Neal A. Maxwell expounds on the nature of Christ and those who become His children through obeying His gospel and becoming like Him.

This speech was given on February 4, 1990.

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"This address will attempt to “survey the wondrous cross” by focusing on the Christology in the book of Mosiah, using not only the words of King Benjamin, Mosiah, Abinadi, and Alma the Younger, but scriptures that lie in the suburbs of Mosiah and other related scriptures. The final focus will be on the requirements for our becoming what King Benjamin called “the children of Christ,” which is my text (Mosiah 1:11; 5:9, 11; 26:18).

Left unexplored are other possibilities, such as some our LDS scholars are reconnoitering. For instance, the biblical term mosiah was probably a political designation; it also is an honorific title in Hebrew meaning savior or rescuer (FARMS Update, April 1989). Not bad for a bright but unschooled Joseph Smith who, while translating early on, reportedly wondered aloud to Emma if there were walls around Jerusalem (The History of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, vol. 4, 1873–1890 [Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1967], p. 447).

There is so much more in the Book of Mormon than we have yet discovered. The book’s divine architecture and rich furnishings will increasingly unfold to our view, further qualifying it as “a marvelous work and a wonder” (Isaiah 29:14). As I noted from this pulpit in 1986, “The Book of Mormon is like a vast mansion with gardens, towers, courtyards, and wings (Book of Mormon Symposium, 10 October 1986). All the rooms in this mansion need to be explored, whether by valued traditional scholars or by those at the cutting edge. Each plays a role, and one LDS scholar cannot say to the other, “I have no need of thee” (1 Corinthians 12:21).

Professor Hugh Nibley has reconnoitered much of that mansion, showing how our new dispensation links with the old world. There is not only that Nibley nexus, but also one between him and several generations of LDS scholars.

Scriptures of the Restoration

The book of Mosiah begins with a father instructing his sons, just as was done in ancient Israel. Alma the Younger remembered a critical Christ-centered prophecy of his father, you’ll recall (see Deuteronomy 6:7; Alma 36:17–18). The book of Mosiah ends as the successor son approaches death, having sought to “do according to that which his father [King Benjamin] had done in all things.” As a result, Mosiah’s people “did esteem him more than any other man” (Mosiah 6:7; 29:40). So did the Mulekites, who accepted him as their next king, though he was an immigrant among them.

Within the book’s sixty-plus printed pages occur not only family and political drama, but some stunning verses of Christology concerning the role, mission, and deeds of Jesus Christ. The Christology of the Restoration, brothers and sisters, restructures our understanding of so many fundamental realities.

A significant portion of King Benjamin’s towering sermon was given to him by an angel, and angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost (Mosiah 3:2; 2 Nephi 32:3). At its center is the masterful sermon about the exclusive means of salvation:

There shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. [Mosiah 3:17; see also Mosiah 4:7–8]

It is not only the divinity but also the specificity of King Benjamin’s sermon that marks it. Hence Father Helaman, in sending his two sons, Lehi and Nephi, on a mission to the land of Nephi, exhorted them to “Remember, remember, my sons, the words which King Benjamin spake unto his people” (Helaman 5:9).

In Restoration scriptures, not only is salvation specific, but so also is the identity of the Savior as various scriptures foretell. A savior was to be provided in the meridian of time (Moses 5:57). His name was to be Jesus Christ (2 Nephi 25:19). Christ volunteered for that mission premortally (Abraham 3:27). He was to be born of Mary, a Nazarene, but in Bethlehem—a fact over which some stumbled in the meridian of time (John 7:40–43; see also Micah 5:2, Luke 2:4, Matthew 2:23, 1 Nephi 11:13, Alma 7:10). There would even be a new star celebrating his birth (Helaman 14:5, 3 Nephi 1:21).

And then we learn from the holy scriptures of the sacrifice of the Father’s..."