39 And Amulek said unto him: Yea, he is the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth, and all things which in them are; he is the beginning and the end, the first and the last;
I love reading about this dramatic confrontation between Zeezrom, a skilled lawyer, and Amulek, a new missionary.
Zeezrom first tries to bribe Amulek to deny his testimony, offering him the equivalent of about $17,0001 if he will disavow his faith. Failing in that attempt, he begins to search for inconsistencies in Amulek’s testimony to demonstrate that he is not a credible witness.
One of Zeezrom’s strategies is to attack the doctrine of the Godhead. Is there more than one God? Amulek says no. Does God have a Son? He says yes. Is the Son of God the very Eternal Father? You can see where these questions are going. He is exploiting the same confusion about the nature of God which led to the Nicene Creed. If the Father is God and the Son is God, then how can we say that there is only one God?
Amulek largely ignores the implication of these questions. He is there for one reason: to testify that there is a God, that His Son Jesus Christ will come into the world and that He has power to save us from sin and death. I love the fact that he doesn’t back down, that he doesn’t apologize, and that he doesn’t allow Zeezrom’s questions to shake him from his core message. He is there as a witness, not as an apologist, and his job is to share what he knows to be true by firsthand experience, not to prove that it is true by reason.