Abinadi is simply pointing out an inexorably logical position. If the priests had been teaching the gospel correctly, Yahweh would not have called Abinadi to stand before them. (See the parallel statement in Mosiah 12:37.) His words are poignant. He has come to “prophesy evil”—the calamitous events that he has foretold. Those events indeed would be seen as “evil” by the Limhites who had endured them by the time Ammon arrived (see Mosiah 7:24–28, especially v. 25).