“To spread forth the kingdom of heaven abroad,” (William W. Phelps, “The Spirit Of God”). We often refer to something that gets popular very quickly as “going viral.” A meme or a video gets shared from person to person and spreads in much the same way as a virus or a disease might. At their core, viruses are basically information delivery systems. They carry a message to a new body, and that message begins to have an immediate effect on almost every aspect of that person’s life. The Lord has called on each of us to carry, like viruses, information to others that can change every aspect of their life. The more that we spread word of the Kingdom of God and infect others with the joys of the Spirit and instill in them the desire to have love and charity for their neighbors, the more those new hosts will become carriers themselves of the gospel message and continue to spread the kingdom of heaven abroad. And just as viruses mutate and change to defeat the resistance and antibodies and immunities that may develop against the information that they carry, so too do we have to be wise to the fact that Satan and all of his minions are going to do their best to inoculate the world against the message of the Gospel. If we have tried to share our testimony before and have been fought off by someone else’s spiritual immune system, then we need to rethink our approach. Ammon and his brethren all started out trying to preach the gospel in the normal way. But when Ammon was rebuffed, he changed tactics. He decided to serve the people rather than preach to them. He made it clear that he wanted to live among them perhaps until the day he died. He got past their defenses by not acting like a virus at first and merely preached the gospel through his actions of service and devotion. By adapting and mutating, Ammon was able to spread the kingdom more quickly and effectively than his brethren who didn’t change up their tactics. The Lord intends to save as many of His children as He possibly can and He needs our help to carry out His vision. And if we have to follow the example of the humble virus to accomplish that task and spread forth the Kingdom of Heaven abroad more quickly and efficiently and virally, then that is what we must do.
