Samuel the Lamanite

The role reversal of the Nephites and Lamanites is on its greatest display with Samuel the Lamanite. During this time, the Lamanites repeatedly sent missionaries to the wayward Nephites. Samuel was one of them. Yet his prophecies have the singular distinction of being the only ones the Savior insisted on being added to the Nephite record. I’m certain this endorsement is why his words also made it into the Book of Mormon.

It makes me wonder why. One of the reasons why it’s there is a bitter pill, but I’m grateful for it just the same. Samuel tells the people the Lord loves the Nephites. Because of that love and their wickedness, He chastens them to get them back in line. I don’t know about you, but living so I don’t get chastened seems a lot smarter thing to do than living so I need it.

I hadn’t noticed until reading through this, but an observation on what the unbelievers were saying about Samuel’s prophecies shows unbelievers tactics haven’t changed. What they complained about then, they complain about today. To borrow from Ecclesiastes, “there’s nothing new under the sun.” What do I mean by this? Critics today dismiss the archeological bullseyes scored by the Book of Mormon. An example is their dismissal of Nahom, saying, “out of so many guesses, mere chance says he’d get one right. It’s still a work of fiction.” Mormon tells it this way: “Some things they may have guessed right, among so many; but behold, we know that these great and marvelous works cannot come to pass…”

One of the things which occurs to me as I read through this is virtually all the people, Nephite and Lamanite, are or were members of the church. Any who are not now are not by choice. Makes me think of something President Benson said in General Conference in April 1987 about the passage in the Book of Mormon leading up to 3 Nephi 11. He said, “The record of the Nephite history just prior to the Savior’s visit reveals many parallels to our own day as we anticipate the Savior’s second coming.” How true.

Helaman 13-15 Samuel and the Light in the Sky

The account of Samuel the Lamanite, is unique among the stories in the Book of Mormon. It's the only one Jesus himself told the Nephites to include in the Large Plates of Nephi. Because of this importance, Mormon included it in the record he compiled.

The story of Samuel the Lamanite and his preaching to the Nephites, is well known, so I wont spend time on it here. Instead, I want to focus on the sign he predicted of the Savior's birth. He said it would be light as day the night before the day the Savior was born. The effect of that being a day, a night and another day that would appear as one day. That's pretty impressive!

I've wondered how that could happen. How did God make the sky light up without the sun around so it would shine like day? I still don't know, but there is a clue. In Chapter six, verse five, Samuel says there will be a new star, such as they've never seen before appear in the sky.

The geek in me says the two events are connected. This is how... When a star much larger than the sun runs out of fuel, it explodes becoming a "super nova." It puts out as much light energy in that dying gasp as it did over its entire life time. Some of that energy is in the form of a spherical wave of charged particles rushing away from the star.

Our sun frequently does this too, but on a much less violent scale. When the sun's particles pass the Earth, some get trapped by the magnetosphere and sent down to the poles. There they hit the upper atmosphere creating the auroras. In this instance though these particles hit the atmosphere in such a way and place, it lit up like a giant neon light. Which made the night as bright as day, even though no star could be seen.

Once the wave passed, "all" that was left was the flash of the explosion which became the star they'd never seen before. As explosions do, even super novae, the flash faded and the star disappeared from site. But while it shone, it shone with unusual brilliance. While the phenomenon is easily explained, getting it to happen at just the right time is a miracle on an astronomic scale.