Words Alone

When Alma (the Elder) went to the Lord to determine how to handle the difficult situation in the church when the unbelievers were causing members to “commit many sins,” the Lord praised him for his faithfulness that he had exhibited.  He said, “Thou art blessed because of thy exceeding faith in the words alone of my servant Abinadi.”  The Lord similarly commended the faith of those who had originally been baptized in the waters of Mormon among the people of King Notah: “And blessed are they because of their exceeding faith in the words alone which thou hast spoken unto them” (Mosiah 26:6, 15-16).  What struck me in these verses was the use of the word alone by the Lord.  Alma had had only the mortal witness of Abinadi.  Though surely he had the scriptures and knew to some degree the law of Moses, Alma had to believe the words of Abinadi while discounting the words of everyone else around him including the group of priests he was a part of and the king himself.  Alma had exhibited great faith in being able to believe Abinadi despite how alone Abinadi was in his testimony, at least among that people at that time.  Similarly, the people only had Alma’s words, and those were preached secretly and against the knowledge of their rulers.  They presumably did know of Abinadi and had even perhaps heard him, but at the time of their conversion the only mortal’s testimony they had was Alma’s. The Lord commended their ability to act and exhibit great faith based on just that single witness. 

                Of course, the Lord promises that we will ultimately have multiple witnesses.  In fact, we even call it the “law of witnesses,” and the Lord reaffirmed it in our dispensation: “in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:28).  Surely Alma and his people had hundreds more witnesses of the truthfulness of the gospel and the path they had chosen, but they had had enough faith to move forward with a single witness at the time.  I believe it is same with us—we may have just one prompting to do a particular thing, or get one invitation from the prophet or another leader to make a change, and we have to decide what to do with that witness “alone”.  Do we have enough faith to act and move forward with just that one indication of the direction we should head?  It really was an incredible thing for Alma to have the courage to go against all those around him, including the king, and trust in the words alone of Abinadi, and his example can inspire all of us to act on what is right even if we only have one small witness of what we are to do.  Mormon gave us perhaps an insight into Alma’s character that helps us see what drove him to exhibit such faith.  He wrote that Alma went fervently before the Lord because he “feared that he should do wrong in the sight of God” (Mosiah 26:13).  Ultimately at that moment decades before when he had decided to throw in his lot with Abinadi he had exhibited the same character trait—he decided listening to Abinadi that he should fear God more than fear the rest of those in his society.  He decided that it was more important to worry about what was wrong in God’s eyes than what was wrong in the eyes of the powerful priests and king around him.  For us to follow the single witnesses we receive of what we are to do, then we must likewise learn to fear doing wrong in the sight of God, even if that means we indeed do wrong in the sight of the world.  We must not, as the Prophet Joseph did in a moment of weakness, “fear man more than God,” but rather hearken steadfastly to the “counsels of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 3:7).