginning in Mosiah chapter 2, seemed to apply one hundred per cent, as did the stories of Helaman, Ether, Mormon, and Moroni. How had I not made the connection before?

When I finally came to Mormon chapter 8, the thing I had missed seemed to jump right out of verses I’d read so many times but not really absorbed; Moroni says, “Behold, the Lord hath shown unto me great and marvelous things concerning that which must shortly come, at that day when these things shall come forth among you. Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing.” (Mormon 8:34 & 35)

They had seen our day. Us, now. That’s how they knew what to include and why it was so applicable. In the end, as I read through to the final chapters, it actually became hard to find a section that did not point us to Christ and answer our problems and those of the world.

Brad and I put our heads and our hearts together and began writing what would become the musical presentation “From Cumorah’s Hill.” (I’ve included two of the songs here so you can taste some of the fruits of our labors.)

The Book of Mormon hadn’t changed since I was sixteen, but I certainly had. And when I came to Alma chapter 30 this time, I recognized my own change of heart. I no longer saw Alma as the naïve one, but myself. If the very existence of the earth, everything upon it, and the very movements of the planets in their regular cycles didn’t testify to me that there was a creator, a God, then maybe Alma knew something I didn’t. Saw something I didn’t. Maybe I was missing something—not comprehending something spiritual.

The Power of God
Sung by Johanne Fréchette Perry and Choir
© copyright 1990 Steven Kapp Perry

Listen to the wind blow
Lonely as a sigh
Nothing overhead but empty sky.

Look up at starlight on a dark night
Are we all alone, an island in space?
Or is there a plan where I have a place?

Could it be that heaven
Is man’s imagining
Reaching out for hope in childish dreams?

Stories so old then, we’ve outgrown them?
Has God gone away or hidden his face
Have miracles ceased to be?

Chorus:
But the power of God is plain to see,
There are wonders on every hand
To those who will see through eyes of faith
Beyond the mind of man.

For how could we hope to see his face
Who never could see his hand?

Some may see a rainbow
As nothing more than light—
Others see a promise and a sign.

Everyday wonders without number
Are here all around and wait to be found
By those who have eyes to see

(Chorus: repeat)

Listen to the wind blow,
Then listen once again.

Reading the Book of Mormon with a new intent, with eyes searching for ways the Book of Mormon spoke directly to me and to the times we live in, gave it a new layer of meaning. My thanks go to all the authors of the Book of Mormon who saw our day and included what we’d need to know now, and especially to Alma the Elder, who showed me that even wicked priests can change.

Steven Kapp Perry is a songwriter, playwright and broadcaster. Find him on Facebook and click here for information on “From Cumorah’s Hill.”.”