Book of Mormon Studies Podcast: Moroni Text with Christopher Blythe

Rosalynde Welch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute's Book of Mormon Studies Podcast. My name is Rosalynde Welch, and I'm joined today by Dr. Christopher Blythe. Christopher is a wonderful guest. I'm so excited to have him on today. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Chris is an Assistant Professor of English at Brigham Young University, and he has one of the most fascinating research focuses: that is Latter-day Saint folklore.

And we're actually going to be talking a bit about folklore during our conversation today. Dr. Blythe is also the host of a wonderful podcast, Angels and Seer Stones, that in fact is all about Latter-day Saint folklore. If you haven't caught it yet, you need to listen to a couple of episodes. Once you listen to one, you'll be hooked. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Blythe.

Christopher Blythe: Thank you Rosalynde, I'm excited to be here.

Welch: It’s going to be great. Today is a banner day, a red-letter day here at the Book of Mormon Studies Podcast because we have arrived at the Book of Moroni, which is the last book of the Book of Mormon if you are reading it in textual order. Now, if we were reading the Book of Mormon in dictation order, in the order that Joseph Smith dictated to his scribes, we'd still, we'd now be looping back around and going to 1 Nephi and reading through to Words of Mormon, but we're doing it in textual order.

So today, we are going to tackle the last book in the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moroni, absolutely packed with gems that were intended for us in the latter-days. So, it speaks to us with a kind of urgency and relevancy that's pretty unique in the whole Book of Mormon. Let's start out, Dr. Blythe, by talking about any context that will help us prepare to understand what Moroni has to offer us here in this last book of the Book of Mormon.

Blythe: That’s right. Absolutely. I love this, right? The Book of Moroni is a book that's, it's almost an addition, right? It wasn't intended as part of the end. He says, ‘Well, there's time. We're gonna keep writing here.’ And we find out what happens to Mormon's son. Just an absolutely powerful, very short book of scripture in which Moroni lays out his thoughts on how a church might operate in the future. He's going to leave lessons he learned from the Savior, and he's going to give us hints about his life. We're going to learn that we've lost Mormon, and Moroni is ultimately the final, right? He's the final believer. There's still Nephites when he's writing, but they've lost the Spirit and wars are occurring and we probably won't get into it, but some really terrible things are happening to both Lamanite and Nephite society. And so, Moroni is on his own, journaling his experience on gold plates, right.

Welch: Yeah, it's an amazing scene to imagine, right? There's something very kind of cinematic and tragic about the picture of this ancient American prophet wandering on his own through a devastated landscape, devastated communities, yet with a vibrant connection to the past through these ancient records that he's entrusted with completing and burying up. He's the link to the future. And, on that note, as this incredible link to the latter-days, right? In close visionary contact with our day. He saw our day, he thought about us. And in fact, these words here in the Book of Moroni are directed towards latter-day Lamanites, right? That's his specific audience here.

Blythe: Oh absolutely. Moroni writes for the benefit of the Lamanites. He's thinking about- his people are lost. He knows the Lamanites are going to survive. I love this description. I mean, we have so many movies today. Movie-like, right? This is a person walking in an apocalyptic world.

He's a fugitive, just like when we started out in the Book of Mormon, fugitives in the land of Jerusalem that kind of get out of there. Now we have Moroni again. And yeah, there's just something like, a wasteland. I don't know if that's exactly what it's like, but that's what we envision it, right? This society that's in shambles, that 400 years before was thriving- even a couple hundred years before, right?

Welch: Yeah.

Blythe: This beautiful world of peace and people getting along and there are no more -ites and so on. And now we have a moment of hyper contention and yeah, very, very sad ending to the Book of Mormon. That's going to end very happy at the end. But if I had any call to be a missionary or a prophet, I would not want to have the call Moroni has.

Welch: Hahaha. One interesting thing about the Book of Moroni is that it's composed of a lot of different, disparate, separate pieces that come from different times and places in his life. And so, each chapter has sort of a slightly different context, even though he's putting them all together here at one time, presumably near the end of his life. But one of these pieces is actually--we see that he has received a formal call to the ministry. And he receives a wonderful letter from his father on the occasion of his call to the ministry. So, he was a church leader, as you say, a church leader shepherding a dwindling flock of believers in Christ through the absolute worst possible circumstances that one can imagine as a church leader. I'm with you. Hahaha. Don't give me that mission call. But Chris, here we are. We live in the latter-days, right? So, in some ways we are called. We are called to something similar, which is to be a peaceable follower of Christ at a time when it's not easy to do that.

Blythe: I think that's right. I served my mission in West Virginia and I, you know, sometimes missionaries write their own lessons, right? And I wrote a lesson about Moroni, and I wanted to relate it to people who felt, felt alone, right? They're the only members in their family in the gospel. They're the only member in their high school. Any of our adversity, I mean, Moroni's experience in that, being strong, standing in our faith, even when those around us are losing their faith. I think we can relate to Moroni’s experience.

Welch: Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about how the Book of Moroni is put together. I mentioned that it's composed of disparate pieces. What else can you tell us about the structure of the Book of Moroni?

Blythe: You know, I mean, really quickly, it's an easy book to go through, right? Chapter one, here's Moroni saying, this is where I'm at. He's going to tell us really quickly, four verses, what's going on. The next four chapters, two to five, are going to be, and six to some extent, are church operations, right? This is what we learned from the Savior about how to operate a church. You guys need to be aware of it. And then when we get to seven, we have Moroni's teachings, very interested in the Spirit. Some powerful words there. We have a moment of insertions of Mormon, which Moroni is willing to [include]. And then we end up with one of the greatest chapters in the entire Book of Mormon, chapter 10, where, you know, clearly God has designed Moroni to conclude this book and give him his final seal, final witness to this thing before I imagine Moroni's life goes south.

Welch: Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about this this morning. I have a mind that likes things that are schematic, right? I like to be able to have something that I can hold on to that helps me to remember stuff well. So, I'm gonna, if you'll indulge me, I'm gonna float for you one way of thinking about the structure of the Book of Moroni and you tell me if this is persuasive, okay? So we start out in chapter one.

Blythe: I like it.

Welch: Yeah, start out in chapter one with Moroni's introduction, right, and just getting ready for the book. Then we have four items of kind of liturgical instruction, and you mentioned these. So, we have the manner of conferring the gift of the Holy Ghost. We have the manner of ordaining to priesthood office. We have the manner of blessing the emblems of the Lord's Supper, of administering the sacrament. And finally, we have the rite of baptism, that's entrance into the church, so then including the way that the church should be governed and practiced. So, there we have four items of liturgical instruction.

Then we move into the second half of the book where we have four more items. And as you mentioned, three of them come from Mormon and the last one from Moroni. But the first one, chapter seven, is, and I think there's a kind of chiastic structure going on here, okay?

So, see if you can follow me. So, chapter seven, we have Mormon's address to the peaceable followers of Christ at a terrible moment in Nephite history. This must have been a fairly small flock as we've talked about those, the faith in Christ was dwindling overall. So here Mormon has a small flock of peaceable followers of Christ who are trying to live the gospel. They are trying to practice faith, hope, and charity with real intent. They're trying to figure out in this confusing scene what is good. So Mormon is helping them to understand how they can judge what is good from what is evil. And his criterion, of course, is what is good comes from Christ and leads to Christ. And he, and Mormon reassures them that even in this moment of darkness, God is still speaking to us, love and light from God can still flow to us in this mourning, in this moment, through angels, through miracles, through prophets. God is still speaking to us, even in the darkness.

Then we move on to these two other letters from Mormon. And I see them as related. They can feel kind of random, right? It sort of feels random. Why do we have this random letter on infant baptism and then this other letter on how depraved the Nephites and Lamanites have been? But here's what I think. I think chapter eight, it's about infant baptism, yes, but it's really about how little children are alive in Christ, right? It's really about the life that comes to us as a gift of grace from Jesus Christ. And in that chapter, he talks a lot about the atonement, Mormon does, and he talks about how Christ's atonement overcomes our evil nature, how Christ is always compassionate, how Christ is very fair-minded, right? He will never consign one child to hell and another to heaven just because one missed the opportunity to be baptized. So, Christ is fair-minded and equitable always, and He is always faithful to us, right?

Now in chapter nine, it's kind of a negative, right? A mirror image. Here, we see the work of death, and what the work of death looks like when you have to live through it. But what Mormon teaches Moroni, I think, is that as Christ was, so we should be, right? So, we should maintain a kind of persistent opposition to evil. We should continue to try to overcome it, even when it seems impossible, just as Christ's atonement overcomes evil. We should continue to be compassionate to those who suffer, even when it seems overwhelming. Where we can, we should be compassionate and try to relieve suffering when possible. We should be fair-minded, right? Just as Christ would. We shouldn't favor our own people over our enemies, even when our enemies are very blameworthy, right? We should be fair-minded and see the faults in ourselves and our side as well as the other side as well. And finally, we should be faithfully committed. I'm so moved by Mormon and Moroni who never gave up their commitment to their people despite the fact that they had lost hope. Not hope in Christ but hope in the future of their people. And yet they stayed committed to them just as Christ stays committed to us.

So, I see those two chapters, chapters eight and nine as kind of mirror image negatives of one another: life in Christ; the work of death--but we should be Christ-like through it all.

Blythe: You know, I love that, the relationship between these two. I like that. Chapter eight is, I can remember the first time I read this chapter, and it hit me. And I'd read it before, but it almost feels harsh, right? This idea that if you imagine a child will go to hell, it's actually you that are kind of already in a state of hell, right? Your image of God is completely,

Welch: Yes.

Blythe: faulty. It's a God who doesn't exist. It's a God that would be evil if he did, that He would punish the child for where he was born. I agree, this is sort of a root of Latter-day Saint identity, right? We believe in a just God who gives everyone a chance, who's trying to save all of His children. And I mean, this passage, right?

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Blythe: “Their little children need no repentance.” Verse 11, neither “neither baptism, behold, baptism is unto repentance to the fulfilling the commandments of the remission of sins, but little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the world”.

And up in verse 10, this line that shows up and reminds me of King Benjamin's sermon: “Teach parents that they must repent and be baptized and humble themselves as their little children.” So, Christ, God uses a child for us rather than imagining original sin and a tainted humanity. God actually says, ‘You want a lesson on how you should be? Well, look to your kids, look to innocence.’ I love it. I mean, it's such a powerful chapter.

Welch: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Blythe: Right at the end there. I love the way you parsed it together. Here we have a chapter even using the language of life and then the language of death in chapter nine. Pretty powerful.

Welch: Yeah. Well, and that's, you know, children continue to be born. We hope that men and women will continue to have the faith and the love necessary to commit to being parents. But even in dark times when children are born, they are this kind of connection to that divine innocence. And so, they are this renewable source of love and of light and of perfection in our world.

And that kind of leads me then to chapter ten, the very last chapter, which I see as a kind of echo of chapter seven, right? Chapter seven is Mormon's address to the peaceable followers of Christ in his day, right? The twilight of the Nephite nation. And here in chapter ten, this is Moroni's address to the peaceable followers of Christ. He doesn't use that exact phrase, but that's who he's talking to. It's those in the latter-days in the dwindling of the time of the Gentiles. And he's speaking to us, and I think he hits many of those same notes that Mormon does, right? He's telling us, “God will still speak to you despite the darkness around you. Revelation is still flowing. If you have the faith to recognize it and to receive it. And you can exercise faith, hope and charity.” It may seem impossible given what you're witnessing on a daily basis, but he reassures us: “You can exercise faith, hope, and charity if you ask Christ for it.” Christ's grace is sufficient, and He will carry you through it, but you have to turn to him and ask Him.

And then in this incredibly powerful, unforgettable ending, Moroni speaks directly to us right in that last verse and says, “I will see you at the last day. And we will, you know, we will see eye to eye, we'll understand each other and we'll”--this is, I'm paraphrasing here--but I think he's saying “We will rejoice together in what we have come through and in the way that our Savior has carried us.”

Blythe: Oh, absolutely. Such a powerful idea. There's so many ideas about reunion in the scriptures, you know, the city of Enoch returns and Zion below, they all hug each other or us imagining what it's like to see our loved ones after death.

Welch: Yes. Yeah. He must have taken a lot of comfort as well in engraving the words of his father, don't you think? In his loneliness as he transcribed the words of his father in chapter seven, eight and nine, that must have made him feel close. And speaking of reunion, right? Moroni, I think, was hungry for reunion and he must have felt a beautiful communion with his father during those moments.

Blythe: I love that. I think that's absolutely right.

Welch: Well, let's talk now about the man Moroni. There's not a lot of characters here in the book of Moroni. It's pretty much a one-man show. We do get these beautiful echoes of Mormon, and we learn something about Mormon as a father. And there's mention here and there of other people, and the latter-day audience is implied. But really, it's about Moroni. So, Dr. Blythe, help us understand who Moroni was as a prophet. Introduce him to us.

Blythe: Oh man, you know, when I think about Moroni, I get some of his teachings here, so I learned something from there. But just these four verses in chapter one tells us so much. Our image of Moroni are taken from them, right? So, “I Moroni, have abridged the book of Ether, I suppose not to have written more, but I have not as yet perished, and I make not myself known to the Lamanites, lest they should destroy me.” So, Moroni is hiding.

“For behold, their wars are exceedingly fierce among themselves,” and they're putting to death Nephites. They hate us. And this is the chapter here that my imagination picks up on and lots of ours does. “I, Moroni, will not deny the Christ, wherefore I wander whithersoever I can for the safety of my own life. Wherefore I write a few more words in hopes that it's useful to my brethren the Lamanites in the future.”

This image of Moroni, the wanderer. So, an individual who's alone wandering like we've talked about really picks up in the imagination of Latter-day Saints. Someone showed me a film not too long ago that imagined Moroni's post-Book of Mormon life. But actually, we have a number of Latter-day Saints in the 19th century, who…

I would call it folklore. They wrote legends. They told stories that they at least believed had come down from Joseph Smith on the fate of Moroni and the things he did during his life. When I talk about folklore, particularly in a setting like this, I always remind people, you know, this doesn't mean--these are possibilities, right? These aren't official doctrine. It's not like reading chapter one. This is what we know. Chapter one of the Book of Moroni tells me what I know about Moroni's life.

But we have a number of individuals who told us additional stories. One claim, we have a document in the church history library called “The Fate of Moroni”. And it comes down, I think it's a, in fact, each of these things I'll talk about are three-part steps, right?

So, the claim is Joseph said this, but it's a friend of a friend legend, right? I heard it from so -and -so who heard it from Joseph.

Welch: Okay.

Blythe: It's completely possible these are accurate, but it's completely possible they're not, that they're part of a development of Latter-day Saint culture and imagination. So, one of the stories…

Welch: So Chris, so when we think about folklore, I love the way you present it to us because it's not like, you know, doctrinal truth. On the other hand, it's also not just like rumors that should be trashed, right? These stories have great value, and they tell us something important, but what it tells us is maybe not so much about the historical reality of Moroni and more about the Latter-day Saints at that time, right? What they valued, what resonated for them and what made sense to them.

Blythe: Yes, it might tell us actually about Moroni, but what it definitely tells us about is how Latter-day Saints are relating to this story and relating to this figure. People didn't forget Moroni. Today we're more likely to tell, and less so today, but let's say 30 years ago and today too, we'd be more likely to tell a Three Nephite story than a Moroni story. But in the 19^th-century, Moroni stories were much more common. So, we get to the West and people begin to talk about Moroni wandering, right? What did that look like? At this point, the Book of Mormon, we didn't yet have limited geographic models. People were thinking about the Book of Mormon occurring in the entire Americas.

And so, what did it look like for Moroni to wander? Did he wander this entire country? I personally love stories from early pioneers that suggest Moroni was in Manti, or Moroni was in St. George, or Moroni was in Nauvoo. I think that's just fun to imagine, right? And I imagine, well, we know in Manti, this became part of local identity even, that Moroni passed through here and dedicated a spot of land where the temple would be completed. And the same with St. George, that some, at least wandering Nephite once dedicated this land. During that time period, we have something very fun that many Latter-day Saints scholars have talked about. In the Church History Library, we have two maps that allegedly tell Moroni's travels. Have you seen these, Rosalynde?

Welch: I haven't, no.

Blythe: These are really funny. You're going to have to look them up. But the maps show Moroni walking from Palmyra to Nauvoo to Salt Lake City to St. George to Manti and then down to a place I don't know, the Sand Hills in Arizona, another time to like, closer to Mexico. But tracing--and this map allegedly came from Joseph, who I think he shared it, allegedly with Reuben McBride, who then shared it with two other men, which came to us. And so, this circulated. We have two copies of this map. As people imagined, what exactly did it look like for Moroni to wander?

And we have another document that I think is really fun. It's called “The Fate of Moroni”. It's the same. I think it's also Reuben McBride. Just a couple paragraphs that tell the story of Moroni's final death. And it's a vision, allegedly, that Joseph had, in which Moroni, you know, he's got a war passed to him. So, the image is that he's able to fight off a few of these men that attack him until he's slain.

And I imagine it's completely possible that Joseph might have shared a story like that, right? Because when I'm left with the Book of Moroni, I finish it. That's the question I have, right? What happened to Moroni? We're missing him. He's called as a great angel. I know he remained faithful. How did it happen? Did he make it to old age, or did he meet the fate of Lamanites who are full of hatred and seeking the death of every believer in Christ? And according to this story, yeah, he met his fate…

Welch: Yes.

Blythe: and persecution. He was a martyr.

Welch: Wow. Chris, what does that tell you about what Moroni meant for these early Latter-day Saints? Why did they, why were they so captured by the idea of his wanderings, of his continent-wide wanderings? What was it about that?

Blythe: Yeah. You know, Moroni…we don't have patron saints as Latter-day Saints. We don't think of it in those terms. But our Catholic friends have an idea that people are assigned special responsibilities, right? If you're… What, who is it? Is it Sir Thomas Aquinas is in charge of students? You know, you have patron saints of different things. Moroni, and we have an idea that you might have a mission that goes beyond death. Moroni becomes associated with the Americas itself. I mean, he becomes a sort of angel, so much so that we have one.

Welch: Uh-huh.

Blythe: very speculative apostle, Orson Hyde, who was willing to weigh in on all sorts of things. He once gave a sermon about Moroni and he says that Moroni appeared to George Washington, like he helped the founding fathers, he helps Columbus, he calls him the guardian angel of the Americas. I don't know if anyone else thought of it in those terms that Orson Hyde did.

But it represents just how important Moroni was in this idea. We're in the promised land, and Moroni is the one that came to make sure that message was imparted. And so early Latter-day Saints and the wandering and so on, we had to wander. We had to leave. We faced persecution. And Moroni is a great example of that enduring, that promise that even if our lives are cut short, even if our lives don't go as they're expected, that God has a great plan for us.

And yeah, for me, I mean, Moroni is one of the most compelling figures in the Book of Mormon for that reason, even though I don't know that much about him, right? Was Moroni married? I don't know, right? Did he have a few kids?

Welch: Yeah.

Blythe: I don't know. I mean, we assume not, right? But we're really limited on how much we get into his story.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah, and maybe in some ways that gives scope for the imagination, right? And gives scope for these early Saints to read their own experience into him. Yeah, they were wanderers themselves, and I have to think that it brought comfort to know that somebody has been here before me, somebody who knows me and who has goodwill towards me has been here before me. And that must have made a barren and forbidding land seem more open to them, right? It made it seem possible that they could live here and that they could make a new life here. Whereas in other circumstances, they may have just been deterred by the strangeness and by the foreignness of what they were seeing.

Blythe: Absolutely. I wrote a book called Terrible Revolution, and one of my chapters just talks about how the geography of the West was read through the Book of Mormon. And so, when we saw petroglyphs, Latter-day Saints imagined that these were Nephite writings, and it helped us position ourselves in the world. And so, yeah, the story of Moroni is the story of, I guess he's not our people, but he's kind of our people, and he is present in the land experiencing something. I’d imagine it would give us great comfort.

Welch: Yeah. Well, let's shift gears just a little bit right now. And let's talk now moving from Moroni to his book, the actual text of the Book of Moroni. And listeners know that I, as a former English major, I love to think about the genres and the forms that we see in the Book of Mormon. By now, I hope that our listeners understand why. I think it's because it helps us interpret the text more faithfully when we understand…

Blythe: Yeah.

Welch: Why the authors were using particular ways of speaking and what their intents were. So that's why I always enjoy focusing on this aspect of the scriptures. And if you'll indulge me, I'll share just a couple of thoughts about some of the forms that we see in the Book of Moroni. As I mentioned before, it's kind of, I hope it doesn't sound disrespectful if I say it's a grab bag, right? It's a little bit of a miscellaneous group of disparate types of text. And I made the case earlier that we can see a kind of beautiful theological order and symmetry in it. But the reality is that each of the pieces comes from a different place and is slightly different.

Maybe the first thing to say, this is something that Grant Hardy points out, is that there's a glaring absence. And the absence is the absence of the historical narrative that we've seen since Mosiah, continuously through Mormon's abridgment of the large plates. And one way to really notice that Hardy points out, that the Book of Moroni is the only book with no “it came to pass.” Did you notice that?

Blythe: I did not. That's awesome. Right?

Welch: Yes. Yeah, that little phrase never appears in the Book of Moroni because “it came to pass” is a device that Mormon uses in his historical narration to denote the passage of a period of time. And so now we're in a place, kind of this timeless space where we're not giving historical narrative anymore. And so, we don't have “it came to pass”.

We have a number of these liturgical formula as we talked about before. So, we see a formula for certain kinds of ceremonial prayer. Liturgical formulae are really important in tying a church together across large spaces, geographical spaces, so we have the same words, right, in every nation and tongue where the gospel of Jesus Christ is practiced. And it also ties us across time. So, our, you know, generations before they were using these same words; and generations in the future, they'll be using these same sacred words. So those kind of set prayers have a beautiful unifying function across space and across time for the body of Christ.

We see the sermon form, which we're very used to by now. We've had all just so many epic, timeless sermons for the ages in the Book of Mormon. You could kind of read it as a handbook of how to deliver a sermon. And so we have the final, the final formal sermon, which is Mormon’s sermon in chapter seven. And I think Moroni's chapter 10 can also be considered a type of sermon spoken to us here in the latter-days.

We have intertextuality, something else we've gotten very familiar with over the course of the Book of Mormon. Astute readers will recognize that we have some of our greatest hits of Isaiah that show up here again in chapter ten. We have very famously large, longer quotations from 1 Corinthians 13 on charity and 1 Corinthians 12 on spiritual gifts that show up in chapter seven and chapter ten, so that I think so that readers in the latter days would recognize those words and it would connect them to the Bible and connect them to these beautiful truths on love--and love in fact as the greatest of all spiritual gifts that are still flowing. That's always their point, right? Spiritual gifts are still available from our Savior if we will ask for them.

I think in all of these different forms, we know that Moroni chose them very specifically. He had time to think about it. He took the time to write them. He included them because he knew that they would be of value, specifically to the Lamanites, the remnant of Jacob in the latter days, those who would receive the Book of Mormon and would come to Christ and would build the New Jerusalem--and those of us who are lucky enough to be the witnesses and the helpers in that project.

And so, I think for all of us who read this, whatever it is that we're reading in the Book of Moroni, we can ask ourselves very specifically, how is this useful to me? This must have something to say to me because Moroni saw our day, he chose these things for me, there's something here that is relevant to me. And as I have said several times now in this podcast, for me, the overriding message is that there is a stream of gifts, of miracles, and of messengers that are flowing from God, and they are always available. They're available to us through the church, right, through the sacraments and the ceremonies and rites that we experience in the church. They also come to us through the Holy Ghost, through angels, through prophets. They are coming to us and there is an abundance of gifts that are still available. And through them we can exercise faith, hope, and charity even in what seems like impossible circumstances of evil and destruction and suffering. We can be the peaceable followers of Christ in the latter days. So that's what I see as uniting all of these disparate forms that we see here in the Book of Moroni.

Blythe: Excellent.

Welch: Great. Well, that kind of leads us to think a little bit now about some of the themes. What are, I mentioned what I see as kind of an overriding theme, but what are some of the more specific messages that Moroni wants to communicate to us? What's most important to him that he's reopened the record and taken the time to engrave these? What do you think he wants to communicate, Chris?

Blythe: You know, spirituality is a really important theme for Moroni. You know, I want to talk about those chapters two to five. I think these are, you're right, our formulas are a little different. In fact, even our sacrament prayers have one word different, right? It's half, half here and it's has here in Doctrine and Covenants 20. So, one minor from the archaic language.

Welch: Ah. Yeah.

Blythe: But his emphasis as he's relaying these prayers is always, I mean, check this out. This is chapter two. So, when I confer the gift of the Holy Ghost on someone, you know, you're right. We talk about by the power of the Melchizedek priesthood. I call the person by name and I say, receive the Holy Ghost. And here his emphasis is a little different. He says,

“He called them by name, saying, you shall call on the Father.” So, Jesus tells his disciples, I'm talking to you, “you shall call on the Father in my name in mighty prayer. And after you've done this, you shall have power that to him upon whom you shall lay your hands, you shall give the Holy Ghost.” And then when you jump down into the ordinations, in verse two, “after they had prayed unto the Father in the name of Christ, they laid their hands upon them and said…”

And so, for him, that spiritual connection is the key. When we do a baptism or sometimes when we do an ordination, but usually at baptism, we have a pre -prayer, right? Those involved go pray together. For Moroni, this is key. Now we know that's not an essential part of the ceremony today, but this idea that you call on the Father and get the Spirit and mighty prayer before you do this is such a beautiful idea and one that means a lot to me.

He's gonna have that through all of, obviously, the sacrament prayers themselves are prayers. But when he talks about the administration of a meeting, he's gonna tell us chapter six, verse nine, “and their meetings were conducted by the church after the manner, the workings of the spirit and by the power of the Holy Ghost. For as the power of the Holy Ghost led them, whether to preach or to exhort or to pray or to supplicate or to sing, even so it was done.”

And so, Moroni wants Heavenly Father to be the guiding force, the Spirit, the guiding force of everything in the church. And individually, we're going to find out too. But to me, that sticks out as such an important theme just right in, right away, right? He's out there wandering. He's thinking about the good old days when there was a church he could go to. And he's saying, what was the most important thing for us? It was the Spirit. We are led by the Spirit. We cried down mighty prayer for us to be able to pass on the Holy Ghost to others. I just love that.

I think sometimes as I go to church with three little boys who have different moods at different times, I can miss out on some of the spiritual impacts of meetings and even the ordinances sometimes. And Moroni is telling me that if that's the case, I'm really missing out on a lot. Heavenly Father is part of this, and it requires me to ask, and it requires me to pay attention. The workings of the Spirit is a beautiful phrase. And yeah, he wants us to experience that. To me, that's an overwhelming theme in these passages.

Welch: Yeah, I was really struck by the importance of prayer as well. It reminded me in some ways, we know that there's a strong connection between the Book of Moroni and the Book of 3rd Nephi, because these words and these ceremonial forms that he's teaching them, he takes from the Savior's ministry. They're just what the Savior taught the Nephites in Third Nephi. And for me also in Third Nephi, one of the predominant kind of themes there is prayer. We see Christ praying, we see him praying with the Nephites all the time. It's just running throughout all those chapters in 3rd Nephi. And similarly, here, I was really struck by how central prayer was to Moroni's own spiritual life, and mighty prayer, right? This isn't just kind of like getting the blessing on the food done so we can eat dinner. This is real connection with God, however that looks like for you.

Blythe: Yeah.

Welch: I'm drawn to it; I think because I'm still working on that in my own spiritual life. I'm still figuring out how to open that channel to God, but I'm really, really struck by the importance of prayer here in Moroni's own spiritual life. Yeah. Anything else? Yeah, go ahead.

Blythe: You're in good company. That's what we're all doing. That's right. There's a lot of beautiful themes. Let me read a couple of passages if I could.

Welch: Of course.

Blythe: Here we have verse 27, “wherefore my beloved brother have miracles ceased because Christ have ascended into heaven and have sat down on the right hand of God to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath given upon the children of men. For he hath answered the ends of the law,” moving down to 29, “and because he hath done this my beloved brother have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay, neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men, for behold they are subject unto him to minister according to the word of his command, showing themselves unto them strong faith and firm mind in every form of godliness.”

And here we have a message about what angels do. “And the office of their ministry is to call men unto repentance and to fulfill and to do the work of the covenants of the Father, which he hath made unto the children of men to prepare the way among the children of men by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord that they may bear testimony of him.”

We go through, let's see here, 37, “Behold, I say unto you, it is by faith that miracles are wrought, and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men. Wherefore, if these things have ceased, woe be unto the children of men, for it is because of unbelief and all is vain.”

I love these passages. Now, if you're reading this on an individual level, you might be like thinking, I haven't seen an angel. Does that mean I don't have faith? Right? Now that's not Moroni’s message. He's talking about miracles in our lives. Can we see these things? Angels have a specific mission, which is to bring about repentance, to prepare people. I think partly we're not always aware of angels acting in our lives.

Welch: Yeah.

Blythe: But also, as a folklorist, and something I obviously talk a lot about on “Angels and Seer Stones” our podcast, is the fact that Latter-day Saints

Welch: Mmm. Hahaha.

Blythe: tell stories and experience angels all the time. And partly that's because we know what angels are, right? Angels are deceased loved ones. They are people that haven't been born yet or have already died. They're not some special race. They don't have wings.

And so, when you hear a story, last night I listened to a man tell me about a revelation he had that came in a dream from his departed mother. And he told me this experience and I was really touched by him. I was touched that he trusted me with this story. And I was touched that he had listened to this revelation that was given in this way. I don't think he would say an angel appeared to him, but that's what an angel is in Latter-day Saint thought. If you have a story of, or if you've experienced a dream or an impression from a messenger of God, even if it was a deceased loved one. That's what Moroni is talking about. They come for a purpose, but that more importantly than this is the power of the Holy Ghost.

Welch: Mm -hmm.

Blythe: Is that if you have a witness of the Holy Ghost, I mean, we know what happens to Laman and Lemuel after they see an angel. It's not enough, right? They can be obedient for a minute, but it's the power of the Holy Ghost, the humbling, the listening to the Spirit that Nephi experiences that actually leads him to live a righteous life. And so, he preaches this importance. And of course, the Holy Ghost is part of the miracle that Mormon and Moroni are teaching us in this passage. I love it.

I think the Book of Moroni is just full of this emphasis on personal revelation, on the fact that God has not ceased to speak to his children. As a convert to the church, this is the teaching that makes me so grateful to have, to have ever met missionaries in the first place, right? This ties into the fact that God still speaks. He's not sleeping. He's not dead. If you aren't hearing God, well, we need to work some things out, right? There's a, you need to open that channel, as you talked about. And Moroni is going to try to help us think, how can you do this?

I meet students all the time who come to me and say, I don't know if I'm forgiven of something, right? Or I don't know if I'm able to hear the Spirit. And for me, this is just a really powerful pattern that's worked for me in my life, is that I focus on keeping the commandments. I try to be humble in my relationship with God. And then when I feel the Comforter, I trust it, right? So, I know things are okay. A major theme in the chapter, is that Christ has redeemed us, even to, I mean, he's gonna give us the phrase to be perfect in Christ, right? Be perfect, but Moroni is gonna tell us in chapter ten, 32, is it 32? “Come unto Christ and be perfected in him, deny yourselves of ungodliness,” so on. He talks about his, “Then is His grace sufficient for you that by His grace you may be perfect in Christ. And if by the grace of God, you are perfect in Christ, you can no wise deny the power of God. And if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ and deny not His power, then are you sanctified in Christ.”

I love it. We think so much about do all we can do, keep the commandments and things. And he's gonna say that's completely rooted in our relationship with Christ.

Welch: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Blythe: So personal relationship is another theme that is so important to Moroni.

Welch: Yes. Yeah, I agree. That's one thing that I had on my list as well. Well, so much of what you said, Chris, is just ringing all the bells in my heart. But yeah, on this question of relationships, we see that our relationships at church are absolutely essential to keeping us spiritually alive. Our relationships with our family, I mentioned how much it must have meant to him to have the memory and the voice of his father ringing in his head, even as his father's voice in his head was talking about some pretty difficult things. That relationship was nourishing to him there. Even, you know, it's so striking that he talks about, Moroni talks about the Lamanites themselves as his brethren. The Lamanites are his enemies, but they are also his brethren. And Moroni follows in the footsteps of a whole series of Nephite prophets who even as they were in an antagonistic, even a violent relationship with the Lamanites, still refer to them as our brethren. Jacob does this, Jarom, Benjamin, the sons of Mosiah, Mormon throughout, and Samuel of course, they all refer to the Lamanites as their brethren. So, I think keeping in mind that he's doing this for the sake of his brothers, right? His brothers in Christ in the latter days. That is, I think, part of what helps him to avoid being consumed by hatred and bitterness and destroyed by what he witnesses around him.

Blythe: I think that's absolutely right. What a powerful example to think about people that maybe on the surface you don't identify with their identities and maybe their actions are completely different. But what an optimism someone has even in this moment of utter despair that Mormon and Moroni are gonna kind of hint at. But there's a deep optimism in there that we need to be paying attention to.

Welch: Yeah, you know. Yeah, I agree. It seems like, you know, relationships are one way that we keep that channel of love open, right? I feel like the implicit model here is that, is that God's love comes to us, but then it needs to have someplace to go. It needs to flow out of us to other people. And if it has nowhere to go, it might get a little stopped up, right? So, the love needs to come through us and flow out. So, relationships are this really important way that we can feel the love of God, but also the sacraments are, right? These formal moments where we invoke the power of God and it's kind of like this is a symbolic--but not just symbolic--it's a real moment where the windows of heaven are open and we have a kind of foretaste as you said, this direct contact with the power of God.

Blythe: 27 and five. And it's so fun. Just what you said, he hasn't had this experience to get to celebrate this with his brethren again, at least. And then verse 27, “behold, this is wisdom in me, wherefore, marvel not for the hour cometh that I will drink of the fruit of the vine with you on the earth and with Moroni whom I have sent unto you to reveal the Book of Mormon, containing the fullness of my everlasting gospel, to whom I have committed the keys of the record of the stick of Ephraim.”

Welch: Yeah.

Blythe: And then he gives other people that are going to be at this great millennial sacrament meeting. But the first person he mentions is Moroni, which is kind of cool, right? As we think about in thinking about the sacrament at the end of his chapter. So, I imagine if Moroni was aware when that revelation came, it would have touched him greatly to think about that great sacrament meeting where he too got to be with the Savior and participate in this anew. It's pretty cool.

Welch: I'm a person, maybe different from you, I sense, Chris, who doesn't have a strong connection to what we might call supernatural spiritual experiences. I have loved ones who have passed beyond the veil. For me, they haven't…

Blythe: Mm-hmm.

Welch: come to visit me. I haven't had that dream. I haven't had that visitation. And I am always open to the possibility that my faith needs to continue to grow. I know my faith needs to continue to grow and I live in openness to that possibility. But I also, I think, have come to a place in my life where I can feel God's grace abundantly through other channels as well. So, I don't feel like I have a desperate need to have those kinds of supernatural, miraculous experiences in my life. So, I could then, as you said, I could read Moroni 7, Moroni 10 and say either, well, there's something wrong with me because I don't have enough faith. Or I could maybe just say, okay, well, that's not for me. That's for somebody else.

But I think there's a better way than either of those options. And this time through reading it, what really stuck out to me is that in emphasizing the fact that miracles have not ceased, it seems to me that Mormon and Moroni's larger point is that revelation has not ceased. Ultimately, I think that's what they want us to know. Miracles and spiritual gifts, remarkable spiritual gifts are fantastic. They're forms of revelation, just as you said. They come to us to teach us and to tutor us. And I do have a strong sense of ongoing guidance and connection in my life. I've been blessed with that over the years, to find those ways that I can connect into that light and that love of Christ.

So, I think for me, I can say, yes, miracles have not ceased because Christ continues to reveal himself to me and I'm in contact with that light and that love. So, I have been able to read these verses about miracles, I think, with a new sense of connection and identification, even though I'm a little unlike my Latter-day Saint brothers and sisters who have this very vibrant connection beyond the veil.

Blythe: Yeah, I think that you have some very obvious gifts of the Spirit. And so, I would actually suspect that guidance and connection are miracles and they are gifts of the Spirit and the ability to have counsel. You know, we talk about these elaborate things, and I think they're real. I think they really happen. People do dream of relatives. I have…

Welch: Yes, yes. Mm-hmm.

Blythe: I haven't had that experience. I've had, you know, I've had some things, but I think you're right. We need to look for the gifts that God's given us. And that's one of Moroni's major points in Moroni 10 right after he gives us this promise. Do you mind if I tell you about my experience with Moroni's promise?

Welch: Yes, please do. I've been hoping you would share that with us.

Blythe: Cause I, yeah, I was a 13-year-old kid, and I had started reading the Bible and I grew up Episcopalian. And so, I had visited my priest, a chaplain. My dad was in the military, and we had talked about things, and he wrote me a really long letter.

He told me to go read, you know, great priest, did something that I do with students today. He told me to read Screwtape Letters, you know, getting to C.S. Lewis, good guy. We moved away. I started, I had a neighbor who said, hey, come with us to meet, to the kingdom hall, the Jehovah Witnesses. And so, I went out and did that. One day I got back, my brother's friend,

Welch: Mm.

Blythe: was at the house and I was a little bit of a punk 13-year-old. And I won't tell too much of the story, but he kind of called me out and he said, “Hey, you're reading the Bible. Don't you believe in right and wrong?” And I thought, huh? And to be honest, I never really thought about behavior as something to do with the gospel, which is really strange. But I was a kid that went to a high church tradition. Our sermons were mainly based on current events or historical scenes. And we prayed every night, but we didn't pray in what Moroni calls mighty prayer, right? We said a beautiful, as a folklorist, I know it's beautiful, a beautiful prayer that we would say in our family.

So long story short, he asked me if I'd meet with missionaries. I said I would. I got back from school the next day and two sister missionaries were waiting on the porch, and it was Sister Unga from Hawaii and Sister Stewart from Utah. And we went inside, and they talked to me about the first discussion, right? I mean, these are the days it was probably even memorized. They gave me the principles and I just remember them asking me like what I think about God. And I said I know God loves me.

And they talked to me about prayer. And this hit me really hard, the idea that we could pray. And they said, you know, they told me about Moroni's promise, you can go pray about this thing. And I read what Moroni says about powerful words, right? “When you receive these things, I would exhort you that you would ask God, the eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true if you should ask with a sincere heart and with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

And so, I had this awesome Book of Mormon, and I knew Christ came to America. I kind of have an idea, but I was a youngster. For the life of me, I didn't know anyone wanted me to join their church. I just thought this was sharing something cool that God did.

We were taking my brother to, uh, he was, we lived in Virginia at the time. We're taking my brother to Galveston, Texas, where he was looking to go to college, you know, just kind of a student weekend or something. And on the plane, I had five hours, I think five hours, and I read the 1st book of Nephi, and I took notes and I, you know, nothing profound, right? Like I was, I knew how to study a story. And so, I just, from a, from a 13-year-old's perspective. So, I was just writing plot points.

And I got to this hotel once we were there, and I thought it was kind of cool. And I got to the hotel and I just, I was just reminded of this moment of this promise. And so, I laid back on this hotel bed and I just said, God, is this thing real? And maybe I said true, maybe I said real, but I just felt for the first time in my life, this fire, right? This burning. And it filled my body. I started to cry. I thought I was going to see angels. Like, I thought this is the conduit to heaven, right? Like, I mean, this was something completely extraordinary to me. And of course, it dissipated. And I went back, and the sister missionaries read the...

Welch: Haha.

Blythe: the story of the road to Emmaus, right? This burning in the bosom. Why didn't we know that was the Savior? For me, I think this is where this is particularly important for converts. But I think it's something Heavenly Father wants us to have. I don't think I'm special. I think it was easier for me because there was no stress. There was no larger question I was thinking about, right? My question was just God, do you love me? Is this a book? Can we communicate?

And for me, Moroni's promise here changed my life completely. Everything in my life has been, I mean, my three kids, you know, I'm the only member of my family and my wife's the only member of her family. We both had these experiences, her praying with missionaries right there with her when she felt this. And I'm, I'm just so grateful to be part of a religion that says I can learn myself. Like you can come up with a thousand philosophical reasons, maybe why Mormonism could be true or why Heavenly Father is real, or Jesus atoned for our sins. But I don't have to take anyone else's, and even prophets, but I don't have to take their word for it. I can actually go to God and have this experience.

And for me, this is life-changing. And I hope it changes the lives of my descendants forever because of this promise that Moroni gave us. And so, I occasionally hear people say, not everybody's experienced this. And so, we shouldn't constantly talk about it, or we shouldn't tell our youth constantly to go do this. But I don't think so.

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Blythe: I think this is the key to the Book of Mormon. And so, I want us all to have some experience that we know we're witnesses of this book. And I think that's what Moroni wants too. Like I'm going to meet you at the pleasing judgment bar of God and we're going to be the same sort of people because you're going to have this witness too. So, I love it.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah. I love that, Chris. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. That was powerful to me. I love to hear the experiences of people, I think especially for those who met the gospel and became acquainted with the Book of Mormon during a very determinate and discrete period of your life, you can have these very identifiable moments. And I love to hear them. I love to worship shoulder to shoulder with brothers and sisters who have that fire in their bones.

Some of us, like for me, perhaps who grow up in the gospel and kind of grow up bathed in the light and color of the gospel, our witness might happen over a period of time, right? It might kind of distill upon our souls.

Blythe: Oh, absolutely.

Welch: But I can witness that it is just as powerful and just as real. There's so much in your story, I think, that resonates. I think that it would make the heart of Mormon and Moroni, the hearts of Mormon and Moroni sing as well to hear you share that. Because in so many ways, you lived out what they laid out for us, right? They laid out for us a kind of what scholars would call an epistemology, a way to know, a way to gain spiritual knowledge. And it comes through group and corporate relational practices, but it also comes individually. It comes through kind of revealed means, whether that be the Holy Ghost or angels or a prophet, but it also comes through judgment, right?

I'm really struck that you were taking notes. How moving to me- this 13-year-old boy taking notes on the Book of Mormon. You were using your mind and the capacity for judgment as you had it at that time. And this is something very important for Mormon and Moroni also. They say it's given to you to judge correctly. You have the light of Christ. It's apparent in the world around you. So, if you pay attention to the world around you, you will have the mental faculties to judge rightly if something is bringing you to Christ. And if it's bringing you to Christ, you know that it's good. You know that it's from me. So, we have a kind of innate capacity of judgment and reason also that can lead us rightly and prepare us to then receive the revealed knowledge as well.

So, I think your own experience echoed by millions and millions of other Latter-day Saints around the world really confirms the, the reality of spiritual knowledge and the reality that God is still speaking to his children. And like you, I prize that in our tradition. I prize it and I'm fed by the rich vibrancy of this Spirit. When I sit in Relief Society with my sisters and we share together our own walk with Christ, that feeds me. And so, I'll never leave. I'll never leave the Church because the Church is the place where I experience that spiritual nourishment, and I feast with my brothers and sisters on the word of Christ.

Blythe: That's awesome.

Welch: Well, Chris, I think this is a great place to wrap up today. Thank you so much for all that you've studied and shared, for the way that your own life experience has prepared you to be the teacher that you are now to your students, to our listeners, to your own children. I think we're both grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and for Moroni and for the promise he gives us that God is speaking, and He wants us to ask. Thank you for being with us today on the Book of Mormon Studies Podcast.

Blythe: Thanks, Rosalynde. It was awesome.

Welch: Bye-bye.