Mormon 1-6 Quotes and Notes

These chapters are an excellent illustration of how to raise a righteous family in the midst of great spiritual wickedness. Mormon is an excellent model of how to do this. Bryce lays out the argument in our podcast that Mormon probably was working on his editing and constructing of the Book of Mormon during the time when his people were at peace with the Lamanites, a ten year period extending from Mormon’s 40^th to 50^th year of his life. During this time, Mormon shows us that he:

1. Tasted and knew of the goodness of Jesus (Mormon 1.15).
2. Spent a great amount of time in scripture (He edited, redacted, and constructed the text, using the methods and constructions of antiquity).^[1]David Bokovoy and John A. Tvedtness, Testaments: Links Between the Book of Mormon and the Hebrew Bible, Heritage Press, 2003. See also: Parry, Peterson, and Welch (editors), Echoes and Evidences of … Continue reading
3. Showed great love for his fellow man (Mormon 3.12)

For the PDF of the chart showing the events in Mormon’s lifetime, along with the scriptural references and his ages, go here.

Mormon 1

Who was Mormon? Sober and quick to observe (2)

24 years old … hill Shim – get the plates… Mormon = a descendant of Nephi (kingly line?)

7 tribes morph into 2 tribes (8)

The Lord takes away the beloved disciples (13)

At 15 years he is visited by Jesus (15), he is forbidden to preach at this time (16)… perhaps it has to do with his youth?

The land is cursed… treasures are slippery (18)… sorceries, witchcrafts, magics… are in the land

Mormon 2

The people could not take happiness in sin any longer (13)… how do youth make themselves incapable of being led by the Spirit of the Lord?  (All Andrew heard was roaring when Aslan spoke) 

Cross reference Mormon 2.13 with Mormon 3:8-11 also verse 16, where Mormon utterly refuses to lead them into battle.  Principle: I can of my own choosing, force the Lord out of my life.  It’s not that He doesn’t want to lead me, it is that I refuse to be led by Him.

The land was filled with Gadianton robbers (8)

My people did not repent (8)… blood and carnage was “one complete revolution” (8)

Lamanite kind Aaron comes with his 44K (9) and Mormon withstands with 42K – 330 AD

Do the Nephites repent? (10-11) … not so much! (13)… they did curse God and wish to die! (14)… this is nihilism at its worst! (see happiness handout)…

The day of grace was past (15) … 344 AD. This, to me, represents not that God would not forgive them, rather, that they were past having the desire to repent. Their losing this desire was timely in the sense that the Lamanites clearly were able to continually add to their numbers at a greater pace than the Nephites. Add to this that the Nephites were losing their culture, their faith and religion, they were no longer “God’s people,” but were “left to themselves.”

The 350 AD Treaty is signed… the Nephites acquire all of the land northward… even to the narrow passage which led to the land southward. And the Lamanites acquired all of the land southward.

Mormon 3

The Nephites have 10 years without war (1), so Mormon gets them ready to fight again…

He tries to get them to repent, but it is all in vain (3)

Mormon will not be involved in an offensive war (11)… this follows in the principles of the text that God will not go with them if they are on the offensive. We read this principle throughout the war chapters.

I write unto you Gentiles! (17)… Mormon’s mind keeps going back to the Gentiles over and over again- Mormon 3:17-22

Mormon took joy in the future. He is an eternal optimist, even while his people quit repenting and will not listen to his counsels. Elder Holland put it this way:

I have a theory about those earlier dispensations and the leaders, families, and people who lived then…I have thought often about them and the destructive circumstances that confronted them. They faced terribly difficult times and, for the most part, did not succeed in their dispensations. Apostasy and darkness eventually came to every earlier age in human history. Indeed, the whole point of the Restoration of the gospel in these latter days is that it had not been able to survive in earlier times and therefore had to be pursued in one last, triumphant age. We know the challenges Abraham’s posterity faced (and still do). We know of Moses’s problems with an Israelite people who left Egypt but couldn’t quite get Egypt to leave them. Isaiah was the prophet who saw the loss of the 10 Israelite tribes to the north. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were all prophets of captivity. Peter, James, John, and Paul, the great figures of the New Testament, all saw apostasy creeping into their world almost before the Savior had departed and certainly while they themselves were still living. Think of the prophets of the Book of Mormon, living in a dispensation ending with such painful communication between Mormon and Moroni about the plight they faced and the nations they loved dissolving into corruption, terror, and chaos. In short, apostasy and destruction of one kind or another was the ultimate fate of every general dispensation we have ever had down through time. But here’s my theory. My theory is that those great men and women, the leaders in those ages past, were able to keep going, to keep testifying, to keep trying to do their best, not because they knew that they would succeed but because they knew that you would. I believe they took courage and hope not so much from their own circumstances as from yours—a magnificent congregation of young adults like you tonight gathered by the hundreds of thousands around the world in a determined effort to see the gospel prevail and triumph…One way or another, I think virtually all of the prophets and early apostles had their visionary moments of our time—a view that gave them courage in their own less-successful eras. Those early brethren knew an amazing amount about us. Prophets such as Moses, Nephi, and the brother of Jared saw the latter days in tremendously detailed vision. Some of what they saw wasn’t pleasing, but surely all those earlier generations took heart from knowing that there would finally be one dispensation that would not fail. Ours, not theirs, was the day that gave them heavenly and joyful anticipations and caused them to sing and prophesy of victory. Ours is the day, collectively speaking, toward which the prophets have been looking from the beginning of time, and those earlier brethren are over there still cheering us on! In a very real way, their chance to consider themselves fully successful depends on our faithfulness and our victory. I love the idea of going into the battle of the last days representing Alma and Abinadi and what they pled for and representing Peter and Paul and the sacrifices they made. If you can’t get excited about that kind of assignment in the drama of history, you can’t get excited!^[2]Jeffrey R. Holland, “Terror, Triumph, and a Wedding Feast,” CES Fireside, 12 Sept. 2004, 5.

These chapters are really all about happiness… how to achieve it, how not to do it, and where the Nephites went wrong. Mormon is an excellent example of optimism and points the way how we can have a righteous family in the midst of chaos and war.      

Mormon 4

Mormon’s commentary: the Nephites are losing because they went on the offensive (4)… and it is by the wicked that the wicked are slain (5)

Mormon writes, “I cannot describe the horrible scene of blood and carnage that was on both sides… they delighted in violence…” (11)

There never had been so great wickedness (12) – contrast this with 4 Ne. 1.16.

Human sacrifice takes place (14) – 367 AD

By 375 AD the Nephites no longer can win any wars… (18). This is an important verse. The Nephites cannot from this time any longer take territory.

The Nephites are sacrificed to the gods of the Lamanites (21)

Mormon 5

Without any hope, Mormon picks up his sword… I assume this has to do with the Nephites’ inability to effectively win territory war any more at this time (1-2). It also seems to tie into his commentary in Mormon 4 when he states, “I, Mormon, seeing that the Lamanites were about to overthrow the land…” (Mormon 4.23) Essentially Mormon knows that the Nephites are going to lose, but he is obligated to help those people that he loves (Mormon 3.12). Mormon specifically tells us that he is without hope:

“Behold, I was without hope, for I knew that the judgments of the Lord which should come upon them; for they repented not of their iniquities, but did struggle for their lives without calling upon that Being who created them” (Mormon 2.2).

Hugh Nibley comments:

They [Mormon and Moroni] are editing this book, and they have put into it whatever they think might be useful as warning to us. It’s not their purpose to tell an entertaining or reassuring tale. War is anything but glamorous in the Book of Mormon. The campaigns and battles are described not as a writer of fiction would depict ancient warfare with all its excitement and color. (Like somebody writing in early New England. That would be popular. Mark Twain or somebody would write about it.) No, it is not what an author in America in the 1820s would imagine as the gaudy trappings of heroic derring-do. That’s all missing. It is real war that we see here, a tedious, sordid, plodding, joyless routine of see-saw successes and losses-brutally expensive, destructive, exhausting, and boring, with constant marches and countermarches that end sometimes in fiasco and sometimes in intensely unpleasant engagements. The author writes as one would write-as only one could write-who had gone through a long war as a front-line observer with his eyes wide open. Everything is strictly authentic, with the proper emphasis in the proper place.^[3]Hugh Nibley, Since Cumorah, p. 292.

The Nephites, though not taking any new territory, are able to hold their strongholds (4)… there had to be some kind of way that Mormon used the terrain to protect his cities… For those of you who are proponents of a North America setting to the text, Wayne May has some good videos on this topic.

The Nephites are straight fleeing… running for their lives and whoever was faster than the Lamanites lived (7)…

Mormon laments that the Nephites were once delightsome, and now they are as chaff before the wind (15-17)… without sail or anchor (18), and so their blessings will go to the Gentiles which shall possess the land (19)

They (the remnant of these people) will be driven and scattered…  (20)

Jared Diamond has much to say regarding the decimation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. He discusses the destruction of the most populated peoples in North America by the 1600s in the Mississippi River territory. According to Diamond, this reduction is mostly due to the natives’ lack of immunity to European diseases. Diamond writes:

Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population. The most populous and highly organized native societies of North America, the Mississippian chiefdoms, disappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600s, even before Europeans themselves made their first settlement on the Mississippi River.^[4]Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, p. 78.

Later Diamond discusses the incredible reduction in population in Mexico due to infectious diseases by 1618 when he writes:

The importance of lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated by Europeans’ conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors’ morale. For instance, in 1519 Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico with 600 Spaniards, to conquer the fiercely militaristic Aztec Empire with a population of many millions. That Cortes reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, escaped with the loss of “only” two-thirds of his force, and managed to fight his way back to the coast demonstrates both Spanish military advantages and the initial naivete of the Aztecs. But when Cortes’s next onslaught came, the Aztecs were no longer naive and fought street by street with the utmost tenacity. What gave the Spaniards a decisive advantage was smallpox, which reached Mexico in 1520 with one infected slave arriving from Spanish Cuba. The resulting epidemic proceeded to kill nearly half of the Aztecs, including Emperor Cuitlahuac. Aztec survivors were demoralized by the mysterious illness that killed Indians and spared Spaniards, as if advertising the Spaniards’ invincibility. By 1618, Mexico’s initial population of about 20 million had plummeted to about 1.6 million.^[5]Ibid., p. 210.

Mormon repackages Micah 5… he writes to the Gentiles (22), and says essentially, “You had better know that you are in the hands of God and if you don’t watch yourself, a remnant of the seed of Jacob will come and rend you as a lion!” (22-24) Cross reference this with Micah 5.8.

Mormon 6

The disintegration of the Nephite culture and religion

Commenting on the numbers slain in this chapter, after quoting Mormon 6.12-15 Brant Gardner writes, “Accepting Mormon’s numbers at face value gives 250,000 dead, including 10,000 from the previous verse (Mormon 6.11), killed on a single terrible day. It seems more probable that this is an exaggerated number and that “ten thousand” names a military unit rather than a specific count. Mormon names twelve captains of ten thousand, meaning that he has omitted the names of ten more such leaders. Perhaps these twelve had a special relationship with him, or perhaps it is a literary image. Symbolically, Israel has fallen, represented by twelve men for the twelve tribes.^[6]Brant Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, volume 6, Greg Kofford Books, 2011, p. 102.

Brent Merrill discusses exercising caution in taking all of these numbers literally. While I certainly do not know exactly how literal these numbers are, Merrill discusses the idea that “ten thousand” could represent a military designation when he wrote:

The foregoing discussion further suggests that one must be careful when interpreting references to Nephite field armies normally composed of ten thousand men. To illustrate this point, the army of Antipus mentioned earlier almost certainly numbered about ten thousand when originally deployed. Through casualties and capture, this number was reduced to about six thousand. If, however, the Nephite reference to “ten thousand” was a form of unit designation—an organizational title—then one might properly say that, although his forces were seriously depleted, he still commanded an Army of Ten Thousand. An example of this can be seen in early Roman military organization. A unit called a “century,” meaning one hundred, originally consisted of one hundred soldiers commanded by a “centurion.” Later, because a unit of one hundred men was too large for a single officer to control readily, the size varied from sixty to eighty men, but the designation “century” was retained. 15 In other words, it is not certain whether Nephite armies of “ten thousand” always maintained this number of troops. There could have been more, or less, depending on battlefield attrition or evolving Nephite usage of this description as an organizational title. The phrase “ten thousand” might not always be an accurate count of manpower.^[7]Brent Merrill, “Nephite Captains and Armies,” in Warfare in the Book of Mormon, 1990, p. 270-271.

Brant Gardner brings up anthropologist Ross Hassig’s commentary on Mesoamerican warfare and its use of how the Aztecs used military numbers generically, rather than specifically:

Too often figures cited for troops in battle conform closely to round numbers- 10,000, 100,000, and so on- suggesting that general magnitudes were being indicated rather than precise numbers. And even where the figures do not appear to be round, they are often from the perspective of the Aztec vigesimal (base-20) numerical system (which had place values of 1, 20, 400, 8,000 and so on), resulting in typical troop numbers of 200, 400, 8,000, and so forth.^[8]Brant Gardner, Second Witness Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Volume 5, p. 33. Gardner is citing Ross Hassig, Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control, … Continue reading

Mormon says he is going to finish his record of the destruction of his people (1)

Mormon (at the age of 75!) gathers all his people at Cumorah in 384 AD in a land of many waters and rivers (2-5). This, to me, is filled with motifs associated with the temple, and the Hill Cumorah is going to be a representation of what “might have been.” Rather than these people approaching the Lord in their righteousness, they will appear before them after death. Mormon tells his readers, “O ye fair sons and daughters, ye fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have fallen! … The day … cometh that your mortal must put on immortality, and these bodies… must soon become incorruptible bodies; and then ye must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, to be judged according to your works…” (19-21)

This is our last struggle (6) and so he hides the records in the hill Cumorah (6) and gives “a few plates” to his son Moroni

Mormon’s 10K fall (10)… all except 24 are slain (11)… 23 military leaders with “their 10K each” (14)

O ye fair ones… (17)… Jesus “stood with open arms” – cross with 2 Nephi 4.33 and Alma 34.16 and Alma 26.15… this is the symbol for the atonement…

The Temple Symbolism of Mormon 6: A Cosmic War Defending the Nephite Ark of the Covenant

Let us more closely examine the symbolism of what we have happening here in Mormon 6:

• The Ark of The Covenant of the Nephite nation is going to be deposited. This is “the last stand” of the covenant keeping Mormon and Moroni, both priests in the visionary tradition, fully initiated into the secrets of Yahweh.
• In this text we have two (at least) sacred priests who have been fully initiated into the mysteries, having seen Jesus, with swords, defending it (see Genesis 3.24).
• This mountain is described in other texts as being called Ramah (exalted, high, lifted up – see Ether 15.11).
• Mormon and Moroni make sure to let us know that this mountain/hill is a place that has two names. In Mormon’s day he called it Cumorah… this is probably Kemarah = the Melchizedek place… this meaning can be associated with Melchizedek as it is associated with the one of the words used for priest in the Tanakh: kōmer. The meaning of Cumorah probably has several layers, among which could be the following:
  • The first possible meaning has dark implications: As distant as it may seem, an East Semitic lexeme may provide an appropriate etymology for Cumorah. The Akkadian verb kamāru in the G-stem means “to heap up, to layer” including corpses, and in the N-stem it is applied to ruin mounds and piled up corpses.^[9]See: The Book of Mormon Onomasticon, fn 5. Notice that Ether 11:6 states that JAREDITE prophets prophesied that “their bones should become as heaps of earth upon the face of the land except they should repent of their wickedness,” an apt description of the destruction of both the JAREDITES and the NEPHITES at the hill Cumorah. With metathesis, the Akkadian noun karmu, from the same root, means “ruin, ruin heap” and Akkadian karmūtu, “state of ruin.”^[10]Ibid., fn 6. Chicago Assyrian Dictionary = Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the Univ. of Chicago. Chicago: Oriental Institute/Glückstadt: J. J. Augustin, 1956-2010, p. 218-219. The vocable karmūtu is an abstract noun and may be analogous to Cumorah, a grammatical feminine which can be used as an abstract. Lending support to this suggestion is the likely the Hebrew cognate kmr that occurs in words having to do with heat, ripening, fermentation; darkness, gloom; net, snare; and heap up (JH).
  • Cumorah may be the English equivalent of the abstract noun for kĕmōrāh,^[11]Ibid., fn 7. based on the Hebrew noun pattern peʿullāh,^[12]Ibid., fn. 8. from the Hebrew verbal noun kōmer (parallel to the Hebrew kehunnah, “priesthood,” from the Hebrew noun kōhēn, “priest.” One may also compare the HEBREW kōmer with kumirtu, “priestess,” the feminine of West Semitic kumru, “priest,” found on an ASSYRIAN tablet from the time of Asshurbanipal, now in the British Museum [ ANET 301:1 ]). Even though the general sense of the Hebrew kōmer is “idolatrous priest” with reference to non-ISRAELITES priests, Ricks and Tvedtnes note that kōmer could also refer to non-Levitical priests, ISRAELITE or otherwise (cf. 2 Kings 23:5; Hosea 10:5; Zephaniah 1:4), observing that “since LEHI‘s party did not include descendants of LEVI, they probably used kōmer wherever the Book of Mormon speaks of priests.”^[13]Ibid., fn 9. There were only three vowels available for expressing the first two letters of the word “Cumorah” in English: cu-, ca-, and co- (all of the other possible combinations (ce-, ci-, cy-) would have produced an initial /s/ sound).
  • The Chem’arim are priests: We read that Josiah cut these priests down. We read in 2 Kings 23.5 that Josiah “put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah… that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven. It says that he put down the kemarim: הַכְּמָרִים… who were these priests ousted by Josiah? Could they be the very movement that Lehi and his ilk represented? One non-LDS scholar put it this way:
  • Later texts show that this ascent to heaven to learn divine knowledge had been the prerogative of the Davidic kings and high priests, and Josiah did depose some priests, described as the kemārȋm who had kept the high places (2 Kgs 23.5), and other priests, kohanȋm who had burned incense at high places (2 Kgs 23.9). The latter went to Jerusalem but were not allowed to serve at the altar, although they did eat the unleavened bread among their brethren. To translate kemārȋm as ‘idolatrous priests’ (thus AV, RSV) is not accurate, since the distinction between kemārȋm and kohanȋm is not clear: there were kemārȋm for the golden calf in Samaria (Hos.10.5) and kemārȋm worshipped the host of heaven on the rooftops together with kohanȋm in the time of Josiah (Zeph.1.4). The word is usually translated ‘idolatrous priests’, as though to distinguish them from kohanȋm, but this cannot be the distinction: Joseph’s father-in-law was a kohen of On, the sun god (Gen.41.50), and the Philistine god Dagon was served by kohanȋm (1 Sam.5.5). It is possible that a komer had significance that later editors sought to obscure, and the indications are that this was an association with Melchizedek. The Syriac Old Testament chose kumra’ to describe Melchizedek, not kohēn (Gen.14.18), which may preserve a memory of the distinction between the two types of priest in earlier times.^[14]Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord: The Lady in the Temple, 2012, p. 40. For more on Chemarim, see: McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia. They write: According to … Continue reading
• Then you have 24 remaining warriors in the text – Mormon 6.11. This could be something tied into Revelation 4, where John sees a divine council of angels surrounding the throne of God with crowns of gold on their heads (Rev. 4.4), and “cast their crowns before the throne” (v. 10), praising God for his creation. In the next chapter we see in God’s right hand a book. So you have a possible reference to an apocalyptic vision, with God issuing forth a book, and 24 initiated ministrants attending: A) God, B) God’s throne – the cosmic mountain, and C) The issuance of a sacred text coming from his hand
• You have references in this passage to the following:
  • Jesus standing with open arms to receive you (them, the Nephites) – Mormon 6.17
  • Their mortal will “put on immortality” – Mormon 6.21

Hugh Nibley on Temple Imagery in the Book of Mormon

As a matter of fact, they are everywhere in the book if we know where to look for them, and the dozen or so discourses on the Atonement in the Book of Mormon are replete with temple imagery. – Hugh Nibley, Approaching Zion

But you will “stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, to be judged according to your works…” (21)

The word atonement appears only once in the New Testament, but 127 times in the Old Testament. . . . In the other Standard Works of the Church, atonement (including related terms atone, atoned, atoneth, atoning) appears 44 times, but only 3 times in the Doctrine and Covenants, and twice in the Pearl of Great Price. The other 39 times are all in the Book of Mormon. This puts the Book of Mormon in the milieu of the old Hebrew rites before the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, for after that the Ark and the covering (kapporeth) no longer existed, but the Holy of Holies was still called the bait ha-kapporeth. . . . It has often been claimed that the Book of Mormon cannot contain the ‘fullness of the gospel,’ since it does not have temple ordinances. As a matter of fact, they are everywhere in the book if we know where to look for them, and the dozen or so discourses on the Atonement in the Book of Mormon are replete with temple imagery. From all the meanings of kaphar and kippurim, we concluded that the literal meaning of kaphar and kippurim is a close and intimate embrace, which took place at the kapporeth, or the front cover or flap of the tabernacle or tent. The Book of Mormon instances are quite clear, for example, ‘Behold, he sendeth an invitation unto all men, for the arms of mercy are extended towards them, and he saith: Repent, and I will receive you’ (Alma 5:33). ‘But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love’ (2 Nephi 1:15). To be redeemed is to be atoned. From this it should be clear what kind of oneness is meant by the Atonement—it is being received in a close embrace of the prodigal son.^[15]Hugh Nibley, Approaching Zion, 566-67.

Mormon 6 is a cosmic battle between two forces that have devolved into chaos. Mormon constructs his narrative to show his readers what might have been. The Nephites might have been a mighty and delightsome people in his day. They might have survived the attacks of the Lamanites. God might have been with them. But it was not so (Mormon 5.17-18). They rejected their Redeemer. All of these ideas our couched in temple symbolism. The end of Mormon’s story is the beginning of the Restoration, and invitation to all of us to enter into the sacred space of the Book of Mormon and come into the place where the words reside, and let these words into our hearts. The blessings that they might have received have been reserved for those that will choose to believe in Christ in our day (Mormon 5.19).

The Culture War

The measure of our success as parents, however, will not rest solely on how our children turn out. That judgment would be just only if we could raise our families in a perfectly moral environment, and that now is not possible. – Elder Packer, Our Moral Environment

I believe that the Nephites were swept away in a culture of war and violence that made it very difficult for them to perfectly raise their children in a way that would have caused them to be successful. So many factors played out in the disintegration of this culture, and today we face many of the same challenges. It is so difficult to read Mormon’s words as he sees the disintegration of his people, and hear his voice as he begs his audience of the last days to heed his warnings. It is so challenging to raise our children in an environment that is filled with darkness.

In today’s darkness modern apostles have stood up and given us hope. Elder Packer spoke of this in 1992 when he made the following statement:

It is a great challenge to raise a family in the darkening mists of our moral environment. We emphasize that the greatest work you will do will be within the walls of your home (see Harold B. Lee, Ensign, July 1973, p. 98), and that “no other success can compensate for failure in the home” (David O. McKay, Improvement Era, June 1964, p. 445).

The measure of our success as parents, however, will not rest solely on how our children turn out. That judgment would be just only if we could raise our families in a perfectly moral environment, and that now is not possible.

It is not uncommon for responsible parents to lose one of their children, for a time, to influences over which they have no control. They agonize over rebellious sons or daughters. They are puzzled over why they are so helpless when they have tried so hard to do what they should.

It is my conviction that those wicked influences one day will be overruled.

“The Prophet Joseph Smith declared—and he never taught a more comforting doctrine—that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the divine promises made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only themselves, but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father’s heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain. Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God.”^[16]Elder Boyd K. Packer, Our Moral Environment, April 1992 General Conference. See also: Orson F. Whitney, in Conference Report, Apr. 1929, p. 110.

In the next chapter Mormon is going to write a personal letter to the descendants of the people that wiped out his people… very touching.