Page:A dictionary of the Book of Mormon.pdf/294

of his congregation. To the contrary, he boldly rebuked their sins, their murders, their whoredoms, their secret iniquities, at the same time, in the love of the Gospel, entreating, beseeching and pleading with them to amend their lives and do better. He also warned them of the terrible, impending judgments that would inevitably fall upon them if they repented not. His words caused a division among his hearers, some clamoring for his arrest and imprisonment as one who bore false testimony and reviled the law, while others maintained that he spoke the truth and was a prophet. To prove to their sin-darkened minds that the prophetic gift was with him, he told them to send to the hall of judgment, and that there they would find the chief judge murdered, lying in his blood; yet more, that the murderer was the victim's brother. Five of the crowd hastened to prove his words. They hurried to the judgment hall, where they found the chief magistrate in the condition that Nephi had declared. Other citizens who knew nothing of Nephi's words, having entered the hall and finding the five men there with the dead body, concluded that they were the assassins, and consigned them to prison. And some of the most hardened afterwards charged Nephi with being an accomplice before the fact, and that he had arranged the whole affair to obtain influence with the people, so that they would believe and accept his doctrine. On this charge he was bound and imprisoned. By the wisdom that Heaven gave him so abundantly, he was enabled to baffle this attempt on his life, and through his instrumentality the murdered judge's brother having been brought to confess his crime, Nephi was delivered from his traducers and set at liberty. Some of the citizens now acknowledged that he was a prophet, others declared that he was a god, while many remained hardened in their sins. So violent became the contention, that