For his testimony of Jesus among the people of Lehi-Nephi, Abinadi was consigned to the flames by wicked King Noah. Some of the disciples of our Lord were cast into furnaces of fire, although they were miraculously rescued, as had been the Three Hebrew Children in Babylon. (4 Ne. 32)
From these examples it appears that the peoples of the Book of Mormon were in the habit of committing captives to the flames.
Burning of prisoners was extensively practised by natives at the time of the arrival of the Spanish explorers. The Apaches used to put prisoners to death by fire.129 In Tezcuco, the punishment for certain unnatural crimes was torture and burning at the stake.230 At the festival in honor of Xiuhtecutli, the god of fire, the people raised a "May pole," elaborately decorated. At the appointed time, the officiating priests hurled a number of prisoners, stripped of clothing and bound hand and foot, upon a great heap of smoldering coals, where they suffered untold agony, until raked out and slaughtered on the altar, whereupon the people enjoyed themselves singing and dancing around the pole.331 At the termination of an age-a cycle of fifty-two years was so called-the sacred fires were permitted to go out, and a new fire was kindled by friction of sticks placed on the breast of a wounded prisoner provided for that purpose. The flame was soon communicated to a funeral pyre on which the victim was consumed.432 Surely there is historical connection between the flames of persecution recorded in the Book of Mormon and the cruelties practised, sometimes in behalf of "justice" and sometimes as religion, by the later occupants of American soil.
That the Jews in Palestine burned human victims in honor of Moloch is clear from Ezek. 20:26, and other passages.