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Alma 23–29 — “They Never Did Fall Away”

Key Verse

“And as sure as the Lord liveth, so sure as many of the Lamanites as believed in their preaching, and were converted unto the Lord, never did fall away.” — Alma 23:6

Why This Block Matters

This is the crescendo of the missionary chapters — and Jared Halverson notes it is also a deliberate hinge. If you were teaching the Book of Mormon across two semesters, this is where you would break: Ammon’s homecoming address in Alma 26 and Alma’s psalm in Alma 29 end the first half on something epic, and Korihor opens the second.¹

But the phrase that gives the block its name is the one worth the week. “They never did fall away.” Halverson calls it the phrase he wishes had applied to every person he ever taught in the mission field — and he treats Alma 23:6 as a verse you can reverse-engineer. Read it backward and you get the process:

preaching of the word (with revelation and prophecy) → brought to a knowledge of the truth → the power of God working miracles in them → converted unto the Lord → never fell away.

Emily Belle Freeman and David Butler build the same list forward and land on the same emphasis: they were converted unto the Lord — not unto Ammon, not unto the church, not unto a testimony borrowed from someone else’s root system.² Halverson’s warning is sharp: a plant with “no root in itself,” tapping another plant’s taproot, will not survive drought.

The proof is 3 Nephi. Roughly ninety years later, when the church has broken up in every land, the exception is “a few of the Lamanites who were converted unto the true faith… firm and steadfast and immovable” (3 Nephi 6:14). These are the same people.

And the block does not let conversion stay abstract. It costs. More than a thousand Anti-Nephi-Lehies die praising God with no weapon in hand. A Nephite city is leveled. The Nephites take “a tremendous slaughter” defending converts they had every reason to distrust. Alma 28 is a chapter of national mourning. The Come, Follow Me title is triumphant; the chapters underneath it are not sentimental.

Historical and Literary Context

Aaron has converted the king over all the Lamanites, and Alma 23 opens with the result: a proclamation of religious freedom across Lamanite lands. Mark Holt (Gospel Talktrine) points out this is what makes the mass conversion in this chapter possible at all — and reads the whole lesson as a meditation on religious liberty.³

Lori Denning (followHIM) is a literature professor, and she treats these chapters as literature.⁴ Alma 23:1 opens with resumptive repetition — a technique where a narrator restates a phrase from before a long digression to say and now, back to the story (“sent a proclamation,” picking up from Alma 22:27). The list that follows — not lay hands on them, nor bind, nor cast into prison, nor spit upon, nor smite, nor cast out, nor scourge, nor cast stones — is what she calls anataxis, a piled-up list joined by and / nor. Denning’s read: every item on that list is something that had actually been happening to the missionaries. Hank Smith adds that each conjunction makes the next item land harder. Her instruction: read it out loud. These texts were made to be heard.

Holt maps the geography and the tribes. Alma 23 names the converted lands — Ishmael, Middoni, Nephi, Shilom, Shemlon, Lemuel, Shimnilom — and he argues that since all three Lamanite tribes (Lamanites, Lemuelites, Ishmaelites) appear in that list, the bulk of the Lamanite nation has converted. Who is left? Two groups of Nephite dissenters: the Amulonites (descendants of Noah’s wicked priests) and the Amalekites — whom Holt argues are the Amlicites of Alma 2 under a different vocalization (Hebrew writes consonants; Amlici and Amalekite would look the same). Both carry the order of Nehor. So the wickedest opponents in this block are not Lamanites at all. Mormon says so directly: Alma 24:30.

Holt also spends real time on Alma 23:18 — “the curse of God did no more follow them” — arguing (following Marvin Perkins and Ethan Sproat) that the curse was separation from God, not skin color, and that Hebrew idioms of “blackness” denote mourning and spiritual distance. He notes Alma 55:4, where the Nephites must search to find a descendant of Laman — hard to reconcile with a visible racial marker.³

Major Themes

1. “Free Access” and “No Obstruction”

Halverson lingers on two phrases in Alma 23:2–3: the missionaries were to have free access, and the word of God was to meet no obstruction. The kings would not compel conversion — they had just been taught agency — but they would guarantee a hearing.¹

His application turns it inward: is my heart soft enough to give God’s word free access? What obstructions have I put between my ears and the Lord’s mouthpieces?

2. Reverse-Engineering a Conversion That Holds

The heart of the block. Working backward through Alma 23:6:

Never fell away — the outcome.
Converted unto the Lord — Halverson: not unto Ammon, not unto the church, not even unto scripture or prophets, which are “steps removed.” Christ is the true vine; if we are not connected to Him, living water cannot flow.¹
The power of God working miracles in them — Freeman’s favorite word in the verse is in. Not signs on the outside. “I am the miracle.” Butler quotes David O. McKay — the greatest battles are fought within the confines of the human soul — and adds: therefore the greatest victories are won there too.²
Believed their preaching / brought to a knowledge of the truth — through the spirit of revelation and prophecy.
The preaching of Ammon and his brethren — someone came. Freeman: at any moment we are either the bringer of the good news or the hearer of it. And note what Ammon led with — not “stop killing people,” but the mercy of God.²

Freeman adds a grammatical observation worth the whole lesson: Alma 23:8 says they were converted — passive. “They didn’t convert; the working was done in them by him.” Their part was to allow it.

3. “Weapons of Their Rebellion” — Before the Swords

Alma 23:7 says they “did lay down the weapons of their rebellion.” Halverson catches the word: you would expect warfare, and chapter 24 will indeed bury weapons of war. But the order matters.

The inward arms go down first. Then the outward ones can be buried.

The verse continues: “they did not fight against God any more, neither against any of their brethren.” Halverson sees the cross being drawn — the vertical beam (stop fighting God) making the horizontal one possible (stop fighting your neighbor).

His invitation is one of the best pondering prompts in the block: what are the weapons of my rebellion? Not the outward acts — the inward attitudes underneath them. Pride. Rationalization. Apathy. What he calls “diabolical patience” — procrastinating the day of repentance.

Freeman and Butler give it a family activity: actually bury something. But define your “sword” through the two great commandments — my rebellion is anything breaking a relationship and causing harm to God or to others. Write on a paper sword: “This is my testimony to God that I never will again…”²

Denning notes the literary frame: Alma 23:16–17 is a new name signaling a new identity — the same covenant pattern as Mosiah 5:7.⁴

4. What “Anti-Nephi-Lehi” Might Mean

Halverson concedes the name is tricky, since anti reads as “against” in English, which cannot be right.¹ Kevin Barney (BYU Studies index) lays out the menu of scholarly proposals rather than picking one:⁵

Nibley — from Indo-European roots for “meeting together / face to face”: imitators of, or joiners with, Nephi and Lehi.
“Against Nephi” as social penance — naming their former hostility as part of their repentance.
Lehites not descended through Nephi — Barney judges this linguistically weak.
Stephen Ricks — Egyptian nty, a relative adjective: “those who are of Nephi and Lehi.”
Barney’s own — Hebrew ‘anshê, “people of,” drifted over centuries: “the people of Nephi and Lehi.”

Halverson’s own instinct runs parallel to Nibley’s: anti as “before” — we want to go back to before we split off, before the curse; we choose Lehi and Nephi as our spiritual fathers.

5. Alma 24 — The Speech, and What Repentance Costs

Holt calls King Anti-Nephi-Lehi’s address “one of the great motivational talks of all time” and says it required more courage than any speech he has read. Note that the king is not hiding behind the army — Lamanite tactics target the king, so he is likely to be among the first to die, and he says it anyway.³

Three phrases Halverson slows down for:¹

“He hath taken away the guilt from our hearts… through the merits of his Son” (24:10). Not only forgiveness, but the felt removal of guilt — Enos’s language.
“All that we could do” (24:11). Halverson reads this as the Book of Mormon’s own commentary on 2 Nephi 25:23. All we could do is not achieving perfection — it is recognizing there is almost nothing we can do. “I can’t take the guilt out of my heart. I can’t reverse murder.” What we can do is come to Christ, repent, and lay down the weapons of our rebellion. King Anti-Nephi-Lehi is “waiting in the wings, raising his hand,” every time we quote that phrase.
“Repent sufficiently” (24:11). The adverb changes everything. Compare Alma’s “sufficiently humble” in Alma 5.

And the most striking textual observation in the block: verse 15 and verse 16 give different testimony. In 24:15, the buried swords testify that “we have not stained our swords since he imparted his word unto us.” One verse later, 24:16: a testimony “that we have never used them.”

Halverson: that is not a slip. The Atonement “doesn’t just change your future; it changes your past.” God’s promise to remember sins no more is omniscience choosing amnesia. The irony: we remember (probably a mercy, so we don’t repeat it), while God does not. “Look at this sword. It’s in mint condition.”

Note also the “perhaps” and “if” in 24:13 — perhaps if we stain them again they can no more be washed bright. Doctrinally that’s not quite right (Mosiah 26:30: as often as they repent, I will forgive). But Halverson loves the carefulness: the king refuses to presume on grace. Elder Maxwell’s phrase for the opposite instinct is “pre-planned prodigalism.”

Freeman and Butler ask the practical question — why did the swords stay buried? — and answer from Alma 24:14–15: remembrance of what the rescue cost. “He loveth our souls as well as he loveth our children.”²

6. Were They Pacifists? Two Readings, Held Together

This is where the BYU Studies index earns its place, because it puts a serious scholarly challenge next to what the podcasts say.

The podcast reading. Halverson calls the Anti-Nephi-Lehies “the greatest example of radical pacifism in the entire Book of Mormon,” and grounds it in D&C 98 — the Lord’s law of war, which begins renounce war and proclaim peace. His argument: if I strike back, I have justified my attacker’s first blow; I have proved I am as willing to reach for violence as they are. Turning the other cheek says I refuse your approach and invite you up to higher moral ground.¹ Holt frames it as a people who transcended a telestial law and began living a terrestrial one, and he honors the paradox — Captain Moroni’s defensive war is also right — as “one of those wonderful paradoxes you usually only find in Eastern philosophy.”³

Duane Boyce’s challenge. In Interpreter, Boyce argues the Ammonites were not pacifists at all, and the text says so:⁶

They let the Nephites defend them by force (Alma 27:22–24). If killing in war were murder, they were outsourcing murder.
They gave a large portion of their substance to support Nephite armies (Alma 43:13).
They later wanted to take up arms, and only Helaman stopped them (Alma 53:10–15).
Decisively: Helaman’s appeal was to the covenant, not to morality. He warned they were “about to break the oath which they had made.” A genuine pacifist needs an argument that killing is wrong; these people needed a reminder of a promise.

Boyce’s conclusion: the oath was penitential and idiosyncratic — the response of former murderers whose violence had been hatred-driven plunder, not soldiering. That is why Moroni, Alma, and Nephi felt no corresponding guilt. Their covenant was not a universal ethic; it was a specific repentance.

Teaching both is better than teaching either. Boyce sharpens rather than diminishes the story: their refusal was not a philosophical position they might have argued their way out of — it was a covenant, and they kept it while being killed. And the two readings converge on Halverson’s actual point anyway: what are the weapons of my rebellion, and will I keep them buried?

7. “The Lord Worketh in Many Ways to the Salvation of His People”

The battle’s aftermath is the argument. Over a thousand die “praising God in the very act of perishing” (24:23) — and the attackers throw down their weapons (24:25; Halverson notes the verb is more violent than the converts’ laid down), “stung for the murders which they had committed.” More than a thousand converted that day — more than were slain (24:26–27).

Holt’s arresting counterfactual: given how thoroughly the Lamanites had converted, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies would probably have won that war and could have exterminated the Amalekites and Amulonites entirely — “but it would have changed them.”³

Mormon’s own “thus we see” is darker: Alma 24:30 — those once enlightened who fall away “become more hardened, and thus their state becomes worse than though they had never known these things.” Compare D&C 82:3. Halverson’s pastoral turn: this should move us to reach toward those who once knew, not to write them off.

Note the grim irony of Alma 25: the city destroyed in retaliation is Ammonihah — exactly as Alma warned. Halverson: the people who wouldn’t listen to Ammon destroyed the people who wouldn’t listen to Alma.

8. Works Without Works-Righteousness (Alma 25:15–16)

An easily-skipped passage Halverson thinks belongs beside 2 Nephi 25:23. These converts keep the law of Moses — but “they did not suppose that salvation came by the law of Moses”; rather, the law “did serve to strengthen their faith in Christ.”

Substitute works / callings / commandments for “law of Moses” and the verse becomes a complete answer to the question a Protestant friend might ask about Latter-day Saint busyness: “I’m not earning a thing, but I’m learning so much, and Christ is my teacher.” Halverson’s phrase: these are works of reconciliation, not works of salvation — retraining the will until we have righteous reflexes.

9. Alma 26 — Praise, Not Pride

Ammon’s homecoming address. Aaron thinks his brother is boasting; Ammon’s answer is the distinction that governs the chapter: this is not pride, it is praise.

“I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things.” (Alma 26:12)

Denning reads this as poetry — a couplet with parallel subjects and objects (“I am nothing” / “I am weak”), then a three-step stair (“I will not boast of myself” / “but I will boast of my God” / “for in his strength I can do all things”), then a psalm-like turn to praise.⁴ Her exercise, borrowed from Anthony Sweat: when you can’t connect to a poetic text, translate it into your own words.

Ammon’s question in 26:2 — “what great blessings has he bestowed upon us? Can ye tell?” — is not rhetorical. Halverson: stop and actually inventory. And note what makes the list: not only the triumphs but 26:27, “when our hearts were depressed… the Lord comforted us.” Freeman had each of her missionary children read Alma 26 and write their own version in their final letter home — she calls those her most treasured letters.²

Two verses on how to feel this way:

26:21 — “there is none that knoweth these things save it be the penitent,” paired with 27:18, “joy which none receiveth save it be the truly penitent and humble seeker of happiness.”
26:22 — repenteth, exerciseth faith, bringeth forth good works, prayeth continually → given to know, given to reveal, given to bring thousands to repentance. Halverson: the vertical conduit opened, then turned horizontal. And given three times — it is a gift, which is why this is praise.

10. Alma 27 — Zarahemla and Jershon: Compassion and Inheritance

Matthew Bowen (BYU Studies index) supplies a layer no podcast in the vault mentions.⁷ The Nephite names in this chapter are doing Hebrew work:

Zarahemla = zeraʿ (“seed”) + ḥemlâ (“compassion, pity”) — “seed of compassion.”
Jershon = from the root yrš (“to inherit, possess”) — “place of inheritance.”

Now read the text. Alma 27:4: “they were moved with compassion… let us go down to the land of Zarahemla.” And Alma 27:22–26: the land of Jershon given “for an inheritance,” where they “took possession.” The narrator is punning on the names — and the pun recurs a generation later when the Ammonites themselves “were moved with compassion” and wanted to take up arms (Alma 53:13). Compassion received produces compassion given.

Three more things in this chapter worth teaching:

“We will be their slaves” (27:8). Halverson gives two pushbacks: you cannot repair murder — restitution is impossible here; and we are not asking you to. Slavery is against the law of the land. His application: Christ is not trying to enslave us. “I will not be God’s slave, but I will be his servant.”¹

Where the army was placed (27:23). The Nephites set their armies between Jershon and the land of Nephi — which is where the Lamanites live, not the Nephites. So the army stands between the new converts and their old enemies, and nothing stands between new convert and lifelong member. Halverson: “We will protect you from your enemies. We feel no need to protect ourselves from you.”

Both sides give (27:24). The converts contribute substance for the armies. Halverson: not patronizing paternalism but equal partnership — “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints” (Ephesians 2:19).

And how were they distinguished (27:27)? Not by appearance. By zeal toward God and toward men, perfect honesty, firmness in the faith — and they “never did look upon death with any degree of terror.” (A footnote from the index: David Larsen’s BYU Studies article traces “death swallowed up” to Hebrew netzach*, victory/endurance — the same idiom Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15:54.)*⁸

11. Alma 28 — The Cost, and Whether Zion Survives It

The Nephites keep their promise and pay for it: Alma 28:2–3, “a tremendous slaughter among the people of Nephi” — the worst battle in Nephite history to that point. 28:4–5 piles up the word mourning: widows for husbands, fathers for sons, daughter for brother.

Halverson asks the question nobody wants to ask out loud: could a grieving Nephite widow have thought this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come? He pictures the first Sabbath afterward, the Jershon ward and the Zarahemla ward together, and what “a time of much fasting and prayer” would have meant in that room.¹ Freeman and Butler read the same generosity and ask whether we would pass the test: “are we the people who are merciful in this situation?”²

Alma 28:8 is the mission summarized in one line: “their sorrows and their afflictions, and their incomprehensible joy.” Halverson: you cannot reach the incomprehensible joy without enduring the equally incomprehensible sorrow.

12. Alma 29 — “O That I Were an Angel,” and Contentment

Denning calls this her all-time favorite chapter and notes what Mormon has done: after centuries compressed into paragraphs, he stops and gives us a whole chapter of one man’s interior life. “Mormon’s like, I really want you to sit with this for a minute.”⁴ Her framing for a class: if you could have any superpower, what would it be? Alma’s answer is to be a preaching angel — because that is the gift he was given, and he wants to give it away.

Halverson goes further: remember that an angel with a voice of thunder stopped Alma in his tracks. Alma is asking to become, for someone else, exactly what God was for him.¹

Then 29:3: “I sin in my wish.” Everyone stumbles here. Halverson’s reading: the sin was not the desire — it was wishing to trump God’s will with his own. “I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.” Alma then talks himself down twice:

29:4 — to eliminate sin by force would eliminate agency. “God will force no man to heaven.” A realization every parent has to make.
29:8 — the Lord grants all nations teachers of His word. I don’t have to be the only angel. There are angels aplenty — Ammon, Aaron, Omner, Himni, Amulek, Zeezrom, his own sons.

He lands at 29:9: “this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance.” Freeman’s tenderest application in the episode is on that word some — the woman who played banjo at girls camp in 1982 had no idea she was the instrument that shaped fifteen future girls-camp callings.²

Words and Phrases Worth Slowing Down For

Free access / no obstruction (23:2–3) — what a soft heart grants the word of God.¹
Weapons of their rebellion (23:7) — the inward arms, laid down before the outward ones are buried.¹
Were converted (23:8) — passive voice. The work was done in them.²
Righteous — “in right relationship.”²
Anti-Nephi-Lehi — possibly Hebrew ‘anshê (“people of”) or Egyptian nty (“who are of”); not “against.”⁵
All that we could do (24:11) — the Book of Mormon’s own gloss on 2 Nephi 25:23.¹
Sufficiently (24:11) — an adverb that changes the question from have I repented? to have I repented enough?¹
Never used them (24:16) — vs. “since” in 24:15. The Atonement rewrites the past.¹
Zarahemla — zeraʿ ḥemlâ, “seed of compassion.”⁷
Jershon — root yrš, “place of inheritance.”⁷
Moved with compassion (27:4; 53:13) — wordplay on Zarahemla, and a virtue that reproduces itself.⁷
Zeal toward God and toward men (27:27) — how converts were distinguished; the two great commandments as a visible mark.
Anataxis / resumptive repetition — Denning’s literary vocabulary for Alma 23:1–2.⁴
Incomprehensible joy (28:8) — named in the same breath as sorrow and affliction.

Cross-References

Mosiah 5:7–12 — taking a new name as the sign of a new heart; the pattern behind Alma 23:16–17.⁴
Mosiah 27:36 & Alma 17:9 — the sons of Mosiah’s original prayer to be instruments; Alma 25:17 says the Lord “verified his word unto them in every particular.”²
Mosiah 26:30 — “as often as my people repent, will I forgive”; read against the “perhaps” of Alma 24:13.¹
3 Nephi 6:14 — ninety years later, the converts are still “firm and steadfast and immovable.” The proof of Alma 23:6.²
Alma 53:10–15 — the Ammonites nearly break the oath; Helaman appeals to the covenant, not to pacifism.⁶
Alma 56:47–48 — the sons who fight because the fathers cannot; the sequel this block sets up.
Alma 43:13 — the Ammonites materially fund the armies.⁶
D&C 98 — the Lord’s law of war: renounce war, proclaim peace.¹
D&C 82:3 — greater light, greater condemnation; the doctrine behind Alma 24:30.¹
2 Nephi 25:23 — “after all we can do,” read through Alma 24:11 and Alma 25:15–16.¹
1 Corinthians 15:54–57 — death swallowed up in victory; the idiom behind Alma 27:28.⁸
Ephesians 2:19 — no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens; Jershon in one verse.¹
Alma 1–3 — Nehor and Amlici; the roots of the Amalekites who drive the violence here.³
Alma 55:4 — the Nephites must search for a descendant of Laman.³

Questions for Study or Teaching

Work Alma 23:6 backward. At which step in that chain is your own conversion strongest — and which step is thinnest?
Halverson warns against a testimony rooted in someone else’s taproot. Whose faith have you been living on, and what would it take to be “converted unto the Lord” directly?
What are the weapons of my rebellion? Not the outward acts — the inward attitudes underneath them. Name one honestly.
Alma 24:15 says “not since”; Alma 24:16 says “never.” Which of those two do you actually believe about your own repented sins?
Are the Anti-Nephi-Lehies a model for everyone, or a covenant specific to their history? Read Halverson and Boyce against each other — what changes if Boyce is right?
Ammon asks, “What great blessings has he bestowed upon us? Can ye tell?” Take twenty minutes and actually make the list — including the hard days, as Ammon does in 26:27.
Alma 26:12 as poetry: translate it into your own words, in your own idiom. Then do the same with Alma 29:1.⁴
The Nephites put their army between the converts and the converts’ old enemies — not between the converts and themselves. Where are you still keeping a defensive line up against someone whose change you don’t quite trust?
Alma 28: a Nephite widow could have blamed the converts for her husband’s death. When has someone else’s good news cost you something, and how did you carry it?
What is the difference between “I sin in my wish” and holy ambition? Where in your life do you need Alma’s contentment rather than Alma’s wish?

Personal Application

The block is bookended by two men who got what they wanted and then had to decide what it meant. Ammon comes home with thousands of converts and has to insist that joy this loud is praise, not pride. Alma comes home having labored in Zarahemla and has to make peace with wanting more than the Lord allotted him.

Between them stands a people who did the one thing the Book of Mormon almost never records: they never fell away. Not because their lives got easier — their lives got dramatically harder, and more than a thousand of them died for it — but because the conversion went all the way down. They laid down rebellion before they buried swords. They were converted unto the Lord rather than unto the missionaries who taught them. And they kept a covenant while people were killing them, which is a different and harder thing than holding an opinion about violence.

The invitation is Alma’s, scaled down to fit: not to be an angel with a voice of thunder, but to be content in your allotment and to hope that perhaps you may be an instrument to bring some soul to repentance. That is enough. It was enough for the two women with a banjo at a girls camp in 1982.

Pulling It Together

If Alma 17–22 asked how does a hardened heart change?, Alma 23–29 asks the harder follow-up: what makes a changed heart stay changed?

The answer the block gives is not enthusiasm. It is depth — conversion rooted in Christ Himself rather than in a teacher, a program, or a feeling — and it is covenant, kept at cost. The Anti-Nephi-Lehies are proof that the Atonement doesn’t merely improve a future; it rewrites a past, until swords that were once bloody can honestly testify they were never used. And the Nephites who took them in are proof that Zion is not a feeling either: it is an army placed on the far side of the people you have decided to trust.

Ammon’s summary of fourteen years fits any life of discipleship: “their sorrows and their afflictions, and their incomprehensible joy.” You do not get the second half without the first.

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tags	scripture-study, book-of-mormon, alma, conversion, repentance, covenant, martyrdom, missionary-work, forgiveness, zion, come-follow-me/2024
aliases	Alma 23-29, Alma 23–29 — O That I Were an Angel, They Never Did Fall Away, O That I Were an Angel, The Anti-Nephi-Lehies, The People of Ammon, Burying the Weapons of Rebellion, Ammon's Psalm

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Alma 23–29 — They Never Did Fall Away

Alma 23–29 — “They Never Did Fall Away”

Why This Block Matters

Historical and Literary Context

Major Themes

1. “Free Access” and “No Obstruction”

2. Reverse-Engineering a Conversion That Holds

3. “Weapons of Their Rebellion” — Before the Swords

4. What “Anti-Nephi-Lehi” Might Mean

5. Alma 24 — The Speech, and What Repentance Costs

6. Were They Pacifists? Two Readings, Held Together

7. “The Lord Worketh in Many Ways to the Salvation of His People”

8. Works Without Works-Righteousness (Alma 25:15–16)

9. Alma 26 — Praise, Not Pride

10. Alma 27 — Zarahemla and Jershon: Compassion and Inheritance

11. Alma 28 — The Cost, and Whether Zion Survives It

12. Alma 29 — “O That I Were an Angel,” and Contentment

Words and Phrases Worth Slowing Down For

Cross-References

Questions for Study or Teaching

Personal Application

Pulling It Together

Footnotes

Further Reading

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Table of Contents

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