2 Nephi 25:26

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.

"The Book of Mormon presents a very unusual picture of religious life between 600 B.C. and the coming of Christ. It claims that the ancient Nephites actually worshipped Jesus Christ and established Christian churches during this long period before Christ died and the New Testament was written. Bible scholars find it very hard to accept this claim, and they are even more puzzled when they learn that the Book of Mormon claims that the ancient Nephites also kept the Law of Moses at the same time. Between 559 and 545 B.C." -Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Joseph Smith's Plagiarism of the Bible in the Book of Mormon, p. 206.

Contrast 2 Nephi 25:24-30 and 2 Nephi 31:18 with 1 Peter 1:10-12; 1 Corinthians 2:7-8; John 7:39; and Colossians 1:26.

Wesley P. Walters writes in his Master's thesis: "The transplantation of New Testament material into the Old disrupts the dispensations that God has established in the unfolding of redemption, and confuses the Old and New Covenants and their respective ordinances. The Book of Mormon is careful to point out that the American Hebrew colony 'kept the law of Moses'... Yet Christian baptism was said to be taught among the Nephites five hundred years before Christ... Furthermore by 147 B.C. a Christian Church is depicted as flourishing, of which people become members through baptism... to introduce the New Testament practice of baptism in the name of Christ into the Old Testament period is to confuse the Old and New Covenants and the ordinances connected with each. The Book of Hebrews is very specific that while the Old Testament was in force, the New clearly was not... To introduce the features of the New Covenant into the time-period when the Old Covenant was in force is to confuse the two covenants to the extent of rendering them both meaningless... The Book of Mormon, by injecting the New Testament material into the Old Testament period, completely disrupts the biblical pattern so carefully set forth in the Old Testament itself and so faithfully guarded by the New." -Wesley P. Walters, "The Use of the Old Testament in the Book of Mormon," (Master's thesis, St. Louis: Covenant Theological Seminary, April 1981), pp. 15-17.