Both statements refer to the serpent in the wilderness. However, the important parallel for John is Christ’s being lifted on the cross and Moses’s lifting of the serpent. It fits the New Testament emphasis on recasting the cross from a humiliating tool of death to an affirming symbol of resurrection. (See commentary accompanying 2 Nephi 25:20.)
Nephi2 also comments on the “lifting up” phrase, but for him the effective part of the Mosaic episode was looking upon the serpent, not its lifting up. The cross was not the symbol in the New World that it was in the Old. Christ is important, clearly, but the Book of Mormon never emphasizes the mode of his death. Rather, it emphasizes the meaning of his atonement.
Culture: A popular contemporary Mormon view links this image to the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl. For example, Daniel H. Ludlow comments: “Some scholars of the Book of Mormon have wondered if this story of the serpent as given in the book of Helaman did not account for the ‘serpent motif’ in the art and architecture of some of the American Indian cultures. Also, it is of interest to note that one of the names given by some of the American Indians to the great white God who appeared out of the eastern sky was the name of Quetzalcoatl, which literally means the bird-serpent, or the serpent of precious plumage.” While this ascription has been popular, it is most assuredly incorrect. (See “Excursus: Quetzalcoatl: A Malleable Mythology,” following 3 Nephi 11.)