Lamoni’s Father
King of All the Lamanites — who asked what he must do, and offered everything to receive eternal life
The First Encounter
The story begins on a road. Ammon was escorting the newly converted King Lamoni back to his father's court when they encountered Lamoni's father — the supreme king over all the Lamanite lands — traveling in the opposite direction. The old king immediately commanded Ammon to release his son, whom he assumed had been bewitched or deceived by this Nephite. When Lamoni refused to go with his father and instead defended Ammon, the king drew his sword against his own son.
Ammon intervened, blocked the blow, and then in the struggle wounded the king. The king, unable to fight further, offered Ammon whatever he desired if he would spare his life. Ammon asked only for the freedom of Lamoni's territory and safe passage for his brother Aaron, who was in prison elsewhere in the kingdom. The king agreed. The encounter ended, and Ammon went to serve Lamoni.
But something had happened to Lamoni's father on that road. A Nephite had stood between a father's sword and his son. That act lodged in the king's mind. He sent after Ammon trying to learn more, but Ammon had already gone. So the king summoned Aaron.
Aaron and the Question
Aaron had been released from prison and brought to the king's court. The king received him and asked directly: “What shall I do that I may have this eternal life of which thou hast spoken? Yea, what shall I do that I may be born of God, having this wicked spirit rooted out of my breast, and receive his Spirit, that I may be filled with joy?” (Alma 22:15).
The question itself is remarkable. This was the king of all the Lamanites — the most powerful man in the largest nation in the known world of the Book of Mormon. He held every earthly thing. And he was asking a foreign missionary how to be born of God.
Aaron told him he must repent, bow before God, and call upon his name in faith. The king asked whether he must give up all his sins to know God. Aaron said yes. And then the king did something that is one of the most searching moments in the Book of Mormon:
Alma 22:18
“O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee, and that I may be raised from the dead, and be saved at the last day. And now when the king had said these words, he was struck as if he were dead.”
“I will give away all my sins to know thee.” Not some sins. Not the sins he had already wanted to leave. All of them, whatever they were, the full inventory of a life built on power and violence and the traditions of his fathers. The king lay as though dead. His servants thought him dead and mourned. His wife stood over him weeping.
The Conversion and Its Reach
Aaron raised the king from the floor, took him by the hand, and he stood. He immediately confirmed his conversion to his household, and the servants and the queen were also overcome with the Spirit. When the servants of the household saw what had happened, they reported it to the people of the city. A large multitude came, and seeing the servants lying as though dead, many believed.
The converted king then did something of sweeping political consequence: he issued a proclamation throughout all his lands that the missionaries of Ammon’s company should not be imprisoned or harmed, and that the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi (the converted Lamanites) were free to worship God according to their desires. His conversion opened a kingdom. The door that swung on the hinge of one man's prayer allowed tens of thousands to come through it.
The king is never named in the text. He is defined entirely by his relationship to his son and by the question he asked. But the prayer he prayed — offered in the full honesty of a man willing to give everything — is among the most quoted in the Book of Mormon, because it says plainly what conversion costs and what it is worth.
Key Scriptures