Jeffrey R. Holland writes that the Book of Mormon prophet who probably thought about scriptural symbolism and taught it more effectively than any other is Abinadi. Very early he warned King Noah that whatever Noah would do to him would be "a type and a shadow of things which are to come" (Mosiah 13:10), and indeed it was.
Abinadi also stressed that the performances and ordinances of the law of Moses "were types of things to come" (Mosiah 13:31) and shadows "of those things which are to come" (Mosiah 16:14). But the most striking symbolic statement Abinadi ever made was his own living pre-figuration of Christ.
Consider these foreshadowing links and parallel possibilities between Abinadi, the first Book of Mormon martyr, and Christ, the great and last sacrifice.
Abinadi
Type/Shadow
Christ
Mosiah 11:20
Called to preach repentance to those sinning
Matthew 9:13
Mosiah 11:21-23; 12:1-8
To deny message was to be afflicted by the hand of enemies and brought into bondage
Matthew 23:37-38; 24:3-51
Mosiah 11:20-25
Denounced unbelievers in public discourse
Matthew 2:39
Mosiah 12:9
Stood alone against accusers
Matthew 26:56
Mosiah 12:17-18
Bound and taken before religious priests and political ruler
John 18:12-40
Mosiah 12:19
Cross-examined
Matthew 26:59-60
Mosiah 13:1
Dismissed as mad
John 10:20
Mosiah 13:6
Spoke with power and authority
Matthew 7:28-29
Mosiah 13:7
Could not be slain until message / mission was completed
John 10:17-18
Mosiah 17:6
Three-day imprisonment (entombment)
Luke 24:4-8, 46
Mosiah 17:8
Condemned for blasphemy
Matthew 26:63-66
Mosiah 17:9
Would not recall words
Matthew 27:12-14
Mosiah 17:10
Innocent blood
Matthew 27:24
Mosiah 17:11-12
Leader tempted to release him but yielded to detractors and delivered him to be slain
John 18:4-25
Abinadi is the most extensively developed prophetic prefiguration of Christ in the Book of Mormon and one of the most conspicuously developed types in any of the scriptures. And it is yet another conspicuous irony that he, like Christ, died lamenting that those who claimed a belief in the law of Moses could not recognize the Messianic teachings--to say nothing of the Messiah himself--toward which that law in its purity had always been directed. [Jeffrey R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant, pp. 171-173]