As we approach the end of Nephite civilization in our study, and as we approach the end of our own civilization in real life, it can be easy to succumb to gloomy, doomsday, apocalyptic thoughts. I try to always remember, however, Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s hopeful declaration:
Yes, there will be wrenching polarization on this planet, but also the remarkable reunion with our colleagues in Christ from the City of Enoch. Yes, nation after nation will become a house divided, but more and more unifying Houses of the Lord will grace this planet. Yes, Armageddon lies ahead. But so does Adam-ondi-Ahman!
As we consider how Mormon, Moroni, and the three Nephites became much better even as their civilization became much worse, we can find ultimate hope through the Atonement of Christ. Our ultimate hope, even in the midst of dashed proximate hopes, is found in our Savior Jesus Christ, He who was born into this world as a man, and He alone who perfectly understands our every mortal weakness, pain, and affliction.
When I think of Mormon, almost alone in his difficult task, surrounded by the worst wickedness, and recording the downfall and utter destruction of his civilization, I wonder how he was able to retain the “perfect brightness of hope” of which his great predecessor and forefather Nephi wrote. (2 Nephi 31:20) It was not easy.
When I read news of the calamities and wickedness in our own modern American society, such as Biden’s absurd and evil declaration of a “Transgender Day of Visibility,” I feel to lament along with Mormon:
aO ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you!
Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But behold, ye are fallen, and I amourn your loss.
O ye afair sons and daughters, ye fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have bfallen! (Mormon 6:17-19)
My lament is premature, but Mormon’s lament arose from the real anguish of his sober and sensitive soul during a time of revolting and heinous wickedness. When he was only about ten years old, the last Nephite record-keeper, Ammaron, perceived that Mormon was a sober child, and quick to observe. This encounter initiated one of the most remarkable exchanges of the records in Nephite history. To my knowledge. all previous transfers of the plates were from one mature adult to another, from father to son, from brother to brother, or from one seasoned scribe and record keeper to another. Mormon was a very young boy, even younger than Joseph Smith when he was visited by God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
Mormon had only just begun his education in the Nephite scribal school:
And about the time that aAmmaron hid up the records unto the Lord, he came unto me, (I being about ten years of age, and I began to be blearned somewhat after the manner of the learning of my people) and Ammaron said unto me: I perceive that thou art a csober child, and art quick to observe; (Mormon 1:2)
What does it mean to be a sober child? What does it mean to be quick to observe? Mormon’s description of his special conversation with Ammaron conjures up the image of a boy who was unusually watchful and prayerful, a boy who was prepared from the pre-mortal life to descend into an abominably wicked civilization, take note, lay hold upon the permanent things, and transmit them to future generations. When I think of the ten year-old Mormon, I see a boy who caught on so quickly to the lessons in the Nephite scribal school that he stood out from his peers.
Mormon wasn’t like most other Nephite boys. How did Ammaron perceive that Mormon was a sober child and quick to observe? How could Ammaron have known that a ten year old boy could be entrusted with the most valuable records and relics of an entire civilization on the verge of collapse? Noel Reynolds has written eloquently and profusely on this topic, and his insights are indispensable for understanding this penultimate exchange of the Nephite records.
Think of it. Ammaron hid away all the Nephite records in the land Antum, in the hill Shim, because he knew that the Nephite civilization was crumbling. Ammaron hid up the records unto the Lord, and he did so by the direction of the Lord:
And it came to pass that when three hundred and twenty years had passed away, aAmmaron, being constrained by the Holy Ghost, did bhide up the crecords which were dsacred—yea, even all the sacred records which had been handed down from generation to generation, which were sacred—even until the three hundred and twentieth year from the coming of Christ.
And he did hide them up unto the Lord, that they might acome again unto the remnant of the house of Jacob, according to the prophecies and the promises of the Lord. And thus is the end of the record of Ammaron. (4 Nephi 1:48-49)
Ammaron knew the prophecies and promises of the Lord. He knew that his own civilization would be destroyed, according to the prophecies, but that a record would be preserved for the remnant of the house of Jacob (and for us). But the Lord instructed Ammaron to hide up the records after only 320 years from the coming of Christ. Ammaron knew that the prophesied destruction of his people would be complete after 400 years. Thus Ammaron’s successor had to be someone very young. If Ammaron had delivered the plates to another adult, perhaps he might have kept the record for a time and delivered it to another, and so forth. But Ammaron was inspired by the Lord to approach young Mormon because the Lord knew of Mormon’s potential and capacity.
Was Mormon a student under Ammaron’s tutelage in the Nephite scribal school? Was Ammaron a relative of Mormon, perhaps an uncle? Whatever his relationship to the young boy, Ammaron knew Mormon well enough (perhaps as a teacher) to discern his potential and his capacity to carry out the great task of abridging, summarizing, commenting, and prophesying as the penultimate Nephite prophet-historian. After reading about this exchange, we should never look at a ten year old in the same way again.
It is all too common to hear adults and parents complain about youth and their young children, blaming the rising generation for their perceived deficiencies. The inverse is also all too common. But a pattern that I’ve noticed is that many of the potential Mormons among us - many young people with great potential who are truly sober and quick to observe - are shunned or labeled for their perceived deficiencies, and sometimes drugged into a chemical stupor because they do not conform to their parents’ distorted wishes. In many cases in which I’ve seen family struggle with the perceived deficiencies of a child in their family, it is because that particular child, like the young Mormon, has been endowed with a peculiar measure of soberness and quickness to observe, to an extent that other family members may struggle to understand.
This is one reason why I despise psychiatry, the myth of “mental illness,” and especially the myth of “autism,” a destructive myth that we have inherited from the Nazis. Because of the pernicious nature of psychiatry and the false notions that many of us blindly accept as reality, I fear that many of the young Mormon’s among us - youth with great potential who are sober and quick to observe - do not have the Ammarons that they need in their lives - those sober and perceptive teachers and leaders who recognize and nurture that great potential. Because too many potential Ammarons are busy pursuing wealth, power, prominence, prestige, and the honors of men, their potential Mormon-like proteges are left to fend for themselves and to seek for their metaphorical treasure trove of records without clear directions about where they are buried.
Although I too fall short of such soberness and quickness to observe or such perceptivity, I can confidently point to at least two sources that will lead to treasure troves of wisdom and knowledge. The first is the Book of Mormon itself. We shouldn’t wait until our children and youth are in their teens to encourage them to fall in love with the Book of Mormon. If ten year old Mormon was prepared to receive instructions about the spiritual, historical, political, and literary treasures of an entire civilization, then we should not withhold the riches of the precious Book of Mormon from precious children and youth. The second source is Fathom the Good.
Young Mormon didn’t come up with a great idea to write a book about the history of civilization and the downfall thereof by himself. He wasn’t part of a Nephite university history department that required him to publish or perish. His commission came from on High:
And behold, I do make the record on plates which I have made with mine own hands.
And behold, I am called Mormon, being called after the land of Mormon, the land in which Alma did establish the church among the people, yea, the first church which was established among them after their transgression.
Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life.
And it hath become expedient that I, according to the will of God, that the prayers of those who have gone hence, who were the holy ones, should be fulfilled according to their faith, should make a record of these things which have been done—
Yea, a small record of that which hath taken place from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem, even down until the present time.
Therefore I do make my record from the accounts which have been given by those who were before me, until the commencement of my day;
And then I do make a record of the things which I have seen with mine own eyes.
And I know the record which I make to be a just and a true record; nevertheless there are many things which, according to our language, we are not able to write. (3 Nephi 5:11-18)
The record that we are about to study is Mormon’s record of the things which he had seen with his own eyes. It is significant that Mormon’s first record was the small record of that which hath taken place from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem up until Mormon’s own life time. It is also remarkable to consider that the record that we just finished reading - a translation of Nephi’s small plates and a translation of Mormon’s abridgment of the large plates of Nephi from the time of King Mosiah and King Benjamin to the collapse of the Nephite Zion - is a small record. If we include the record that was lost - the 116 pages - that seems to me like a very large record. But the Nephite prophets frequently remind us that they couldn’t even record a hundredth part of the events and prophecies throughout Nephite history and the things that were contained on all of the Nephite records.
Thus Mormon, a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, received a particular calling from the Lord to declare the word of God among his people, that they might have everlasting life. We also know, however, that the Lord prohibited Mormon from preaching the Gospel to his own people for a time, or that his mouth was shut:
And I did endeavor to preach unto this people, but my mouth was shut, and I was forbidden that I should preach unto them; for behold they had awilfully rebelled against their God; and the beloved disciples were btaken away out of the land, because of their iniquity.
But I did remain among them, but I was forbidden to apreach unto them, because of the hardness of their hearts; and because of the hardness of their hearts the land was bcursed for their sake. (Mormon 1:16-17)
What did Mormon mean, therefore, when he wrote that he had been called of God to declare His word among his people? Mormon was called to declare the word of God, but he was also forbidden to declare the word of God? One possible answer to this riddle, one possible resolution of this conundrum, is that Moron had been called of God to declare the word of God for future generations who would receive his testimony. Mormon’s calling was to preach the word of God among God’s people, that they might have everlasting life. We know, however, from Mormon’s descriptions of the Nephites of his time, that the people had refused to be God’s people, and that they chose to follow the evils of black magic, sorcery, witchcraft, and other wiles of the devil. Thus Mormon declarations among God’s people may be a reference to Mormon’s position as a prophet-historian among many generations of Lehites, mostly past and future.
Whatever the case, Mormon, like Nephi before him, did not make his record because he was an ancient George Orwell or Aldous Huxley with a compelling ambition to write. The Lord, and Ammaron, called and commissioned Mormon to carry out this great work.
It is important to remember that Mormon, like Nephi before him, did not begin his own record of his own time until after having recorded and abridged the records of those who had preceded him. Thus Mormon’s record of his own time is saturated with the wisdom that he had gained from his diligent efforts to first understand and articulate the truth about the past. Mormon was like the man that C.S. Lewis described:
A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.
Mormon had lived in many places, and because of his study and abridgment of the records, he had also lived in many times. He was a perennial disciple of Jesus Christ who was in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense, and the evils of his own age. Mormon’s prophetic perspective on the past, as well as his prophetic perspective on the future, enabled him to write of things as they really were regarding the present in which he lived. Thus there is so much depth in even the opening sentence of Mormon’s book:
And now I, Mormon, make a arecord of the things which I have both seen and heard, and call it the bBook of Mormon. (Mormon 1:1)
Why is there so much depth? Because the things that Mormon had both seen and heard were things to which his contemporaries were completely blind and deaf. When Mormon saw and heard things, he saw them with spiritual eyes and keen spiritual vision, and he heard them with spiritual ears and keen spiritual hearing. Mormon’s contemporaries may have also seen and heard of war and wickedness, but most of them were either participants in the evil or oblivious to it. Mormon, on the other hand, understood the patterns for and the root causes and inevitable outcomes of the evils of his time. Moreover, because the Lord had blessed him with a sober mind, he enjoyed the presence and ministering of the Lord and His beloved disciples:
And I, being afifteen years of age and being somewhat of a bsober mind, therefore I was cvisited of the Lord, and dtasted and knew of the goodness of Jesus. (Mormon 1:15)
And there are none that do know the true God save it be the adisciples of Jesus, who did tarry in the land until the wickedness of the people was so great that the Lord would not suffer them to bremain with the people; and whether they be upon the face of the land no man knoweth.
But behold, my afather and I have seen bthem, and they have ministered unto us. (Mormon 8:10-11)
Why did Ammaron instruct Mormon to seek the records when he had reached the age of twenty-four? Fourteen years is a long time to wait. A lot can happen in fourteen years. But the age and number twenty-four strike me as significant (think of the twenty-four gold plates that contained the record of the Jaredites or the twenty-four Lamanite daughters, for example). I don’t know, but this was Ammaron’s commission to the young, sober, and quick to observe Mormon:
Therefore, when ye are about twenty and four years old I would that ye should remember the things that ye have observed concerning this people; and when ye are of that age go to the aland Antum, unto a hill which shall be called bShim; and there have I deposited unto the Lord all the sacred engravings concerning this people.
And behold, ye shall take the aplates of Nephi unto yourself, and the remainder shall ye leave in the place where they are; and ye shall engrave on the plates of Nephi all the things that ye have observed concerning this people.
Obviously Ammaron would not have given Mormon such a commission if Mormon did not already know about the sacred engravings, the plates of Nephi, and how to engrave on the plates of Nephi. Ammaron’s commission to Mormon to take the plates of Nephi must refer to the large plates of Nephi, because we know that Mormon only added the small plates afterward beginning his abridgment of the large plates:
And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an aabridgment from the bplates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the crecords which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this king dBenjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi. (Words of Mormon 1:3)
The land Antum and the hill Shim are very significant locations in Book of Mormon history, not just because Ammaron deposited the records there, but also because the final downfall of both the Jaredite and the Nephite civilization occurred in the same region (see Mormon 4:23, Mormon 6:6, Ether 9:3, Ether 15:11). It is interesting that Ammaron, Mormon, and Moroni each hid up records in a hill. It makes sense to hide records in a hill, because other locations, especially plains and valleys, may be more vulnerable to flooding, and perhaps fewer people were likely to climb a hill and accidentally stumble upon a cave of records. Furthermore, who could have ever come up with place-names like Antum or Shim?
Mormon remembered Ammaron’s commission. In the intervening years before recovering the records, Mormon (age eleven) was carried into the land southward, to the land of Zarahemla, by his father who was also named Mormon (for my reflections on the significance of the name Mormon, see here). And who writes in this way - “carried by my father into the land southward”? Why not simply write: “my father brought me into the land southward”? I point out this strange phraseology because it is the English translation of an ancient, unknown language. (For my reflections on the significance of the land northward, see here).
How old was Mormon when he composed his own book? If he had been about twenty-four years-old when he began the abridgment of the large plates of Nephi, a task that must have taken him several years, Mormon must have been at least a few years older, if not much older. What did Mormon first notice and record about his people? He noticed that his people had grown very numerous and that they had built many buildings. He remembered the war that commenced between the Nephites and the Lamanites. He noticed where the war started, in the borders of Zarahemla, by the river Sidon, a place that had already been a war zone in the time of Captain Moroni. Mormon noticed significant details about warfare, including numbers of men, numbers of battles, victorious parties, and times of peace.
Perhaps most importantly, Mormon noticed that his people had become degenerate and grossly evil, a condition that stood in especially stark contrast to the blessed and happy state of the righteous in the Nephite Zion that flourished only a few hundred years previously:
But wickedness did prevail upon the face of the whole land, insomuch that the Lord did take away his abeloved disciples, and the work of miracles and of healing did cease because of the iniquity of the people.
And there were no agifts from the Lord, and the bHoly Ghost did not come upon any, because of their wickedness and cunbelief. (Mormon 1:13-14)
Mormon didn’t just notice and record these things because of his in depth study and the process of recording his abridgment. Mormon knew what to inscribe because, from a very young age, he had communed with the Lord:
And I, being afifteen years of age and being somewhat of a bsober mind, therefore I was cvisited of the Lord, and dtasted and knew of the goodness of Jesus. (Mormon 1:15)
I love this verse for many reasons. I love this verse because Mormon was very young when he had these great experiences. I also love this verse because Mormon reminds us of the connection between tasting and knowing the goodness of Jesus, a connection that can be traced all the way back to Lehi and Nephi (the fruit of the tree of life), through prophets such as Enos, and especially Alma (see here), to Mormon’s own experiences. I love that Mormon admits that he was “somewhat of a sober mind,” perhaps acknowledging that his own character included more youthful joviality in contrast to the compliment paid to him by Ammaron. The Lord is certainly willing to visit every fifteen year old in order that he or she taste and know of His goodness, but the Lord’s gift to Mormon of a sober mind facilitated this early communion and connection.
Even though he was prohibited from preaching the word of God, and even though he remained in the midst of a hard-hearted and cursed people, Mormon tasted and knew of the goodness of Jesus because he soberly sought the Savior. I find it significant that Mormon enjoyed these great experiences with the Lord before he began the great work of perusing and abridging the plates of Nephi. Thus Mormon knew the Lord before he had completely mastered His word. It’s as though Mormon went straight to the Tree of Life and partook of the fruit, and then discovered the iron rod that led to the Tree. Of course Mormon also knew the word of the Lord, but because he was forbidden to preach, and because he had not yet begun the work of abridging and inscribing, much of Mormon’s early tutoring, like that of the Prophet Joseph Smith, took place through direct personal experience with Jesus Christ and His beloved disciples.
Because of Mormon’s great personal spiritual experiences with the Lord and His disciples, Mormon was also equipped to discern the great evils that surrounded him, including the Gadianton robbers, sorcery, witchcraft, and magic, and the power of the evil one that darkened the face of the land, which things, as Mormon must have later learned, were a direct fulfillment of the prophecies of Abinadi and bSamuel the Lamanite.