'Apinetai ko e Palofita

Call me crazy, but I really love reading the Book of Mormon in other languages. I've read it so many times in English, that I found myself not paying as much attention as I should. Starting on my mission with the Hawaiian language, I've found that I get more out of my reading when it is in another language. I am forced to read it more slowly, and thus pay more attention. But even more importantly, the different languages render familiar sayings in unique ways, leading to greater insight or new interpretations that weren't seen before.

Currently, I'm in Mosaia of my new Tongan translation of "Ko e Tohi 'a Molomona" which came out last year. This time while reading, I think I finally understand the story of Abinadi in king Noah's court. King Noah's people are having a crazy, wild fun time breaking the laws of God, so God sends the Prophet Abinadi to tell the people they needed to repent or they were going to be destroyed. The King and his priests get mad at him for trying to ruin their fun, so they arrest him and have a mock trial before they kill him. Before being killed, Abinadi prophecies about the death of the king and other events which all eventually come true. The story is also symbolic of Jesus Christ preaching repentance to the Jews of his day, being rejected and killed by them.

Now, the part I've always wondered about was at the beginning of Abinadi's trial, one of the priests quotes seemingly random verses from Isaiah:

And it came to pass that one of them said unto him: What meaneth the words which are written, and which have been taught by our fathers, saying:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings; that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good; that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth; Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing; for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion; Break forth into joy; sing together ye waste places of Jerusalem; for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem; The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God?

-Mosiah 12:20-24

Now, if I was a wicked priest who doesn't like upstart prophets coming along and telling my followers to stop listening to me, my first thought wouldn't be to read random verses from the Old Testament to him and think that by itself would kill him off. I've always tried to understand what on earth they were trying to get at with these verses, because it obviously backfires and Abinadi then goes off for several chapters about the mission of Christ and condemning the priests for not teaching the people about this.

Here's what I think the priests were trying to get at: I think the priests were trying to use these verses to prove Abinadi was not a real prophet from God. I think they were presenting that if Abinadi was a real prophet, he would have brought a message of peace to the people, instead of:

Thus saith the Lord, it shall come to pass that this generation, because of their iniquities, shall be brought into bondage, and shall be smitten on the cheek; yea, and shall be driven by men, and shall be slain; and the vultures of the air, and the dogs, yea, and the wild beasts, shall devour their flesh.

And it shall come to pass that I will smite this my people with sore afflictions, yea, with famine and with pestilence; and I will cause that they shall howl all the day long.

And it shall come to pass that except they repent I will utterly destroy them from off the face of the earth.

-Mosiah 12:2,4,8 (italics added)

I think the priests were using those verses from Isaiah to show that Abinadi's message of destruction couldn't be from God because God obviously loves his people and wouldn't punish them like that. Abinadi instead runs with those verses and even quotes some of Isaiah himself to show that not all prophets preach nothing but peace, including Isaiah himself. He quotes Isaiah to talk about the suffering Christ would go through to atone for our sins. Abinadi was teaching that the role of prophets is to not just encourage the people in their good activities, but to also tell them to repent.

The story of King Noah and Abinadi illustrates the principle taught later in the Book of Mormon by Samuel the Lamanite:

Yea, wo unto this people, because of this time which has arrived, that ye do cast out the prophets, and do mock them, and cast stones at them, and do slay them, and do all manner of iniquity unto them, even as they did of old time. And now when ye talk, ye say: If our days had been in the days of our fathers of old, we would not have slain the prophets; we would not have stoned them, and cast them out.

Behold ye are worse than they; for as the Lord liveth, if a prophet come among you and declareth unto you the word of the Lord, which testifieth of your sins and iniquities, ye are angry with him, and cast him out and seek all manner of ways to destroy him; yea, you will say that he is a false prophet, and that he is a sinner, and of the devil, because he testifieth that your deeds are evil.

But behold, if a man shall come among you and shall say: Do this, and there is no iniquity; do that and ye shall not suffer; yea, he will say: Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth—and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a prophet. Yea, ye will lift him up, and ye will give unto him of your substance; ye will give unto him of your gold, and of your silver, and ye will clothe him with costly apparel; and because he speaketh flattering words unto you, and he saith that all is well, then ye will not find fault with him.

-Helaman 13:24-28

So I guess the real application is how do we respond to the prophets' council in our day? Do we just listen to the parts when they commend us for our good deads? Or do we hearken to the warnings they give us? We are warned against anger, pornography, going into debt, food storage, etc.

On another related note, you might be interested to know my opinion about the FLDS situation in Texas. I was speaking with my mother about this a few days after the raid happened, and she was quite surprised when I referred her to some comments of President Woodruff after the Official Declaration #1:

I have had some revelations of late, and very important ones to me, and I will tell you what the Lord has said to me. Let me bring your minds to what is termed the manifesto. . . .

The Lord has told me to ask the Latter-day Saints a question, and He also told me that if they would listen to what I said to them and answer the question put to them, by the Spirit and power of God, they would all answer alike, and they would all believe alike with regard to this matter.

The question is this: Which is the wisest course for the Latter-day Saints to pursue—to continue to attempt to practice plural marriage, with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of sixty millions of people, and at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the Temples, and the stopping of all the ordinances therein, both for the living and the dead, and the imprisonment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the heads of families in the Church, and the confiscation of personal property of the people (all of which of themselves would stop the practice); or, after doing and suffering what we have through our adherence to this principle to cease the practice and submit to the law, and through doing so leave the Prophets, Apostles and fathers at home, so that they can instruct the people and attend to the duties of the Church, and also leave the Temples in the hands of the Saints, so that they can attend to the ordinances of the Gospel, both for the living and the dead?

The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice. If we had not stopped it, you would have had no use for . . . any of the men in this temple at Logan; for all ordinances would be stopped throughout the land of Zion. Confusion would reign throughout Israel, and many men would be made prisoners. This trouble would have come upon the whole Church, and we should have been compelled to stop the practice. Now, the question is, whether it should be stopped in this manner, or in the way the Lord has manifested to us, and leave our Prophets and Apostles and fathers free men, and the temples in the hands of the people, so that the dead may be redeemed. A large number has already been delivered from the prison house in the spirit world by this people, and shall the work go on or stop? This is the question I lay before the Latter-day Saints. You have to judge for yourselves. I want you to answer it for yourselves. I shall not answer it; but I say to you that that is exactly the condition we as a people would have been in had we not taken the course we have.

. . . I saw exactly what would come to pass if there was not something done. I have had this spirit upon me for a long time. But I want to say this: I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write. . . .

I leave this with you, for you to contemplate and consider. The Lord is at work with us. (Cache Stake Conference, Logan, Utah, Sunday, November 1, 1891. Reported in Deseret Weekly, November 14, 1891., italic added)

I just find it interesting that everything President Woodruff said he saw happening is occurring with these people. Just something to think, because I do believe, like Pres. Woodruff said, the Lord is at work with us, because there still is a prophet on the earth today, and time left for us to repent.