User:Ghosts of Europa/sandbox/Ammonihah

Ammonihah is a city mentioned in the Book of Mormon described as governed by lawyers and judges. When the Book of Mormon prophet Alma visits Ammonihah as part of a preaching tour, the city becomes the setting of "one of the most disturbing episodes" of the text in which Ammonihah's governing elite imprison him, exile any men converted by his preaching, and kill women and children associated with his mission by fire.

The narrative set in Ammonihah is intertextual with the Old and New Testaments. Literary and theological scholarship treat the Ammonihah story as an exploration of suffering and a turning point in the Book of Mormon's use of the phrase "lake of fire and brimstone" as a metaphor for hell.

A among the first published illustrations of Book of Mormon, Ammonihah is depicted in two woodblock prints by John Held Sr. commissioned for George Reynolds's 1888 The Story of the Book of Mormon.

Narrative
In "the tenth year of the reign of the judges", Alma has stepped down as the chief judge of the Nephites to become an itinerant preacher. When he arrives at the city of Ammonihah to preach, its citizens mock him and his church. He is turned away because of his earlier role in executing Nehor, the founder of a rival church. Alma is visited by an angel, who tells him to return to the city. An angel also tells Amulek, a resident of Ammonihah, to assist him.

The town's lawyers and judges confront Alma and Amulek, who they believe undermine its political order. Zeezrom, a lawyer, offers Amulek a bribe to deny the existence of God, but Amulek refuses. Instead, Alma and Amulek proclaim that Jesus will soon "redeem his people" and raise the dead, who will be "arraigned before the bar" of God's judgment. They warn that those who do not repent of their sins will experience "spiritual death", and their "torments shall be as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever".

Some of Ammonihah's residents listen and repent. They are driven out of the city, and their wives and children are arrested and burned to death. Amulek and Alma are made to watch them suffer and die; Ammonihah's chief judge mockingly asks them, "After what ye have seen, will ye preach again unto this people, that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?" Amulek suggests they intervene using the power of God, but Alma tells him that "The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand".

Alma and Amulek are imprisoned. They are miraculously saved by an earthquake that kills their captors and destroys the prison walls. They leave Ammonihah and reunite with other survivors in a place called Sidom. There, they re-encounter Zeezrom, who has assumed Alma and Amulek were dead, considered himself responsible, and developed a severe fever. Alma miraculously heals him, then baptizes him after he proclaims his newfound belief in Jesus' redemption. Alma also "administers unto" Amulek, who has been left without family or possessions.

Months later, as part of a larger war, Lamanites destroy Ammonihah and kill its remaining residents. Its ruins are called the "Desolation of Nehors". Within the next ten years, the city is rebuilt and surrounded by a defensive dirt wall, where it hosts an army under the command of Moroni.