2 Nephi 25:17
1830 Edition
Influences
Changes
Simple English
The Lord will reach out a second time to save his people from their lost and fallen state. He will do a great work. He will do a wonderful thing among the people.
Paraphrase
The Lord will reach out a second time to restore his people from their broken, lost condition. He’ll do something marvelous and astonishing.
Notes
Written in approximately 550 B.C., 2 Nephi 25:16-26 provides an excellent example of a "theological anachronism."
LDS scholar, Grant Hardy observes: "In 1831, Alexander Campbell, one of the book's first critics (and certainly the first one to read it carefully), famously observed that it seemed to weigh in on all the popular religious questions of the day, including 'infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry , the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of freemasonry, republican government, and the right of the man.' This is a fair list, and references to these topics-or their analogous counterparts-can be found throughout the Book of Mormon." -Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon, p. 184
M.T. Lamb writes, "The whole Old Testament, as we have it, proceeds upon the assumption that these new Testament truths were not fully understood by the Old Testament writers. The entire system of bloody sacrifices, as found in the law of Moses, would have been the silliest nonsense to him had he understood in full the great plan of redemption to which this system looked forward in type... It would hardly seem possible for language to state more clearly or positively that the mystery of Christ's incarnation and the modus operandi or method of human salvation HAD NOT been revealed to the world until the Apostle's day. That while the Old Testament authors had presented the truth, it had been so presented in type, shadow, symbol and figure that it was not an could not be understood by them, not even by the angels of God..." -M.T. Lamb, The Golden Bible; or The Book of Mormon, Is It From God? (New York: Ward and Drummand, 1887), pp. 148.