I’m on the road again (which has sadly delayed my post).[1] This week I’m visiting my family in Minnesota and the –17° F temperature outside contrasts somewhat with the +82° F in South Beach a few weeks ago. The Book of Mosiah so far has alternated between narrative action broken up by two lengthy sermons. This week’s reading (Mosiah 9-10 CofC/17-22 LDS) picks up right after Abinadi has finished his sermon and the story takes off immediately. Chapter 9 in the Community of Christ version is big, long, and action-packed — I can see why it’s broken up into so many chapters in the LDS version.
As you’ll recall from last week, we’re in our book within the book. The “Record of Zeniff” chronicles the story of a smaller group of Nephites who have gone back to the Land of Nephi, where they are surrounded by (and pay tribute to) a much larger kingdom of Lamanites. King Zeniff the Over-Zealous was succeeded by his unworthy son, King Noah the Wine-Bibber. King Noah, aided by the wicked priests of his court, has initiated all sorts of unrighteous practices, which Abinadi has condemned in his sermon. In keeping with the theology presented thus far, Abinadi has predicted that since God punishes nations for bad behavior, the Nephite kingdom in the Land of Nephi is about to get punished.
That happens right away in this week’s reading. The wicked priests charge that since Abinadi “hast said that God himself should come down among the children of men” and predicted the ministry of Christ, he has crossed a line and said things that “art worthy of death” (Mosiah 9:10-11 CofC/17:7-8 LDS). Refusing to recant, Abinadi is burned at the stake on this charge of heresy and/or blasphemy. He thus becomes the Book of Mormon’s first proto-martyr: killed for his testimony of Jesus Christ on the model of the early martyrs in the Biblical Book of Acts. (Abinadi’s experience with the wicked priests can be compared with Stephen’s long speech before the Sanhedrin and his subsequent execution for heresy, told in Acts 6-8.)
As with martyrdoms in Acts, Abinadi’s Christian martyrdom achieves converts. One of the priests — a man named Alma — is persuaded by Abinadi’s preaching, leaves the court, and secretly organizes a new church called “the church of God or the church of Christ” (Mosiah 9:49 CofC / 18:17 LDS). When King Noah find out about it, he sends the bulk of his army to break up the new church, but Alma and about 450 of his followers escape into the wilderness (Mosiah 9:72-73 CofC / 18:33-35 LDS). Meanwhile, with the army gone, a revolution against King Noah breaks out at home. The chief rebel, Gideon, is about to slay the king when the Lamanites attack.
After much battle and mayhem, King Noah is himself burned to death, but his priests escape into the wilderness. The remaining Nephites (sans both Alma’s group and the wicked priests) make peace with the Lamanites on much harsher terms. Gideon becomes captain of the Nephite royal guard and Limhi, one of Noah’s sons, is named the new king. In the wilderness, the priests have fled without their families and decide to kidnap “daughters of the Lamanites” to start their lives over again. Thus, we now have three separate groups of Nephites in vicinity of the Land of Nephi: (1) King Limhi’s group, (2) the group of wicked Nephite priests with Lamanite wives, and (3) Alma’s group.
It is now that our story re-encounters representatives of the main group of Nephites (who live in the Land of Zarahemla) as our disembodied narrator brings the story all the way up to the point where Ammon and his search party discovered King Limhi’s group (Mosiah 9:164 CofC / 21:23 LDS).[2] Having reconnected with the Nephites in Zarahemla, King Limhi decides that his group needs to escape their Lamanite overlords. Captain Gideon hatches a plan, which is to get the Lamanite guards drunk,[3] while all the people and all their flocks escape through the secret back gate of the city (Mosiah 10:8-11 CofC / 22:3-8 LDS). All goes as planned and Limhi’s group are reunited with the main body of the Nephites in Zarahemla, leaving Alma’s group and King Noah’s group still off in different parts of the wilderness.
That’s a lot just to summarize. At some point, the action may get boring or repetitive, but that hasn’t happened yet for me.
Alma and Authority
Although Alma and his group largely duck out of the action, their story is the most interesting to me from a theological perspective. In Acts, preaching and martyrdoms are set against the backdrop of the apostles’ work building up the young Christian church. Here in the Land of Nephi, however, there is no Christian church (yet) and there are no apostles commissioned directly by Jesus to build one up. King Limhi’s group (after the defections of both Alma and King Noah) feel the problem acutely. They now believe the testimony of the proto-martyr Abinadi, and they are “desirous to be baptized” — “but there was none in the land that had authority from God” (Mosiah 9:176 CofC / 21:33 LDS).
Prior to the Protestant Reformation, Christians understood authority to descend through apostolic succession. Jesus commissioned apostles including Peter, who established churches led by bishops who succeeded each other in an unbroken line to the present. While Catholic and Orthodox Christians continue to look to apostolic succession, Protestants in breaking with the Papacy had to look elsewhere for authority. They found it in scripture, which they argued was the sole source of authority.
Off in the wilderness with his small band, Alma has neither ordination through apostolic succession nor scriptures (King Limhi’s group and King Mosiah’s group have the various plates). Alma’s solution is to receive authority directly through the Spirit. As we read:
Alma took Helam, he being one of the first, and went and stood forth in the water, and cried, saying, “O Lord, pour out thy Spirit upon thy servant, that he may do this work with holiness of heart.” And when he had said these words, the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he said, “Helam, I baptize thee, having authority from the Almighty God, as a testimony that ye have entered into a covenant to serve him until you are dead, as to the mortal body; and may the Spirit of the Lord be poured out upon you; and may he grant unto you eternal life, through the redemption of Christ, whom he has prepared from the foundation of the world.” (Mosiah 9:43-44 CofC / 18:12-13 LDS)
Alma then submerged both Helam and himself under the water, baptizing himself at the same time as Helam. After this original self-baptism/baptism, we’re told that in all the subsequent baptisms only the baptizee would be submerged. As mentioned above, the newly baptized souls then came to be called “the church of God or the church of Christ” and “whosoever was baptized by the power and authority of God, was added to his church.”
Alma then went on to establish a priesthood:
And it came to pass that Alma, having authority from God, ordained priests; even one priest to every fifty of their [the church members’] number did he ordain to preach unto them, and to teach them concerning the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. (Mosiah 9:51 CofC / 18:18 LDS)
Thus, it’s very clear that Alma has authority to baptize (beginning with himself!), to organize a church, and to ordain priests. That authority has apparently not come from any ordination he may have received as one of King Noah’s wicked priesthood (apostolic succession, however tainted). Instead, he’s received authority directly from the Spirit, in response to his public prayer.
The question faced by Limhi’s people and Alma’s people was, of course, directly relevant to Joseph Smith and his early supporters. Being a part of the Gold Plates project stirred within them a desire to be baptized and to organize a church. And they were able to take Alma’s precedent as a model for how this could be done. Accordingly, having prayed about the matter like Alma, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery had a spiritual experience which caused them to feel they had received authority to baptize. They then baptized each other and others in their early small group; and, like Alma, began to ordain members to a restored priesthood long before their own “Church of Christ” was organized on April 6, 1830.
Later, as Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery’s ideas of authority evolved, they remembered or retold their spiritual experiences with more detail as visions involving specific personages: John the Baptist, and the apostles Peter, James, and John.[4] And these visions as they were heard became visitations, which were consonant with a new understanding of authority — one that once again relied on apostolic succession, in this case, directly from the apostles themselves. Thus, the idea of the authority of the Spirit, presented here in Alma, while serving as the actual model for the early Restoration as it happened, no longer matches the idea of authority in the mainline Restoration tradition, nor does it match the “traditional” way the sacred story of the Restoration is now told.
Nevertheless, the model has continued to inspire individual Restoration believers who find themselves in schism with the larger, mainline Restoration tradition churches. For example, in rejecting the organizations of Brigham Young in Utah and Joseph Smith III in Illinois, William Bickerton (a former follower of Sidney Rigdon) explicitly used Alma’s church as a model for reorganizing his own “Church of Jesus Christ” (headquartered in Monongahela, Pennsylvania), which has continued to this day as the third largest branch of the movement.
Stray Observations
• The formula employed by Alma for performing baptism is interesting for its uniqueness. Making no mention of the “remission of sins,” the baptism is instead a “testimony” or symbol of a personal covenant to serve God. The inclusion of the phrase “until you are dead” reminded me of the traditional marriage vows which are taken “until death do us part”.
• The ratio of 1 priest per 50 members in Alma’s church has not been the practice in any Restoration tradition church that I am aware of.
• The priests of Alma’s church “were not to depend on the people for their support; but for their labor they were to receive the grace of God, that they might wax strong in the Spirit…” (Mosiah 9:57-59 CofC / 18:24-26 LDS) signalling a very early bias in the Restoration against paid ministry. This view, of course, later became problematic for Joseph Smith himself as he struggled to lead a church and support a growing family.
• Alma does his baptizing at the Waters of Mormon, which are at the place of Mormon near the forest of Mormon. This is our first introduction to the name “Mormon”. It’s described as “having received its name from the king, being in the borders of the land having been infested, by times, or at seasons, by wild beasts” (Mosiah 9:32 CofC / 18:4 LDS). But it isn’t clear from context, if the land is named after a King Mormon (whose story was lost in the 116 pages) or if some other king (like Noah) named it because Mormon means “borderlands” or “semi-infested with wild beasts”.
• Alma’s church came up with a solution to the beggar problem that we all struggled with during King Benjamin’s sermon:
Alma commanded that the people of the church should impart of their substance, every one according to that which he had; if he have more abundantly, he should impart more abundantly; and he that had but little, but little should be required; and to him that had not should be given. And thus they should impart of their substance of their own free will and good desires towards God, and to those priests that stood in need, yea, and to every needy, naked soul. (Mosiah 9:60-62 CofC / 18:27-28 LDS)
• Although Zeniff was originally just an over-zealous guy and although we are told that his grandson Limhi had the kingdom “conferred on him by the people,” the new king was nevertheless chosen from Zeniff’s royal line, despite the wickedness of Limhi’s father Noah (Mosiah 9:103 CofC /19:26 LDS). The idea of kingship here includes a popular component and retirement, but it remains hereditary.
• The idea of that the Nephites had to pay tribute for the upkeep of the guards quartered among them by the king of the Lamanites (Mosiah 9:105-106 CofC /19:28 LDS) must have resonated to readers in the early post-revolutionary United States.
Next week: The end of the Book of Mosiah (Mosiah 11-13 CofC /23-29 LDS).
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[1] Sadly, no books with me means none of the footnotes are going to be backed up with references until I get home.
[2] Although the Record of Zeniff began as a first-person account by King Zeniff, after his retirement the narration become anonymous. Now the record comes all the way down to and includes the arrival of Ammon previously narrated from Ammon’s perspective in Mosiah 5:1-24 CofC. As the story has played out, we now have the additional detail that Ammon and his companions were mistaken by King Limhi’s guards for members of King Noah’s group. If the text had been composed in a conventional way, an author might now be tempted to go back to chapter 5 and have the guards ask Ammon something like, “What have you done with the daughters of the Lamanites?” Which questions would confuse both Ammon and the reader at that stage in the story. However, the Book of Mormon was not composed conventionally, and the text once dictated was essentially fixed permanently.
[3] Getting your guards drunk is a general stock literary device, but it is also, unfortunately, in keeping with European American stereotyping of Native Americans.
[4] Although these have become sacred stories for the movement, they do not fit the rest of the historical record. Early members like David Whitmer testified that stories of these personages were a later development. Their memories are backed by contemporary records which show that the understanding of priesthood as narrated in the story were later developments that did not exist in the early period. For a complete description of the evolution of priesthood, see Gregory Prince’s Power from on High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995).
Wheat & Tares 
This is an interesting observation about authority, one I noticed myself when reading the BOM years ago. I have heard LDS teachers say that Alma’s authority came through King Noah, but it is a problematic assertion.
I’ve heard the King Noah assertion too, but there seems to be an awful lot of assumptions with that. There is certainly no clear transmission of authority in evidence.
“That authority has apparently not come from any ordination he may have received as one of King Noah’s wicked priesthood . . .” Why not? The idea that Alma received his authority from the Spirit in response to his prayer, as you claim, is unprecendented and not in harmony with the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or restoration teachings. There’s no reason to believe that his authority came through Noah but he was one of Noah’s priests. Where did Noah’s prients get their authority? It had to come from someone. We don’t know where it came from but I’ve always assumed that there was someone or a group of people with priesthood authority who traveled with Zeniff. It makes sense that he would bring priests with him even if they aren’t mentioned. By the time Abinadi comes into the picture, the only priesthood authority around is Noah’s hand picked group of lackeys. Maybe some of Zeniff’s priests turned to the dark side along with up and coming Noah and they worked to get rid of the good ones and ordain more bad ones. Or maybe Noah was able to get a few wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing ordained and then worked to get rid of the priests who didn’t agree with him and picked others he wanted ordained. All of this is speculation of course but it’s a reasonable theory. Once Alma converted, he already had the authority even if he received it through nefarious means.
Welcome to my beautiful, if somewhat chilly, home, John! Sorry about the weather. What part of town are you in? (All Minnesota is one big small town, ya know.)
“Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force!” -Barbie
I have a few thoughts on this entry, and I’ll try to be coherent…
I personally would have preferred it had some heavenly messenger come down and ordained Alma first, but it seems that it wasn’t to work that way. I’ve always found it odd that John the Baptist could return, presumably as a resurrected being, lay hands on Joseph and Oliver to ordain them, but then not baptize them (since he would have been physically capable of doing so). Even had he then made them re-ordain each other and baptize each other, as the mainline story tells, that would seem more consistent. I suppose the Lord works with what he has available. It makes sense that this story would have evolved over time.
I always kind of wondered about the persecution of Abinadi. Was it simply that he challenged the established church, condemned the priests and administration of Noah, or was it something specific about the message of the Messiah? Would he, for example, have been “worthy of death” had he preached that Xenu was scattering Thetans among the children of men, or speaking of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? It’s kind of a trope that the persecution of the LDS movement in 19th century America was due to Satan’s special fear and hatred of the Savior’s true church, but the history of Christian schism and internecine warfare doesn’t lead us to believe that the established cults look with favor upon any fast-growing newcomer. However, Abinadi doesn’t seem to have attracted a lot of attention until he started to preach the coming destruction of the kingdom. I conclude his execution was probably more political, with doctrine used as an excuse, by a priest/political class which possibly wasn’t all that sincere in belief anyway.
Finally, your derived etymology of the word “Mormon” seems plausible to me in context. You’re of course familiar with Joseph’s (supposed) riff on the word in which he claims it means “more good,” thus apparently conflating an English contraction (mor-) with some kind of Nephite word (mon=good), but some sources think perhaps somebody else wrote that, maybe WW Phelps. I think there are times when someone asked Joseph a somewhat silly, irrelevant question and he chose to give them a semi-facetious answer, like here (he probably got tired of being asked to explain everything). I don’t know that Joseph had any idea what the word meant. LDS President Gordon Hinckley seemed to cast doubt on the accuracy of that translation in an October 1990 General Conference talk, as well. FWIW, I think the story of “Zelph, the Itinerant Lamanite Warrior” (to the extent that the details are not the fruit of the fertile imaginations of Joseph’s followers in Zion’s Camp) fits in that category.
According to the D&C John the Baptist was ordained by an angel when he was eight days of age. Is this some how more authoritative or official than receiving his authority from the spirit?
We get way too caught up in the golden calves of the church. Religion is the mortalization of spirituality. Rituals are only symbolic carrying only the power we assign to them, not intrinsic power.
If you have access to God’s power, implicit in that access is the authority to use it in righteousness for it cannot be used in unrighteousness. The LDS argument about authority is about trade marking and copyrighting in an attempt to argue a propitiatory product they broker to members. Many outside the church enjoy free access to God’s power and apply it regularly in righteousness without any proprietary claims or charges.
DB wrote:
“The idea that Alma received his authority from the Spirit in response to his prayer, as you claim, is unprecedented and not in harmony with the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or restoration teachings.”
I think that there may indeed be a scriptural precedent.
Verses 67 – 69 of Genesis chapter 6, as it appears in the Inspired Version, makes mention of Adam being baptized. It then continues with these words:
“And thou art after the order of him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity.” (verse 70).
This verse could be interpreted as just something casual, like “because you were baptized, you are now part of what will be a really awesome body of people faithful in Christ”.
However, I don’t think that is really correct. I think the real meaning is different. While the gist of the preceding verses are about baptism, I believe that what is really being said in verse 70 is that Adam was, in the pronouncement of those words, made (“ordained”), a high priest directly by the will of God. I base this on the words “after the order of him who was…” – this sounds very familiar to “after the order of the Son of God”, which is a phrase found multiple times in other scriptures, including the Book of Mormon, and which is a reference to the Melchisidec priesthood.
And, we know from the scriptures that Adam was a high priest in that order. Who ordained him? Even if we reject my theory, how did Adam receive the priesthood? Clearly, somehow Adam had to be ordained to the priesthood, even if that “ordination” really just took the form of God viewing Adam as a high priest. In essence, if you are viewed in the mind of God as being a member of the priesthood, than you are, irregardless of any other factors (such as whether or not an actual laying-on-of-hands took place).
It is possible however that Noah’s priests did have authority. I have not read the Book of Mormon chronologicaly in a while to be sure of the order of events, but Noah’s priests were either priests of a false religion, or they were priests descended from the first Nephi. We know that Nephi ordained his brothers to the priesthood. Did this priesthood survive into the days of Noah? I can’t recall. But, if they did, than maybe Noah’s priests were of that lineage, and not of a false religion, in which case Alma’s authority came from them. If it did, then his authority was “apostolic” or “Nephiaic”.
However, one has to ask, was the priesthood of Noah’s priests still valid (if it ever was), or were they by that time apostate, requiring Alma to be ordained by an act of God, as was Adam before him?
And how did Nephi gain his authority to ordain his brothers?
This whole authority thing in the BoM is very interesting to me. So far as we know, Nephi was a descendant of Joseph–not Levi–so there would have been no native priesthood holders of the Levitical priesthood among them. Of course Nephi had visions, but we have no record (so far as I recall) of Nephi or any of his descendants receiving Levitical priesthood. Was it some other (Melchizedek, Lineal, Patriarchal, or other) form of priesthood among the Nephites?
MH, (#9), I’d almost think that by virtue of the things they did, it had to have been the Melchizedek PH (a view espoused by Paul Hoskisson, a BYU professor, in a 1994 “I Have A Question” column in the Ensign), but you’re correct in saying that there isn’t a “John the Baptist/Restoration of the PH” story to it. Lehi does have a Prophetic Call/Eating the Book story similar to Isaiah and Jeremiah and John, but no laying on of hands that we see. David Donoghue (#8) seems to be looking at some kind of “historic episcopate,” if you will, by which the authority was passed, but where would the Melchizedek PH have come from?
It’d be a lot simpler to tell the authority story if the story was in the book.
New Iconoclast, I seem to remember learning in seminary that (a) that the MP existed during the time of the Law of Moses (held by the Israelite prophets and passed down, but withheld from the general population under the Law) and (b) the Nephites therefore had the MP because Lehi was a prophet, but also because they couldnt have had the AP b/c they were of the wrong lineage. But I have no source for that.
Joseph was very busy in his work as a Prophet, Seer and Revelator long before the priesthood was officially restored. So what is the priesthood? And what is priesthood authority? The priesthood is putting God’s power to work in the mortal world and as we see from the Joseph Smith story a physical laying on of hands with one holding the proper authority is not necessary to accomplish that. So what is LDS priesthood authority? It’s an invitation to engage God’s power within the LDS community according to prescribed rules and hierarchical oversight.
Ordinances.
This is what the female ordination controversy is all about. Many LDS women have access to God’s power but they do not have the authority to use it! They are prohibited from using it at least within the LDS community.
#11 Essentially correct, from what I’ve heard, and the essence of the Ensign article I cited. However, Howard in #12 seems to have a point as well; that would seem to divorce the calling of “prophet” from the holding of either PH. In other words, “Prophet” is not an office in the Melchizedek Priesthood (or that’s not all the title means).
How the MP was passed down from Israelite prophet to Israelite prophet, and who gave it to Lehi, and why we have no record of his giving it to Nephi (or Nephi to anyone else), is quite another cup of Postum. The absence of those records in no way negates what Joseph and his successors have said about the transmission of the PH or its restoration in our day, but it does leave you wondering why Nephi, etc. omitted it from the original record or why Mormon excluded it from the redaction.
I mean, I am pretty sure what we have no record of Lehi getting the MP because Joseph Smith hadn’t invented the MP yet when he wrote that part of the Book of Mormon.
Mormon Heretic, I suggest looking at what the BoM says about priesthood. A whole 7 times. It uses the term priesthood to refer to a guild/group/club of priests not as some thing you get or conferred on you. The priesthood in BoM thought is much like knighthood. You are ordained/knighted which means you are part of the knighthood and within that -hood there are many orders.
I’ve always viewed Alma as having received authority as one who was ordained a priest under a king, not that the process is identical the process we have now, but as was the ritual of that time. I always assumed that he understood the ordinance of baptism from teachings he had received prior to the prophesying of Abinidi, and that the spirit rekindled his testimony of the ordinance. And I assumed that when he went under the water, he was being “re-baptized” in the way that a repentant excommunicated disciple of Christ is re-baptized. The unique thing in my view would be that he was his own disciplinary council. There was not a regional priesthood leadership office through whom he could pursue his confession, so he took it directly to God.
I would not view his authority as corrupt any more than I would that of a young man in the modern church who’s father ordained his son unworthily. Obviously my mind has painted in a lot of gaps with the palate of colors obtained with my LDS-centric upbringing. Nevertheless, I feel a kinship to priesthood holders in other restoration branches who share common points in the lines of authority. Though the separate branches may not recognize each other’s priesthood authority for the functions within the church offices of the branches, I suspect that the viewpoint of God is more inclusive in finding tools to fulfill His purposes. The Alma principle would not argue against this.
There was not a regional priesthood leadership office through whom he could pursue his confession, so he took it directly to God. Humm, isn’t this conclusion backward? Isn’t taking it directly to God the ultimate?
From my studies of the Bible, I think that the concept of receiving authority through the Spirit is consistent with the Bible. Whereas the concept of receiving authority through mortal men, either through a priesthood lineage of authority or an apostolic succession, is inconsistent with the Bible.
There are two aspects to authority: doctrinal authority and functional authority. For anyone who believes that the Bible is the Word of God it could be viewed as an authoritative source of doctrine, and thus it serves as the origin of systematic theology for many Protestants.
Functional authority is the power to act on behalf of God on earth. There are several examples in the Bible of people being “ordained” into functions, but this means being “chosen” or “set apart”, not the conferral of God’s authority. In Acts 1:8 the resurrected Christ prophesied the coming of the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the church for the first time ever, and that event did occur in Acts 2:1-13. As part of that prophecy He explained that is when power would come upon all of the faithful disciples.
Jesus explained in Matthew 17:20 that there is no limit to power that can come through faith.
It is really only natural social convention, both inside and outside of Christianity, that authority should be inherited through mortal men. But if you believe in an omnipotent God, there is no logical reason to think that He would be restricted to such a human convention.
As an example of a specific conferral of authority directly from God, the Apostle Paul explained in the first chapter of Galatians that he received his apostolic authority directly from the resurrected Christ, not through mortal men, and that he began functioning before he even met the other apostles.
Howard, I’m glad you pointed that out. It certainly is the ultimate.
Bill, you bring up a good point about the many nuances of authoritative gifts. Some traditionally associated with the laying on of hands, and some not. Being a prophet scripturally can come from a testimony of Jesus. I do not believe God is restricted to human convention. The conventions that come with orders of congregational ministries can also be looked at as gifts to magnify the power and scope of divine service, but the service of the individual is also divine.
I strongly disagree with your conclusions here. I agree with Gregory L. Smith’s conclusions in his Passing the Heavenly Gift articles in Mormon Interpreter, that Alma and the other wicked priests of Noah were legal administrators in spite of the way they lived. When Alma repented, he was no longer JUST a legal administrator, but at that point, he then had POWER in the priesthood. The apostasy of early Christianity was not just about the loss of true doctrine and the wickedness of the great and abominable. The death of the apostles and the withdrawal of John the Beloved necessitated a return of the keys at a later time for more legal administrators. If the apostles had passed on the keys, then there would still have been legal administrators in apostate Christianity. In that case, only a reformation would have been necessary, not a full blown restoration. The wicked King Noah consecrated wicked priests, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that he had keys to do so. So Alma’s priesthood came from the fact that Noah had the keys to consecrate him as a priest in the Melchizedek priesthood, and gave him keys to be able to organize a Church. The scriptures are clear that if Joseph Smith had been a fallen prophet by reason of iniquity, he still would have power to choose his successor and give him authority. The same is so with the wicked king and priests.
Re (#1, 2, 3, 18, 22): For everyone who thinks that Alma’s authority is derived from his ordination as one of King Noah’s priests, I think it’s clear that you’re reading your own beliefs about priesthood and priesthood authority into the text where they don’t exist.
I agree that the principle that a sinful priest nevertheless performs valid sacraments is both the only practical policy, and is, indeed, the orthodox Christian policy from late Antiquity through the Middle Ages to the present day. But the text doesn’t make that point.
Alma here is represented as the founder of something new: the Nephite proto-Christian church. He doesn’t take a teaching moment to state his belief that even though his ordination in the previous Noachide priesthood was performed by unworthy men, it was nevertheless valid because they were properly ordained according to patriarchal succession and we are all sinners in any event. Instead, he very clearly prays, has the spirit come upon him, and considers himself “authorized” by the spirit.
The position that the Noachide priests are themselves validly ordained is a little bizarre. Whence cometh their authority? Zeniff’s party came from Zarahemla, presumably with the fathers and grandfathers of these priests. So presumably they would be bringing their line of authority from Zarahemla. And yet when Alma gets to Zarahemla, there’s no existing valid priests, righteous or wicked. In a vacuum, Alma organizes the church and ordains everyone based on his assumption of authority through the spirit at the waters of Mormon.
To underline the point, we have the counter example in this same reading of King Limhi’s people asking Ammon for baptism. Ammon doesn’t decline because he wasn’t properly ordained (again, why aren’t there priests, righteous or wicked in Zarahemla?) Rather, he declined “considering himself an unworthy servant.” In your argument, what does that have to do with anything? Noah’s priests were unworthy, but they were ordained. Ammon’s worthiness in your view is irrelevant — the question is whether he was ordained and that question is totally absent from the text. At that point in the text we are then told explicitly “therefore they did not at that time form themselves into a church, waiting upon the Spirit of the Lord” (Mosiah 21:34). I.e., the Spirit hadn’t endowed any of them with authority to baptize and organize a church (the way the Spirit had authorized Alma).
The text is pretty clear. The idea that Alma’s authority is derived from his Noachide ordination is a mis-reading of an 1829 text based on post-1835 innovations in the Restoration ideas of priesthood and authority.
The verse that stood out most to me was 9:71 (CofC): “And now the king saith that Alma was stirring up the people to a rebellion against him, therefore he sent his army to destroy them.”
To me this indicates that the message of Alma’s church dared to speak truth to power, that it was counter-cultural enough to be considered a legitimate threat to the King’s power. Those in authority are threatened when preachers offer a different way of life that sits opposed to their own. In my view, this is often a measure of the prophetic nature of any given movement or preacher.