When people realized that they could not hit Samuel, they could have reacted in several ways. However, because of God’s miraculous protection of Samuel, more Nephites accepted his teachings. Nephi was preaching repentance and baptizing the converts, as well as “showing signs and wonders, working miracles among the people, that they might know that the Christ must shortly come.” But Samuel was never seen again (16:8).
Elder Henry B. Eyring taught, “When we reject the counsel which comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence. We choose another influence. We reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Father in Heaven, whose whole purpose, as that of His Beloved Son, is to give us eternal life, to give us all that He has, and to bring us home again in families to the arms of His love. In rejecting His counsel, we choose the influence of another power, whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred.”
Henry B. Eyring, “Finding Safety in Counsel,” Ensign, May 1997, 25.