The Book of Mormon: A Summary

Moroni Buries the golden plates of The  Book of Mormon

I love The Book of Mormon. I’ve never read a book which so consistently inspires me and opens up my mind to so many more possibilities and ideas. I’ve never heard of a book that is re-read as often as that book, either. It is common in the LDS faith for Mormons to read and re-read The Book of Mormon time and time again for the span of their entire lives. What is it about the Book that has this effect on its readers? I will give an answer that speaks from my personal experience.

First off, what is the Book of Mormon, exactly? It is the corner stone of the LDS faith - in fact, Mormons are called Mormons because in the early days of their church, their detractors called them that because of their very belief in the Book. Not all members of the LDS faith are very fond of the term, ‘Mormon,’ because that is not the actual name of our church or of those who are members of it. Mormon was actually a prophet who compiled the records of his people and abridged them to create The Book of Mormon.

That opens up another question: who were Mormon’s people? Mormon was one of the last survivors of a great civilization of people who called themselves the people of Nephi, or Nephites. They were descendants of a Hebrew prophet named Nephi, who escaped with his family from Jerusalem shortly before it was destroyed by the Babylonians around 600 B.C. under the reign of Zedekiah. Nephi’s Father, who was called Lehi, was a prophet in Jerusalem, but the Hebrews there rejected their traditional religious tenets and their prophets. They tried to murder the prophets who preached repentance, and so Lehi was told in a dream to flee with his wife and children into the wilderness to escape the imminent, wickedness-induced destruction of Jerusalem.

Nephi was one of Lehi’s younger sons, and he loved God and was obedient to the commandments that God gave Lehi’s family while they were traveling in the wilderness. Nephi’s older brothers, Laman and Lemuel, were disobedient and rebelled against their father. This caused a lot of sorrow and hardship in Lehi’s family as they journeyed in the wilderness for eight years.

At the end of that eight years, Lehi’s family had made it to the shores of the sea. The Lord commanded Nephi to build a ship, for the Lord had a promised land in store for the descendants of Lehi. Nephi obeyed, and he and Lehi’s family boarded the ship and set sail in the direction God commanded them to go. This led them to the Americas, which Mormons believe is a promised land where men are to be free and to serve God. Insofar as the peoples inhabiting the Americas are righteous, God-fearing people, they are able to remain free and be prosperous in the land. However, when they drift away from God and His statutes, their freedoms become restricted, their prosperity wanes, and the protection of God’s hand is lifted. Calamities befall the people until they remember God and cease to break his commandments and statutes.

This is a central theme in The Book of Mormon. Over the centuries after the arrival of Lehi and Nephi in the promised land, their descendants wax and wane in their faithfulness to God. During the times that the people of Nephi become wicked, they are scourged by their enemies, the Lamanites, who are the descendants of Nephi’s wicked brothers, Laman and Lemuel. The Lord uses the wild and ferocious Lamanites as a tool to humble the Nephites, for the Nephites are in possession of the holy scriptures and God’s laws, and therefore have no excuse to commit wickedness.

As the centuries go on, the Nephites spiral downward into a more consistantly wicked people. They more often forget God and pursue ungodly courses of action, such as adultery, idolatry, murder, prejudice, dishonesty and other forms of sin. As their society decays, their enemies tend more often to gain the upper hand and threaten to destroy them. Even the Lamanites begin to obey the words of their prophets and become more righteous than their Nephite counterparts.

Prophets constantly preach that the Nephites will be destroyed from the earth if they don’t cease their evil-doing. They preach that Christ will be born in the lands of their forefathers, and that the Nephites must be ready for a personal visit from the resurrected Christ. Few listen to the words of the prophets.

The time finally comes when an immense destruction comes upon the Lamanites and the Nephites. Not a final destruction, but a cleansing destruction. At this point in time, the land has become overrun by a secret band of robbers who have covenanted with one another that they might murder those they oppose and take control of the government. Most people reject the messages of the prophets regarding Jesus Christ. Many prophets are murdered by the people as they preach. As a sign of the crucifixion of Christ in another hemisphere, great storms and earthquakes scourge the lands of the Nephites and Lamanites, and the more wicked people are destroyed along with their cities. The land becomes dark, the people are miserable, and they realize that had they accepted the message of Christ, they would not have had to face such terrible tragedy.

It is in that moment of humiliation and as their hearts begin to soften toward the message of Christianity, that they hear a voice and see a light, and the resurrected Christ, in His glory and majesty, descends from heaven to minister to the Nephites.

Christ spends several days with the Nephites, preaching the gospel as he preached it to the Jews in the Middle East. He gives the Nephites the authority to represent Him and run His church in their lands. He calls Nephites to be apostles and serve and baptise among the Nephites. The people are so moved by the words and blessings of the Savior that they forsake evil and overcome sin on a civilization-wide level. They weep when the Savior departs and returns to His heavenly realm.

I don’t believe we have any record of any people who are so universally effected by religious experience as were the Nephites. After Christ’s departure, the Nephites actively build the Kingdom of God and remain a happy, peaceful, God-fearing people for over two hundred years. The lesson is that civilisation can exist in peace and harmony as long as it embraces the tenets of Christ’s doctrine.

But after the first two to three centuries following Christ’s ministry to the Nephites, the dissensions and working of evil begins again in the Nephite society. The people once again divide themselves into political parties, Nephite and Lamanite, and wars are waged. Christ is rejected by both the Nephites and the Lamanites, but the Nephites become the most wicked of the two groups. Within four hundred years, the Nephites have managed to nearly destroy themselves. Prophets preach that they will shortly be wiped out by their enemies if they don’t cease to do evil and return to the fold of God.

As mentioned earlier, Mormon is one of the last Nephites, and certainly among the last handful of righteous people in all of the lands occupied by Nephites and Lamanites. He is called upon by God to take the historical and religious records that have been kept by his people since the days of Nephi one thousand years earlier, and to abridge and compile the records. He does so, while simultaneously striving to save his people by preaching to them and by fighting for them with the sword. It is to no avail. His people will not harken to the words of God, but remain in their hatred toward their fellow men, desiring to battle and do wickedness until they are no more.

Mormon’s son, Moroni, is chosen to finish Mormon’s work and take the records of the Nephites and prepare them for future generations. Moroni takes the records and flees into the wilderness so that the Lamanites will not find him and kill him. He is the last Nephite alive, as far as he knows, and cannot allow himself to be killed before his work is done. Moroni completes the abridgement of the Nephite records, inserting some of his own writing, and buries the resulting book in a hill, knowing that the Lord will bring the book forth unto the Europeans who would settle there centuries later.

That book, The Book of Mormon, was intended for our modern day. Mormon and Moroni were prophets, and they wrote that they saw our day, for the Lord showed it to them so that they could include aspects of Nephite history that would relate to us and show us how to live through the problems that we face. It includes accounts of spiritual disputations and heresies, and the doctrines that refute them and lead back to the truth. It includes detailed summaries of social, political, and military conflicts and how they were resolved by prophets of the Lord who received guidance directly from the Lord  in those times of trial. All in all, The Book of Mormon is a manual for living in our troubled times, and it is inspired of God. It is overall a fascinating story comprised of smaller fascinating stories, and the stories are true.

I urge everyone everywhere to read The Book of Mormon. Find out for yourself if it is true. You don’t need to take my word for it. God can tell you whether or not it is true. In his closing passages, Moroni writes, “Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.  And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” (Moroni 10:3-5)

I know that this book is true because I followed the council of Moroni and prayed, wanting to know from God if the book is true. For if the book is true, then it is the most important book in the world, for it contains the knowledge necessary for living a life of complete discipleship. It clarifies the doctrines in the Bible that cause confusion. It restores knowledge that was otherwise lost over the centuries after Christ’s ministry. There is so much more to it than I’ve been able to describe here. All it all, it is exactly what it claims to be: Another Testament of Christ. Its purpose is to lead us to Him. It will lead you to Him if you embrace its teachings, which are correct.

You can read The Book of Mormon for free here: http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng

You can obtain a free printed copy from here: http://mormon.org/free-book-of-mormon