Cry Repentance Unto Every People

Though Mormon gave us no introduction, it is clear that Alma 29 is a direct quotation from the record of Alma. It contains a powerful expression of desire to take the gospel to all the earth, and Alma rejoiced in the success of his brethren the sons of Mosiah. It is not surprising that Mormon wanted to preserve those words exactly as Alma gave them, and so he kept them directly in his record. I believe, though, that the quotation of Alma starts in Alma 28:7 because that’s where the verb tenses change from past to present. In verses 1-6 of Alma 28 we have phrases such as these: “After the people of Ammon were established in the land of Jershon…. And thus there was a tremendous battle…. Nevertheless, the Lamanites were driven and scattered.… There was a great mourning and lamentation heard throughout all the land…. The cry of mourning was heard among all of them…. And now surely this was a sorrowful day.” All of these verses are in the past tense, consistent with the standard way that Mormon wrote telling us what happened among the Nephites. But then it appears that without introduction Mormon simply started quoting directly from Alma’s record.   

Starting Alma 28:7 everything is written in the present: “And thus endeth the fifteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi; And this is the account of Ammon and his brethren…. And this is the account of the wars and contentions among the Nephites…. And the bodies of many thousands are laid low in the earth, while the bodies of many thousands are moldering in heaps upon the face of the earth…. Many thousands of others truly mourn for the loss of their kindred.” All of these are in the present tense; in fact it wouldn’t make any sense for Mormon to say that the people “are mourning” or that the body of thousands “are moldering in heaps upon the face of the earth.” Those mourning were long since dead by the time he was writing and those bodies were long since gone when he was abridging his record. But Alma must have written this right as it was happening, at the end of the fifteenth year, and so he could describe the current state of things as they were among the Nephites at that moment. And in that context this statement about the sons of Mosiah makes more sense: “And now may the Lord, the Redeemer of all men, bless their souls forever.” It would seem a little odd for Mormon to say it that way if he was expressing his feelings hundreds of years after they died; but it is totally natural coming from Alma who was their contemporary expressing his love for his brethren while they were still living.   

                These words taken directly from Alma are a powerful introduction to his heartfelt expressions in Alma 29, and it perhaps would have been better if we did not have a chapter break between Alma 28:14 and Alma 29:1. Alma had just described both the incredible missionary labors of his brethren and the terrible destruction that had just come upon the Nephites and the Lamanites. He saw the effect that the word of God had had upon the people of Ammon, but he also saw the unmistakable need for the gospel light to penetrate all of the people of land as thousands mourned over the death and destruction that had just come upon them. He expressed his feelings this way: “And thus we see the great call of diligence of men to labor in the vineyards of the Lord; and thus we see the great reason of sorrow, and also of rejoicing—sorrow because of death and destruction among men, and joy because of the light of Christ unto life.” This was the natural introduction to his expressions of personal desire that directly followed: “O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!” His strong longing to take the gospel to the whole earth was driven at least in part by this terrible destruction and mourning he saw among his people at this time after the most tremendous battle the Nephites had ever seen. He gloried in the success of his brethren taking the word of God to the Lamanites and yearned to do the same to all people.