Moroni
The last Nephite — who finished the record, hid the plates, and delivered them fourteen centuries later
The Son Who Outlived Everything
Moroni first appears in his father Mormon’s record as a military captain before the battle at Cumorah. After the battle destroyed the Nephite nation and Mormon was killed, Moroni was alone. He wrote in Mormon 8 with a stark directness: “My father hath been slain in battle, and all my kinsfolk, and I have not friends nor whither to go.” He expected to be killed soon. He wrote anyway.
He did not die soon. He wandered for decades, alone, hiding from Lamanites who would kill him if they found him. During those years of solitude he continued writing — finishing Mormon’s record, abridging the Jaredite record into the book of Ether, and composing ten chapters of his own that now bear his name. The book of Moroni is the work of a man who kept finding things worth saying to a future audience, even when there was no one left around him.
Mormon 8: Writing After the End
The chapter Moroni added to his father’s record is addressed directly to those who will one day read it. He knew the record would come forth. He knew there would be those who would attack it. He described both with precision:
“Behold, the Lord hath shown unto me great and marvelous things concerning that which must shortly come, at that day when these things shall come forth among you. Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing.”
He described the era when his record would come forth: a time of pride, pollution, secret combinations, churches built for gain, love of money more than the poor. He was not guessing at the future. He had been shown it. He wrote a warning addressed to that specific time — which is our time.
The Book of Ether
Among the plates at Cumorah were twenty-four gold plates containing the record of the Jaredite civilization — a people who had come to the new world at the time of the Tower of Babel and risen and fallen entirely before Lehi ever left Jerusalem. Moroni abridged that record into the fifteen chapters we call the book of Ether.
In the middle of that abridgment, Moroni paused to write chapter 12 — one of the great theological chapters in the Book of Mormon. It is his meditation on faith: the unseen foundation of things hoped for, the anchor of the soul. He was writing it as a man who had watched two entire civilizations collapse. His words about faith were not theoretical.
The Book of Moroni
The ten chapters of Moroni’s own book cover the ordinances of the church — priesthood ordination, sacrament prayers, confirmation, baptism. They also include two of Mormon’s letters, preserved by Moroni, dealing with infant baptism and the pure love of Christ. And they end with the most-read passage in the Book of Mormon:
“Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”
The man who had watched everything fall apart ended his record with an invitation to prayer and a promise that God answers. The last words of the Book of Mormon are a testament to faith written by its loneliest author.
The Angel
On the night of September 21, 1823, a young man in Palmyra, New York, was praying in his room when a figure appeared in a robe of extraordinary whiteness. The figure identified himself as Moroni, a servant of God. He told Joseph Smith that God had work for him to do, and that a record was deposited in a nearby hill, written on gold plates, containing the fulness of the everlasting gospel. He quoted extensively from the Old Testament prophets — Malachi, Isaiah, Joel, Acts — and then disappeared.
He returned twice more that same night and once the next morning — four visits, repeating the message each time with additional instruction. That fall Joseph went to the hill and found the plates deposited in a stone box. Moroni met him there and told him to return annually for four years before he could take them.
In 1827 Joseph received the plates. He translated them with divine assistance. In 1830 the Book of Mormon was published. The record Moroni had buried in approximately 421 AD was in print fourteen hundred years later, distributed worldwide, fulfilling everything he had written about it coming forth in a day of pride and secret combinations — and containing his own invitation for every reader to ask God if it was true.
What Moroni Teaches
Moroni teaches endurance beyond the visible end. He had no community, no congregation, no family, no future in any earthly sense. He kept writing because the work mattered beyond his circumstances. His contribution to the record — the Jaredite abridgment, his own ten chapters, the title page — is disproportionately large for a man who had nothing.
He also teaches something about the nature of a testimony offered in isolation. Moroni wrote his promise — “he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost” — without any audience to receive it for over a millennium. He was writing a check drawn on God’s account, trusting that the bank would honor it when the time came. It has been honored millions of times.
His last recorded words, after everything, are these: “And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen.” He expected to see us. He expected to be glad about it.