The Book of Mormon

2 Nephi 25:29

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~559–545 BC

1830 Edition

And now behold I say unto you, that the right way is to believe in Christ, and deny him not; and Christ is the Holy One of Israel: wherefore ye must bow down before him, and worship him with all your might, mind, and strength, and your whole soul; and if ye do this, ye shall in nowise be cast out.

Influences

Luke 10:27 (KJV)
And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
John 6:37 (KJV)
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
John 6:37 (KJV)
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

Changes

And now behold, I say unto you, that the right way is to believe in Christ, and deny him not; and Christ is the Holy One of Israel:; wherefore ye must bow down before him, and worship him with all your might, mind, and strength, and your whole soul; and if ye do this, ye shall in nowise be cast out.

Simple English

The right way is to believe in Christ and not reject him. Christ is the Holy One of Israel. So you must bow down before him. You must worship him with all your might, mind, and strength. You must worship him with your whole soul. If you do this, you will not be thrown out.

Paraphrase

The right path is to believe in Christ and not deny him. Christ is the Holy One of Israel. You must bow before him and worship him with everything you have—all your strength, all your mind, all your heart, your whole soul. If you do this, you will never be thrown out.

Notes

25:24-30

"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.