I was going to try to do this all in one post, but after a couple months of working on it, it turns out I just have way too much to say, so I’m going to try again to write a series (I don’t have a great track record of finishing those).
Hopefully this will be different because this topic has just been weighing on my soul. It’s the first thing in a long time that I’ve felt I have to write. I think that's why I decided to make it the initial post on this new blog. There’s a big part of me that doesn’t really want to write it, but I feel compelled by my faith, by my knowledge, and by my conscience to do so. So here goes. In the first two parts, I’ll lay the groundwork. In the later parts, I’ll build on that foundation to make some specific points about things we’re all going through lately. But more on that later. Let’s put down a beginning.
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Growing up, I was always taught The Book of Mormon was written for our day. There was even a song about it:
A light for our time
To brighten our minds
It gives sight to the blind
In our day when people hunger
For our time, when good men wander
A book is designed
To give help divine
For our day.
Between seminary and the EFY albums my family had, I heard this song a lot. We were taught this idea in church, too. The Book of Mormon was a record of ancient things, but compiled under the inspiration of God by a prophet who had seen the times in which we live and was sending us the messages we would need. Mormon himself says as much in these sobering words:
“Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing” (Mormon 8:35).
But why should Mormon have such a good idea of what messages we would need? I mean apart from being divinely inspired. People can and do misinterpret the word of God, and Mormon is looking at us from a dozen centuries away, having no understanding of our language, culture, technology, or other unique things about our times. What gives him the insight, or frankly the right, to judge and advise us in this way?
If I learned anything from my most recent study of the Old Testament, it’s that God works through each prophet according to their own personalities, strengths, and natural tendencies. Some of them get crafty object lessons, (Jeremiah). Some have dramatic, theatrical experiences (Elijah), some see strange visions (Ezekiel, Daniel), and some have their entire lives, and those of their families, turned into an object lesson (Isaiah). Once in a while, one even gets some straightforward verbal communication (Samuel). In all of those cases, the prophet’s individual ways of understanding and interacting with the world are critical to how they receive God’s word, and how their message is delivered.
This is even more easily apparent with modern prophets. You don’t need to think any further than Elder Uchtdorf and his endearing aviation analogies to see my point. Also consider these words of Nephi:
“For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding” (2 Nephi 31:3).
So what makes Mormon particularly suited to write/compile/abridge a book intended for an audience who wouldn’t even be born for another millennium? Well, for the best answer you’d have to ask God, but if I had to take a stab at it, it’s that Mormon was in a unique position to perceive how many of the things we would have to live through are the same things his people lived through. He also had the temperament to do it.
“I began to be learned somewhat after the manner of the learning of my people…and Ammaron said unto me: I perceive that thou art a sober child, and art quick to observe…” (Mormon 1:1).
That’s a proclivity that would serve him well as he observed the destruction of his people, and warned us about the potential for ours. Hopefully it goes better for us than it did for the Nephites.
But it’s more than that too. I’ve often been struck by the term “prophet-historian,” used to describe Mormon and other Book of Mormon writers. A historian’s expertise, as I understand it, is in uncovering and interpreting the past. Some historians I know of have a goal of using what they discover to better understand the present, but I think most of them stay away from the realm of the future, except perhaps to inform their own or other people’s opinions about possibilities, based on historical trends.
You know that old saying that whoever doesn’t learn from the past is doomed to repeat it? Like that. The responsible historians seem to eschew outright prediction, but they sometimes temper dire current events with hope, or warn of emergent patterns that bear a resemblance to troublesome episodes of history.
Prophets on the other hand are defined by prediction. Promises and warnings, the knowing of the unknowable, the responsibility to communicate to humans what only God can see. Prophets are all about the future.
And yet, have you ever noticed how often prophets call on people to remember the past? Few prophetic admonitions are proclaimed more loudly in the Book of Mormon than this: remember. Remember what happened, and hold to the promises. Remember what the Lord did, what He said about it, and think about how you want things to go. This is what the prophets often teach. Because, they tell us, it’s our agency that drives things here. These, they say, are the principles at play. Here are the stakes. The promises of the Lord are constant, so how this goes is up to you. These words from Samuel, the Lamanitish prophet, are just one of many possible examples:
“And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free” (Helaman 14:30).
From that perspective, “prophet-historian” seems like a natural combination. It unites studious remembrance of the past with prophetic vision of the future like two sides of the same coin: one side human and one divine. Mormon (and others, but especially Mormon), had the lived experiences and personal proclivities that would make him an astute observer of and commentator on his people. He had access from an early age to a trove of records covering about 1000 years of his people’s history, and he studied them diligently. He knew of his people’s founding, of their periodic greatness, and their occasional depravity. He understood their cycles of righteousness and prosperity, then iniquity and destruction. He was personally living through their ultimate fall. Pair that far-reaching understanding of his past and present with a divinely gifted vision of the future we inhabit, in all its precariousness, and it’s easy to see why Mormon would be inclined to want to speak to us.
He must have thought we were in a similar boat. He would have things to say.
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This is where I'll stop things for now. In Part 2, I'll talk about the context of the Book of Mormon. Thanks for reading.
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