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Alma 32–35 — Plant This Word in Your Hearts

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tagsscripture-study, book-of-mormon, alma, come-follow-me/2024, faith, humility, prayer, atonement, repentance, charity
aliasesAlma 32-35, Plant This Word in Your Hearts, Alma’s Experiment on the Word, The Seed of Faith, Infinite and Eternal Sacrifice

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Come, Follow Me — July 22–28, 2024

Official lesson: “Plant This Word in Your Hearts” — Alma 32–35. The manual joins faith, prayer, Christ’s infinite Atonement, present repentance, and care for the poor: the word takes root in the heart only as belief becomes a nourished, merciful way of life.1

← Previous: Alma 30–31 — The Virtue of the Word of God | Next: Alma 36–38 — Look to God and Live →

Alma 32–35 — “Plant This Word in Your Hearts”

Key Verse

“And now, my brethren, I desire that ye shall plant this word in your hearts, and as it beginneth to swell even so nourish it by your faith. And behold, it will become a tree, springing up in you unto everlasting life.” — Alma 33:23

Why These Four Chapters Belong Together

A congregation bars the poor from a building they helped construct. Alma answers by planting a sanctuary where no gatekeeper can reach it: inside the heart.

The movement of Alma 32–35 is from exclusion to indwelling. The poor begin outside the synagogue, treated as “dross.” Alma teaches that humility can make an inner place for God’s word. The word is tested, felt, and nourished until it becomes a tree of life within. Zenos shows that prayer can rise from wilderness, field, house, closet, or congregation. Alma then names the seed’s Christ-centered content: the Son will come, suffer, die, rise, and bring resurrection and judgment. Amulek explains why that news can save—Christ offers an “infinite and eternal sacrifice”—and insists that prayer without material mercy toward the needy is vain. Finally, the converts are cast out of Antionum but received in Jershon by the people of Ammon.

The story therefore refuses to leave faith as a private feeling or an abstract proof. A living word does at least four things:

  1. it gives the excluded direct access to God;
  2. it grows through patient, chosen trust;
  3. it turns the heart toward Jesus Christ and repentance;
  4. it bears social fruit in prayer, generosity, refuge, and costly solidarity.

The Zoramite leaders can expel believers from a synagogue and even from a land. They cannot uproot a tree of life that has begun to grow within them.

What to Watch for While Reading

  • Distinguish the seed from faith: Alma explicitly compares “the word” to a seed; faith is the trust that plants and nourishes it.
  • Mark every begin in Alma 32:27–30. Alma honors small beginnings rather than demanding instant certainty.
  • Notice Alma’s careful limits on knowledge: experience can make knowledge “perfect in that thing” without eliminating the future work of faith.
  • Follow the movement from seed → swelling → light → root → tree → fruit → everlasting life.
  • Count the words mercy and because of thy Son in Alma 33.
  • Watch the verbs surrounding the brazen serpent: look, behold, cast about your eyes, live.
  • Notice how Alma and Amulek answer the same question in stages: How do we plant the word?
  • Trace prayer from formal speech to a heart “drawn out” continually.
  • Put Alma 34:28 beside the Rameumptom prayer: neglect of the poor makes even abundant prayer vain.
  • Mark the paired urgency in Alma 34:31: if we repent now, redemption begins immediately.
  • In Alma 35, ask who nourishes the new believers after the sermon ends.

Historical and Literary Context

One Long Argument From Korihor to Jershon

In the 1830 Book of Mormon, present-day Alma 30–35 appeared as one long chapter. The original arrangement makes the argumentative arc easier to see. Korihor demands a sign and receives compelled knowledge; the poor Zoramites receive an invitation to voluntary faith. Korihor resists the Spirit; Alma asks the poor to stop resisting long enough to “give place.” The Zoramites’ elite claim that there will be no Christ; Alma and Amulek center the seed in Christ’s coming, suffering, death, resurrection, judgment, and mercy.

Joseph Spencer reads Alma 32 as Alma’s fuller answer to the problem of knowledge raised in Alma 30: knowledge that a seed is good is real, but faith continues beyond that limited knowledge toward eternal life.2 This is a scholarly literary reading, not an official declaration that Alma’s earlier testimony was defective. Its value is that it helps us hear these chapters as a continuous conversation rather than isolated sermons.

See the sequence in Alma Timeline Map and the preceding guide, Alma 30–31 — The Virtue of the Word of God.

Antionum’s Economic Theology

The poor have not merely wandered away from worship. They are excluded “because of the coarseness of their apparel” from synagogues “which they had labored abundantly to build” (Alma 32:2–5). Their religious rejection and economic exploitation reinforce each other. The prosperous leaders interpret wealth as evidence that they are chosen; poverty becomes evidence that others do not belong.

Alma does not romanticize deprivation. He rejoices in the poor people’s readiness, not in the injustice that wounded them. He says it would be better to choose humility without compulsion. Elaine Shaw Sorensen notes the irony that elaborate weekly observance survived among the Zoramites while humility and daily Christian conduct disappeared.3 The text warns against measuring spiritual health by visible religious performance while neglecting the heart and the neighbor.

The Sermon’s Audience Shapes Its Images

Alma speaks to laboring people who know soil, seed, heat, roots, patience, and harvest. His metaphor respects their experience. Later, Amulek tells them to pray over fields, flocks, houses, households, crops, and enemies. The sermon does not ask the poor to leave ordinary life in order to meet God. It reveals ordinary life as the field where faith grows.

S. Michael Wilcox describes this as moving from metaphor to practice: prayer digs the hole, scripture turns the eyes toward Christ, and repeated looking builds relationship with God.4 David Butler and Emily Belle Freeman similarly emphasize that God’s mercy can be found in wilderness, field, house, closet, and congregation—not only in the building from which the poor were excluded.5

The Architecture of Alma’s Experiment

StageAlma’s languageWhat the learner doesWhat can honestly be claimed
Readinesshumbled; lowly in heart (32:6–16)receive correction without self-protectionaffliction may have opened a listening space
Desiredesire to believe (32:27)allow hope to work rather than demanding certainty first“I am willing to try”
Plantinggive place for a portion of the word (32:27–28)practice a specific teaching and do not pre-reject the Spiritthe experiment has begun
First evidenceswell, enlarge, enlighten, become delicious (32:28–30)attend to spiritual, moral, and intellectual fruitthe word is showing goodness
Limited knowledge“perfect in that thing” (32:34–36)name precisely what experience has shown“This effect is real”; not “I now know everything”
Nourishmentcare, diligence, faith, patience (32:37–42)continue through heat, delay, and ordinary maintenanceroots and fruit take time
Harvesttree of life; precious fruit (32:40–43)feast, become filled, and share the seed carried in the fruitfaith has become a life, not merely a conclusion

The Seed Is the Word, Not Faith

The familiar Primary song says, “Faith is like a little seed.” That is a helpful devotional comparison, but Alma’s wording is more exact: “we will compare the word unto a seed” (Alma 32:28). Faith is the willingness to plant, the refusal to cast out prematurely, and the patient work of nourishment.

Jared Halverson stresses this distinction because it protects Alma’s experiment from circular reasoning. A person need not assume the conclusion is true; the learner must only suspend a foreclosed verdict long enough to test the word fairly.6 Desire to believe is not pretending to know. It is granting a real possibility enough room to be examined through faithful action.

What Exactly Is “This Word”?

Alma eventually specifies it:

“Begin to believe in the Son of God, that he will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins; and that he shall rise again from the dead.” — Alma 33:22

The seed can include God’s teachings generally, but this sermon’s central word is the proclamation of Jesus Christ. Freeman and Butler make the connection explicit: scripture is the word, and its saving center is the living Word, Christ.5 We should not force every detail into a rigid allegory in which seed, tree, and fruit each equal only one thing. Alma’s own sequence is enough: receive Christ’s word, look to Christ, trust His mercy, repent, pray, serve, and let eternal life grow within.

Faith, Knowledge, and the Courage to Continue

Alma Does Not Glorify Ignorance

Faith is “not to have a perfect knowledge,” but it hopes for “things which are not seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21). Truth matters. Evidence matters. Alma even asks whether knowledge becomes perfect after the seed sprouts and answers yes—with a boundary: perfect “in that thing.” The learner now knows the word has produced enlargement, light, and deliciousness. The learner does not yet know the entire future of the tree.

Spencer’s key contribution is to treat this limited knowledge as a foothold, not the destination. Faith is not discarded when one discovers that the seed is good; it shifts toward the unseen fruit and the person one may become.2 Halverson puts it pastorally: “I know the gospel is true” can be a starting point rather than a finish line.6

A Laboratory With a Living Subject

Alma’s experiment is not a controlled laboratory proof that compels every observer. The subject is a covenant relationship involving agency, Spirit, moral action, time, and a living heart. The experiment can be sabotaged by either gullibility or hostility:

  • accepting every seed without discernment is not faith;
  • casting out every possibility in advance is not an experiment;
  • mistaking one emotional moment for a mature tree ignores roots and time;
  • neglecting a once-good plant does not prove the seed was bad;
  • calling harmful fruit “good” merely because it grew is not Alma’s test.

Alma invites a disciplined openness: plant a specific true word, practice it, observe its fruit, and continue with care. The four first effects—swelling, enlargement, enlightenment, and deliciousness—include emotion but are not reducible to emotion. The soul, understanding, desire, conduct, and relationship with Christ begin to change together.

Creation in the Heart

David Bokovoy proposes that Alma draws on biblical creation language: seed produces after its own likeness, light is perceived as good, living things grow, and the process culminates in a life-giving tree.7 This literary proposal is not official doctrine, but it illuminates the sermon. Faith is not merely adding a proposition to the mind. God’s word begins a small creation inside a person—light where there was darkness, fertile order where the ground was barren, and life where exclusion had pronounced someone worthless.

The tree’s “most precious” fruit recalls Lehi’s vision. Compare Jacob 5–7 — The Allegory of the Olive Tree for another Book of Mormon vision of patient divine cultivation. In both, the Lord does not merely inspect plants; He labors for their life.

Prayer: A Sanctuary No One Can Lock

The poor ask how to worship after being cast out. Alma’s first response is almost astonished: “Do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only?” (32:10). Chapter 33 then quotes Zenos praying in multiple places; chapter 34 expands the pattern.

Place or concernZenos / AmulekCovenant meaning
Wilderness33:4; 34:26isolation is not absence from God
Enemies33:4, 10; 34:22–23bring conflict to God rather than letting hatred rule
Field, crops, flocks33:5; 34:20, 24–25work and provision belong inside prayer
House and household33:6; 34:21domestic life is sacred ground
Closet / secret place33:7; 34:26unseen sincerity matters more than public display
Congregation33:9communal worship remains possible outside elite control
Affliction33:11sorrow can become speech “because of thy Son”
Continual inward prayer34:27prayer becomes a posture carried through the day

For broader application, compare Prayer. Freeman’s practical paraphrase is especially vivid: pray over work, family, deadlines, discouragement, ideas, hidden heartaches, and the needs of whoever is near; God is not wearied by repeated honest return.5

But Amulek adds a necessary correction. Prayer that does not change how one treats the vulnerable is “vain, and availeth … nothing” (34:28). The answer to exclusion is not simply to build a private spiritual world. A heart drawn upward to God must also be drawn outward to people.

“An Infinite and Eternal Sacrifice”

The Zoramite creed denies Christ. Amulek responds not with a minor adjustment to their theology but with the “great question”: whether the word is in the Son of God (34:5). He testifies personally that Christ will take upon Himself the transgressions of His people.

Why Ordinary Sacrifice Cannot Save

Amulek reasons that one human being’s blood cannot satisfy justice for another’s murder under ordinary law. Animal sacrifice likewise cannot be the final answer. The law of Moses points beyond itself: “every whit” anticipates the Son of God (Alma 34:9–14).

“Infinite and eternal” should not be flattened into a mechanical price tag. The text stresses the unique identity and reach of the One who offers the sacrifice. Wilcox describes it as larger than an accounting transaction: Christ changes the whole covenantal possibility by opening “the bowels of mercy” and providing means for faith unto repentance.4 That is devotional interpretation, but it honors Amulek’s own refusal to compare Christ’s offering with merely transferring one finite penalty to another finite victim.

Mercy Does Not Abolish Moral Agency

Christ’s sacrifice “overpowereth justice” by creating a merciful means through which those who believe can repent (34:15–16). Mercy is not divine indifference to harm. It opens “the arms of safety” to the penitent while leaving those who refuse repentance exposed to justice. The proper response to infinite grace is therefore not complacency but trust strong enough to turn.

The official manual asks readers to consider not only whether Christ’s power is infinite, but whether they believe His promised blessings are available to them.1 Alma 33 has already answered why mercy is possible: “because of thy Son.” Amulek answers when it becomes available: now, as the heart turns.

“Now” and “Immediately”: Repentance Without Despair

Amulek’s warning not to procrastinate is often heard only as threat. Read verse 31 first:

“Now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.” — Alma 34:31

The pairing is full of hope. Our now meets God’s immediately. Repentance need not wait for worthiness, complete understanding, or a better setting. Salvation begins as soon as the heart stops hardening and turns toward Christ.

Verses 32–35 still give a serious warning: mortality is the appointed season for choosing, practicing, and becoming. “That same spirit” should not be carelessly reduced to a claim that every habit is mechanically frozen at death or that postmortal change is impossible in every sense. Amulek’s immediate pastoral point is that deliberate delay strengthens the adversarial disposition we keep choosing. The safest day to stop resisting the Holy Ghost is today.

Amulek closes not with panic but with a pattern: work out salvation with reverence, contend no more against the Holy Ghost, take Christ’s name, worship anywhere, live in daily thanksgiving, remain watchful in prayer, and have “a firm hope” of rest from affliction (34:37–41).

Alma 35: The Social Fruit of the Word

The sermon produces visible consequences. The Zoramite rulers secretly identify believers and expel them. The converts flee to Jershon, where the people of Ammon receive, feed, clothe, house, and defend them without regard for threats.

This is the week’s final test of the seed. The word that was called good in chapter 32 becomes a community’s goodness in chapter 35. The people of Ammon—refugees themselves—become refuge for new exiles. Prayer for the needy becomes food, clothing, land, and protection.

The Zoramite leaders react because the word “destroy[ed] their craft” (35:3). Conversion threatens an economy and hierarchy built on exclusion. Their anger escalates toward alliance with the Lamanites and war. The chapters therefore end with two rival harvests:

  • the word of Christ bears humility, repentance, welcome, and costly charity;
  • the word of pride bears surveillance, expulsion, threats, and war.

Faith can be evaluated partly by the world it begins to build around vulnerable people.

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

Alma 32

Alma 32:1–5 — The Builders Outside Their Own Synagogues

“They had labored abundantly to build [the synagogues] with their own hands; and they were cast out because of their poverty.”

Alma and his companions preach in synagogues, houses, and streets, but the greatest success comes among the poor. The text repeats their poverty and coarse clothing so readers cannot spiritualize the exclusion away. These people contributed labor and were then told they did not belong.

The chief man’s question—“What shall these my brethren do?”—is already communal. He does not ask only how I can cope. Freeman and Butler identify it as the question that turns Alma’s face and opens the sermon.5

Come, Follow Me connection: when a person says, “What shall we do?” turn toward the person before turning toward a prepared lesson.

Alma 32:6–16 — Compelled Humility and Chosen Humility

“Their afflictions had truly humbled them, and … they were in a preparation to hear the word.”

Alma rejoices because their hearts are ready, not because oppression is good. He distinguishes two routes: circumstances may compel humility, or a person may choose it upon hearing the word. Both can lead to mercy; voluntary humility is blessed because it does not require collapse first.

Sorensen treats humility as fertile soil: not humiliation or self-hatred, but teachability and submission to divine wisdom.3 Alma’s repeated questions about synagogue-only worship expose the false premise that gatekeepers control access to God.

Come, Follow Me connection: do not waste suffering, but do not wait for suffering to make you teachable.

Alma 32:17–23 — Signs, Faith, Truth, and Angels

“Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.”

A sign can compel knowledge without producing a faithful disposition. Alma is not praising belief without truth; faith hopes for what is both unseen and true. Verses 22–23 add that God communicates the word through angels to men, women, and little children—sometimes through voices society considers weak.

Compare Hebrews 11:1 and Ether 12:6. Restoration scripture treats faith as trust that precedes some kinds of witness, not as contempt for evidence.

Come, Follow Me connection: ask whether a desired sign would transform your heart or merely remove the need to choose.

Alma 32:24–27 — Begin With Desire

“Even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you.”

Alma returns to listeners who came because they were cast out. He does not demand that they say “I know.” He asks them to awaken, arouse their faculties, experiment, exercise a particle of faith, and give place for a portion of his words. Mind and heart are both active.

Halverson’s courtroom illustration is useful: one need not believe the verdict before the trial, but one must believe enough in the process to let evidence be heard.6

Come, Follow Me connection: an honest “I want to want to believe” can become a faithful beginning when it leads to a specific experiment.

Alma 32:28–30 — The Four Beginnings

“It beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.”

The seed is the word. If it is good and not cast out through unbelief or resistance to the Spirit, it begins to work. “Swelling” is not by itself the whole test; Alma immediately interprets it through enlargement, enlightenment, and goodness. The repeated begin keeps the claim modest.

Freeman and Butler describe “give place” as preparing a landing place in hard ground: desire, attention, and action loosen the soil before growth can occur.5

Come, Follow Me connection: record beginning-level evidence accurately. “This practice brought light today” is both humbler and more durable than claiming more than experience has shown.

Alma 32:31–36 — “Perfect in That Thing” and “Is Not This Real?”

“Every seed bringeth forth unto its own likeness.”

Fruit reveals the nature of the seed. The learner can know that a particular word has enlarged and enlightened the soul. That knowledge is perfect in that thing, while faith remains necessary for everything the plant has not yet become.

Spencer emphasizes Alma’s word real. The experiment does not deliver exhaustive certainty; it gives lived contact with genuine goodness and light, enough to justify further faith.2

Come, Follow Me connection: let a real experience become a root for continued discipleship, not a trophy that excuses future neglect.

Alma 32:37–43 — Roots Before Fruit

“Because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it … ye shall pluck the fruit thereof.”

Heat does not prove the seed false. An unnourished plant without roots withers under ordinary adversity. Alma assigns no blame to the seed or the desirable fruit when barren ground and neglect interrupt growth.

The harvest language echoes 1 Nephi 8:10–12: precious, sweet, white, pure, filling, and life-giving. Halverson calls the result a portable, personal tree of life—access to God’s love rooted within rather than controlled by external circumstances.6

Come, Follow Me connection: testimony maintenance is not evidence of defective faith. Living things require repeated light, water, attention, pruning, and time.

Alma 33

Alma 33:1–11 — Zenos: Heard Everywhere

“Thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity; and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me.”

The hearers ask how to plant the seed and whether they believe in one God. Alma first tells them to search scripture, then quotes Zenos. Every location the Zoramites thought spiritually disqualified becomes a place where God hears.

The repeated word is not merely prayer but mercy. Wilcox notes that relationship grows as God becomes Father and companion in every place and concern.4

Restoration parallel: Doctrine and Covenants 6:36 gathers the practice into one sentence: “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”

Come, Follow Me connection: choose one ordinary place—car, office, kitchen, trail, or bedside—and deliberately make it a recurring place of prayer.

Alma 33:12–18 — Zenos and Zenock Testify of the Son

“Because of thy Son … thou hast turned away thy judgments from me.”

Alma’s scriptural chain insists that mercy is not sentimental denial of justice. It comes “because of” the Son. Zenock’s difficult statement says the people provoke divine anger by refusing to understand mercies bestowed through Christ. Halverson devotionally paraphrases the paradox: what angers God is the refusal to understand how merciful He is through His Son.6

The point is not that divine judgment is imaginary. The point is that the listeners’ image of a distant, exclusionary God is false. Scripture witnesses that God has already prepared a merciful way.

Come, Follow Me connection: examine whether shame is making you distrust the very mercy Christ asks you to receive.

Alma 33:19–23 — Look to Christ and Plant This Word

“If ye could be healed by merely casting about your eyes that ye might be healed, would ye not behold quickly?”

The brazen serpent from Numbers 21:4–9 becomes a type of Christ. Some perish because they do not believe so simple an act can heal them. Alma then names “this word”: the Son will come, redeem, suffer, die, rise, resurrect all, and bring judgment.

Compare Jesus’s use of the same image in John 3:14–17. Looking is not passive curiosity. It is trusting Christ enough to turn toward the offered cure.

Come, Follow Me connection: do not confuse simplicity with insignificance. A small turn toward Christ can become the beginning of eternal life.

Alma 34

Alma 34:1–8 — The Great Question

“Whether the word be in the Son of God, or whether there shall be no Christ.”

Amulek provides a second witness and ties Alma’s seed directly to the Zoramites’ disputed claim. They have already been taught the word, including witnesses from Zenos, Zenock, and Moses. The issue is no longer whether they may enter a synagogue. It is whether they will receive the Christ to whom scripture points.

Come, Follow Me connection: beneath many secondary religious questions lies a deeper one: Can I trust Jesus Christ enough to try His way?

Alma 34:9–14 — The Great and Last Sacrifice

“There must be an atonement made, or else all mankind must unavoidably perish.”

Amulek testifies that Christ will take upon Himself the transgressions of His people. No ordinary human or animal offering can be the final sacrifice. The law of Moses is typological: “every whit” points toward the Son of God.

The sacrifice is infinite and eternal because the Savior and the reach of His redeeming work exceed every finite ritual. It includes resurrection for all and the possibility of repentance, mercy, and covenant safety.

Come, Follow Me connection: when recurring weakness makes grace feel scarce, return to Amulek’s adjectives. Christ’s redeeming capacity is not running out.

Alma 34:15–17 — Mercy Opens the Door to Repentance

“The intent of this last sacrifice [is] to bring about the bowels of mercy, which overpowereth justice, and bringeth about means unto men that they may have faith unto repentance.”

Mercy’s victory is not permission to remain unchanged. Christ creates a real means to repent. Faith “unto” repentance is confidence in Him strong enough to leave hiding and move toward the arms of safety.

Come, Follow Me connection: measure faith not only by what you affirm, but by whether Christ’s mercy makes honest repentance possible today.

Alma 34:18–27 — Cry Over the Whole of Life

“Let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually.”

Amulek expands prayer across mercy, work, home, family, enemies, spiritual danger, livelihood, secret grief, and wilderness. Vocal prayer has times and places; inward prayer can continue between them.

The text does not promise that every crop will increase exactly as requested. It teaches that no part of faithful life must be kept outside relationship with God.

Come, Follow Me connection: convert a task list into a prayer list, then listen for ways you may become part of God’s answer for someone else.

Alma 34:28–29 — Prayer Without Charity Is Vain

“If ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted … your prayer is vain.”

This is the direct ethical answer to Antionum. The elite pray publicly while excluding the poorly dressed. Amulek says that generosity according to one’s means is not an optional supplement to worship; it is evidence that worship has reached the heart.

“Dross” reverses the insult from 32:3. The poor were esteemed as dross, but it is loveless religion that is refined away as worthless.

Restoration parallel: Mosiah 4:16–27 likewise joins retaining remission of sins with imparting substance wisely and compassionately.

Alma 34:30–36 — Now Is the Day

“Do not procrastinate the day of your repentance.”

Amulek pleads rather than merely scolds: do not harden your hearts “any longer.” Verse 31 promises immediate access to the plan of redemption; verses 32–35 warn against choosing a resistant spirit until resistance becomes the governing allegiance.

The “night of darkness” image means mortal opportunities are precious and finite. It should generate action, not hopelessness. The invitation is being issued because repentance remains possible now.

Come, Follow Me connection: make one concrete repair today—confess, apologize, remove access to a temptation, request help, or resume a neglected covenant practice.

Alma 34:37–41 — Daily Thanksgiving and Firm Hope

“Live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.”

Amulek’s closing pattern joins humility, Spirit, Christ’s name, worship in every place, gratitude, watchfulness, patience, and hope. Patience does not mean pretending affliction is pleasant. It means enduring in the confident expectation of Christ’s promised rest without reviling those who cause harm.

Come, Follow Me connection: name both the affliction and the mercy in prayer. Gratitude becomes denial when it erases pain; gospel hope can hold both.

Alma 35

Alma 35:1–6 — The Word Destroys Their Craft

“They were angry because of the word, for it did destroy their craft.”

After the missionaries withdraw to Jershon, Zoramite leaders discover which people believed. Their opposition is economic and political as well as theological: the word undermines a system sustained by hierarchy, status, and controlled access.

The private inquiry into people’s beliefs becomes a tool of expulsion. This sharply contrasts with Alma’s noncoercive experiment: Alma gives place; the rulers remove people.

Come, Follow Me connection: when a truth provokes anger, ask honestly what identity, advantage, income, or control the truth threatens.

Alma 35:7–10 — Jershon Receives the Cast-Out

“The people of Ammon did receive all the poor of the Zoramites that came over unto them.”

The Anti-Nephi-Lehies give land, food, clothing, and protection. They do not fear Zoramite threats. Their hospitality is especially powerful because they know displacement and dependence from experience.

This is the mature fruit of Alma 32 and the answer to Alma 34:28. The word has become flesh in a refugee-receiving community.

Come, Follow Me connection: create room—in a home, schedule, budget, quorum, class, or friendship—for someone another system has discarded.

Alma 35:11–16 — War Clouds and a Family Interlude

“The Zoramites became Lamanites.”

The angry Zoramites mix with the Lamanites and stir them against the people of Ammon and the Nephites. The narrative now turns toward war. Alma grieves over growing hardness and gathers his sons to teach them individually.

The next chapters are not disconnected family advice. In a society moving toward conflict, Alma invests in memory, repentance, scripture, steadiness, and moral repair within his own family. Continue with Alma 36–38 — Look to God and Live.

Come, Follow Me connection: when public events feel too large to influence, do the next faithful work of formation in the relationships entrusted to you.

Assigned Reading

  • Alma 32 — the poor Zoramites, humility, faith, the experiment on the word, and the tree of life.
  • Alma 33 — Zenos, Zenock, prayer everywhere, the brazen serpent, and the Christ-centered word.
  • Alma 34 — Christ’s infinite sacrifice, prayer, charity, repentance now, and daily thanksgiving.
  • Alma 35 — expulsion, refuge in Jershon, and the turn toward war.

Key Parallels

Teaching Illustrations and Activities

1. The Locked Door and the Potted Tree

Place a key or small lock beside a potted plant. The lock represents the synagogue door; the plant represents the word growing in the heart. Ask:

  • What can a gatekeeper take away?
  • What can no gatekeeper control?
  • What still must the disciple do to keep the inner tree alive?

Do not imply that exclusion from sacred community is harmless. Alma 35 shows that God’s answer includes both inward access and an outward receiving community.

2. Label the Experiment Honestly

Give learners four cards:

  • Desire: I want to know whether this is good.
  • Action: I will live one teaching for a defined time.
  • Observation: What enlarged, enlightened, or became delicious? What did not?
  • Next faith: What still requires patience and nourishment?

Choose a word such as daily gratitude, forgiving prayer, Sabbath worship, or serving someone in need. The purpose is not to manufacture a predetermined feeling but to practice Alma’s honest progression from desire to limited knowledge to continued faith.

3. Seed, Root, Fruit

Show a seed, a rooted cutting, and a piece of fruit.

  • Seed: Christ’s word can look small and unproven.
  • Root: unseen repeated practices carry the plant through heat.
  • Fruit: the mature test includes what faith produces in character and community.

Cut the fruit open and point to the seeds. God’s love received becomes love capable of being replanted in another life.

4. Map a Day of Prayer

Draw a simple timeline from waking to sleep. Mark the modern equivalents of field, flock, house, enemy, closet, and wilderness. Invite learners to add brief inward prayers at each location. Then add Alma 34:28: draw one outward arrow showing the act of mercy that should grow from prayer.

5. “Now” and “Immediately”

Write NOW on one side of a board and IMMEDIATELY on the other. Under now, list one small act of repentance a person can choose. Under immediately, list what God’s plan makes available: mercy, truth, help, covenant return, and the next right step. Keep the activity private; do not invite public confession.

6. Build Jershon

Give a hypothetical situation: a family has been excluded and arrives with little. Ask groups to translate “receive, nourish, clothe, give lands, administer” into a one-week plan. Who welcomes? Who listens? What practical needs matter? What protects dignity? This lets Alma 35 test whether the class’s prayer has become charity.

Questions for Personal Study or Teaching

  1. When has affliction made you teachable? What would chosen humility have looked like earlier?
  2. Who helped build a community but may still feel excluded from it?
  3. What is the difference between desiring to believe and pretending certainty?
  4. Which specific word of Christ could you test rather than discussing only in generalities?
  5. What has enlarged your soul, enlightened your understanding, or become spiritually delicious?
  6. Where have you claimed more knowledge than your actual experience supports?
  7. What truth do you know “in that thing,” and what future fruit still requires faith?
  8. Are your roots deep enough for heat—criticism, boredom, delay, temptation, or disappointment?
  9. How does identifying the seed as the word change your reading of Alma 32?
  10. Why does Alma move from the agricultural image to Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection?
  11. Which ordinary place in Zenos’s prayer feels most like your current wilderness?
  12. Do you believe Christ’s infinite Atonement is available to you personally, or only as a doctrine about others?
  13. How can mercy “overpower” justice without making injury or repentance irrelevant?
  14. What prayer in your life needs an accompanying act of generosity?
  15. What have you postponed because you think repentance begins with shame rather than Christ’s open arms?
  16. What does the phrase “immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you” add to Amulek’s urgency?
  17. How did the people of Ammon nourish converts after Alma and Amulek finished teaching?
  18. What “craft”—status, profit, image, or control—might the word of God disrupt in your life?
  19. Who needs a Jershon from you: a place to recover, belong, work, worship, or be defended?
  20. What seed would you like your current fruit to place in someone else’s life?

Personal Covenant Application

Give Place

Choose one sentence from these chapters and place it where it can interrupt the day. Do not demand a tree by tomorrow. Give the word a real plot of time, attention, prayer, and obedience.

Nourish What You Already Know Is Good

List one gospel practice whose goodness you have genuinely experienced. Ask what root it now needs: consistency, community, study, repentance, a boundary, or patience. Past light is not a substitute for present nourishment.

Pray the Whole Day

Use Alma 34:18–27 to bring work, family, fear, enemies, provision, and hidden grief into prayer. Let formal prayer create an inward current that continues between spoken prayers.

Make Prayer Material

Choose one need you can meet according to your means. Visit, feed, clothe, listen, donate, include, transport, defend, or make room. Do not use private spirituality to evade another person’s embodied need.

Repent Now Without Catastrophizing

Name one next act rather than trying to repair an entire life in one burst. Christ’s sacrifice is infinite; your next step can be finite and immediate.

Become Jershon

Ask not only, “Where can I belong?” but “For whom can I help create belonging?” The word is mature when the once-excluded become a people who receive others.

Pulling It Together

Alma 32 begins with people treated as residue. Their clothes are coarse, their access is revoked, and their labor has been used by a community that now despises them. Alma does not answer by giving them a better platform from which to despise their oppressors. He gives them a seed.

The seed is small enough for honest uncertainty. It requires only desire, room, and a willingness not to strangle the experiment before it begins. Its first growth is real but modest: enlargement, light, deliciousness, a little knowledge “in that thing.” The discovery that the word is good does not end faith. It makes deeper faith possible—faith that grows roots, survives heat, waits for fruit, and aims beyond certainty toward eternal life.

Then Alma names the word: Jesus Christ will come. He will suffer, die, rise, redeem, resurrect, and judge. Amulek explains that His sacrifice is infinite and eternal, capable of opening mercy and arms of safety to the penitent now. That Christ-centered word turns every wilderness into a possible place of prayer and every present moment into a possible day of salvation.

The final measure is not private consolation alone. Prayer that turns away the needy is vain. In Jershon, the people of Ammon show what a rooted word looks like: they receive the expelled, share land and substance, ignore threats, and defend vulnerable neighbors. The seed has become fruit; the fruit carries more seed.

That is why these chapters belong together. Planting the word in the heart means letting Christ create a life within us that no locked door can stop—and then using that life to open doors for someone else.

← Previous: Alma 30–31 — The Virtue of the Word of God | Next: Alma 36–38 — Look to God and Live →

Annotated Source Guide

  • Official Come, Follow Me manual: establishes the exact lesson title and emphasizes nourishing faith in Christ, personal experimentation on the word, prayer anywhere, Christ’s infinite and eternal Atonement, and repentance now.1
  • BYU Studies lesson index: supplies the scholarly map for Alma 32–35, especially Spencer on faith beyond knowledge, Sorensen on humility, Bokovoy on creation imagery, and resources on Zenos and delayed repentance.8
  • Jared Halverson / Unshaken: strongest for the continuity with Korihor, non-circular openness to Alma’s experiment, careful limits on “perfect knowledge,” roots under heat, mercy because of the Son, and the tree of life growing within.6
  • David Butler and Emily Belle Freeman / Don’t Miss This: strongest for the excluded builders, “prepare a landing place,” prayer in ordinary life, Christ as the saving center of the word, and practical modern paraphrase of Alma 34’s prayer.5
  • S. Michael Wilcox / followHIM: strongest for faith’s reason/authority/experience foundation, moving from metaphor to prayer and scripture, continually looking to Christ, and the immediacy of mercy and repentance.4
  • Joseph M. Spencer: offers the most sustained scholarly argument that Alma 32 answers Korihor by placing limited knowledge inside a larger journey toward eternal life. Retained locally as Joseph M. Spencer — Is Not This Real.2
  • Elaine Shaw Sorensen: clarifies humility as the soil of faith and warns against substituting visible religious activity for inward transformation. Retained locally as Elaine Shaw Sorensen — Seeds of Faith.3
  • David E. Bokovoy: proposes that Alma’s seed sermon uses biblical creation and tree-of-life imagery. Retained locally as David E. Bokovoy — The Word and the Seed.7

Source Availability Audit

Relevant local Unshaken and Don’t Miss This transcripts were found and used. A matching 2024 followHIM episode with S. Michael Wilcox was found on the official episode pages; the speaker-attributed web transcripts were retained locally because no proofread downloadable PDF was exposed there during this run. The BYU Studies lesson 30 index was checked chapter by chapter. No matching Alma 32–35 file was found in the local 2024 Gospel Talktrine sequence; the sequence currently skips from S03E26 (Alma 23–29) to later preserved episodes. This reports only what was found locally during this run, not that no such Gospel Talktrine episode ever existed.

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “July 22–28: ‘Plant This Word in Your Hearts.’ Alma 32–35,” Come, Follow Me—For Home and Church: Book of Mormon 2024 (2023), https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/come-follow-me-for-home-and-church-book-of-mormon-2024/30?lang=eng. Official Church curriculum. The quoted title and lesson emphases were verified from this exact weekly page. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Joseph M. Spencer, “Is Not This Real?” BYU Studies Quarterly 58, no. 2 (2019): 87–126, https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/12. Local source note: Sources/Website/Joseph M. Spencer — Is Not This Real.md. Scholarly interpretation, not official Church teaching. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. Elaine Shaw Sorensen, “Seeds of Faith: A Follower’s View of Alma 32,” in The Book of Mormon: Alma, the Testimony of the Word, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1992), 129–39, https://rsc.byu.edu/book-mormon-alma-testimony-word/seeds-faith-followers-view-alma-32. Local source note: Sources/Website/Elaine Shaw Sorensen — Seeds of Faith.md. Scholarly/devotional interpretation. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. S. Michael Wilcox with Hank Smith and John Bytheway, “Alma 32–35,” followHIM Podcast, episode 30 (2024), official web transcript parts: https://followhim.co/show-note/book-of-mormon-episode-30-alma-32-35-part-1/ and https://followhim.co/show-note/book-of-mormon-episode-30-alma-32-35-part-2/. Local retained transcript: Sources/Series/Follow Him/Book of Mormon 2024/30 S. Michael Wilcox Alma 32–35.md. Devotional expert interview. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. David Butler and Emily Belle Freeman, “Come Follow Me Alma 32–35 (July 13–19),” Don’t Miss This, local transcript: Sources/Series/Don't Miss This/Book of Mormon/Come Follow Me Alma 32-35 (July 13-19).md; original video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V125GkJL5lg. Devotional commentary from an earlier Book of Mormon curriculum cycle; its chapter-specific content is relevant, while its printed date does not match the 2024 week. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  6. Jared Halverson, “Come Follow Me — Alma 32–35 — Knowing or Believing,” Unshaken (Faith Matters), local transcript: Sources/Series/Unshaken/Book of Mormon/Come Follow Me - Alma 32-35 - Knowing or Believing.md; original video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSABZi1fz5Q. Devotional commentary; claims about Alma’s possible continued response to Korihor and the “portable, permanent, personal” tree are Halverson’s interpretations. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  7. David E. Bokovoy, “The Word and the Seed: The Theological Use of Biblical Creation in Alma 32,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 23, no. 1 (2014), article 3, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol23/iss1/3/. Local source note: Sources/Website/David E. Bokovoy — The Word and the Seed.md. Literary scholarship, not an official Church interpretation; the advertised PDF endpoint returned an HTML 403 response during this run, so no local PDF is claimed. ↩ ↩2

  8. BYU Studies, “Plant This Word in Your Hearts — Alma 32–35,” Come, Follow Me: Book of Mormon, lesson 30, https://byustudies.byu.edu/come-follow-me/book-of-mormon/30. Curated scholarly index; not official Church curriculum. ↩

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