John emphasizes that both the serpent and Christ were “lifted up.” Jesus’s crucifixion (his “lifting up”) was the most important connection between the two stories. The serpent-pole’s raising foreshadowed Christ on the cross.
While modern Christianity has long accepted the cross as a symbol of Christ’s atoning sacrifice and given it a prominent place in worship, in John’s time, the cross represented an ignominious, even criminal, death. Christians defiantly exalted this symbol from shame to glory, sanctified by the perfection of the Redeemer who died there. In John, the tremendous irony of the Son of God dying on a shameful cross was the most important image, and his reference to Moses was intended to communicate that good can come out of evil in God’s plan. In John’s context, the essential symbolism in both “raising ups” was the contrast between the apparently evil symbol and the good that came from it.
Alma, however, emphasizes the healing the resulted from looking upon the symbol. He does not emphasize the “raising up.” While Nephite prophets had a prophetic knowledge of the Savior’s crucifixion (1 Ne. 19:13, 2 Ne. 6:9, 10:3, 25:13, Mosiah 3:9), they did not have direct experience with crucifixion nor its social implications, unlike John. Alma’s listeners, with their reliance on the brass plates, did not have the Nephite prophets’ understanding of “raising up.” Thus, the symbolic association so important to John is entirely missing in Alma’s analysis.