Broken the Bands of Death

After Abinadi came to preach a second time to the people of King Noah, the people were angry with him and “took him and carried him bound before the king” (Mosiah 12:9). In the pictures I’ve seen of Abinadi’s subsequent teaching to the king and his priests, Abinadi is always bound (see, for example, the one in the Come, Follow Me manual or Arnold Friberg’s Abinadi). The assumption, which I believe is a reasonable on, is that he stayed “bound” once he was set forth to speak before them. If that is indeed the case, then it is fitting and all the more powerful that he testified of how Christ would break the bands of death as he stood there tied or chained and on his way to death himself. He declared, “And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death.” After ascending to heaven Christ will have “broken the bands of death.” Abinadi emphasized again, “But behold, the bands of death shall be broken, and the Son reigneth, and hath power over the dead.” He taught that we gain “eternal life through Christ, who has broken the bands of death” (Mosiah 15:8-9,20,23). He summarized, “And if Christ had not risen from the dead, or have broken the bands of death that the grave should have no victory, and that death should have no sting, there could have been no resurrection” (Mosiah 16:7). As he stood there, most likely bound in chains or rope, he boldly declared that Christ would one day loose all our bands and that we would rise from the grave. Because of Christ, the bands placed on him would not hold him.

               Other Book of Mormon passages similarly spoke of how the Savior would break or loose the bands of death. The righteous people at the time of Alma the Younger were “filled with great joy because of the resurrection of the dead, according to the will and power and deliverance of Jesus Christ from the bands of death” (Alma 4:14). Alma taught others of the people of Zarahemla about his father’s group who had believed Abinadi’s words after his death: “They were encircled about by the bands of death, and the chains of hell, and an everlasting destruction did await them…. I ask, were the bands of death broken, and the chains of hell which encircled them about, were they loosed? I say unto you, Yea, they were loosed” (Alma 5:7,9). He also taught the people of Gideon, “And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people” (Alma 7:12). Amulek declared of the Savior: “The death of Christ shall loose the bands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death” (Alma 11:42).  And Aaron taught the king of the Lamanites of the Savior in these words, “The sufferings and death of Christ atone for their sins, through faith and repentance, and so forth; and that he breaketh the bands of death, that the grave shall have no victory, and that the sting of death should be swallowed up in the hopes of glory” (Alma 22:14). Moroni wrote to us with this declaration of the resurrection: “The death of Christ bringeth to pass the resurrection, which bringeth to pass a redemption from an endless sleep… and they shall come forth, both small and great, and all shall stand before his bar, being redeemed and loosed from this eternal band of death” (Mormon 9:13). Abinadi and other Book of Mormon prophets emphatically declared that Christ has symbolically broken all bands so that they and we will all rise again in the resurrection.