Source:Reexploring the Book of Mormon:Ch:5:3:Textual consistency: Helaman 14

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Textual Consistency: Helaman 14:12

Textual Consistency: Helaman 14:12

Even more remarkable are the extensive, intricate consistencies within the Book of Mormon. Passages tie together precisely and accurately though separated from each other by hundreds of pages of text and dictated weeks apart....

There Samuel the Lamanite spoke of the coming of Christ, so that the people in the city of Zarahemla "might know of the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and of earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning." The twenty-one words in italic appear to be standard Nephite religious terminology derived from the words given to Benjamin by an angel from God: "He shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning" (Mosiah 3:8).

These sacred words identifying the Savior evidently became important in Nephite worship after they were revealed through Benjamin. Samuel the Lamanite would have had the opportunity to learn these words through the ministry of Nephi and Lehi among the Lamanites (see Helaman 5:50), for the words of Benjamin were especially important to Lehi and Nephi. Their father, Helaman, had charged them in particular to "remember, remember, my sons, the words which King Benjamin spake unto his people" (Helaman 5:9). Nephi and Lehi likely used the precise words of King Benjamin in their preaching, just as their father had quoted to them some of the words of Benjamin: "Remember that there is no other way nor means whereby man can be saved, only through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ" (Helaman 5:9; compare Mosiah 3:18; 4:8).[1]

Notes

  1. John W. Welch, "Textual Consistency," in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, edited by John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1992), Chapter 5.