If, as is quite commonly supposed, our Lord was born four years before the beginning of our era, the exodus of Lehi from Jerusalem would have taken place in what in our chronology would be the year 604 B.C., or the year after the battle at Carchemish, where the Egyptians were defeated by the Chaldeans. That would, from an historical point of view, have been the logical time for the laying of the foundations of a new dispensation, in another part of the world, because from now on Palestine was to be the battle ground of the great world powers for supremacy.
A Messiah. Dr. Klausner, in his “Jesus of Nazareth,” asks what Jesus is to the Jew. His book is written specially for the Jews. He answers the question by saying that, to the Jew, he is neither God nor the Son of God; neither the Messiah, nor even a prophet; but that, if his teachings were stripped of certain objectionable features, they would form the most admirable code of ethics, and he would be the greatest author of parables that ever lived.
Some Christian theologians have taken a similar view. According to them, all that man needs is a consciousness of his oneness with God. The life of Christ was completely dominated by that consciousness, and his work as a Savior is to arouse his consciousness in us. There is no need of expiation or sacrifice. As we share Christ’s consciousness of the divine, our lives are transformed, and we are saved, and that is all there is to it.
Lately, theologians have even gone farther. They have suggested that a new religion is needed, stripped of everything supernatural; they propose substituting “humanism” for the Gospel, and to form a society in which all cooperate for the common good, and call that their church. In that society, there will be no place for the Messiah.
The Book of Mormon does not speak in uncertain terms on such subjects. It does not leave us in doubt. Here, in this discourse, Father Lehi states four positive facts: (1) that the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim), at a stated time, would raise up a prophet among the Jews; (2) that this prophet would be the promised Messiah, or the Savior of the world; (3) that his mission of salvation would be in the nature of “redemption”; (4) that man, in his fallen state, would be lost without a Redeemer. All this refers to Jesus. He is the Prophet, the Messiah, the Savior, the Redeemer.
As the Prophet, he declares the plan of salvation to God’s children, for a prophet is one who speaks “for God.” As the Messiah, the “Anointed One,” the “Christ,” he is the Mediator between God and man and the Ruler of God’s kingdom. As the Savior, his mission is to save his people—which means all who acknowledge him as their Savior—from their sins. That is the meaning of the blessed name, JESUS, the Greek form of the Hebrew, Jehoshuah, or, Joshuah. As the Redeemer he delivers his people, from guilt, by means of pardon; (1 Cor. 1:30; Tit. 2:14).