Chapter 4

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Editor’s Note:  Several civilizations lived on the American continent over the centuries, and each of them was eventually decimated or destroyed. Does a similar fate await us?  Author Douglas E. Brinley describes ten stages of decline through which all of the previous societies passed through before they were destroyed, and he compares our current circumstances to theirs.  His book, serialized here, provides insights that give us hope in a time of upheaval, and offers timely counsel on what we must do to avoid the fate that befell former civilizations.

The four principal authors of the Book of Mormon were impressive record keepers. Mormon, after whom the book is named, is responsible for 63 percent of the text. His son Moroni, who was one of the last surviving Nephites, accounted for 10 percent of the record. Nephi began recording his account after arriving in the promised land and is responsible for 22 percent of the present volume. Jacob, his younger brother, contributed 4 percent to the volume.

Other authors at the end of the small plates of Nephi include Enos, Jarom, Omni, Amaron, Chemish, Abinadom, and Amaleki, who was born during the reign of Mosiah, the father of King Benjamin. Amaleki wrote about his own day, and he lived to witness King Benjamin bring peace to the ­war-­torn land. Before his death, Amaleki explained why he delivered the small set of gold plates to the king: “Having no seed, and knowing King Benjamin to be a just man before the Lord, wherefore, I shall deliver up these plates unto him” (Omni 1:25). The two records of Nephi, the small and large plates, were now together in the possession of the righteous monarch.

Each Author Receives a Visitation from the Savior

Each of the four major authors of the Book of Mormon had a visitation from Jesus Christ. Mormon wrote of his experience, “And I, being fifteen years of age and being somewhat of a sober mind, therefore I was visited of the Lord, and tasted and knew of the goodness of Jesus” (Mormon 1:15; italics added). The Lord apparently added an assignment to that given him by Ammaron to “engrave on the [large] plates of Nephi all the things that ye have observed concerning this people” in the ­fourteen-­year period to follow (Mormon 1:4). The young prophet ended up abridging a millennium of earlier writings from Lehi down to his own day of calamity.

Mormon’s son, Moroni, referred to his experience with the Savior. In a farewell to the Gentiles, he said that at the Judgment “shall ye know that I have seen Jesus, and that he hath talked with me face to face, and that he told me in plain humility, even as a man telleth another in mine own language, concerning these things” (Ether 12:39; italics added).

Nephi strongly desired to “know of the mysteries of God,” and in his quest to learn the will of the Lord, he said: “I, Nephi, being exceedingly young ... and also having great desires to know of the mysteries of God, wherefore I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father” (1 Nephi 2:16; italics added). Nephi also recorded that heavenly messengers visited him (2 Nephi 4:24–25), and he acknowledged that both he and his younger brother Jacob had seen the Savior: “For he [Isaiah] verily saw my Redeemer, even as I have seen him. And my brother, Jacob, also has seen him as I have seen him” (2 Nephi 11:2–3).

That the younger Jacob was familiar with the premortal Christ is also attested by Lehi in a blessing, when the patriarch acknowledged that this son born in the wilderness had “beheld in thy youth his glory” (2 Nephi 2:4; italics added). That Jacob was ­well ­acquainted with the Lord is plain from his writings (Jacob 1:5–7; 2:9, 11).

Each Author Saw Our Day

The Book of Mormon was intended primarily for the ­latter-­day inhabitants of the land. The Nephites had already been destroyed when the record was completed, and the Lamanites would have destroyed the plates had they had access to them (Mormon 6:6). The message of the book, therefore, is primarily directed to the ­latter-­day “Gentiles, Jews, and Lamanites,” as each writer was aware that his own people would not repent nor profit from his writings. They spoke specifically to us about their concerns. Mormon, living toward the end of the Nephite civilization, explained why he added the small plates of Nephi to his record without abridging them:

In the book of 3 Nephi, we see that Mormon was familiar with our day because he bluntly chastised the ­latter-­day Gentiles for their lack of spirituality and wickedness:

Moroni, too, spoke plainly of our day and of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon:

Moroni chronicled our day of materialism, clearly warning us of the conditions that would test the spiritual resolve of the ­Latter-­day Saints while the Gentiles stumbled spiritually.

Nephi wrote, “The Lord God promised unto me that these things which I write shall be kept and preserved, and handed down unto my seed, from generation to generation” (2 Nephi 25:21). He saw the conditions of our day, and he cautioned those who would write after him that they were not to “occupy these plates with things which are not of worth unto the children of men” (1 Nephi 6:6). From what he recorded of his own experience, together with an extensive commentary on Isaiah (2 Nephi 25-33), we see that he knew the conditions we face in these latter days. Nephi detailed the coming of the Gentiles to this land (1 Nephi 12-15). He also knew, sadly enough, that the Lamanites would be the Lord’s agent to sweep his own people from the land.

Jacob, who succeeded Nephi as a recorder, outlined the charge given him: “Nephi gave me, Jacob, a commandment concerning the small plates, upon which these things are engraven. And he gave me, Jacob, a commandment that I should write upon these plates a few of the things which I considered to be most precious; that I should not touch, save it were lightly, concerning the history of this people ... For he said that the history of his people should be engraven upon his other plates” (Jacob 1:1-3). Jacob, like his brother Nephi, quoted and commented on a number of Isaiah’s writings that pertain to our day. He provided insights and observations concerning the state of the ­latter-­day Gentiles (2 Nephi 6-10). One of his most perceptive comments was “this land shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings upon the land, who shall raise up unto the Gentiles” (2 Nephi 10:11). That modern America has never had a king is in itself a marvel, given the political background of the colonists before their victory over their “mother Gentiles” (1 Nephi 13:17).

Enos, the son of Jacob, knowing of the charge given to his father by Nephi, indicated that he knew that he too was writing to future generations (Enos 1:15-16).

Summary

The ­prophet-­scribes of the Book of Mormon were ­well ­qualified to counsel and warn us about what we must do to avoid the disasters that befell their people. Though much of what Nephi and Jacob wrote on the large plates would come to the attention of the Nephites and the Lamanites who would join the Church after the missions of the sons of Mosiah, the smaller plates were written and preserved only for the righteous who would receive the book in the latter days. Mormon abridged the large plates, selecting the information that would be of most worth to the people on the land in our day. He did not abridge the works written on the small plates by Nephi and those after him.

Mormon and Moroni were abridgers and commentators who had an urgent yearning to warn us of the pitfalls they could see in our day. Mormon explained his problem: “I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people” (Words of Mormon 1:5; see also Helaman 3:14; 3 Nephi 5:8; 26:6). Being limited in space and writing materials, Mormon could record only a portion of the records available to him. Having seen our day in vision, surely he would choose examples and experiences of his people and from earlier records that would be most relevant to those ­latter-­day people. President Ezra Taft Benson testified:

On another occasion, President Benson spoke of the writers of the Book of Mormon and explained:

Elder M. Russell Ballard commented on Moroni’s seeing our day:

We may have confidence in the integrity of those who wrote the Book of Mormon and of the record itself, as we read of the rise and fall of the people about whom they wrote and whom they sought desperately to turn back from destruction. Our task as ­Latter-­day Saints is to learn from these inspired authors what we may do to avoid the tragedies that befell their people. We cannot disregard the warnings of these prophets, for God made promises to those who pleaded with Him to preserve a record for future generations (Enos 1:16-18; D&C 10:46), and He did not disappoint His faithful disciples.

“I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion,” the ­latter-­day prophet Joseph Smith wrote, “and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book” (History of the Church, 4:461). The ­latter-­day seer could say that because these writings are relevant to us. The record was hidden for many centuries. Having been translated once (into English), this text gives us a better record of the principles of the gospel than we have in the Bible because of problems with its translation and transmission.