Mosiah 11:20-29 - A Man Named Abinadi

11:20-25 - Here we are introduced to a man named Abinadi. We know almost nothing about him, his age, his heritage, all we basically know is that, "Abinadi was a man who came from among the people, not from outside their society. He was obviously a righteous man called to warn his own people that if they did not repent, bondage and destruction would follow, as taught by Elder Cree-L Kofford as quoted in the IM. Interesting here though is Abinadi's speech patterns are new to us in the Book of Mormon. He uses phrases like "thus saith the Lord" and explains what the Lord has told him, instead of just giving the message like "God said repent," he tells us "God commanded me to go forth and tell you to repent." In the end, the message is the same, but the delivery is different, and that's what makes up the diversification of the writers of the Book of Mormon. So this is the first time that the people are given the warning to repent, and if they don't they are promised "they shall be brought into bondage; and they shall be afflicted by the hands of the enemies." One of the references for this section is the Primary 4 manual, and it teaches us that "even though being righteous does not free us from pain and trials, if we are valiant in our testimonies of Jesus Christ, Heavenly Father will bless us with peace in this life and all that he has in the life to come." I thought that that was such a beautiful thought, though I maybe jumping ahead a little bit. Abinadi was truly valiant in his testimony, but it makes me wonder, where did he give his message? This is going to sound stupid but was he basically standing on the street corner preaching like we have today? When I first started going back to church, I went to the movies with my then husband and while he bought the tickets I listened to a guy standing on a box with a sign talking about the wickedness of the people and calling them to repentance, then after he had said his bit, he said "thank you" and got down and left, and I wanted to go up to him and thank him for being courageous in his testimony, but I didn't. It was at that moment that I wondered "is that how Abinadi taught?" I mean, it seems like a sacrilegious comparison, but makes sense to me. Verse 22 talks about a "jealous God," and that word jealous has always puzzled me, I heard a really good talk once that defined what "jealous" meant in the context of what our God says to us, and it made total sense but I will have to look for it. The Church's website defines "jealous" as having two meanings, "(1) to be fervent and to have sensitive and deep feelings about someone of something, and (2) to be envious of someone of suspicious that another will gain some advantage." Because I've only heard "jealous" to mean the envious part, that's what I've always read into it, but the other way makes much more sense, but I'm still going to look for that article. Abinadi continues with the "stick" end of the speech, he tells the people that if they don't repent, they will be brought into bondage and the repentance process will be intense and they will suffer unless until the repent. In an April 1993 general conference address entitled "Receiving Divine Assistance through the Grace of the Lord," Gene R. Cook teaches, "a repentant heart and good works are the very conditions required to have grace restored to us. When someone pleads fervently in prayer for an answer, the answer may be more conditioned on repentance of personal sins than on any other factor." It's like we've learned before, God doesn't move, his offerings don't change, the only thing keeping us from God is ourselves, and the only person who is able to come back is us. Abinadi ends with the statement "and thus saith the Lord, and thus hath he commanded me." He has a very unique style of teaching, it seems almost a little bit more Old Testamentish.

11:26-29 - How did this message go over? That's right, not very well. King Noah is furious and gives interesting reasons "who is he to judge us?" "Who is this God to punish us?" "He's trying to start a riot!" "So let's kill him!" He has clearly gone past the point of teachability, totally self absorbed and will do anything to keep his status quo, he loves his life, he believes that he is happy and that nothing can go wrong. Besides God's law that he's breaking, Noah is completely hiding his head in the sand about the fact that there are probably several hundred thousand Lamanites within a few miles who was to enslave and slaughter him and his small population of a few thousand. That has nothing to do with God, that's just the fact of the geography in which he lives. And he's hiding from the fact that the heavy taxes that he laid on his people will eventually cause them to revolt, so it's not just God's law that he's choosing to ignore, it's the law of the jungle too. I did like the mention of the miraculous escape that was made by Abinadi "but the Lord delivered him out of their hands." This is similar to some of the happenings in the Saviors life as discussed by James E. Talmage's Jesus the Christ. It's a beautiful book, it is amazing to me, but in it, he discusses several times when Jesus simply walked away, and this reminds me of that.