Mosiah 13 Touch Me Not

Abinadi warns his captors that they are not to touch him until his mission and message are completed. But he also warns that whatever they do to them will be a “type and shadow” of what will happen to them. This was in harmony with the laws the Nephites used to govern themselves. If you accuse someone of a crime and he is proven guilty then he will be punished by the law. But if you bring someone to trial and the charges are false, then the prescribed punishment falls upon the accusers. In this case it is going to be death by fire. I found it interesting that Abinadi brought accusations of his own to the trial. He tells the king and his wicked priests that they have “studied and taught iniquity the most part of your lives.” So King Noah, who was attending Sunday school with his father Zeniff, was obviously doing some outside studying on his own. Whatever it was, it was as poisonous to him as the pornography of today. Noah and his buddies were all into it and it destroyed their spiritual awareness. So darkened had they become that they wouldn’t hear the words of a prophet and the scriptures had become meaningless. Abinadi reads to them the 10 commandments from their own scriptures. The Law of Moses had become an empty set of rituals in which the Atonement of Christ was not t be found. They had no desire to learn of Christ or to come unto Him and be saved.