Review ~ King Noah and Abinadi

July 30 - August 2:

The people who left Zarahemla during the reign of King Mosiah were led by a man named Zeniff.  Zeniff found the Land of Nephi and made a treaty with the Lamanite king, but his people were soon brought into bondage as the Lamanites violated the treaty.

Zeniff was a decent man, but his son, Noah, who became king after Zeniff's death, was not.  Noah was one of the laziest, cowardly, and wickedest men in the Book of Mormon.  He was a glutton and a drunkard.  He stripped the court of the priest who had been called by his father and filled the judgment seats with "priests" who were as profligate and sensual as he was.  The people soon fell into wickedness and abandoned the Law of Moses and their God.

A Nephite prophet named Abinadi began to preach to the people, calling them to repentance.  He was arrested and brought before the king and the court where he bore powerful testimony of the truthfulness of God's plan for His children.  Of course, this denounced everything the king and the wicked priests were doing, so the king sentenced him to death.  As Abinadi was dying in the flames, he called out to Noah that he would suffer the same death himself.

Abinadi died, thinking no one had paid heed to his warnings.  But one man had listened and his heart was pricked with repentance.  This man was one of Noah's priests, a man named Alma.  Alma stood up for Abinadi and, as a result, was cast out of the court.  He wrote down everything he could remember that Abinadi taught and began to preach to the people.  Many people listened.  King Noah heard about it and Alma and his people had to flee into the wilderness.

Not long after, the Lamanites attacked.  The cowardly Noah ran away with his priests, leaving their wives and children to face the Lamanites.  Other men refused to leave the women and children behind and stayed to protect them as best they could.  Noah's son and some of the other men wanted to go back.  Noah was tried as the coward he was and put to death by fire, just as Abinadi had prophesied.

 

Text copyright December 2013, Gebara Education

 

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