After posting my thoughts on Moroni chapter 10 the other day--and in particular, reading Stew's comment about verse 32—I would like today to delve a bit deeper into the end of the chapter, starting with verse 30 and Moroni's final exhortation: "come unto Christ."
This isn't actually the entire statement, as, grammatically speaking, what we have here is a compound predicate, stretching into verse 31: "come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift...and awake, and arise from the dust...and put on thy beautiful garments...and strengthen thy stakes, and enlarge thy borders forever."
This command comes with a wonderful promise, that if we do this, "the covenants of the Eternal Father, which he hath made...may be fulfilled." I see in all of this echos of the covenants of the temple, with the emphasis on the covenants God has made with His children throughout history, the need to shun evil and cling to virtue, and the overarching theme of coming to the Lord.
This same pattern recurs in verses 32-33: "come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness...and love God with all your might, mind, and strength...that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ...[and] then are ye sanctified..that ye become holy."
We often speak of Moroni 10:3-5 as the promise of the Book of Mormon, but, if you ask me, this is the real promise, that through the grace of Christ and His atonement, we can become better, ultimately becoming as our Savior is.
2 comments:
I completely agree and am glad you see the pattern too. I've always loved the last verse of Moroni as well for a couple of reasons. When we first meet Moroni in Mormon 8 he is a depressing character. His entire civilization has been destroyed, he's been forced to bury his father and all his kinsmen, and to take to life on the lamb.
Twenty years later in Moroni 10 he no longer has the same attitude. Well yes Moroni 1 does reiterate his desperation. He is simply stating that he must wander for his own life's safety. By time he engraves chapter 10 he is laying out quite succinctly what we need to do to received the promised blessings.
But v. 34 is the most fascinating of all. Instead of exhorting us one last time or telling us how much he longs for our repentance, he basically tells us that if we don't believe him we'll realize we're wrong in the end.
In the end he epitomizes what he wants us to become. He's done the things he's commanded us to do. As a result he knows what his reward will be. If we believe him great. If not...well he told us so.
Stew,
Good insights. The evolution of Moroni has long interested me. I'd love to know more about those 20 years--where he went, what he did, how he learned. I bet he has more to say than we get in those few chapters.
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