“Believe in Jesus Christ That He is the Son of God and That He Hath Risen Again”

Alan C. Miner

In some of his final words, Mormon admonishes those of the latter-days with the following:

Know ye that ye must come to the knowledge of your fathers, and repent of all your sins and iniquities, and believe in Jesus Christ, that he is the Son of God, and that he was slain by the Jews, and by the power of the Father he hath risen again, whereby he hath gained the victory over the grave; and also in him is the sting of death swallowed up. (Mormon 7:5)

Jeffrey Marsh notes that the story of Jesus' life is not just a great story, it is true. C. S. Lewis eloquently described the Savior's life:

Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among . . . [those who believe that the universe and the combined forces of nature make up God], . . . anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. . . .The really foolish thing that people often say about Him is that "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." . . . But a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or . . . something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

[Quoted in W. Jeffrey Marsh, His Final Hours, p. 5] [See the commentary on Mosiah 4:9]

Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon: A Cultural Commentary

References