Agency

We widely recognize the truth sung in the hymn, "God will force no man to heaven."  But I have heard people wonder (and I have wondered myself) why the Lord intervened so mightily in the cases of Saul of Tarsus and Alma the Younger.  He may not have forced them to heaven, but he certainly slapped them back from their hell-bent behavior.  Why those two, and not so many others?

This morning something in Mosiah 27:13 struck me differently than it ever has before:

For the Lord hath said: This is my church, and I will establish it, and nothing shall overthrow it, save it is the transgressions of my people. (Italics mine)

It occurred to me in that context that Alma may have been so effective in his persecution of the church members that he may have been able to completely destroy the church.  Since God had promised that the destruction of the church could only come from within it was necessary to stop this external threat.  In this connection the end of Verse 16 makes even more sense:

...seek to destroy the church no more, ... and this even if thou wilt of thyself be cast off.

It sounds to me like the heavenly intervention was not primarily for Alma's benefit, but for the benefit of the Church.

In Saul's case there it seems pretty safe to conclude that the Lord's visit was inspired by a desire to save Saul, since the Lord immediately tells him what he should be doing.  Also, there is no evidence that Alma immediately recognized the Lord, but Saul did as soon as the Lord spoke to him.  But I also feel that Saul's persecutions may have been organized well enough that he could have destroyed the church from without.