Moroni’s Statement to David Whitmer about enduring to the end
Brigham H. Roberts (First Council of the Seventy)
In my interview with David Whitmer, in 1884, as he went over this ground, led by my questions, when we came to this part of it he said to me that in the progress of turning the leaves, or having them turned by Moroni, and looking upon the engravings, Moroni looked directly at him and said: “David, blessed is he that endureth to the end.” When David Whitmer made that remark it seemed to me rather a peculiar thing that he should thus be singled out for such a remark, and I remember reporting it as such to President John Morgan, then president of the Southern States mission. I stated to him the peculiar feelings I had when I learned that from the lips of David Whitmer; but the subsequent history of these three witnesses led me to conclude that there was indeed a hidden warning in the words of the angel to David, “Blessed is he that endureth to the end.” And it is rather a sad reflection that of these three witnesses he was the only one who died outside of membership in the Church. I wonder if Moroni was not trying to sound a warning to this stubborn man, that perhaps whatever his experiences and trials might be, that at the last he, too, might have been brought into the fold, and might have died within the pale of the Church. (Conference Report, October 1926, p.126)