In the garden of Eden there were two trees: the tree of knowledge, and the tree of life. If we have the experience Alma is talking about, we will become fruit-bearing trees in God’s garden. That is a great promise and a way of relating us to having permanence and fruit-bearing capabilities. Fruit-bearing may also be, in a human case, posterity. And thus, we are blessed and promised that we can have eternal posterity.
This tree that Alma is alluding to is also the tree that Lehi saw, that had the fruit that was white above all that is white, the sweet fruit, “Whose fruit was desirable to make one happy” (1 Nephi 8:10). So Alma precisely describes the tree that will grow from the planting of the seed of the word as bearing “fruit” which is “most precious,” “sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure” (32:42). It is interesting that Alma is using the tree of life as a similar metaphor, like the one found in Lehi’s dream and Nephi’s vision. However, in Lehi’s vision, when people came to the tree of life, the tree was external to them. Lehi brought the people to the tree, and the ones who made it all the way there rejoiced, fell down, and were grateful that they had gotten there.
Moreover, there is another step beyond that first partaking of the fruit and knowing how delicious it is. It is through diligence and cultivation of this word that we may have the tree of life growing inside us. Alma went beyond where Lehi left off. Alma taught that we need to take the vision that Lehi saw and internalize it so much that the tree of life grows up inside each of us to give us eternal life.
We thus encounter three different perspectives on the tree of life in the Book of Mormon (Figure 1). In Jacob 5, Zenos’ tree represents the House of Israel. Who are you in that allegory of the olive tree? Where are you on that tree? You may be a leaf or an olive, but you are just a very small part of that very big tree.
In 1 Nephi 8, Lehi’s tree represents the goal of eternal life. We come to that tree, partake of the fruit, and stand under the tree. Although the tree is still external to us, we are now a much bigger part of that picture than individual people were in Zenos’s allegory.
Finally, Alma wanted that tree of life to be in each one of us, where we will each become a tree of life planted in God’s eternal paradise, and we will become a fruit-bearing tree that will produce eternal fruit for us and for others around us.
Figure 1 John W. Welch and Greg Welch. “Three Trees in the Book of Mormon,” in Charting the Book of Mormon, chart 95.