=1. What is the Book of Mormon?=--The claims made for the Book of
Mormon affirm it to be a divinely inspired record, made by the
prophets of the ancient peoples who inhabited the American continent
for centuries before and immediately after the time of Christ; which
record has been translated in the present generation through the gift
of God and by His special appointment. The authorized and inspired
translator of these sacred scriptures, through whose instrumentality
they have been given to the world in modern language, is Joseph Smith,
whose first acquaintance with the plates was mentioned in the first
lecture.[768] As stated, on the 21st of September, 1823, Joseph Smith
received, in answer to fervent prayer, a visitation from an angelic
personage, who gave his name as Moroni; subsequent revelations showed
him to be the last of a long line of prophets whose translated
writings constitute the Book of Mormon; by him the ancient records had
been closed; by him the graven plates had been deposited in the earth;
and through his ministration they were brought into the possession of
the modern prophet and seer whose work of translation is now before
us.
[768] See pages 10, 17.
=2.= On the occasion of Moroni's first visit to Joseph Smith, the
angelic visitor declared the existence of the record, which, he said,
was engraved on plates of gold, at that time lying buried in the side
of a hill near Joseph's home. The hill, which was known by one
division of the ancient peoples as Cumorah, by another as Ramah, is
situated near Palmyra in the county of Wayne, State of New York. The
precise spot where the plates lay was shown to Joseph in vision; and
he had no difficulty in finding it on the day following the visitation
referred to. Joseph's statement of Moroni's declaration concerning the
plates is as follows:--"He said there was a book deposited, written
upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this
continent, and the source from which they sprang. He also said that
the fulness of the everlasting gospel was contained in it, as
delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants. Also, that there
were two stones in silver bows, (and these stones, fastened to a
breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim),
deposited with the plates; and the possession and use of these stones
was what constituted Seers in ancient or former times; and that God
had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book."[769]
[769] Pearl of Great Price: Extr. Hist. of Joseph Smith, 34-35.
=3.= Joseph found a large stone at the indicated spot on the hill
Cumorah; beneath the stone was a box, also of stone; the lid of this
he raised by means of a lever; then he saw within the box the plates,
and the breastplate with the Urim and Thummim, as described by the
angel. As he was about to remove the contents of the box, Moroni again
appeared before him, and forbade him taking the sacred things at that
time, saying that four years must pass before they would be committed
to his personal care; and that, in the meantime, Joseph would be
required to visit the place at yearly intervals; this the youthful
revelator did, receiving on each occasion additional instruction
concerning the record and God's purposes with it. On the 22nd of
September, 1827, Joseph received from the angel Moroni the plates and
the Urim and Thummim with the breastplate. He was instructed to guard
them with strict care, and was promised that if he used his best
efforts to protect them they would be preserved inviolate in his
hands; and that on the completion of the labor of translation, Moroni
would visit him again, and receive the plates.
=4.= The reason prompting the angelic caution regarding Joseph's care
of the treasures soon appeared; thrice in the course of his short
journey homeward with the sacred relics, he was attacked; but by
Divine aid he was enabled to withstand his assailants and finally
reached his home with the plates and other articles unharmed. These
attacks were but the beginning of a siege of persecution which was
relentlessly waged against him by the powers of evil as long as the
plates remained in his custody. News that he had the golden record in
his possession soon spread; and numerous attempts, many of them
violent, were made to wrest the plates from his hands. But they were
preserved; and, slowly, with many hindrances incident to persecution
by the wicked, and to the conditions of his own poverty which made it
necessary for him to toil and left little leisure for the appointed
labor, Joseph proceeded with the translation; and in 1830 the Book of
Mormon was first published to the world.
=5. The Title Page of the Book of Mormon.=--Our best answer to the
question: What is the Book of Mormon? is found on the title page to
the volume. Thereon we read:
"The Book of Mormon: an account written by the hand of Mormon,
upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi. Wherefore it is an
abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the
Lamanites; written to the Lamanites who are a remnant of the
house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile: written by way of
commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of
revelation. Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that
they might not be destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power
of God unto the interpretation thereof: sealed by the hand of
Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by
the way of Gentile; the interpretation thereof by the gift of
God.
"An abridgment taken from the book of Ether also; which is a
record of the people of Jared; who were scattered at the time the
Lord confounded the language of the people when they were
building a tower to get to heaven; which is to show unto the
remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath
done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of
the Lord, that they are not cast off forever; and also to the
convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the
Eternal God, manifesting Himself unto all nations. And now, if
there are faults, they are the mistakes of men: wherefore condemn
not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the
judgment seat of Christ."
This combined title and preface is a translation from the last page of
the plates, and was presumably written by Moroni, who, as before
stated, sealed and hid up the book in former days.[770]
[770] See Note 1.
=6. Main Divisions of the Book.=--From the title page, we learn that
in the Book of Mormon we have to deal with the histories of two great
nations, who flourished in America as the descendants of small
colonies brought hither from the eastern continent by Divine
direction. Of these we may conveniently speak as the Nephites and the
Jaredites.
=7. The Nephite Nation= was the later, and in point of the fulness of
the records, the more important. The progenitors of this nation were
led from Jerusalem 600 B. C., by Lehi, a Jewish prophet of the tribe
of Manasseh. His immediate family, at the time of their departure from
Jerusalem, comprised his wife Sariah, and their sons Laman, Lemuel,
Sam, and Nephi; at a later stage of the history, daughters are
mentioned, but whether any of these were born before the family exodus
we are not told. Beside his own family, the colony of Lehi included
Zoram and Ishmael, the latter an Israelite of the tribe of Ephraim.
Ishmael, with his family, joined Lehi in the wilderness; and his
descendants were numbered with the nation of whom we are speaking. The
company journeyed somewhat east of south, keeping near the borders of
the Red Sea; then, changing their course to the eastward, crossed the
peninsula of Arabia; and there, on the shores of the Arabian Sea,
built and provisioned a vessel in which they committed themselves to
Divine care upon the waters. Their voyage carried them eastward across
the Indian Ocean, then over the south Pacific Ocean to the western
coast of South America, whereon they landed (590 B. C.). The landing
place is not described with such detail as to warrant definite
conclusions.
=8.= The people established themselves on what to them was the land of
promise; many children were born, and in the course of a few
generations a numerous posterity held possession of the land. After
the death of Lehi, a division occurred, some of the people accepting
as their leader Nephi, who had been duly appointed to the prophetic
office; while the rest proclaimed Laman, the eldest of Lehi's sons, as
their chief. Henceforth the divided people were known as Nephites and
Lamanites respectively. At times they observed toward each other
fairly friendly relations; but generally they were opposed, the
Lamanites manifesting implacable hatred and hostility toward their
Nephite kindred. The Nephites advanced in the arts of civilization,
built large cities, and established prosperous commonwealths; yet they
often fell into transgression; and the Lord chastened them by
permitting their foes to be victorious. They spread northward,
occupying the northern part of South America; then, crossing the
Isthmus, they extended their domain over the southern, central, and
eastern portions of what is now the United States of America. The
Lamanites, while increasing in numbers, fell under the curse of
darkness; they became dark in skin and benighted in spirit, forgot the
God of their fathers, lived a wild nomadic life, and degenerated into
the fallen state in which the American Indians,--their lineal
descendants,--were found by those who re-discovered the western
continent in later times.
=9.= The final struggles between Nephites and Lamanites were waged in
the vicinity of the hill Cumorah, in what is now the state of New
York, resulting in the entire destruction of the Nephites, about 400
A. D. The last Nephite representative was Moroni, who, wandering for
safety from place to place, daily expecting death from the victorious
Lamanites, who had decreed the absolute extinction of their white
kindred, wrote the concluding parts of the Book of Mormon, hid the
record in Cumorah, and soon thereafter died. It was this same Moroni
who, as a resurrected being, gave the records into the hands of Joseph
Smith in the present dispensation.
=10. The Jaredite Nation.=--Of the two nations whose histories
constitute the Book of Mormon, the first in order of time consisted of
the people of Jared, who followed their leader from the Tower of Babel
at the time of the confusion of tongues. Their history was written on
twenty-four plates of gold by Ether, the last of their prophets, who,
fore-seeing the destruction of his people because of their wickedness,
hid away the historical plates. They were afterward found, B. C. 123,
by an expedition sent out by King Limhi, a Nephite ruler. The record
engraved on these plates was subsequently abridged by Moroni, and the
condensed account was attached by him to the Book of Mormon record;
it appears in the modern translation under the name of the Book of
Ether.
=11.= The first and chief prophet of the Jaredites is not mentioned by
name in the record as we have it; he is known only as the brother of
Jared. Of the people, we learn that, amid the confusion of Babel,
Jared and his brother importuned the Lord that He would spare them and
their associates from the impending disruption. Their prayer was
heard, and the Lord led them with a considerable company, who, like
themselves, were free from the taint of idolatry, away from their
homes, promising to conduct them to a land choice above all other
lands. Their course of travel is not given with exactness; we learn
only that they reached the ocean, and there constructed eight vessels,
called barges, in which they set out upon the waters. These vessels
were small and dark within; but the Lord made luminous certain stones,
which gave light to the imprisoned voyagers. After a passage of three
hundred and forty-four days, the colony landed on the western shore of
North America, possibly south of the Gulf of California, and north of
the Isthmus of Panama.
=12.= Here they became a flourishing nation; but, giving way in time
to internal dissensions, they divided into factions, which warred with
one another until the people were totally destroyed. This destruction,
which occurred near the hill Ramah, afterward known among the Nephites
as Cumorah, probably took place at about the time of Lehi's landing in
South America,--590 B. C. The last representative of the ill-fated
race was Coriantumr, the former king, concerning whom Ether had
prophesied that he should survive all his subjects, and live to see
another people in possession of the land. This prediction was
fulfilled in that the king, whose people had become extinct, came, in
the course of his solitary wanderings, to a region occupied by the
people of Mulek, who are to be mentioned here as the third ancient
colony of emigrants from the eastern continent.
=13.= _Mulek_, we are told, was the son of Zedekiah, king of Judah, an
infant at the time of his brothers' violent deaths and his father's
cruel torture at the hands of the king of Babylon.[771] Eleven years
after Lehi's departure from Jerusalem, another colony was led from the
city, amongst whom was Mulek. His name has been given to the people,
probably on account of his recognized rights of leadership by virtue
of his lineage. The Book of Mormon record concerning Mulek and his
people is scant; we learn, however, that the colony was brought across
the waters, to a landing on the northern part of the continent. The
descendants of this colony were discovered by the Nephites under
Mosiah; they had grown numerous, but, having had no scriptures for
their guidance, had fallen into a condition of spiritual darkness.
They joined the Nephites, and their history is merged into that of the
greater nation.[772] The Nephites gave to North America the name Land
of Mulek.
[771] See II Kings xxv, 7.
[772] Omni i, 12-19.