The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ

The Book of Mormon, while ostensibly a history of ancient Jews who lived in the Americas, is in fact most concerned with an exposition of God’s plan of salvation through Jesus. Among the most foundational ideas in LDS theology is that all of history progresses along a linear plan toward the fulfillment of God’s purposes. This view of history draws on the LDS tradition’s shared heritage with Judaism and Christianity, which also view history teleologically: as proceeding in a linear fashion toward an ultimate end, in which God’s final plan for his creation will be realized. Some other religious traditions, by contrast—such as Buddhism and certain Indigenous American religions—tend to view history in the mode of a cyclical, recurring pattern rather than a linear progression.

In The Book of Mormon’s portrayal of history, even apparent setbacks (such as, for instance, the eradication of the Nephite people even after all of God’s work through his prophets and in Jesus’s ministry to them) are not, in fact, reversals of God’s purposes; LDS theology holds that God sees and knows those events long before they come about, and that his plan of salvation ultimately triumphs even over such downturns in the fortunes of his believers. This conviction is often presented with a note of confidence and hope: “For the eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his promises shall be fulfilled” (Mormon 8:22).

Though it begins centuries before the birth of Jesus, the book’s history is always oriented toward and around salvation through faith in Jesus: “And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption” (Omni 1:26). The historical narrative of the text, with its accounts of wars, kings, and judges, is subservient to the higher story of how God was preparing the world to receive Jesus, that people might put their faith in him. The climax of the entire narrative of The Book of Mormon comes in 3 Nephi, when Jesus Christ himself appears in the Americas after his death and resurrection. That appearance is coupled with a long extract of teaching, including both ethical and administrative injunctions for the life of the church, but all of it focused on the question of how to live a life ordered by faith in Jesus and obedience to God’s commandments.

The fact that the whole text of The Book of Mormon is centered around the theme of faith in Jesus is rather counterintuitive, since the majority of the book’s chronology takes place centuries before Jesus’s birth. Nevertheless, this theme appears with clarity and specificity even in the earliest periods, far surpassing the level of detail in the messianic prophecies of the biblical Old Testament. Whereas the prophecies in the Old Testament are interpreted by Christians as foretelling the nature of Jesus’s office as Messiah, the atonement to be offered through him, and other such indicators or his identity and role, this information is usually related in a symbolic and typological way that only becomes clear in retrospect. The Book of Mormon’s prophecies about Jesus, however, are startlingly clear from the beginning, some six centuries before his arrival, including his name, his divine identity, his mother’s name, the time of his appearance, the manner of his death and resurrection, and so on. “And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary” (Mosiah 3:8). In this way, even though the narrative of The Book of Mormon begins six centuries before Jesus, he is a central character from the beginning, and faith in him is exhorted by every prophet from 1 Nephi onward.