After telling his people the Savior will visit them, he
begins to describe what will happen at the time of Christ’s crucifixion. What about the proud and those “that do wickedly”? “[T]he day that cometh shall burn them up …
for they shall be as stubble” (2 Nephi 26:4).
Those that kill the Lord’s prophets and the saints will be
swallowed up by the depths of the Earth; mountains shall fall on them; they
will be carried away by whirlwinds and buildings will collapse and fall of
them. But, the people have been warned. David wrote, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm” (Psalms 105:15).
Nephi quoted Zenos earlier in his record. “The
Lord God surely shall visit all the house of Israel at that day, some with his voice,
because of their righteousness, unto their great joy and salvation, and others
with the thunderings and the lightnings of his power, by tempest, by fire, and
by smoke, and vapor of darkness, and by the opening of the earth, and by mountains
which shall be carried up” (1 Nephi 19:11).
Mormon, after recording the destruction wrote, “And now, whoso readeth, let him understand;
he that hath the scriptures, let him search them, and see and behold if all
these deaths and destructions by fire, and by smoke, and by tempests, and by
whirlwinds, and by the opening of the earth to receive them, and all these
things are not unto the fulfilling of the prophecies of many of the holy
prophets” (3 Nephi 10:14).
The Nephites will experience “thunderings, and lightnings, and earthquakes, and all manner of
destruction” (2 Nephi 26:6). This is
because the anger of the Lord will be kindled against them.
Knowing that those who die at the time of Christ’s
crucifixion because of their wickedness leads Nephi to cry, “O the pain and anguish of my soul for the
loss of the slain of my people” (2 Nephi 26:7). In spite of the pain, Nephi responds, “I must cry unto my God: Thy ways are just” (2 Nephi 26:7).
The righteous will not suffer the death of the wicked. Those that “look forward unto Christ with steadfastness for the signs which are
given … shall not perish” (2 Nephi 26:8).
Mormon would write about the fulfillment of this promise.
And
it was the more righteous part of the people who were saved, and it was they
who received the prophets and stoned them not; and it was they who had not shed
the blood of the saints, who were spared—
And
they were spared and were not sunk and buried up in the earth; and they were
not drowned in the depths of the sea; and they were not burned by fire, neither
were they fallen upon and crushed to death; and they were not carried away in
the whirlwind; neither were they overpowered by the vapor of smoke and of
darkness.
3 Nephi 10:12-13
Nephi’s powerful testimony of Christ will influence the Book
of Mormon. Stephen Ricks writes:
The Book of Mormon, too, reveals an
intense expectation of the coming of their Messiah (usually referred to in the
Book of Mormon as Christ). The Nephites "look forward unto Christ [i.e.,
the Messiah] with steadfastness for the signs which are given"(2 Nephi
26:8). Indeed, the prophets of the Book of Mormon even prophesy the year of
Christ's birth: Nephi prophesies that Christ will be born "six hundred
years from the time that my father left Jerusalem" (1 Nephi 10:4), while
the mysterious Samuel the Lamanite tells the Nephites that he would be born in
five years (Helaman 14:2).[1]
[1] The
Book of Mormon and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Stephen D. Ricks, Maxwell Institute,
accessed November 5, 2013.
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