Benjamin reprises his earlier discussion of the fate of the enemy to God. For comparison, let’s review Mosiah 2:38-39:
“Mosiah 2:38 Therefore if that man repenteth not, and remaineth and dieth an enemy to God, the demands of divine justice do awaken his immortal soul to a lively sense of his own guilt, which doth cause him to shrink from the presence of the Lord, and doth fill his breast with guilt, and pain, and anguish, which is like an unquenchable fire, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever. 39 And now I say unto you, that mercy hath no claim on that man; therefore his final doom is to endure a never-ending torment.”
Mosiah 3:25 has the phrase “awful view of their own guilt,” and Mosiah 2:38 has “lively sense of his own guilt.” The phrase “shrink from the presence of the Lord” is in both Mosiah 2:38 and Mosiah 3:25. Mosiah 2:38 speaks of an anguish “like an unquenchable fire, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever,” and Mosiah 3:27 has “whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendet up forever and ever.” Both Mosiah 2:38 and Mosiah 3:26 speak of the demands of justice, and that when those demands are applied “mercy hath no claim.” All of these particular repetitions indicate that Benjamin is intentionally reprising that earlier text. Why?
Benjamin is concluding a speech unit that begin with Mosiah 2:31. The unit is divided into two sections, each dealing with a particular type of spiritual culpability. The first unit discusses the religio-political “contentions” that have been put to rest among his people. While this people is a believing people (“I would that ye should do as ye have hitherto done…(Mosiah 2:31) they might nevertheless be enticed by the ”evil spirit“ (Mosiah 2:33). Those who willingly choose are rebelling against God, and ”drinketh damnation to his own soul" (Mosiah 2:33), which precise phrase appears again in Mosiah 3:25.
Interestingly, Benjamin places this religio-political culpability on all “except it be your little children that have not been taught concerning these things” (Mosiah 2:34) which appears to be a corollary to the innocence of little children in the second part.
The two sections are then quite tightly correlated, with the first emphasizing the current political situation, and the second emphasizing the spiritual expansion of that same principle. The first half of the discourse addresses the temporal now and the second half addresses the spiritual forever. The parallelism between the two sections serves to reemphasize the general principles, and the differences highlights the different temporal and spiritual arenas to which the principles are applied.
Textual: This verse ends a chapter in the 1830 edition, as well as in our current edition. This is the conclusion of the first set discourse, beginning in Mosiah 2.