Mormon 8

After reading this chapter, I was trying to think of what to say. This chapter hit me rather hard. I was imagining myself in the place of Moroni. All alone. Literally. Having my people be totally destroyed. It sounds like a plot for fiction, a plot for a story, a plot for some TV show. But it was actual events more horrific than any fiction story.

Once upon a time, there was a man called Mormon who was one of the only good men left among all the inhabitants of the land. He was called to lead men into battle at the age of 16. In the midst of such leadership, he collected the records of all his people from beyond the beginning of their arrival in the Americas. He began his job of historian and summarizing his people's history. He noticed the similarities of his time with those of ancient times. He recognized the fulfillment of prophecies made hundreds of years pior. He knew that the people of his day were actively rejecting the guidance of God, such guidance that had saved his ancestors time and time again. Such guidance that, when rejected, brought dispair and destruction again and again among those in history. He knew it was going to happen again.

He saw all of his people die. He himself was killed in battle. His son saw this. His son, Moroni, also saw that those that had tried to escape were killed. Moroni was witness to the total destruction of his people. He was the only one left. He no longer had kindred. He no longer had friends. He no longer had anywhere to go. He no longer had a people. How long he was going to live, he didn't know. He was alone. His entire purpose is to "write the sad tale of the destruction of my people. But behold, they are gone, and I fulfill the commandment of my father. And whether they will slay me, I know not" (3).


I honestly believe what Elder L. Tom Perry said to be just as powerful.

"'Do you read the scriptures, my brethren and sisters, as though you were writing them a thousand, two thousand, or five thousand years ago? Do you read them as though you stood in the place of the men who wrote them? If you do not feel thus, it is your privilege to do so, that you may be as familiar with the spirit and meaning of the written word of God as you are with your daily walk and conversation' (Discourses of Brigham Young, comp. John A. Widtsoe, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1954, p. 128). 

"The Book of Mormon has many special accounts with lessons which can be applied to all ages. It is a book of great passion and feeling. Let us take Brigham Young’s advice and imagine we are standing in the place where Moroni, the last of the great Nephite prophets, stood. The assignment his father gave to him to complete the record, which was entrusted to his care, was very difficult. He must have been in a state of shock as he describes the total destruction of his people. 

"He must have felt compelled to describe how his people had been hunted by the Lamanites until they were all destroyed. In his feeling of loneliness, he reports that his father was among those who were killed. We sense that the only thing Moroni is living for is to complete the record, as he writes, 'Therefore I will write and hide up the records in the earth; and whither I go it mattereth not.' (Morm. 8:4.) 

"All he has is the faith that the Lord will preserve him long enough to complete the record and that someday it will be found by one chosen of the Lord. He realizes that the record will be a voice of warning to future generations of what occurs when nations like his own turn away from the teachings of the Lord. It is from the depths of his heart that Moroni cries out to those who will eventually receive the record. He wants to spare those who read his account the heartache and misery which comes from disobedience. 

"He writes first to the members of the Church and then to those who have not embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ. Moroni’s last words to the members of the Church are written as a voice of warning. He writes as one who sees the history of his people repeating itself in the future" (“Behold, the Lord Hath Shown unto Me Great and Marvelous Things”).

Please recognize the importance of this book. So much has been sacrificed so that we may have access to this book. It took centuries upon centuries of written record, compiled into one book by a father and son who saw the entire destruction of their people. A son who then buried the record so that the world may know their story and know of the glory of God. His great love for us.