The first named antichrist of the Book of Mormon — the learned man whose smooth tongue led many away from Christ, whose confrontation with Jacob gave us the BoM's master Christological hermeneutic, whose demand for a sign brought down the hand of the Lord, and whose deathbed confession is one of the most agonizing self-disclosures in scripture.
A Witness Against — But With A Twist
Read the stance frontmatter carefully. Against. Sherem is a witness against Christ during his ministry — the prototype antichrist, the founder of the genre Nehor and Korihor will later refine, the BoM's first sustained portrait of organized opposition to the doctrine of Christ. His stance during his life is unambiguous: he is of the devil, by Jacob's own prophetic discernment (Jacob 7:14), and he labors that he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ (Jacob 7:2). The Book of Mormon does not soften this. Sherem is the enemy. Jacob is the prophet. The conflict is real and the sides are not equivalent.
But the portrait does not end at his life's stance. It ends at his deathbed. And on his deathbed Sherem confesses Christ. Publicly. With the multitude gathered. With unsparing self-disclosure. He denies what he had taught. He affirms what Jacob had taught. He names his own source as the devil. He fears the unpardonable sin. He gives up the ghost.
This is one of the most spiritually agonizing scenes in scripture. The portrait owes him the honesty of holding both facts at once. He spent his life leading souls away from Christ. He spent his death leading those same souls back. The stance frontmatter says against because the weight of his life is against. The deathbed confession does not erase the harm; it does not undo the souls led astray; it does not by itself reverse the verdict of his life. But it does open the question of his soul's final state in a way the text deliberately leaves unresolved. Sherem himself does not know. He says I fear lest I have committed the unpardonable sin. Jacob does not pronounce. The text does not pronounce. The reader is left, as the text intends, with the unresolved tension of a man who served the devil for a season and then publicly recanted at death.
The portrait should treat him with the same kind of seriousness the text does. He is the antichrist. He is the deathbed-confessor. He is both. He is a warning. He is also, in some way the text refuses to settle, the witness for the proposition that even the soul that has spent its life against Christ may, at the door of death, turn. The mercy that nourished him for many days after he was struck down (Jacob 7:15) is the same mercy that pleaded with him through Jacob's prayer that he might be brought to confession. The Lord did not let him die in his rebellion. The Lord struck him so that he could confess. The strike was itself a mercy.
This is a portrait of an antichrist and a portrait of a deathbed conversion. The text holds them both. So must we.
The Name He Carried
Sherem is one of the BoM names whose Hebrew etymology is debated, but the most plausible reading connects it to the Hebrew root šārâm or šārēm (variant forms involving šeraf, to burn, or šārôm, possibly related to šārôq, to whistle, hiss, the sound of mocking; or possibly to šēm, name, with the r infix producing a sense of the named one). One scholar, John Tvedtnes, has noted that the consonantal cluster š-r-m appears in Hebrew names associated with renown or placement (cf. Shema, Shimei, Shimri). The most striking biblical resonance is the place-name Shûr (שׁוּר, wall, fortification) — the wilderness on the border of Egypt where Hagar fled (Genesis 16:7) and where the children of Israel were three days' journey when they reached Marah (Exodus 15:22). To bear a name in this cluster suggests one who stands at the wall, one who has placed himself between, one who builds his fortification of words. Sherem builds his fortification — of flattery, of learning, of power of speech, according to the power of the devil (Jacob 7:4) — and his fortification falls in a single sentence when Jacob asks the Lord to render the sign.
But there is a more compelling etymological reading. In Egyptian, šrm (the consonants without vowels) is a known toponym and personal-name element, attested in pre-exilic Egyptian sources. Lehi's family — taught in the language of the Egyptians (1 Nephi 1:2, Mosiah 1:4) — would have been familiar with Egyptian names. If Sherem's name is Egyptian rather than Hebrew, the meaning shifts toward the cultural-marker of a man whose name carries the prestige of foreign learning. He is the outsider with the insider's claim. He stands among the Nephites as a Nephite but with the credential of foreign sophistication. He uses the language of the fathers (he claims to believe the scriptures) and the rhetoric of foreign learning (he is learned, with perfect knowledge of the language) to make himself credible.
Either way the etymology is read, the name names the man. Sherem stands at the wall. He is the man between the Nephites and Christ. He is the rhetorical structure that the multitude has to pass through if they are to reach Jacob's doctrine. He is the wall. Jacob's prayer brings the wall down.
The Anti-Christ From Within
Read the first verses of his story carefully.
And now it came to pass after some years had passed away, there came a man among the people of Nephi, whose name was Sherem. And it came to pass that he began to preach among the people, and to declare unto them that there should be no Christ. And he preached many things which were flattering unto the people; and this he did that he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ. (Jacob 7:1–2)
Came a man among the people of Nephi. He is not a Lamanite invader. He is not a foreigner preaching a foreign religion. He is among the people. He uses their language. He claims their scriptures. He stands as one of them. This is the chapter's first warning. The antichrist is not the outsider with foreign banners; the antichrist is the insider with familiar words. Paul will later warn the Ephesian elders that of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them (Acts 20:30). The deadliest opposition to the gospel arises within the covenant community, from voices that share the canon and the language but reverse the doctrine.
Sherem's method is flattery. The Hebrew root behind flattering — ḥālaq (חָלַק) — produces the noun ḥālāq, smooth-tongue, smoothness of speech. Proverbs 26:28 names the smooth-tongue as the diagnostic of the destroyer: a lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin. Proverbs 29:5 — a man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet. The smooth tongue is the net. It catches the listener gently. The listener is flattered. The listener feels seen, validated, esteemed. The flattery is so pleasing that the listener does not notice what the flatterer is doing to him — drawing him gently away from Christ.
This is one of the BoM's clearest doctrines on how the adversary works. He does not roar at first; he charms. He does not begin with the open denial of Christ; he begins with the careful affirmation of the listener's natural pride. He says, you are sophisticated; you are reasonable; you are intelligent; the simple doctrine of Christ is for the unsophisticated; you have outgrown it. The listener nods. The listener feels esteemed. The listener is, by the same nod, drawn one step away from Christ. Sherem is the BoM's first sustained portrait of this method. His listeners did not feel deceived. They felt validated. The two feelings, in the deception, are the same.
His aim is the third element to notice. That he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ. Not merely adjust the doctrine. Not merely reform the doctrine. Overthrow it. The Hebrew hāp̄aḵ (הָפַךְ), to overturn, to overthrow, is the verb the Hebrew Bible uses for the overthrow of Sodom (Genesis 19:25 — he overthrew those cities). Sherem is doing to the doctrine of Christ what the Lord did to Sodom — overthrowing it, turning it upside down, leaving nothing standing. The aim is total. The aim is to destroy the doctrine of Christ in the people of Nephi. He is the BoM's first apocalyptic-scale enemy of Christ from within the covenant community. The aim is to leave nothing.
The Three Charges
When Sherem comes to Jacob personally, he brings three charges. Read Jacob 7:6–7 with the care it deserves.
Brother Jacob, I have sought much opportunity that I might speak unto you; for I have heard and also know that thou goest about much, preaching that which ye call the gospel, or the doctrine of Christ. And ye have led away much of this people that they pervert the right way of God, and keep not the law of Moses which is the right way; and convert the law of Moses into the worship of a being which ye say shall come many hundred years hence. And now behold, I, Sherem, declare unto you that this is blasphemy; for no man knoweth of such things; for he cannot tell of things to come.
Three charges:
First: Jacob has led the people from the law of Moses. Sherem positions himself as the defender of orthodoxy. He is, in his own self-conception, the conservative opposing the innovator. The law of Moses is the right way, says Sherem. Jacob has been pulling people away from it. Jacob is the deviator; Sherem is the keeper of the tradition.
Second: Jacob has converted the law of Moses into the worship of a future being. This is the precise theological accusation. Jacob has been reading the law Christologically — interpreting every Mosaic ordinance as a type and shadow of the coming Messiah. Sherem charges that this is not what the law is. The law is the law; it stands on its own; it does not point forward to anyone. Jacob's Christological reading of the law is, in Sherem's view, a perversion of the law's plain meaning.
Third: No man knoweth of such things; for he cannot tell of things to come. The epistemological denial. No human being has access to future knowledge. The claim of prophetic knowledge is itself a blasphemy, says Sherem. The prophets cannot know what they claim to know. The future is closed to human knowing. Therefore the claim that Christ shall come six hundred years hence is not just wrong — it is the kind of claim no human being can rightfully make.
These three charges are extraordinary. They are a coherent theological program. Sherem is not a casual heckler. He has thought through his position. He has constructed an alternative interpretive framework. He is learned and eloquent (Jacob 7:4) precisely because he has worked at this. His position is:
- The law of Moses stands on its own; it does not point to a future Messiah.
- The prophets cannot have prophesied of Christ, because no human being has prophetic knowledge of future events.
- The Christological reading of scripture is therefore an innovation, a perversion, and a blasphemy.
This is a sophisticated, internally consistent, conservative-traditionalist position. It is exactly the position the dominant strands of second-temple Judaism would, in the centuries after Sherem, come to hold in opposition to the Christian reading of the Hebrew Bible. The Pharisees and Sadducees and the synagogue leaders who will oppose Paul in Acts 13, 17, 18, 19 will make substantially the same arguments Sherem makes here. You are perverting the law. You are turning it into worship of a man. No one can prove the resurrection of the dead. No one can know that this Jesus is the Christ. The arguments are recognizable across the millennia.
What is remarkable about Jacob 7 is that the BoM presents these arguments six centuries before the Acts encounters where they will become standard. Sherem is prototypical. He is making, in c. 540s BC at the land of Nephi, the same arguments that will later be the standard Jewish-anti-Christian position in the second-temple Diaspora. The BoM is the only text in pre-Christian scripture that names this argument and engages it. The Hebrew Bible itself does not develop the anti-Christological reading explicitly because the Christological reading was still inchoate at the time the Hebrew Bible was being written. The BoM, by contrast, has had Christ revealed by name (2 Nephi 25:19, c. 545 BC), and so the anti-Christological position can be articulated as a position. Sherem articulates it. Jacob refutes it. The exchange is the BoM's first sustained Christological debate.
The Hermeneutical Axiom
Jacob's response is the chapter's load-bearing doctrine.
And he said: Behold, I believe in them. Now I said unto him: Then ye do not understand them; for they truly testify of Christ. Behold, I say unto you that none of the prophets have written, nor prophesied, save they have spoken concerning this Christ. (Jacob 7:10–11)
None of the prophets have written, nor prophesied, save they have spoken concerning this Christ.
This is the BoM's master hermeneutical axiom. Every prophetic utterance, of every prophet, in every era, is Christological. The prophets cannot be read rightly except through Christ. The scripture cannot be understood except through Christ. The man who claims to believe the scriptures but denies the Christ does not understand the scriptures. He has the words without the meaning.
This is the doctrine Christ Himself will articulate on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:27 — and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. The doctrine Christ articulates in John 5:39 — search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. The doctrine Peter articulates in Acts 10:43 — to him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. The doctrine Paul takes through the Roman Empire — that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Six centuries before Christ's mortality, Jacob articulates the doctrine that will become the foundational principle of all Christian reading of scripture: the scriptures testify of Christ. The non-Christological reading is not a different reading; it is the wrong reading. The scripture itself is Christological in its substance. To read it without Christ is to not understand it.
Sherem could not answer this. His silence at this point in the chapter is the silence of a man who has been intellectually disarmed. He had the canon. He thought the canon was his. Jacob showed him that the canon was Christ's — that every prophet in the canon was speaking of Christ — and that Sherem's claim to believe the scriptures while denying the Christ was self-contradictory. Then ye do not understand them. The most devastating sentence Jacob could have said. The whole edifice of Sherem's learned credentials collapses in that sentence. He is learned but he does not understand. He has knowledge of the language but he does not know the meaning. He has power of speech but he is speaking against the scriptures he claims to believe.
The chapter is, at this point, the BoM's clearest portrait of what learning without Christ looks like. It looks like Sherem. Credentials, eloquence, mastery of the language, public persuasion — all of it without the center. The center is Christ. Without the center, the learning is a wall built to keep souls out of the kingdom. The wall stands until the prophet's sentence brings it down.
The Sign Demand
Then comes the sign demand. Show me a sign by this power of the Holy Ghost, in the which ye know so much (Jacob 7:13).
Jacob's response is one of the most theologically careful in scripture.
What am I that I should tempt God to show unto thee a sign in the thing which thou knowest to be true? Yet thou wilt deny it, because thou art of the devil. Nevertheless, not my will be done; but if God shall smite thee, let that be a sign unto thee that he has power, both in heaven and in earth; and also, that Christ shall come. And thy will, O Lord, be done, and not mine. (Jacob 7:13–14)
Three doctrines in one verse.
First, signs do not precede faith. The principle is the same Christ will later articulate against the sign-seeking Pharisees — an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign (Matthew 12:39). The faith comes first; the sign follows. The man who demands a sign before he will believe is already refusing faith. He is putting the Lord on trial and announcing that he will believe only if the Lord performs to his specification. The Lord does not consent to this kind of trial. Same doctrine as Deuteronomy 6:16 — ye shall not tempt the Lord your God. The Hebrew verb nāsâ (נָסָה), to test, to put on trial, is the verb behind temptation. To demand a sign is to nāsâ God. The Lord refuses to be nāsâ-ed.
Second, the man who demands a sign knows the truth already. Jacob is sharp here. Thou knowest to be true. Sherem is not an honest doubter who needs evidence. He is a deceiver who already knows the truth and is asking for a sign so that he can pretend to convert if the sign is given (and reject the sign as illusion if it is not). The Lord, by prophetic discernment, sees through this. The Lord knows the heart of the asker. The Lord knows the asker already knows. The sign would not produce belief; it would only complete the deceiver's bad-faith demand. The Lord refuses to play the role.
Third, the prophet's prayer is the Gethsemane-anticipative submission. Not my will be done; but thy will, O Lord, be done. Six centuries before Christ in Gethsemane (Luke 22:42 — not my will, but thine, be done), Jacob prays the same prayer. The Hebrew of will in such prayers is rāṣôn (רָצוֹן), acceptable pleasure, what is acceptable to. Jacob is not asking for the sign; he is submitting to whatever the Lord's rāṣôn is. If the Lord chooses to smite Sherem, let that be the sign. But not my will; thine. This is the prayer of a prophet who has learned not to wield the gift for personal vindication. The gift is the Lord's; the timing is the Lord's; the outcome is the Lord's. Jacob asks for nothing of his own.
And the Lord, in His rāṣôn, sends the sign.
Struck Down
And it came to pass that when I, Jacob, had spoken these words, the power of the Lord came upon him, insomuch that he fell to the earth. And it came to pass that he was nourished for the space of many days. (Jacob 7:15)
Two clauses, both important.
The power of the Lord came upon him. The Hebrew of power — gĕbûrâ (גְּבוּרָה), might, strength, power — is one of the OT's standard divine-act-of-power nouns. The phrase is the same one used of Samson when the Spirit comes upon him in Judges 14:6, of Saul when the Spirit comes upon him in 1 Samuel 11:6, of the prophetic-power that comes upon Elijah in 1 Kings 18:46. The power that overcomes Sherem is the same kind of power that ordinarily produces the prophetic-gift or the prophetic-deliverance. Here it is used to strike down an enemy of the doctrine of Christ. The same power can liberate or strike, depending on the Lord's purpose. The gĕbûrâ is the Lord's. The Lord chose to use it here.
The closest New Testament parallels are Acts 5:1–11 (Ananias and Sapphira struck down for lying to the Holy Ghost), Acts 13:6–11 (Elymas the sorcerer struck blind for opposing Paul), and Acts 12:21–23 (Herod struck and eaten by worms for accepting divine honors). In each case, the divine gĕbûrâ is unleashed against an opponent of the gospel — not as routine but as the exceptional act that the Lord performs to defend the doctrine in a crisis hour. Sherem is the BoM's clearest pre-Acts portrait of this kind of divine intervention.
But notice the second clause. He was nourished for the space of many days. He did not die immediately. The strike was not lethal. The Lord struck him and then sustained him. He was given food. He was given care. He was given days — perhaps weeks — to think about what had happened to him. The strike was not punishment; the strike was mercy. The strike was the Lord's way of forcing the deceiver to be still long enough to confess. If Sherem had died at the moment of being struck, his death would have been the verdict. The fact that he was nourished and given days means the Lord was waiting for his confession. The Lord wanted Sherem to be able to publicly recant, publicly confess Christ, publicly undo what he had done to the multitude. The days of nourishment were the days of repentance the Lord opened for him.
This is one of the most striking acts of mercy in scripture. The Lord struck down His enemy in order to save him. The strike was not destruction; the strike was conversion. The Lord did to Sherem what He would later do to Saul on the road to Damascus — struck him down, blinded him, gave him three days of silence to think, and then sent Ananias to him. Saul rose from those three days as Paul. Sherem rose from his nourished days to give the most agonizing deathbed confession in scripture. Same mercy, different outcomes; one converted in life, one only at death.
The mercy that nourished Sherem for many days is the mercy the Lord extends to every soul on the way to confession. The Lord does not strike souls down to destroy them; the Lord strikes souls down so that they can hear what they were too deaf to hear standing up. Sherem was given days. Some souls are given decades. The principle is the same. The strike, when it comes, is mercy.
The Deathbed Confession
The deathbed scene is one of the most agonizing in scripture. Sherem summons the multitude. He knows he will die. He wants to speak before he dies.
And it came to pass that on the morrow the multitude were gathered together; and he spake plainly unto them and denied the things which he had taught them, and confessed the Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost, and the ministering of angels. And he spake plainly unto them, that he had been deceived by the power of the devil. And he spake of hell, and of eternity, and of eternal punishment. And he said: I fear lest I have committed the unpardonable sin, for I have lied unto God; for I denied the Christ, and said that I believed the scriptures; and they truly testify of him. And because I have thus lied unto God I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful; but I confess unto God. (Jacob 7:17–19)
Read each sentence with the weight it carries.
He denied the things which he had taught them. The public unmaking of his teaching ministry. Everything he had said. Everything he had preached. Every flattery, every argument, every clever response to Jacob — denied. Withdrawn. Repudiated. He stands before the very multitude he had deceived and says, the things I taught you were not true. He does not soften it. He does not parse it. He denies the things. This is the disciple's act of repentance taken to the public stage. He confessed Christ. The same Christ he had spent his ministry denying — now confessed. The power of the Holy Ghost. The same Holy Ghost he had mocked by demanding a sign — now confessed. The ministering of angels. The same angelic-ministration he had implicitly denied by saying no man can know of things to come — now confessed. He gives back, on his deathbed, every doctrine he had taken from the multitude.
He spake plainly unto them, that he had been deceived by the power of the devil. He names his source. He does not blame the multitude. He does not blame Jacob. He does not blame the times. He names the source. The devil. He had been deceived. The Hebrew verb behind deceived — nāšāʾ (נָשָׁא) or šāwāʾ (שָׁוָה), depending on the underlying form — is the OT's standard verb for to mislead, to seduce, to draw away from truth. Sherem confesses he had been seduced. He had not been an honest reasoner; he had been a deceived man. The deceiver was the devil. The deceived one was Sherem. The honesty of this confession is shattering. He does not say I made mistakes. He says I was deceived by the devil. The diagnosis is total. The repentance is total.
He spake of hell, and of eternity, and of eternal punishment. Sherem becomes, in his deathbed, a preacher of the doctrine he had spent his life denying. He had told the people there was no Christ, no future, no eternal consequences. Now he tells them of hell, and of eternity, and of eternal punishment. He preaches it because he fears it. He fears it because he had been told the truth, had known the truth, and had spoken against the truth. The eternal consequences he is now naming are the consequences he himself may have incurred. The deathbed preaching is the preaching of a man who knows what he is preaching is real.
I fear lest I have committed the unpardonable sin, for I have lied unto God; for I denied the Christ, and said that I believed the scriptures; and they truly testify of him.
This sentence is the heart of his confession. Sherem names his sin with precision. I have lied unto God. Not a general confession of unworthiness. A specific accusation. He had lied unto God. He had claimed to believe the scriptures while denying the Christ they testify of. The claim was false. He had known the scriptures testify of Christ. He had known his denial of Christ was a denial of what he knew the scriptures actually said. He had spoken against what he knew to be true. This is the technical definition of the unpardonable sin as the Restoration would later articulate it in D&C 76:31–48 — they who… deny the Holy Spirit after having received it, and having denied the Only Begotten Son of the Father, having crucified him unto themselves and put him to an open shame. Sherem had not crucified Christ in the flesh; the historical Christ had not yet come. But he had denied the Christ after knowing by the Spirit that the Christ would come and that the scriptures testify of Him. The sin was a knowing denial, not an ignorant denial. And knowing denial is what makes a sin unpardonable.
He fears lest he has committed the unpardonable sin. He does not know he has. He is not certain. He is afraid. The fear itself is a kind of evidence that he has not fully crossed the line — because the soul that has truly crossed the line into the unpardonable sin no longer fears, no longer cares, no longer feels the weight of what it has done. The soul of the truly fallen has no contrition left in it. Sherem has contrition. He fears. He confesses unto God. The presence of fear and confession at the deathbed is, in the doctrine of the Restoration, evidence that the soul has not been wholly given over to the spirit of perdition. The Lord alone judges the case. The text does not tell us where Sherem's soul went. The text leaves it where Sherem left it — I confess unto God. The soul commits itself to God's judgment. The judgment is God's.
And then he gives up the ghost. The chapter does not pronounce. The Lord pronounces in His own time. The portrait should not pronounce either. The reader is left with a man who spent his life against Christ, who at the door of death turned, and whose final state is in the hands of the Lord who alone can weigh such a soul.
The Multitude
What happens to the multitude is the chapter's last gift.
And when the multitude had witnessed that he spake these things as he was about to give up the ghost, they were astonished exceedingly; insomuch that the power of God came down upon them, and they were overcome that they fell to the earth. Now, this thing was pleasing unto me, Jacob, for I had requested it of my Father who was in heaven; for he had heard my cry and answered my prayer. And it came to pass that peace and the love of God was restored again among the people; and they searched the scriptures, and hearkened no more to the words of this wicked man. (Jacob 7:21–23)
The multitude that had been led astray is now overcome by the power of God. They fell to the earth. The same posture Sherem had been struck into is now the posture of the multitude — not in judgment but in conversion. The witnessing of the deathbed confession converts them. They had been deceived by Sherem; they are now restored by Sherem's deathbed unmaking of his own deception. Peace and the love of God is restored again among the people; and they searched the scriptures, and hearkened no more to the words of this wicked man.
The deathbed confession worked. It accomplished what the Lord, by Jacob's prayer, had intended it to accomplish. The multitude is brought back. The doctrine of Christ is re-established. The flock is restored to the shepherd. Sherem's deathbed labor — even if it did not save his own soul — saved theirs. The Lord's mercy in striking him down to give him days to confess was a mercy to the multitude as much as to him. The strike that opened Sherem's mouth to confession opened the multitude's heart to conversion. The same mercy operated on both. The whole episode was the Lord's labor to save the people Sherem had led astray. Even the antichrist, in the Lord's economy, can become an instrument of the people's restoration — not by his life but by his deathbed.
This is one of the most stunning theological points in the chapter. The Lord turned the antichrist into His own missionary. The flattery had drawn many away; the deathbed confession draws all of them back. The very man who had attacked the doctrine of Christ is used by the Lord to restore the doctrine of Christ in the hearts of his own followers. The Lord's purposes are not thwarted by His enemies; the Lord's purposes incorporate His enemies into the larger work of restoration.
What He Was
He was the smooth-tongued learned man who emerged from among the people of Nephi in the late ministry of Jacob, who used flattery and rhetorical credentialing to draw many hearts away from the doctrine of Christ, who built a sophisticated traditionalist case against Jacob's Christological reading of the law of Moses — that no man can know of things to come, that the law is the law and points to no Messiah, that the Christological hermeneutic is innovation and blasphemy. He was the BoM's first sustained portrait of the antichrist-from-within — the deceiver who comes in the name of orthodoxy, who shares the canon, who uses the language of the fathers to dismantle the doctrine of the fathers.
He was the man who confronted Jacob personally, who demanded the sign that no honest seeker demands, who heard from Jacob's mouth the BoM's master Christological hermeneutic — none of the prophets have written, nor prophesied, save they have spoken concerning this Christ — and who could not answer it because the doctrine was true and his denial of it was false. He was the man whom the Lord, by Jacob's prayer and by the rāṣôn of the Lord's own purpose, struck down by divine power. He was the man whom the Lord, having struck down, nourished for many days — the days of mercy in which the Lord was waiting for the confession the deceiver had been too proud to make standing up.
He was the man whose deathbed confession is one of the most agonizing in scripture — the public denial of his own teaching, the public confession of Christ and the Holy Ghost and the ministering of angels, the public naming of the devil as his source, the public preaching of hell and eternity and eternal punishment to the people he had spent his life telling there were none of these things, and the trembling fear that he had committed the unpardonable sin by lying unto God against what he had known by the Spirit to be true. He was the man whose deathbed restored the multitude he had deceived, whose deathbed was used by the Lord to bring back the very souls his life had led away. He was the man whose final state the text leaves unresolved, as he left it — I confess unto God.
He is the warning for every disciple who would build a learned career on a non-Christological reading of scripture, every voice in the public square who would use the prestige of credentials to dismantle the doctrine of Christ, every soul who would lay aside the gift of the Holy Ghost in exchange for the applause of a multitude. He is also, more quietly, the witness for the proposition that the Lord pursues His enemies to the door of death. The strike that comes is not destruction; the strike is mercy. The days of nourishment are days of opportunity. The deathbed is not the end of the Lord's labor; it is the place where the Lord finishes the labor He had been doing the whole time.
He spent his life against Christ. He spent his death confessing Christ. The portrait owes him both halves. The Lord weighs the whole.
A learned man came among the people of Nephi with smooth speech to overthrow the doctrine of Christ; the prophet Jacob met him, refused his sign-demand, prayed the Lord's will be done, and watched the Lord strike his enemy down; the man was nourished many days, gathered the multitude, denied what he had taught, confessed Christ and the Holy Ghost and the ministering of angels, named the devil as his deceiver, preached the eternity he had denied, feared the unpardonable sin, confessed unto God, and gave up the ghost; the multitude he had deceived was restored to the doctrine he had attacked. He is the warning for every smooth tongue that would set itself against Christ. He is also the quiet witness for what the Lord can do at the deathbed of His own enemy.