The Reach of Divine Love: Abinadi Rescues Alma
Book of Mormon Notes - Thursday, July 13, 2023, Mosiah 15
This chapter deserves much more attention and diligent study than I can give it. But I would like to pause on this chapter because it contains core teachings about Jesus Christ and His Atonement, and because of Abinadi’s pivotal role in the Book of Mormon. Abinadi’s bold and fearless testimony of Christ completely changed the course of Nephite history forever. Even though one man, King Noah, had such a detrimental effect upon his people for a time, Abinadi rose to the challenge, opposed the tyrant, and renewed Nephite society by willingly laying down his life for Jesus Christ. Again, Abinadi is a type of Christ. And his testimony of and teachings about Jesus Christ rescued Alma who in turn began to renew the Zenephite civilization from within.
How do we have Abinadi’s words? Alma remembered them and recorded them while he was in hiding. Mormon lets Abinadi speak freely through Alma’s recorded words, adding very little by way of commentary or abridgment. As far as I can tell, Mormon simply recorded verbatim exactly what Alma had recorded of the words of Abinadi. Perhaps the Book of Mormon prophet-historians had developed a method for transferring direct quotations from one set of records to another. I don’t know. But as far as I can tell, Alma’s record of Abinadi’s teachings are as close to a first person account from Abinadi that we can get. After all, it would have been very difficult for Abinadi to keep his own record while in prison and while dealing with the nefarious Noah and his no good priests.
I wonder, however, how Mormon was able to record Abinadi’s final words to King Noah and his priests as he was perishing in the flames, or at least perishing by being burned to death? Alma had already fled before the actual martyrdom took place. Perhaps Alma still witnessed the martyrdom from some secret place, or perhaps Alma received a second hand account of the martyrdom. Whatever the case, Mormon somehow had access to Abinadi’s final testimony and condemnation of his murderers.
Abinadi did not just teach in a way that his audience could understand him. He taught in a way that made it impossible to misunderstand him. This is Abinadi’s plain and precious interpretation and commentary on one of the greatest chapters in all of scripture, the great Messianic prophecy of Isaiah regarding the Suffering Servant, Jesus Christ. Gileadi has some interesting commentary about the suffering servant and phases of descent and ascent, but it is clear from Abinadi’s testimony that Isaiah’s prophecy pertains foremost and particularly to our Savior Jesus Christ.
In the process of answering the wicked priest’s question, and in the process of answering Isaiah’s questions and his own questions, Abinadi testifies plainly of Jesus Christ, and of what Nephi learned was the condescension of God. Abinadi testifies that God Himself shall come down among the children of men, and that He shall redeem His people. He explains how Jesus Christ is both the Father and the Son, the Father because He was conceived by the power of God, and the Son because of the flesh. Jesus was and is the Only One of Heavenly Father’s children who was begotten of an immortal Father, God our Father, and a mortal mother, and the Only One whose Mighty Spirit had perfect and complete mastery over his body of flesh and bone. The Lord’s Flesh (the Son) became completely subject to the Lord’s Spirit (the Father). The Father and the Son are One God. Jesus Christ was and is completely unified with Himself. Thus the Atonement of Jesus Christ began with the Lord’s own integrity and internal wholeness, the obedience of His Flesh to His Spirit.
Because of the flesh that he had taken upon Himself, His tabernacle of clay as the angelic messenger to King Benjamin put it, Jesus Christ suffered temptation. He inherited the capacity to experience mortality and to suffer temptation from His angelic mother Mary. Like each one of us, Jesus Christ suffered temptation. In fact, more than each one of us, Jesus Christ suffered temptation. But unlike us, Jesus Christ never yielded to temptation. Jesus Christ knows better than anyone what temptation and suffering feel like, and He knows better than anyone how to help us to overcome temptation and suffering:
For we have not an high priest awhich cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points btempted like as we are, yet without csin. (Hebrews 4:15)
Abinadi testified, building upon Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy of the Suffering Servant, that Jesus Christ suffered temptation, mockery, scourging, rejection, and more. He was cast out, and disowned. He knows better than any of us what it is like to feel utterly and completely alone and forsaken. He descended below all things. (D&C 122:8, D&C 76:107, D&C 88:6,
Because of His incomprehensible suffering on our behalf, the Lord knows exactly how to succor us in our weakness, infirmities, and trials. The Lord can reach each one of us wherever we are and no matter how far we think we have sunk:
However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines. (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Laborers in the Vineyard”)
And,
“I bear testimony that you cannot sink farther than the light and sweeping intelligence of Jesus Christ can reach. I bear testimony that as long as there is one spark of the will to repent and to reach, he is there. He did not just descend to your condition; he descended below it, ‘that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth.’ [Doctrine and Covenants 88:6.]”4 (Truman G. Madsen, Christ and the Inner Life (1978), 14.)
More soon…