Right after concluding in the previous verse that Jehovah will come to earth so that all men might stand before him at the final day of judgment, Jacob discusses how that will happen. It will not require the kind of universal victory over physical death, but a different type of victory over spiritual death. It will require repentance and baptism. Those who repent and are baptized will be saved. Those who do not must be damned. We should understand the dichotomy of being saved or damned as an intentional use of opposites. It is the same dichotomy we have seen between Jehovah and the devil who embodies the opposite of Jehovah.
Christians are familiar with the paired concepts of repentance and baptism. Israel was familiar with the concept of repentance and immersion for purification. The Nephite visions of the earthly mission of the Messiah will include information about Jesus’s baptism, and it appears that the Hebrew immersion for ritual purity had already been adapted for an immersion for spiritual purity in Nephite culture.