The Rejection of Abinadi

One of the saddest parts about the story of Abinadi is that he never saw the fruit of his labors during his lifetime. Though we don’t have much insight into his personal feelings, it must have been terribly discouraging to preach to the people as he did, even showing forth miraculous signs, and yet still be completely rejected by them. When he was done teaching the people, Mormon recorded that Alma “believed the words which Abinadi had spoken” and “he began to plead with the king that he would not be angry with Abinadi” (Mosiah 17:2). He was the only person who believed Abinadi’s words while he was still alive, and it is not clear from the text that Abinadi ever even knew about it. He likely went to grave believing that he and his message had been totally rejected by the people. Like the Savior, he was killed in a scene of total rejection by his own people who put him to death.

               Given that rejection of Abinadi, I have to think that he found great comfort in the words of Isaiah that he quoted to Noah and his priests. One of Isaiah’s primary messages in Isaiah 53 was that the Savior was indeed rejected of men. He wrote, “There is no beauty that we should desire him.” The people did not, as a whole, desire Him during His lifetime. The Savior was “despised and rejected of men” and the people “esteemed him not.” They “did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” He was “oppressed” by the people and went meekly as a “lamb to the slaughter”—a sign of complete rejection by the people because his life was not even valued any different than an animal’s. He was “taken from prison and from judgment” and “made his grave with the wicked,” showing that men judged him as wicked and of the same value as those condemned. He was “numbered with the transgressors” (Mosiah 14:2-12). Simply put, He was rejected by His people and His valued only as a criminal’s. Abinadi certainly had a similar experience, for he was despised and rejected of the people, and he was judged and condemned to death; he went as well like a “lamb to the slaughter” as he was taken by Noah and burned. He even “made his grave with the wicked” in the sense that, as he prophesied, soon thereafter Noah himself partook of the same fate of being burned at the stake. Abinadi’s rejection was certainly a type of the Savior’s, and like for the Savior the full impact of his life and teachings were not realized until after his death. Just as Alma took his words and testimony and rapidly built up the church, so too did the apostles take the words of the Savior and built up the early Christian church much more rapidly than had occurred during the Savior’s lifetime. Surely in the next life Abinadi was able to see that in fact he had not been completely rejected, and that his mission and sacrifice had indeed not been in vain.