The Priests of King Noah

Of all of those Nephites who lived in the days of King Noah, I’ve always thought that Amulon and the priests of Noah really got it off easy.  King Noah was burned by fire, but these wicked priests that had caused so much evil to take place among the Nephites escaped into the wilderness.  They completely deserted their families, captured Lamanite daughters who became their wives, and stole from the people of King Limhi who were in bondage to the Lamanites.  They seem to be the only ones that never came into bondage out of the original people of King Noah.  Eventually they “did gain favor in the eyes of the king of the Lamanites” and gained positions of prominence among the Lamanites, while the righteous people of Alma were put under bondage and suffered under the rule of Amulon and his brethren (Alma 24:1).  They forsook God completely, but we don’t see any sign of their punishment in the Book of Mormon during their mortal life.  Their descendants were eventually rejected “and the Lamanites began to hunt the seed of Amulon and his brethren and began to slay them,” but the original priests seem to have gone unpunished in mortality (Alma 25:8).  Perhaps one reason for this is that the Lord used them to help prepare the Lamanites for the gospel as brought by the sons of Mosiah.  Mosiah 24:4 tells us that the priest of Noah were “appointed teachers” among the Lamanites and therefore “the language of Nephi began to be taught among the people of the Lamanites.”  By the time the sons of Mosiah showed up a generation or two later, they appear to have been able to communicate with the Lamanites without any problems, thus enabling them to preach the gospel.  God used these faithless priests to prepare the hearts and minds of the Lamanites to be taught faith.  The other truth that I think this story of the priest of Noah teaches us is simply that justice will not fully be meted out upon the wicked in this life.  Ultimately we will all stand before God and have to account for our works, and for those who have acted like the priests of Noah, they will wish at Judgment Day that they could “command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon [them] to hide [them] from his presence” (Alma 12:14).  We should not worry or be disturbed if the wicked seem to prosper in this life, for the promise of God’s justice extends past the short time frame of mortality.