King Benjamin’s speech has an overall chiastic structure. It is organized into seven sections (Figure 6).
Figure 6 Welch, John W., and Greg Welch. "Overview of King Benjamin’s Speech." In Charting the Book of Mormon: Visual Aids for Personal Study and Teaching, chart 87.
Section 4 is the middle, and the middle of that middle is this chiastic centerpiece in Mosiah 3:19 (Figure 7):
| aFor the natural man | ||
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| b is an enemy to God, and | |
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| c has been from the fall of Adam, and |
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| c’ will be, forever and ever, unless he |
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| b’ yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and | |
| a’ putteth off the natural man. | ||
This was the second chiasm I found in the Book of Mormon, on the morning of August 16, as a missionary in Regensburg, Germany. The first was in Mosiah 5:10–12. Having found that one at the end of Benjamin’s Speech, I immediately went back looking to see if Benjamin had used chiasmus elsewhere. Indeed he had.
Figure 7 Welch, John W., and Greg Welch. "Chiasmus in Mosiah 3:18–19. In Charting the Book of Mormon: Visual Aids for Personal Study and Teaching, chart 130.
This passage, exhorting us to "put off the natural man and become a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and become as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him," is one of the most frequently quoted passages in the Book of Mormon in General Conference (see the LDS Scripture Citation Index). We as a people have sensed that that is the lynchpin of King Benjamin’s speech.
The structure and organization of this speech bears out that centrality. This speech has been carefully orchestrated. These words are virtually the dead center, the pivot point, of Benjamin’s entire speech. The focus of everything is right here, so we get not only Benjamin’s direct statement of its truth and importance, but we also get indirectly this structural verification. Indeed, one can count 2467 words before this perfectly central verse, and 2476 words after it. This is the logical and literary epicenter of King Benjamin’s entire speech and also of the glad tidings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Book of Mormon Central, "How Was Chiasmus Discovered in the Book of Mormon? (Mosiah 5:11)," KnoWhy 353 (August 16, 2017).
Book of Mormon Central, "Why Did King Benjamin Use Poetic Parallels So Extensively? (Mosiah 5:11)," KnoWhy 83 (April 21, 2016).