I think I've got a mini-series going now. This is a good thing, since having a theme helps me think of ideas of things to blog about.
In addition to telling the Nephites about the signs of Christ's birth, Samuel the Lamanite also told them about about the signs of Christ's death. What struck me most about these two sets of signs is how much more intense the death signs were than the birth signs.
In the Americas, when Jesus Christ was born, they experienced a night in which the sky didn't darken. They had a day and a night and a day that all seemed to be one especially long day.
The death signs in the Americas included three days of darkness. It wasn't just a night and a day and a night that seemed to be one night; the effect lasted much longer than that. Also, the effect was more powerful. While you probably could have gone inside or underground to get away from the luminous birth sign, you could not have generated any visible light during the darkening death sign. All lights were extinguished and no new light could be made, so while the birth sign generated a short period of time in which I think natural shadows were still cast, the death signs included a much longer period of total darkness. And to top it all off, the three days of darkness were preceded by fires, storms, and earthquakes.
The rest of the world got the storms and earthquakes, too, but it was spared from experiencing the three days of darkness. However, it was also deprived of the night of light, and only given a new star as their birth sign, which the Americans got, too. No matter which side of the world you were on, the signs of Christ's death were far more intense than the signs of his birth.
Why is that? Why would the signs of the Savior's death be more intense than the signs of his birth? Here, I have only speculation. Feel free to add your two cents in a comment below. One thought is that Christ's death may have been more significant than His birth, but I seriously doubt it. The birth of Jesus Christ was a pretty big deal, and though Jesus' death was also a big deal, I don't think its deal was quite as big, mostly because the earthquakes and darkness took place a while after the Atonement, the days of darkness didn't end until Christ was resurrected. If I were to place astrological signs around the time of Christ's death, I would be just as likely to celebrate His resurrection as to lament His death.
Another possibility is that God wanted to keep Christ's birth relatively low-key so as not to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. The birth sign in Bethlehem was so subtle, people could have easily missed it, and thousands did. As a result, Jesus gained a following for the things He did and the things He taught, not because His birth coincided with a display of astrological theatrics. For Christ to fulfil His purpose in mortality, He needed to not make Himself too obvious. However, once His and His Father's purposes were accomplished, there was no longer a need to keep things under wraps, hence the signs of His death being far more intense than the sign of His birth.
However, that doesn't explain why His death signs were so much more intense in the Americas than His birth sign there had been.Since they were already in on the big secret, they didn't need a big reveal. Perhaps the intensity of the death signs in the Americas was partly to punish them for their iniquities? As I recall, they were fairly wicked at that time, though I could be remembering incorrectly.
As I mentioned, I don't know the answer here. Any guess I make now is really just a guess. I'm sure that we will someday learn why the signs of Christ's death were more intense than those of his birth, and then it will all make sense to us. But until then, I just thought that the difference would be interesting to point out and think about, if only for an hour or so.
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