Occasionally when I read the scriptures the personality of the writer really comes through, and when that happens I feel a greater understanding of the subject being discussed. I was studying the book of Ether this past week, and in chapter 12, Moroni, the great editor of The Book of Mormon, interjects his personal fears regarding how the things he is engraving onto metal plates will be received, by a future generation. He laments "Lord, the Gentiles will mock at these things, because of our weakness in writing.... (T)hou hast made us that we could write but little, because of the awkwardness of our hands. (W)hen we write we behold our weakness, and stumble because of the placing of our words; and I fear lest the Gentiles shall mock at our words."
Moroni, you wrote to us as if we were present, having seen our generations in vision. And now, I write back to you as if you are present. Your fears may have been realized when some few read your words and mocked them, but those who did so were uneducated, uninformed, and uninspired. As I read your writings, I find them to be incredible. The more I study them, the more impressed I am at how accurate, how consistent with other scriptures, and how inspired and inspiring they are. You helped author the book characterized by a living prophet as "the most correct of any book on earth"! In my 35 years of studying it, I have never found a single mistake--not one inconsistency, and not a single conflict with anything I know to be true. I concluded long ago that anyone who would mock your writings in The Book of Mormon would also mock the Savior himself. You did your job, and you did it with inspiration, enduring all the hardships we can now only imagine, as your people battled themselves to extinction. Mock your writings? No, Moroni, we humbly thank you, I thank you, a true prophet of God, to whom we acknowledge a great debt, you who brought so much to this latter-day generation.
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