The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (Official Edition)

The Book of Mormon is a volume of scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains, as does the Bible, the fullness of the everlasting gospel.

The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Their words, written on gold plates, were quoted and abridged by a prophet-historian named Mormon. The record gives an account of two great civilizations. One came from Jerusalem in 600 B.C., and afterward separated into two nations, known as the Nephites and the Lamanites. The other came much earlier when the Lord confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel. This group is known as the Jaredites. After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.

The crowning event recorded in the Book of Mormon is the personal ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ among the Nephites soon after his resurrection. It puts forth the doctrines of the gospel, outlines the plan of salvation, and tells men what they must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the life to come.

After Mormon completed his writings, he delivered the account to his son Moroni, who added a few words of his own and hid up the plates in the hill Cumorah. On September 21, 1823, the same Moroni, the a glorified, resurrected being, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and instructed him relative to the ancient record and its destined translation into the English language.

In due course the plates were delivered to Joseph Smith, who translated them by the gift and power of God. The record is now published in many languages as a new and additional witness that Jesus Christ is the Sone of the living God and that all who will come unto him and obey the laws and ordinances of his gospel may be saved.

Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said: "I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."

In addition to Joseph Smith, the Lord provided for eleven others to see the gold plates for themselves and to be special witnesses of the truth and divinity of the Book of Mormon. Their written testimonies are included herewith as "The Testimony of Three Witnesses" and "The Testimony of Eight Witnesses."

We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and the to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true. Those who pursue this course and ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Moroni 10:3-5.)

Those who gain this divine witness from the holy Spirit will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is his revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord's kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah.

Joseph Smith is not the author, per se, but rather the translator of the Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844), was the founding prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the spring of 1820, when Joseph was 14, he was disturbed by the competing claims of the ministers in the area, and frustrated that “the teachers of religion....understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible. Upon reading James 1:5, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him,” he determined to appeal to heaven for guidance. “So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.

“After I had retired to the place where I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction. But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair...just at this moment of great alarm,

"I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no soon appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spoke unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other – This is My Beloved Son, Hear Him!

“....No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself...than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right....and which I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong...”

Joseph found that repeating the experience of this vision subjected him to persecution and ridicule. “It caused me serious reflection then, and often has since, how very strange it was than an obscure boy, of a little over fourteen years of age....should be thought a character of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the great ones of the day, and in a manner to create in them a spirit of the most bitter persecution and reviling. But strange or not, so it was, and it was often the cause of great sorrow to myself....I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me; and though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true...I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it.”

Several years later, in 1823 and at the age of 17, he was visited by an angel, who told Joseph “that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.

“He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the...fulness of the everlasting Gospel was contained in it.”

Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from the gold plates by the gift and power of God, translating the entire volume in approximately 60 working days. It was published in 1830 in Palmyra, New York.

Joseph Smith later wrote many additional revelations, founded several cities, including Nauvoo, the largest city in Illinois, and became one of the most celebrated and controversial figures of the nineteenth century. Esteemed by his people as a prophet of God in the tradition of the Old and New Testaments, he was murdered by a mob at Carthage, Illinois, in 1844. He was 38.