Alma 29O that I were an Angel!

You find a lamp and the genie offers you one wish.

He will convert any person you

know to the Gospel

Alma 29:1-2

Is this a bad thing?

(see Alma 29:3)

Alma 29Many have learned to ignore the increasing evidence that

society is unraveling and that their lives and family lack the peace they once thought was possible. That willingness to ignore the signs of danger can make it easy for you to think: Why should I speak to anyone about the gospel who seems content? What danger is there to them or to me if I do or say nothing?

At some moment in the world to come, everyone you will ever meet will know what you know now. They will know that the only way to live forever in association with our families and in the presence of our Heavenly Father and His Son. They will know that the only way families can be together forever is to accept and keep sacred covenants offered in the temples of God on this earth. And they will know that you knew. And they will remember whether you offered them what someone had offered you.

Alma 29Years ago I worked for a man in California. He hired me, he was

kind to me, he seemed to regard me highly. I may have been the only Latter-day Saint he ever knew well. I don't know all the reasons I found to wait for a better moment to talk with him about the gospel. I just remember my feeling of sorrow when I learned, after he had retired and I lived far away, that he and his wife had been killed in a late night drive to their home in Carmel, California. He loved his wife. He loved his children. He had loved his parents. He loved his grandchildren, and he will love their children and will want to be with them forever.

Now, I don't know how the crowds will be handled in the world to come. But I suppose that I will meet him, that he will look into my eyes, and that I will see in them the question: "Hal, you knew. Why didn't you tell me?" (A Voice of Warning: Elder Henry B. Eyring (October 1998))

 

Alma 290Alma 29:8-90So what can you do differently to help people that you love better

embrace the gospel?

Alma 29The Name Alma

BOOK OF MORMON EVIDENCES

Alma’s name has been one of the most commonly attacked features of the Book of Mormon, for Alma is a female Latin name. In 1961, a prominent scholar in Israel, Professor Yigael Yadin, discovered a land deed from the time of the Bar Kokhba rebellion in Palestine (ca. 131 A.D.). Prof. Yadin translated one of the names as "Alma the son of Judah.“(See Bar Kokhba by Yigael Yadin, Random House, New York, 1971, p. 176; and Nibley, The

Prophetic Book of Mormon, pp. 281-82.) Alma proves to not only be a genuine Semitic name, but is a name of a Hebraic man. Finding the male name Alma in a record must be viewed not as a reason for mocking the Book of Mormon, but as a reason to take it seriously.

BOOK OF MORMON EVIDENCES

“May I suggest to you that one of the things we need to teach our [children], and one of the things which will become more important in their lives the longer they live, is the reality of angels, their work, and their ministry…personal ministering angels who are with us and around us, empowered to help us, and who do exactly that.

Elder Holland

“Perhaps more of us… could literally, or at least figuratively, behold the angels around us if we would but awaken from our stupor and hear the voice of the Spirit as those angels try to speak….

“I believe we need to speak of and believe in and bear testimony to the ministry of angels more than we sometimes do. They constitute one of God's great methods of witnessing through the veil…” CES Symposium on the Book of Mormon • 9 August 1994

Elder Holland

Joseph F. Smith

“When messengers are sent to minister to the inhabitants of this earth, they are not strangers, but from the ranks of our kindred, friends, and fellow-beings and fellow-servants...

“Our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who have passed away from this earth, having been faithful, and worthy to enjoy these rights and privileges, may have a mission given them to visit their relatives and friends upon the earth again, from the divine Presence messages of love, of warning, or reproof and instruction, to those whom they had learned to love in the flesh.”

(Gospel Principles, p. 435)

The word angel is used in various ways. A person who is a divine messenger is called an angel (Moroni, John the Baptist, Peter, James, John, Moses, Elijah, and Elias all ministered to Joseph Smith as angels). Angels also has reference to the heavenly messengers sent forth to minister to the inhabitants of the earth.

www.lds.org: Angels

 “I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my

Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels

round about you, to bear you up” (D&C 84:88).

Joseph Smith

“Enveloped in flaming fire, they [in the spirit world] are not far from us, and know and understand our thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and are often pained therewith.” History of the Church, 6:52

What questions do you have about the role or doctrine of Angels?

Do you have any experiences with this doctrine?

Elder Enzio BuscheAt a Christmas social once, I was

sitting next to a woman from a recently opened country in Eastern Europe. She was in the west for the first time and was helping with the translation work. She was a convert of a little over a year.

She told me about her branch and the poor circumstances they were all living in and how difficult it was for the members to get to their Sunday meetings… These new members could not say enough about the love and the gracious care of the Lord.

Then she said, “Once in awhile, we have holy angels visit and comfort and strengthen us.” She added with a smile, “Can you imagine? I have found people in Salt Lake City who have never see an angel.” She laughed as if that were the strangest thing she had ever heard.

Yearning for the Living God, p. 234

Elder Neal A. Maxwell: “It has been a privilege to seal adopted children to Nan and Dan Barker, now of Arizona. Some time ago Nate, then just over three, said: ‘Mommy, there is another little girl who is supposed to come to our family. She has dark hair and dark eyes and lives a long way from here.’ “The wise mother asked, ‘How do you know this?’ “’Jesus told me, upstairs.’ “The mother noted, ‘We don’t have an upstairs,’ but quickly sensed the significance of what had been communicated. After much travail and many prayers, the Barker family were in a sealing room in the Salt Lake Temple in the fall of 1995, where a little girl with dark hair and dark eyes, from Kazakhstan, was sealed to them for time and eternity. Inspired children still tell parents ‘great and marvelous things’ (3 Nephi 26:14)” (C.R., Apr. 1996, 95-96; or Ensign, May 1996, 69-70).

‘

Who is the angel that most commonly speaks to us?

“Through the Aaronic Priesthood ordinances of baptism and the sacrament, we are cleansed of our sins and

promised that if we keep our covenants we will always have His Spirit to be with us. I believe that promise not only refers to the Holy Ghost but also to the ministering

of angels, for "angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ" (2 Ne. 32:3). So it is that those who hold the Aaronic Priesthood

open the door for all Church members who worthily partake of the sacrament to enjoy the companionship of

the Spirit of the Lord and the ministering of angels.” (Elder Dallin H. Oaks, "The Aaronic Priesthood and the Sacrament," Ensign, Nov.

1998, p. 39)

Alma 29O that I were an Angel!