The Alma Family (A Book of Mormon Sketch) (3 May 1880)

THE ALMA FAMILY.

(A Book of Mormon Sketch).

BY ELDER GEO. REYNOLDS.

[Concluded from page 258.]

AMOS THE YOUNGER.

Amos was the son of the elder Amos, and his successor in the custody of the “holy things.'’ So great was his vitality, and so strong was the constitution implanted in him by the virtuous lives of his progenitors, together with his own life of harmony with Gods laws, that he retained this sacred trust for the unexampled period of one hundred and twelve years, or from A.D. 194 to A.D. 306, when be placed them in the hands of his brother Ammaron.

Amos was a righteous man, but he lived to witness an ever-increasing flood of iniquity break over the land, a phase of evil-doing that arose not from ignorance and false tradition, but from direct and wilful rebellion against God and apostacy from His laws. The wholesome checks to vice and misery found in the plan of salvation were knowingly and intentionally removed or done away; the voice of reason was disregarded, the promptings of the Holy Spirit were defiantly repelled, men’s unbridled passions again bore sway, disunion, dissention, violence, distress, dismay, bloodshed and havoc spread the wide continents over, and from their high pinnacle of righteousness, peace, happiness, refinement, social advantage, etc., the people were hurled once more into an abyss of misery and barbarism, now more profound, more torturing, more degraded than ever.

To give our readers a better idea of the progress of this vile and universal apostacy during the life of Amos, we will refer to its various phases in their chronological order:

By the year A.D. 201, all the second generation had passed away, save a few; the people had greatly multiplied and spread over the face of the lands, north and south, and they had become exceedingly rich; they wore costly apparel, which they adorned with ornaments of gold and silver, pearls and precious stones. From this date they no more had their property in common, but, like the rest of the world, every man sought gain, wealth, power and influence for himself and his. All the old evils arising from selfishness were revived. Soon they began to build churches after their own fashion, and hire preachers who pandered to their lusts; some even began to deny the Savior.

From A.D. 210 to A.D. 2.30, the people waxed greatly in iniquity and impurity of life. Different dissenting sects multiplied, infidels abounded. The three remaining disciples were sorely persecuted, notwithstanding that they performed many mighty miracles. They were shut up in prisons, but the prisons were rent in twain by the power of God; they were cast into fiery furnaces, but the flames harmed them not; they were thrown into dens of wild beasts, but they played with the savage inmates as a child does with a lamb, and received no harm; they were not subject to many of the laws that govern our mortal bodies, they had passed through a glorious change, by which they were freed from earthly pain, suffering and death. Not only did the wicked persecute these three undying ones, but others of God’s people suffered from their unhallowed anger and bitter hatred; but the faithful neither reviled at the reviler nor smote the smiter; they bore these things with patience and fortitude, remembering the pains of their Redeemer.

In the year A.D. 231, there was a great division amongst the people. The old party lines were again definitely marked. Again the old animosity assumed shape, and Nephite and Lamanite once more became implacable foes. Those who rejected and renounced the Gospel assumed the latter name, and with their eyes open, and a full knowledge of their inexcusable infamy, they taught their children the same base falshoods that in ages past had caused the undying hatred that reigned in the hearts or the children of Laman and Lemuel towards the seed of their younger brothers.

By A.D. 244, the more wicked portion of the people had become exceedingly strong, as well as far more numerous than the righteous. They deluded themselves by building all sorts of churches, with creeds to suit the increasing depravity of the masses.

When 260 years had passed away, the Gadianton bands, with all their secret signs and abominations (through the cunning of Satan), again appeared and increased until, in A.D. 300, they had spread over all the land. By this time, also, the Nephites, having gradually forsaken their first love, had so far sunk in the abyss of iniquity that they had grown as wicked, as proud, as corrupt, as vile as the Lamanites. All were submerged in one overwhelming flood of infamy, “and there were none that were righteous, save it were the disciples of Jesus.”

AMMARON.

We have now come to the last of the illustrious line of high priests, prophets and disciples that came forth from the loins of Alma. We fail to remember, in the history of the world, where righteousness was so continuously inherited for so many generations from father to son, as with this family. For five hundred years the posterity of Alma were the mouthpieces of God to the Nephites, and examples in purity of life and devotion to every principle of righteousness. After Ammaron we hear no more of them; possibly they were carried downward with the great stream of iniquity, and, like all their fellow-countrymen, forsook the Lord. We can come to no other conclusion, sad though that conclusion may be.

Ammaron was the son of Amos the elder. He received the sacred records from his brother Amos the younger, A.D. 306. Owing to the increasing depravity and vileness of the Nephites, he was constrained by the Holy Ghost to hide up all the sacred things which had been handed down from generation to generation (A.D. 320.) The place where he hid them is said to have been in the land Antum, in a hill “which shall be called Shim.” After he had hid them up, he informed Mormon (the compiler of the Book of Mormon), then a child ten years old, of what he had done, and placed the buried treasures in his charge. He instructed Mormon to go, when he was about twenty-four years old, to the hill where they were hid, and take the plates of Nephi and record thereon what he had observed “concerning the people.” The remainder of the records, etc., he was to leave where they were. After this we have no information of Ammaron’s life. He must have been a very old man, as his father Amos died 126 years before the time that he buried the sacred engravings.