Mosiah 17:11-13

[pam]

Mosiah 17:11-13 

11 And now king Noah was about to release him, for he feared his word; for he feared that the judgments of God would come upon him.

12 But the priests lifted up their voices against him, and began to accuse him, saying: He has reviled the king. Therefore the king was stirred up in anger against him, and he delivered him up that he might be slain.

13 And it came to pass that they took him and bound him, and scourged his skin with faggots, yea, even unto death.

Quotes for Discussion

“I am so grateful that prophets do not crave popularity.”

Spencer W. Kimball (Conference Report, Apr. 1978, pp.116-117)

“My husband said he still remembers going to his first examination at the University of Utah . . . As the professor passed out the examination and left the room, he said some classmates started to pull out little cheat papers from pockets and from under their books. He said, ‘My heart began to pound as I realized how difficult it is to compete with cheaters.’ . . . About then a tall, thin student stood up in the back of the room and said, ‘I sold my farm and put my wife and three little children in an upstairs apartment to go to medical school and I’ll turn in the first one of you who cheats and YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT!’ They believed it. My husband said he looked like Abraham Lincoln. There were many sheepish expressions and those cheat papers started to disappear as fast as they had appeared . . . That man cared more about character than popularity. When I heard the name of J. Ballard Washburn to be sustained as a member of the Quorum of Seventy, I remembered that he was that medical student.”

Janette C. Hales (BYU Devotional, Mar. 16, 1993)

“[To the young women], Choose your friends with caution. In a survey made in selected wards and stakes of the Church, we learned a most significant fact: those persons whose friends married in the temple usually married in the temple, while those persons whose friends did not marry in the temple usually did not marry in the temple. The influence of one’s friends appeared to be a highly dominant factor—even more so than parental urging, classroom instruction, or proximity to a temple.”

Thomas S. Monson (Ensign, May 1997, pp. 94-95)

“If I now had in my possession one hundred million dollars in cash, I could buy the favor of the publishers of newspapers and control their presses; with that amount I could make this people popular, though I expect that popularity would send us to hell.”

Brigham Young (Journal of Discourses 3:160)

“Popularity is never a test of truth. Many a prophet has been killed or cast out. As we come closer to the second coming, you can expect that as the people of the world become more wicked, the prophet will be less popular with them.”

Ezra Taft Benson (BYU Speeches of the Year, 1980, pp.26-30)

“Individuals who do wrong want you to join them because they feel more comfortable in what they are doing when others do it also. They may also want to take advantage of you. It is natural to want to be accepted by peers, to be part of a group—some even join gangs because of that desire to belong, but they lose their freedom, and some lose their lives . . . You don’t need to compromise your standards to be accepted by good friends . . . No one intends to make serious mistakes. They come when you compromise your standards to be more accepted by others.”

Richard G. Scott (Ensign, Nov. 1994, p.37)

Total Devotion to Christ May Sometimes Cost Martyrdom

In the gospel sense, martyrdom is the voluntary acceptance of death at the hands of wicked men rather than to forsake Christ and his holy gospel. It is the supreme earthly sacrifice in which a man certifies to his absolute faith and to the desires for righteousness and for eternal life which are in his heart.

Martyrs of religion are found in every age in which there have been both righteous and wicked people on earth. Christ himself was a martyr who voluntarily laid down his life, according to the Father's plan, that immortality and eternal life might become available for his brethren. (John 10:10-18.) "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13.)

Many apostles, prophets, and saints have been martyred for the gospel cause. (Matt. 23:29-33; Luke 11:47-51; Acts 7; 22:20; Hela. 13:24-28; D. & C. 135.) The Prophet and Patriarch of this dispensation laid down their lives in the gospel cause, as literally thousands of others have done. Men, women, and children, young and old, weak and strong, sick and well, were driven by the thousands from Missouri and Illinois, many to early and untimely deaths as a direct result of the persecutions and diseases thus heaped upon them. Is a saint any less a martyr who is driven from a sick bed into blizzards to freeze and die than he would have been had an assassin's bullet brought merciful death in a brief destroying moment?

Thousands who have lived in this dispensation shall find place with "the martyrs under the altar that John saw." (D. & C. 135:7.) They shall be classed with those who "loved not their lives unto the death" (Rev. 12:11); they are "the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held." (Rev. 6:9.) They shall "rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled." (Rev. 6:11.) Martyrdom is not a thing of the past only, but of the present and of the future, for Satan has not yet been bound, and the servants of the Lord will not be silenced in this final age of warning and judgment. There are forces and powers in the world today, which would silence the tongue and shed the blood of every true witness of Christ in the world, if they had the power and the means to do it. There are those who would destroy every prophet of God, if they could. Martyrs of true religion are yet to have their blood shed in Jerusalem. "And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified." (Rev. 11:1-12.) True it is that "the woman," of whom John wrote is and shall be "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." (Rev. 17:6.)

True martyrs of religion receive eternal life. "Whoso layeth down his life in my cause, for my name's sake, shall find it again, even life eternal." (D. & C. 98:13; Mark 8:35; John 12:25; Rev. 2:10.) But the mere laying down of one's life standing alone is not gospel martyrdom. Both the righteous and the wicked have and do sacrifice their lives for friends or country without gaining thereby any hope or assurance of exaltation. Those on the other hand who have the truth and who could escape death by denying it are the martyrs who shall receive a martyr's reward — eternal life. When they seal their testimony with their blood, they are honored and their murderers are condemned. (D. & C. 136:39.)

(Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2d ed. [salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966], 469.)