The group of robbers had been demanding the mob take hold of
Nephi. It turns out, many in the multitude were listening to his words. They
gave up their attempt to take Nephi.
Nephi continued to speak.
Nephi continues, using Moses as an example.
Through the power of God, Moses was able to part the Red
Sea. “But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide
it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea” (Exodus 14:16).
“And thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they
went through the midst of the sea on the dry land; and their persecutors thou
threwest into the deeps, as a stone into the mighty waters” (Nehemiah 9:11).
“Now ye know that Moses was commanded of the Lord to do that
great work; and ye know that by his word the waters of the Red Sea were divided
hither and thither, and they passed through on dry ground” (1 Nephi 17:26).
“Therefore, lift up your heads, and rejoice, and put your trust
in God, in that God who was the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; and also,
that God who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, and
caused that they should walk through the Red Sea on dry ground, and fed them
with manna that they might not perish in the wilderness; and many more things
did he do for them” (Mosiah 7:19).
“Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart,
by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your
heart.
“Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation; behold, this
is the spirit by which Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea
on dry ground” (D&C 8:2-3).
“And calling upon the name of God, he beheld his glory
again, for it was upon him; and he heard a voice, saying: Blessed art thou,
Moses, for I, the Almighty, have chosen thee, and thou shalt be made stronger
than many waters; for they shall obey thy command as if thou wert God” (Moses 1:25).
The Israelites were able to pass upon dry ground. The Egyptians
were swallowed up in the waters when they closed.
There is a deviation from the original printer’s manuscript.
“In the printer’s manuscript for Helaman 8:11, the text reads ‘God gave power
unto one man even report Moses to smite upon the waters of the Red Sea and they
departed hither and thither.’ The 1830 typesetter thought departed must be an
error, so he replaced it with the expected parted. Yet the [Oxford English
Dictionary] explains that the verb depart once had the now obsolete meaning of
‘to put asunder, sunder, separate, part’ (see definitions 3a–3d), with citations
from 1297 through 1677.[1]
If God gave Moses this power, Nephi asks, why should you
dispute, among yourselves, whether or not God gave me this power? Why should
you question your need to repent?[2]
The reality is the wicked are not only denying Nephi’s
words, but they are denying the words spoken by previous prophets.
Moses did bear record the Son of God should come. He refers
to Moses lifting up a brazen serpent.
And the LORD sent fiery [OR
poisonous] serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people
of Israel died.
Therefore the people came to Moses, and said,
We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray
unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the
people.
And the LORD said unto Moses, Make
thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that
every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
And Moses made a serpent of brass,
and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any
man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived (Numbers 21:6-9).
Nephi1 would write:
And now, my brethren, I have spoken
plainly that ye cannot err. And as the Lord God liveth that brought Israel up
out of the land of Egypt, and gave unto Moses power that he should heal the
nations after they had been bitten by the poisonous serpents, if they would
cast their eyes unto the serpent which he did raise up before them, and also
gave him power that he should smite the rock and the water should come forth;
yea, behold I say unto you, that as these things are true, and as the Lord God
liveth, there is none other name given under heaven save it be this Jesus
Christ, of which I have spoken, whereby man can be saved” (2 Nephi 25:20).
15 And as many as should look upon that serpent should alive, even so as many as
should look upon the Son of God with faith, having a contrite spirit, might blive, even unto that life
which is eternal.
Those who were bit by the serpents could be healed if they
would look upon the brazen serpent. “And he did straiten them in the wilderness
with his rod; for they hardened their hearts, even as ye have; and the Lord
straitened them because of their iniquity. He sent fiery flying serpents among
them; and after they were bitten he prepared a way that they might be healed;
and the labor which they had to perform was to look; and because of the simpleness
of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished” (1 Nephi 17:41).
So, we should look to Christ, having a contrite spirit. We
will receive eternal life.
It is clear that the righteous
peoples of the Book of Mormon understood the symbol of the serpent in much the
same way that many of their Old Testament forebears did. However, it is
monumentally significant that these American Israelites also knew, even from
the earliest periods of their own history, that the ultimate meaning behind the
symbol of the serpent was the Lord Jesus Christ and his saving and life-giving
power. They understood the true intent of the symbol some 600 years before the
Messiah himself appeared in mortality to articulate the message of the
serpent’s being raised up in Moses’ day.
Later on, another prophet named Nephi
(son of Helaman) also made reference to the image of the serpent lifted up in
the wilderness by Moses and its clearly intended association with the Son of
God, the Messiah, the giver of eternal life. In fact, it seems fair to say that
Nephi, son of Helaman, described even more clearly than Nephi, son of Lehi, the
messianic implications and significance of the brazen serpent symbol.[3]
[2] “And
except ye repent ye shall perish; yea, even your lands shall be taken from you,
and ye shall be destroyed from off the face of the earth.
“Behold now, I do not say that these things shall be,
of myself, because it is not of myself that I know these things; but behold, I know
that these things are true because the Lord God has made them known unto me,
therefore I testify that they shall be” (Helaman 7:28-29).
[3] Serpent
Symbols and Salvation in the Ancient Near East and the Book of Mormon, Andrew
C. Skinner, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 10/2 (2001): 52.
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