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[Site Editor Note: In the published volume 2, this introduction is a duplicate of the introduction found in volume 1 with the exception of a few explanatory paragraphs about volume 1, which were replaced with the following explanatory paragraphs about volume 3. Rather than duplicate the entire introduction for this volume, I only included the unique portion below.]
Words of Jesus, History of Jaredites,
and the Writings of Mormon and Moroni
This final volume completes the published Book of Mormon. It features as its central figure the resurrected Christ descending upon survivors of a cataclysm. The writing of these “lesser words of Jesus” appears to have been the first effort by Mormon, begun amid the turmoil of a failing civilization in order to preserve at least those words for later generations. In them, Jesus introduces the worship of “the Father,” long neglected among Nephites. The shorter project grew, of course, into an entire history from Lehi to his own day, as the Nephites fell wholly into wickedness. Mormon’s compositions during this twilight are given here, as are those of his surviving son Moroni.
That son also appended his own set of plates to those Abridging Plates by Mormon completed, even as genocide spread across the land. Upon Moroni’s plates were engraved his history of the Jaredites, those faithful that fled the destruction of the tower and whose language was not confounded. More of their pre-flight story can be read in Words of the Faithful, beginning at the end of the Second Age (as reckoned by Tolkien).
The published Book of Mormon as found here runs from Third Nephi to the final Book of Moroni, documenting the redemption and fall of two civilizations upon the promised land, in our day given as warning to Gentiles now populating its fruitful shores. More books have been promised to those Gentiles and I doubt their coming forth will be long delayed.
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