Perhaps now would be a good time for me to explain why (at least, in part) I started a series of blogposts on this topic in the first place.
I started it because I have long had a fascination with Alma 13. It’s one of those chapters that makes your head spin when you first read it. It did for me, anyway. I remember feeling like there was so much I needed to understand but couldn’t, and, though I don’t think I could have put this into words at the time, I had a deep realization that, in order to come to a more correct understanding of what I was reading, some of my beliefs were going to have to change. And I don’t know that this is the best way to put this, even now, but I remember feeling like whatever I would learn would help me “come home.” Somehow, I knew that what I didn’t yet consciously know was, in actuality, something very familiar to me.
Hmm…I’m not totally happy with those last two sentences, but I’ll go with that for now. :/
It’s taken me a long time to put up this last post because there is so much to say about “the holy order of God,” and I’ve debated what I should say and what I shouldn’t. If you haven’t noticed already, there are many implications in what I’ve presented so far, and there are many more in what I haven’t, so I think that I will just wrap up this series with a few parting thoughts.
A study of God’s “order”—his arrangement of individuals into ranks and classes, in addition to the ranks and classes themselves—can provide us with some very important information about how we are to progress towards God. What do those ranks and classes look like? What is ordination? How is one “ordained” to a certain order? What does that look like? What qualities and characteristics separate individuals of one “order” from another? Why is it important to understand any of this? I think the answer to this question is three-fold.
1 And again, my brethren, I would cite your minds forward to the time when the Lord God gave these commandments unto his children; and I would that ye should remember that the Lord God ordained priests, after his holy order, which was after the order of his Son, to teach these things unto the people.
2 And those priests were ordained after the order of his Son, in a manner that thereby the people might know in what manner to look forward to his Son for redemption. (Alma 13)
Similar language is found in verse 16:
Now these ordinances were given after this manner, that thereby the people might look forward on the Son of God, it being a type of his order, or it being his order, and this that they might look forward to him for a remission of their sins, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord. (Alma 13)
In these verses, we see that there are things about “the holy order of God” that are meant to help people “look forward to [God’s] son for redemption” and “for a remission of their sins, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord.” These things are meant to help us recognize the Son and others who belong to orders higher than the one we are currently in. Moreover, they are meant to teach us about, and bring us to, those higher orders.
I highly encourage the reader to make “the holy order of God” and God’s “order” the focus of some intense, personal study and contemplation. A greater understanding of these things will enable us to become more capable participants in the accomplishment of God’s purposes—in terms of both this temporal existence and eternity.