Why would the converted Lamanites call themselves “Anti-Nephi-Lehies”?

Thomas R. Valletta

“He used the scriptures from both the Old and New Worlds as his basic source (Alma 18:36–39). Ammon’s straightforward doctrinal approach calls to mind President J. Reuben Clark Jr.’s comment about how not to teach our spiritually alert youth, ‘There is no need for gradual approaches, for “bed-time” stories, for coddling, for patronizing, or for any of the other childish devices.’ If Ammon could teach doctrine from the scriptures to a wicked Lamanite who barely knew God existed, surely students in modern Zion deserve to be taught in the same way. Conversion comes, as Mormon explains in Alma 32, when we hear the word of God taught by the power of the Holy Ghost” (Hansen, “Book of Alma as a Prototype,” 269).

How is mercy possible? (18:41) “ By eternal law, mercy cannot be extended save there be one who is both willing and able to assume our debt and pay the price and arrange the terms for our redemption.

“Unless there is a mediator, … the full weight of justice untempered, unsympathetic, must, positively must fall on us. The full recompense for every transgression, however minor or however deep, will be exacted from us to the uttermost farthing.

“But know this: Truth, glorious truth, proclaims there is such a Mediator.

“‘For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’ (1 Tim. 2:5.)

“Through Him mercy can be fully extended to each of us without offending the eternal law of justice” (Packer, “The Mediator,” 55–56).

The Book of Mormon Study Guide: Start to Finish

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