Mosiah 11-17

Abinadi stands trial for preaching repentance. Noah's priests question and try to cross him. Abinadi stands tall and basically says "Bring on your darkness and your death, I DO NOT FEAR IT." 

To recap from last week.. Most of the book of Mosiah is about people from 2 different lands, spanning across 3 generations. 

	Land of Zarahemla	Land of Nephi
1st Generation	Mosiah I	Zeniff
2nd Generation	Benjamin	Noah
3rd Generation	Mosiah II	Limhi

Chapter 11 starts in the days of King Noah in the land of Nephi. Same time as King Benjamin in Zarahemla.

CH 11

As we get to know Noah, some comparisons with Benjamin jump out at me .

V2. Noah - walk after the desires of your heart
Benjamin - try to change your heart

Noah - many wives, concubines, whoredoms
Benjamin - gathering families at the temple

V3-4 Noah - gives tax to support himself
Benjamin - no tax. Labors with his own hands

V6  Noah - laziness, idleness, idolatry
Benjamin - laboring exceedingly to come unto Christ

V7  Noah - flattering words
Benjamin - Tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear, hoping they develop the desire to act upon it.

V12 Noah - built a tower so he could to look at his domain and gratify his pride
Benjamin - built a tower to teach his people

V17 Noah - Sends servants to fight
Benjamin - fights with the sword of laban

V20-25 Abinadi comes and teaches repentance.
Notice every time it says "except this people repent"

Noah threatens Abinadi, Abinadi leaves the city.

CH 12

2 YEARS LATER 
Abinadi returns and again preaches repentance 

V 18-19
There are 2 types of questions:

1. Sincere questions, with desires to learn, know and act
2. Questions designed to cross and trip people up. With hopes to create doubt and questions in the other person.

I LOVE when people ask me the first type of questions, I will sit and talk with them all day. But I've also had times when people ask me the 2nd type of questions; to them, I usually just walk away because I don't have those questions anymore. I've already answered them in my heart and mind, so I just don't see those conversations going anywhere.

Well the priests of Noah ask Abinadi the 2nd type of questions, and he stands tall and answers them anyways. What a freaking boss!

V21-24
After failing to cross him in their questions, the priests of Noah decide to ask him to interpret a verse from Isaiah 52. This was not just a random verse, they had a very specific goal behind it. 

I imagine the priests reading the verse, and then saying something like this: 

"isn't this what our fathers have taught? The beautiful feet, are those who bring good tidings… you're not doing that, you're bringing bad tidings. With you it's all doom and gloom. Woe this, woe that, this destruction, that bondage , this pestilence, that famine, repent or perish.
"True prophets publish peace, and what are you doing? You're stirring our people up to anger and contention. And without you, we would have nothing but peace, happiness and prosperity. We are the true prophets. We're the ones saying to the people as Isaiah did, "Sing, break forth into joy!" The people love us. They can lift up their heads in this so called 'iniquity'. You? You're trying to bring us down, in feelings of guilt and shame. You're not the kind of prophet that Isaiah prophesied about. So get your feet off our mountain, because they are not beautiful."

Now put yourself in the shoes of Noah's people. You have on one hand the priests of Noah, and on the other, Abinadi, both claiming to be prophets of God. So how do you know who the true prophet is? What constitutes good tidings and the publishing of peace.. How do you help people to feel better about themselves.. The priests seem to have their way, and Abinadi has his way.

V26 Abinadi fires back, bewildered at their audacity, claiming they are "perverting the ways of the Lord". To pervert means to twist. So there is some truth there. the priests' goal is good; peace. But their way of getting there is off.

Abinadi kind of goes off on a tangent. He does answer their question beautifully, but not for a few more chapters. First he is going to answer the questions they should've been asking. He is going to teach the Law of Moses, the Atonement of Christ, then dabble in Isaiah 53 before returning to Isaiah 52 to answer the priests.

So while Abinadi goes off on his tangent, I'll go off on my own. :)

The allegory of The Gap

First off, I recognize that this isn't really an allegory, but it sounds cool 
Here is my feeble drawing of a scale. Imagine the red line represents your beliefs, and the blue line represents your actions. 

If your actions don't line up with your beliefs, then you have a gap in between. You can call that gap sin. That gap is hard to deal with, it's uncomfortable. So let's find a way to deal with it.

Let's look at God's scale. Where's God's belief? The top, he knows everything. Where's God's actions? The top, he does everything he believes. No gap. No sin. 

Let's look at the scale of a baby. Where is the baby's beliefs? The bottom, he/she doesn't know anything. 

Where are the baby's actions? The bottom, he/she doesn't do anything. No gap. No sin.

Now there's a huge difference the sinlessness of God and that of a baby. But the rest us are somewhere in between, dealing with that gap as we live and learn. That gap is filled with not only sin, but guilt and cognitive dissonance. This is not tidings of good joy. This isn't peace… so let's find some.

I can think of 2 ways to eliminate the gap.

1. bring my actions up to be inline with my beliefs. REPENT.
2. bring my beliefs down to my actions. FORGET.

Everyone chooses one of these two options.

There's a great talk about this by Bruce C Hafen: willingness to learn from pain
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1983/10/a-willingness-to-learn-from-pain?lang=eng
The pain he talks about is of unmet expectations, of cognitive dissonance. Can we live with that pain and overcome it the right way? Instead of what seems to be the quick and easy way.

Turns out it takes an amazing amount of mental energy to bring that belief bar down, once it has already been held so high. To maintain a virtual reality, to keep telling yourself "nope, reality is down here, I'm not falling short of anything", is incredibly taxing on the mind.

Noah and his priests come from parents of the Zeniff generation. At one point or another they probably held that belief bar high where it should be, until the discomfort of the gap was great enough that they brought it down to where their actions lay. 

These priests' goal was to bring peace, they were just going about it the wrong way, moving the wrong bar. 

When you raise your knowledge and belief bar, you're creating that gap, realizing and recognizing sin. I'm sure that gap will be filled with some guilt and be quite uncomfortable, but it will also be filled with grace so that you can raise your actions.

We came here not to be sinless in the baby way, but sinless in the Christ way. So let's let him help us

CH 13

V28 Abinadi drives home the idea that salvation does not come by the law alone. It certainly helps, but is nothing without the atonement of Jesus Christ.
V29 It was necessary to give a strict law of Moses because the children of Israel were slow to remember their God.
V30 The strict law was given to help them remember the Lord their God.

I think this is the real reason God asks us to pray before meals and when we wake up and go to sleep. He takes things that are hard to remember (ie Him), and attaches them to things we never forget.
Sleep and Food; I've never once in my life said "hmm I forgot to sleep last night", or "I forgot to eat today". So His hope is if you remember to sleep, remember to pray. If you remember to eat, remember to pray. REMEMBER ME.

CH 14

Abinadi teaches the priests about the atonement using Isaiah 53. If you haven't caught on yet, the book of Mormon prophets LOVE quoting Isaiah. He basically wrote the book on preaching/prophesying using vivid imagery and detail.

CH 15

V1-9 See my earlier post "Easter" about how these verses are teaching about the atonement, not about the Godhead.

V10 Who are His seed? Who are the heirs of heaven?
V11 All those who listen to the prophets, who believe on their words, who believe in Christ, and who look forward to that day for a remission of their sins.
V12 They are those whose sins Christ has borne. They are the ones who have lifted their actions bar to align with their beliefs.
V14 These are they who publish peace, who bring good tidings of good. (Abinadi finally answers the priests question back in chapter 12:21)

V15-17 notice the tense used
O how beautiful upon the mountains were the feet of those who published peace. Are their feet of those who publish peace. And hereafter publish peace.

V26-27 Warning shot to whoever thinks they can have peace by bringing their belief bar down to meet their actions. This willful ignorance cannot bring the peace you seek for.

V29-31 This is basically Abinadi flexing on the priests, quoting the Isaiah verses that come after the verse he was asked to interpret. (Isaiah 52:8-10)

CH 16

V1 The world will realize, that the top bar will not budge.

V6 is kinda cool. We're about 148 years before Christ was born, yet Abinadi says "If Christ had not come into the world", he then catches himself "speaking of things to come as though they had already come". I think Abinadi lived in such a way that he believed so firmly that Christ was to come, that it's as if He already did.

V7-9 keep in mind here, that Abinadi realizes that he is about to be killed by King Noah.
"the grave will have no victory"
"death will have no sting"
"the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ"
"He is the light and the life of the world; yea, a light that is endless that can never be darkened". 

Basically, bring on your darkness and your death, I DO NOT FEAR IT.
We will all be resurrected, that is why Christ rose from the grave.

V11 Death is merely the beginning of your eternal life. Pick your path wisely.

CH 17

Okay we all just witnessed one of the most incredible fast & testimony meetings ever. And it turns out it spoke to the heart of at least one of the priests, Alma. If you ever doubt the power your testimony can have on someone, just look at all the lives that were changed simply because Alma listened to Abinadi's words.

Noah then puts on a sham of a trial.

V7 "we have found an accusation against thee". Meaning, we had to look real hard…
It's hard to sentence someone to death simply because they say bad things will happen to you. So instead they charge him with blasphemy, something that definitely warrants death, and they say we will drop the charge if you take back all those mean things you said about us…

V9 Abinadi doesn't back down. He dies a martyr, sealing his testimony with his life. (Hebrews 9:16)




Thanks for reading this far! I hope this has helped your study of the Book of Mormon, it's helped me so much just by sharing.