The Ground Shook

In Mosiah 27:11 of the Book of Mormon, there is an account of Alma the younger who had a life-altering spiritual moment.  An angel visited him in his wickedness and called him to repentance.  The account says the angel "spake as it were with a voice of thunder, which caused the earth to shake upon which they stood."  It was a moment of truth that changed him began and his conversion to the gospel.  As soon as he was again conscious he spent his days preaching the words of Christ and sharing with others the joy of the gospel.  Only four years after the time of this account, he exclaims his desire to bring others unto Christ by saying, "O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people" (Alma 29:1).  Why did Alma express such a desire?  Because he wanted others to have the experience he had.  He wanted others to feel the earth shake as well - to feel what he felt - so much that he even used the same phraseology.

My stake president told us, in his last fireside as our stake president, about how a boy once came to him and said, "President Greene, why don't we have those kinds of experiences more in these days?  Why don't we see angels and why does the earth no longer shake?"  President Green said that he didn't really have an answer for him except that he thought about his mission as a young man.  He said that the majority of the lessons he has learned from his mission, he realized and came to understand after his mission - looking back.  He said that in a way, those experiences were no less life-altering than Alma's experience - that they were precious.  I can't really remember what else he said after that, or exactly what his point was, but all I could think about were those instances in my life.  No, we can't always pinpoint the exact times we came to know something about the gospel.  Usually we learn "line upon line and precept upon precept," but I can probably count on one hand the number of times when specific truths and principles were so instilled in my soul at that instant, nothing in the world could make me question the feelings I had just come to know for myself.  Moments when I felt so connected to heaven and to the Savior of the World that I was certain that if I were to turn around angels would be surrounding me.  Moments when I knew who exactly who I was, why I am here, and where I am going.  I think of those moments and they sustain me.  They are what I look back on to remember that I know and now I need to share...to help others know.   I think of those moments and for me...
The earth did indeed
shake.