Post by King Lamoni – Lamanite King
I share the following with you emotionally conflicted. Consider blending embarrassment, guilt, pride, remorse, relief, and the deepest gratitude that a living human can experience. Now you have my current emotional status.
I just stood against my own father, the very king of many Lamanite kingdoms. If you recall, after I permitted Ammon to remain in my kingdom, I commanded him to serve with others of my servants caring for my flocks. A second command was quickly forgotten by my servants. But not forgotten by Ammon. While my servants in great astonishment, presented severed and bloody arms to me with a fantastical story of a man that couldn’t be slain; that very man, Ammon was preparing my horses as I commanded. That alone demonstrated that Ammon was no common man.
I will tell more about my experience with Ammon and my conversion later, but as I’ve just helped free Ammon’s brothers from prison in Middoni, I wish to tell about my father the king.
My father held a great festival in the land of Ishmael. He commanded all the kings from the various kingdoms, including me, one of his sons to attend this great festival. As you just read the writings of Ammon and Abish, I was experiencing my own personal festival-in-spirit as my eyes were opened by the great ministering of angels.
I wanted so badly to take Ammon to meet my father. In my jubilation in spirit, I wanted my father to know and love the spirit and Jesus Christ as I do. I wanted him to shed himself of the darkness. Instead, he commanded me to slay Ammon. When I refused, he attempted to slay me. I recognized my foolish innocence which embarrasses me; but more, I am embarrassed for my father.
While Ammon and I traveled toward Middoni, we met my father. He was traveling to discover why I, his son, hadn’t attended the festival. The chance meeting was not as I envisioned the way I wanted to present Ammon to him.
He certainly saw me from afar, yet in his disbelief as to what he was witnessing, he pulled his chariot alongside mine and stood defiantly. His confusion melted into anger as he asked me why I didn’t come to the festival on the great day when he made a feast for his sons and his people. It was evident to everyone I wasn’t there. My absence embarrassed him. I didn’t answer my father right away. He didn’t give me a chance. He immediately demanded where I was going with “this Nephite” as he referred to Ammon, “one of the children of a liar?”
I didn’t know who to offend first, my father for helping a Nephite, or Ammon by respecting my father. I told my father we were going to free other Nephites who were in prison in Middoni. I knew that wasn’t going to help with his displeasure.
I then told him the cause of us tarrying in my own kingdom and why I hadn’t gone up to the feast my father had prepared. I hoped he would understand. He didn’t. He launched into the same angry rant about Nephites that we’d been taught our whole lives. “Nephites are sons of liars. Their fathers robbed our fathers with their cunning and now this Nephite is come among us and with his cunning and lying will rob us of our property.”
Even before being carried away in the spirit, I never sensed cunning or lies in Ammon. He was a more diligent servant than my Lamanite servants. He even refused to marry my daughter. I was torn, but I knew Ammon had a spiritual power given to him from God that certainly overshadowed the power of my father.
My father commanded me to kill Ammon with my sword and that I shouldn’t go with Ammon to Middoni, but I should return to the land of Ishmael. That was an easy one. I wasn’t about to try and kill Ammon. Two big reasons, first I have been born again and am forgiven of my many murders, and second, even if I wanted to, and I hadn’t been converted to the Lord, I was no match for Ammon. So, I refused both the command to kill Ammon and the command not to go to Middoni. I told my father I wouldn’t slay Ammon and I was going to Middoni to free Ammon’s brothers because I knew they were just men and holy prophets of the true God.
That did not soothe my father, he drew his sword and tried to kill me. Not a chance. Ammon stood forth and blocked the blow. I will never forget what Ammon said to my father. “You will not slay your son, nevertheless it would be better for him to die than you, because he has repented of his sins. But if you die, now in your anger, your soul could not be saved. It is better for you to forbear. If you slay your son, he being an innocent man, his blood would cry from the ground to the Lord his God for vengeance to come upon you and you would lose your soul.”
My father’s heart was so hard that when Ammon said all that, he replied, “I know that if I should slay my son, I would shed innocent blood. But it is you that has sought to destroy him!”
My father then tried to kill Ammon. I shake my head as I think of it. My father is a mighty man, a fearless man and he obviously didn’t hear a word I told him about Ammon and the experience at the Waters of Sebus. Ammon defended me so quickly and almost effortlessly, he left my father unable to use his arm. My father realized he was powerless against Ammon. It shocked me that so quickly he began to beg for his life. He knew Ammon could kill him in an instant.
Ammon, with his sword ready, demanded that either I go with him to Middoni and get his brothers out of prison, or he would end my father’s life on the spot. What could my father do but accept. My father added that if Ammon would spare his life, he would give Ammon whatever Ammon wanted, even up to half the kingdom.
Ammon is a cunning one, even though I said he wasn’t earlier, just not the kind of cunning we thought typical of Nephites. Ammon caught my father just as he did me with an oath. An oath with a promised blessing. He made my father agree to let us go to Middoni and to let me own my kingdom and that he should no longer be angry with me, and that I have freedom to rule my kingdom as I wish. What a trade. Nothing for Ammon himself. Is this the way a servant of God must be?
My father agreed but added one condition; that Ammon and his brethren would come to him and teach him what they had taught me. I believe that is exactly what Ammon wanted all along. Yes Cunning. Very Cunning.
Book of Mormon, Alma, Chapter 20
