Hello, my friends. Derek here from BOMSocks. Back with another day of BOMBites, where we feast upon the words of Christ one bite at a time.
We’re into Alma Chapter 13 through 16 this week. Some great stories with some wonderful instruction. Let me backtrack to you what we talked about last week with Alma 8 through 12, which largely dealt with this crazy wicked city called Ammonihah, where Alma goes in there and he meets the wonderful Amulek. They become missionary companions and they go in there, and they’re trying to share the gospel. They meet Zeezrom, and it’s a crazy little adventure right there. I’ve always wondered why Alma Chapter 13 all of a sudden pops up right here, which is a wonderful discourse on the Melchizedek priesthood. It almost seems like it’s a little bit disjointed. I’ve always thought that for many years. You just got this storyline and all this is like, pause, let’s talk about the priesthood. Then in Chapter 14, let’s continue on with this. As I’ve thought more about this, the city of Ammoniah was largely built on what was called the Order of Nihor. You remember Nihor? Crazy antichrist back in Alma Chapter 1 that was really focusing on himself and really starting to build priestcraft, which led to Amlisai in Alma Chapter 2.
It really started building what Ammonihah was really built on, this order of Nehor, which is why chapter 13 is such an instructive chapter, because you get in the first two verses right here where it says, And again, my brother, and this is Alma speaking, I would cite your minds towards the time when the Lord gave these commandments unto his children, and I that you should remember that the Lord God ordained priests after his holy order. Now, there’s that word. You know that I like to focus on words a lot. The word order is mentioned all through this chapter. This order, which was after the order of his son to teach these things unto the people. And those priests were ordained after the order of his son in a manner that thereby the people might know in what manner to look forward to his son for redemption. If you were to click on the word order in verse number 2, it actually takes you to Doctrine and Covenants, section 107, where we learn more about the Melchizedek priesthood, which was originally called the Holy priesthood after the order of the Son of God. It talks about how it was changed to the Melchistic priesthood for a couple of reasons.
One of them was because they wanted to avoid too frequent of repetition in the name of God. But then the other one talks about Melchizedek. In fact, in section 107, it says Melchizedek was such a great high priest. We know very little about Melchizedek. I mean, we have our higher priesthood named after him. When you If you get a priesthood named after you, you’re pretty cool dude. So this chapter 13 becomes a great contrast to this order of Nihor, which Ammonihah was built on. Now, in chapter 13, we actually get to know a little bit about Melchizedek. The very little we know, a lot of it we know from here. Verse 17, This Melchizedek was a king over the land of Salem. Salem is actually a Hebrew word for peace. It’s very similar to Shalom, the way people would greet each other there. And his people had waxed strong in in iniquity and abominations. Sounds a lot like Ammonihah. Yey, they had all gone astray and were full of all manner of wickedness. But Melchizedek, having exercised mighty faith and received the office of the high priesthood, you see a lot about high priests in this chapter, according to the Holy order of God, did preach repentance unto his people, and behold, they did repent.
Melchizedek did establish peace in the land in his days. Therefore, he was called the Prince of Peace. I’m going to come back to that in just a moment. For he was the King of Salem, and he did reign under his Father. There were many before him, and also there were many afterwards, but none were greater. Therefore, of him, they have more particularly made mention. So Melchizedek very much sends off like King Benjamin, Enoch, King Josiah in the Old Testament, a man working with a group of people who were wicked But through the power of the priest or this Holy order after the Son of God, he is able to change these people. Perhaps Alma and Amulak were trying to have the same thing happen here. A lot of bad people. There may have very well been some bad priests in the city as well. Alma and Amulek go in here talking about the Holy priesthood after the order of the Son of God, which is named the Melchizedek priesthood. I love how Melchizedek focuses on God. He focuses on following God. He was the Prince of Peace, Lowercase Prince of Peace, because he followed after the Prince of Peace, capital P, Jesus Christ.
Now, one of the cool things you can do with this chapter is you go over to the Come, Follow, Me manual, and there’s a heading that says, The Lord invites me to enter into his rest. Not only do you find the word order a lot in this chapter, but you also find the word rest all through this chapter. The invitation to enter into the rest of the Lord is repeated often in Alma 13. Maybe you could look for every verse where the word rest appears and ponder what each verse teaches you about what the rest of the Lord might mean. How is it different than physical rest? How do we find it? You also see right there, there is a reference to President Nelson’s wonderful talk from October of 2022 called Overcome the World and Find Rest. I would absolutely recommend that talk as you were studying Alma 13. Now, one of the coolest references to rest as you go all the way down to about verses 27 to 29, you see some great things here. And now, my Breothen, I wish from the innmost part of my heart, as Alma is speaking here, yay, with great anxiety, even unto pain, he is feeling this, that you would hearken under my words and cast off your sins and not procrastinate the day of your repentance, but that you would humble yourselves before the Lord and call on his Holy name and watch and pray continually.
You’re almost getting a little list here of some things that you can do find rest, that you may not be tempted above that which you can bear and thus be led by the Holy spirit, becoming humble, meek, submissive, patient, full of love, and all long suffering. That is setting off some strong Mosiah 3:19 vibes that King Benjamin brought up as well. Having faith on the Lord, having a hope that you shall receive eternal life, having the love of God always in your hearts, that you may be lifted up at the last day and enter into his rest. I love this idea at the end here. May the Lord grant unto you repentance, knowing all the crazy stuff that Ammonihah is doing, that you may not bring down his wrath upon you, that you may not be bound down by the chains of hell, that you may not suffer the second death. Then at the end, Alma spake many more words unto this people, which are not written in this book. I’d love to know what those were as well. Perhaps this chapter is here because Alma and Amulek saw the power of what Melchizedek was able to do with the wicked city.
Perhaps they wanted to do the same thing as they focused on getting these people away the order of Nihor and focusing on the holy priesthood after the order of the Son of God, knowing that that priesthood is going to bless people’s lives. The order of the Melchizedek priesthood can provide a lot of peace and a lot of rest and a lot of direction to not only a city like Ammoniah, but to all of us when we find that our lives are just a little bit out of order and we go back to the blessings of the priesthood and the covenants that come along with those, and we will find ourselves having that rest that Alma and Amulek talked about here. I am grateful for this chapter, and I know that it’s true. Thank you so much for watching. Thanks for subscribing, and thanks for sharing these messages. We are so grateful, as always, that you do that. Please share these so you can get these out there. If you like what you see, please click the like button, and you got to go check out our amazingly comfortable gospel-themed socks at bombsocks. Com. God speed.
See you next time. Take care. Bye-bye.
Guest Author
dyejo
