By Gideon, Captain of the Nephites
I had endured enough.
For too long I watched King Noah lead our people into pride and whoredoms, into idolatry and excess, into a blindness that grieved my soul. The man’s heart was drunk with vanity. He taxed the people until their backs bent with the weight. He built great towers and ornamented halls—not for the glory of God, but to glorify his own name. And worst of all, he silenced the voice of the Lord by casting out the prophet Abinadi, and then murdering him.
That was the moment something in me broke.
I could no longer stand idly by as our covenant people spiraled toward destruction. My soul was heavy, but my hands were steady. I made my way to the palace. I wasn’t there to speak. I came with sword in hand.
I confronted him. Face to face. King Noah. The same man who had sat smugly upon a throne while Abinadi burned. I challenged him then and there. I would have ended his life—yes, I would have done it, not in anger, but in justice. The law of God demanded it.
He turned and fled like a miserable coward, retreating up the very tower he had built to survey the land. I pursued him up the staircase, my heart pounding not with rage, but with resolve.
And then—I saw them.
As I reached the top of the tower, both of us paused. There, in the distance, we saw the Lamanites coming upon our land like a flood. Their numbers were great, and their march was swift.
My sword hung in the air, caught between two duties—justice and deliverance.
He begged that I not slay him. The people needed leadership, he said. Disjointed and weak as it was, yet I was a fool. Noah’s kingship was the only structure we had in that moment to organize defense, he claimed. And I… I was still a captain of the people. My sword was needed in defense of the Lamanites that day.
I lowered it.
The Lamanites would not wait for justice to be done. The time to fight a foreign enemy had arrived—and the day to judge our own would have to wait. How was I rewarded? That measly skunk ran and with him the cowardly fools who obeyed his command to abandon their families and run.
But mark this: though I stayed my hand, the Lord did not forget. Judgment came in due time, not by my blade, but by divine justice. For no tower, no throne, and no army can shelter a wicked king from the wrath of heaven.
And I, Gideon, have never regretted raising my sword that day—only that I lowered it.
Mosiah 19:4
