They Would Not

As Abinadi stood bound before King Noah and his priests, he bore a powerful witness of the Savior. In one of my favorite verses in the Book of Mormon, he declared, “He is the light and the life of the world; yea, a light that is endless, that can never be darkened; yea, and also a life which is endless, that there can be no more death.” Abinadi then taught that we will all be resurrected and “stand before the bar of God, to be judged of him according to their works whether they be good or whether they be evil.” He gave this poignant description of those who at that day will have not repented and come unto the Savior: “Having gone according to their own carnal wills and desires; having never called upon the Lord while the arms of mercy were extended towards them; for the arms of mercy were extended towards them, and they would not; they being warned of their iniquities and yet they would not depart from them; and they were commanded to repent and yet they would not repent” (Mosiah 16:9-12). The phrase “they would not” repeated three times here stuck out to me today as I pondered this teaching. In the gospel there is no coercion, only a constant invitation, and there are those who simply will not turn from their own desires to receive the arms of mercy of the Savior. Each of us much choose each day to give up “our own carnal wills and desires” and depart from our iniquities to receive His arms of mercy.

                My two-year-old has taught me a lot about what it means to have a strong will and that in the end, we cannot be forced. A few days ago he was being particularly obstinate and wouldn’t let us change his diaper until my wife and I finally pinned him down together to do it. I threw the diaper away and finally got the new one on after much struggling. But he would not be defeated so easily.  He promptly pulled off the new diaper and went to the trash can trying to fish out the old one, demanding that we put that back on. Gratefully he wasn’t tall enough to get it out himself or I am sure he would have done that. I’m not quite sure what drove him to want that, but time and time again he has shown me that he will not be forced to do something he doesn’t want to. Perhaps we too can be like that at times when we insist on following our own will and doing things our own way instead of humbling ourselves before God. We must, as King Benjamin taught, learn to become “as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19). Sometimes though, like for my boy, it is really hard for us to submit to the will of the Lord—we just want it the way we want it. And as the hymn teaches us, God will never force us to take His path: “He’ll call, persuade, direct aright, And bless with wisdom, love, and light, In nameless ways be good and kind, But never force the human mind.” But if we choose our own way instead of His, if we refuse to accept the arms of His mercy and His will over our own, we may one day exclaim like the Nephites when our day of judgment is come, “O that we had repented before this great and terrible day!” (3 Nephi 8:24)