Alma and Amulek disprove... well, everything about the Gospel, especially work for the dead

Here is what you are meant to learn when you read the adventures of Al & Am:

1. God sends angels to speak to messengers.

2. The messengers believe in God's word.

3. The messengers receive God's super powers.

4. The messengers come to you and tell you God's message, and this is his message: Jesus is going to come and take the sins of the world upon himself. If you believe in Jesus, you will be saved from God's punishment and go to heaven. If you don't believe, you will go to hell.

5. If you believe, then that's kick-ass.

6. If you don't believe, God will IMMEDIATELY PUNISH YOU, which usually involves you dying slowly and painfully.

There are some doctrinal problems with this.

• This life is the time to prepare to meet God and accept the Gospel.

• You only get one chance encounter to accept the Gospel.

• If you reject the Gospel in the moment it is taught to you, God will dramatically shorten your lifespan and not give you the chance to repent, forcing you to die in your sins and go to hell

There are more problems when you expand their storyline.

7. The people that believed in Alma and Amulek were taken by the unbelievers and burned alive.

8. Alma and Amulek were commanded by God to NOT SAVE THEM.

9. God wanted a reason to send the unbelievers to hell.

There are SO many problems with this.

• God is actively looking for reasons to send people to hell. As soon as they commit the sins, he kills them off so that they don't have time to reflect on their sins and repent. The church teaches that you should have "Godly sorrow," and sometimes it takes time to deeply realize that you have done something wrong. But Alma and Amulek teach of a God that says "believe and obey NOW" and kills you immediately if you don't.

• The sinful unbelievers in this story are already judged and condemned.

• This renders ordinances for the dead irrelevant, especially when you blend Old Testament God with New Testament God. Old Testament God is only concerned with mortality and the continuity of nations and family dynasties. Nobody is judged as an individual; rather, nations are judged as a whole. Punishment isn't eternal. The threat of hell is not a motivating factor. Victory in war, offensive and defensive, is the main driver for worshiping the right God the right way. New Testament God is not concerned with the survival of nations. He is only concerned with individuals and the eternal survival of the soul. You cannot mix these two gods together.

This story ruins the central Christian message of the Gospel, it ruins a core Mormon doctrine of works for the dead, it misrepresents what a missionary or a prophet has the power to do, it is a shitty attempt at trying to explain away The Problem of Evil, and it completely degrades the value of life.