The Promise of the Book of Mormon

Author Jerry Ainsworth wrote of Moroni:

Of all the voices that speak to us from the annals of ancient America, none is more eloquent than Moroni's.  His words ring with a heartfelt vibrancy, having been forged in the crucible of a holocaust and tempered by his foreknowledge of events ranging far into the future.  Many of those future events would themselves depend on Moroni's successful completion of his ministry. [1]

Moroni was a soldier, the son of the greatest military leader in Book of Mormon history.  He was named after Captain Moroni, a great military and spiritual leader from earlier Nephite history.  Like the first Moroni, he was a very spiritual man as well as a soldier, proving that the two things are not mutually exclusive.  He left his father sometime after the Battle of Cumorah, taking Mormon's unfinished abridgement of the Nephite records with him.

Moroni completed his father's record.  He wrote:

My father hath been slain in battle, and all my kinsfolk, and I have not friends, nor wither to go: and how long the Lord will suffer that I may live, I know not . . . For I am alone. (Mormon 8:5)

Moroni wrote that once the Nephites were all slain (remembering that many of them defected to the Lamanites) the Lamanites began to war amongst themselves for possession of the conquered territories.  Moroni continued to travel northward to escape them.  Where he went, we do not know for sure, but undoubtedly he passed through much of what is now the southwestern United States, traveling in a roughly northeastern direction.  He was able to find ore to make additional plates upon which he wrote his own book and his translation of the records of an earlier Mesoamerican people, the Jaradites/Olmecs.

After many years, he prepared the plates for burial.  He fashioned a stone box with a stone lid and placed the plates and the few remaining Nephites' precious artifacts in the box and buried them. 

The last verses he wrote have come to be known as the Promise of the Book of Mormon:

And I seal up these records, after I have spoken a few words by way of exhortation unto you.

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: 2-5)

 

I followed Moroni's invitation when I was 18 years old and the Holy Ghost did reveal the truthfulness of the work to me at that time.  Since then, I have added a lot of head knowledge about the book, much of which I have shared with you these past few months, but the heart knowledge and the spiritual knowing have never left me in the over 50 years since.  I hope you are enjoying my ramblings and notes, but the only way to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon (if you haven't done so already) is the follow Moroni's exhortation and learn of the Promise of the Book of Mormon yourself.

 

[1] The Life and Travels of Mormon and Moroni, Jerry L. Ainsworth Peacemakers Publishing 2000. p. 201

 

Text copyright Gebara Education February 2014

 

Pictures www.lds.org

except

book cover from Peacemakers Publishing, artist David Lindsley