“I think there are at least two ways to read that … phrase from Alma—that ‘God conversed with men.’ One way is to note that angels came first and then, with men thus spiritually prepared, God conversed directly with them. But another way is to see those phrases as synonymous, that when God sent angels to converse with mortals he was speaking to them, just as if he were personally there doing so” (Holland, “Standard unto My People,” 11).