The nature of the atonement. In
King Benjamin’s great sermon—and elsewhere in the Book of Mormon—we are brought
to the realization that Jesus’ atonement was an expiatory act of a divine
being. His agony in Gethsemane for our sins caused him to bleed at every port.
As he hung from the cross, his heart was broken, his spirit fled, he was
offered as the last sacrifice, the spear of a heathen soldier doing service for
the sacrificial knife. We are brought with his blood if we will plead for him
to pay the price. (Glenn L. Pearson and Reid E. Bankhead, Doctrinal Approach
to the Book of Mormon [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1962], 6)