WORDS OF MORMON - A BRIDGE OF CLARIFICATION

Fast forward to 385 A.D., over 500 years after the time of Amaliki. The Nephite Nation is in grave peril because of wickedness that can hardly be described.  Mormon, the great Nephite prophet, has been working for decades compiling and editing the massive amounts of records in his possesion.  He knows that he will soon die, most likely in the great battle now raging.  He wants to give the stewardship of 1000 years of Nephite history and doctrine to his son Moroni.  But he has some concerns.  While he is finishing he abridgement of the large set of plates from the days of Lehi to Amaliki, he finds another, smaller record, of the people of Lehi.  He is inspired by God to attach the small set of plates to the large abridgment he has been making.  He doesn't know why, only the God commands, so he obeys.

Mormon wrote the Words of Mormon many hundred years after the coming of Christ. (Words of Mormon 1:2) So why did he insert them into the book where he did?  Let's look at the plates used by Mormon in his abridgement. Given all of this, it is no wonder Mormon wrote I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people! (Words of Mormon 1:5)

The books we have studied thus far are from the small plates of Nephi. They contain somewhat of the history of the people, but their primary focus was on the spiritual, prophetic doctrines of the gospel. When Nephi created the small plates, he said, I do not write anything upon the plates save it be that I think it to be sacred. (1 Nephi 19:6) The larger plates contained the temporal history of Lehi's family. 

Mormon wanted his readers to know about the multiple sources used and the authenticity of those sources.  He wanted them to understand their history, but more importantly, he wanted his readers, especially those descended from Lehi, to read about the prophecies of the coming of Christ and the fulfillment of those prophecies.  He said that the things which he wrote were pleasing to him.  

We know from the rest of the Book of Mormon how pleasing and prophetic were the things he chose to write.  His son, Moroni, witnessed the total destruction of the Nephites, including the death of his father, then added to the record.  He shared letters that his father, Mormon, had written to him explaining doctrine which had become distorted and misunderstood by the Nephites of his day.  Blessing our lives, these things are the same things which have been distorted within Christianity.  He restored many of the plain and precious truths that were lost through the annals of time, sometimes accidentally, but other times deliberately.

I am grateful to Mormon for his life's work, particularly given the unsettling times in which he lives.  I cannot imaging the immensity of the task he undertook. We also live in unsettling times full of wickedness and sin. One of the things for which I am particularly grateful is the fact that Mormon inserted his own thoughts to the text at critical junctures.  According to modern standards, that makes him a poor editor.  But I don't look at this by man's standards, but by God's.   Here was a man who had seen his entire civilization - friends and family alike - utterly destroyed because of their apostasy and wickedness.  Mormon knew that in the day that his abridgment would come forth, people - we - would also be on the verge of destruction through wickedness in our society.  So when Mormon added, and thus we see, he is driving home a point.  I would like to reread the book and underline every instance when he writes and thus we see.  I think it would help me know what is most important.

© April 2020 Dr. Kathleen Rawlings Buntin Danielson