“Christ Was the God”

Joseph F. McConkie, Robert L. Millet

As we read later, Abinadi bore a powerful testimony to King Noah and his people that “God himself should come down among the children of men, and take upon him the form of man, and go forth in mighty power upon the face of the earth,” being oppressed and afflicted (Mosiah 13:34-35). It was for that testimony and for that doctrine that the wicked King Noah ordered Abinadi killed.

There are two matters of particular interest here: first, that Abinadi plainly taught, as does the entirety of the Book of Mormon, that Christ was the God of the Old Testament. This dispels another modern heresy, one that occasionally finds its way into the Church, the idea that there was one God of the Old Testament-a God of vengeance-and another God of the New Testament, a God of love. Such an idea is entirely untrue and defies the very nature and definition of God. Christ is the God or Redeemer of all mankind, whether they lived in Old Testament times, New Testament times, or in the dispensation of the fulness of times.

Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 2

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