Present Tense

In my old, paper version of the Book of Mormon, the chapter heading of Alma Chapter 48 says that Captain Moroni "rejoiced in liberty and freedom and was a mighty man of God." When I read this in our family scripture study this evening, my mom informed me that the digital version says that he "rejoices in liberty and freedom and is a mighty man of God" (emphasis added). When I thought about this, I was struck with this truth - Yes, Captain Moroni was "a mighty man of God," and he still is. (Never mind that the rest of the chapter heading, including the part about Amalickiah inciting the Lamanites against the Nephites, is also written in present tense. That's not important right now.)

This thought reminds me of Alma 34:34 and of the concept of eternal progression. Alma 34:34 says that "that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world." That is, when we die, we'll still be the same person that we were at the time of our death. Captain Moroni was a strong follower of God during his life. I assume that he remained a strong follower of God up to the time of his death. And, judging by the chapter heading of Alma 48, I would suppose that he remained a strong follower of God even after his death, and remains so to this day. It's not that he was a good man, but isn't anymore, it's that he was a good man, and still is.

It's hard to imagine Captain Moroni still being "around" today, but if a soul is immortal, I guess he must be. Still, it's hard to imagine him as still being Captain Moroni. I would have thought that death was the quintessential life-changing experience. Surely, we would change during our crossing over, but maybe we change less than I thought. Maybe we don't change at all. Do you think Captain Moroni still gets angry as much as he used to? It's hard to say. Maybe as part of our eternal progression, we can lose the negative aspects of our personalities without losing the positive ones, thus becoming better people while still being us.

I think a part of why I think this is a strange concept is that I don't understand how death wouldn't change us, when people in mortality change every day. Maybe change is more difficult in the afterlife? Or maybe, in the afterlife, we see more clearly what parts of ourselves do and do not need to change. I'll have to look into this later.

In the meantime, the moral I want to take from this message is to endure to the end, to keep on keeping on, and to keep all of my good attributes as well as I can. Being a mighty man of God is part of what made Captain Moroni a good role-model. It's good to hear that he hasn't lost that attribute, even after all these years. He is still a mighty man of God, as he once had been. I hope that I become a mighty man of God and that I can keep that attribute literally forever.