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Episode: 4.49 - Moroni 1-6 - Part 1, Moroni Blesses the Latter-day Church of Christ

Author: Lili Anderson
Duration: 00:28:44

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Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_00
Hi, this is Lili DeGioia Sanderson, and you're listening to Choosing Glory. I want to thank you for joining me today, and a special thank you to my Patreon subscribers. You are making this possible, and I am incredibly grateful.

00:00:19 Speaker_00
If you're interested in supporting the podcast and receiving some extra content, please look at the links below, and one of them will take you to Patreon, where you can join us Thank you, all of you, subscribers or no, for being here.

00:00:35 Speaker_00
Today we're talking about Moroni 1 through 6. And this is going to be unusually brief because I need to go to join my granddaughter and other family members, her parents and family members, to be there for her first endowment in the temple.

00:00:53 Speaker_00
So I'm pretty excited about that and really grateful that she's made that choice. I am very blessed and I'm grateful for that. Let's see if I can keep this more succinct than normal. We're gonna do a little bit of current events.

00:01:09 Speaker_00
I can't help myself, right? You may know that the first transgender person was elected to the House of Representatives nationally from Delaware. So this is a man who identifies as a woman and then it created a little bit of a

00:01:30 Speaker_00
news issue because Representative Nancy Mace of the House complained. I don't know that she complained. Whatever she did was though she said that there should be a house rule that female bathrooms were only used by biological females.

00:01:49 Speaker_00
And of course this created a tempest in a teapot for the media and people on the left.

00:02:00 Speaker_00
And she defended her position soundly and got back up from the house speaker, Mike Johnson, who at first, honestly, in his first statement kind of sounded pretty wishy-washy.

00:02:11 Speaker_00
And for that reason, somebody coached him and he made another statement that same day, sounding more firm in his support of keeping the bathrooms in the Capitol to the biological sex for which they are designated.

00:02:26 Speaker_00
Now, there are plenty of bathrooms there. Apparently, every representative has a private bathroom in their own offices. So it's not like this is going to be a hardship for anybody. But this is the creep, right?

00:02:38 Speaker_00
It's not enough that we try to be loving and tolerant, and we should always be loving. and tolerant to a point, right? But when it starts to encroach on the safety of the vulnerable, that's a bridge too far.

00:02:57 Speaker_00
So anyway, I know I beat this drum a lot, but brothers and sisters, this is the drum that's being beat by Satan and his minions. It is actually super dangerous stuff. Transgenderism has always had children in the crosshairs.

00:03:18 Speaker_00
I spoke about this at some length on Patreon a while ago. So if you're interested in that, go back and check Patreon. There's a search feature and you can look up transgender.

00:03:28 Speaker_00
Anyway, I spent some time on this, on some of the roots of transgenderism, but I will mention just briefly that Alfred Kinsey, who died in like 1956, was a so-called, I mean, he was originally an entomologist, meaning he studied insects.

00:03:44 Speaker_00
But he was one of the early guys who did all these reports, so to speak, on human sexuality. And it was discovered later that he vastly overrepresented in his reports pedophiles, prostitutes, homosexuals. So his stuff was all slanted toward an agenda.

00:04:01 Speaker_00
And he did involve children in his reports and started being more vocal. I mean, he might've been the first public figure in this country who started talking about children as sexual beings.

00:04:15 Speaker_00
And all of this was part of an agenda to remove the final taboo. Like there are several taboos in societies, right? And there are several sexual taboos, but most of those sexual taboos have been eroded little by little. attacked them one by one.

00:04:35 Speaker_00
Satan has attacked them one by one. And let's not kid ourselves, this is coming from the adversary. So, first it was the hippies, you know, free love and whatever. So, no more taboo against sex before marriage.

00:04:48 Speaker_00
And then, of course, that loosened what marriage was about and that fidelity within marriage and

00:04:53 Speaker_00
You know, all this idea that starts with people like this, but I'm not saying he was the first one who thought it, but he became quite famous for sharing this, that it's wrong to suppress sexual behaviors and sexual desires.

00:05:05 Speaker_00
And he did talk about children. And of course, if children are sexual creatures, then to oppress them or suppress their sexual feelings is wicked and oppressive. So, This has been creeping into our society for a very long time.

00:05:23 Speaker_00
And the idea then is if everybody is sexual, and look at how transgenderism has gone after the kids, they know if they're not in the right body.

00:05:33 Speaker_00
And I received a message from a podcast listener who's a public school teacher, and she said, you would not believe how blatant

00:05:40 Speaker_00
the transgender ideology is in schools, that's being transmitted to children and supposedly taught to them so that they can be confused about what men and women are and what they are. And as we do this, we set them up.

00:05:56 Speaker_00
If kids are sexual beings and know who they are sexually at young ages and whatever, which is patently untrue, then why would we oppress them to prevent them from experiencing their sexuality with anybody, including adults.

00:06:13 Speaker_00
And that has been at the root of all this movement for a very long time. I hope that you'll take some time and either look into that or go check out my Patreon content on this. This is an evil agenda, brothers and sisters.

00:06:26 Speaker_00
I'm grateful that it's a little more permissible

00:06:31 Speaker_00
In recent times now, to challenge it, we have the San Jose volleyball team for women that have been forced to play with a transgender teammate who is a man, biologically, who now identifies as a woman, and many schools have not agreed to play San Jose State and have

00:06:52 Speaker_00
you know, forfeited those games in protest. One of the coaches is suspended for now because she's a female coach, and she started speaking out.

00:07:00 Speaker_00
And one of the female teammates has been very vocal about this, and she's in the news and getting a lot of flack. And apparently, they're threatening some of these girls' scholarships if they speak out. So this is so evil.

00:07:12 Speaker_00
Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to talk to your children about this. In fact, we really need to talk to our children about this and help them understand that God declared in the beginning and has created us as male and female.

00:07:26 Speaker_00
And this is the unit that is designed to, under the auspices of legal and lawful marriage, hopefully in the Temple if we're members of the Church, to then have a sexual union that can produce children, the point of all of this.

00:07:43 Speaker_00
So, brothers and sisters, I mean, there are lots of points to life, but that's one of them, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. And that includes having babies.

00:07:53 Speaker_00
That has to include bringing God's spirit children to this earth in bodies. And that is one of the great components of marriage. So, okay.

00:08:03 Speaker_00
I'm going to also mention that some of the new cabinet picks for the new administration that will come into official power in January have been in the news a lot too.

00:08:16 Speaker_00
And to put it mildly, they've had some immoral sexual behaviors that have come out and they've been, some of them accused of rape and forcible sexual activity. I don't know. How would I know what the exact truth is of those things?

00:08:34 Speaker_00
People are innocent until proven guilty in this country. I'm grateful for that. But it just made me sad to think that

00:08:45 Speaker_00
these people who are supposed to be more conservative and more, anyway, America first, whatever, but they are not always moral in their sexual behaviors and sometimes very immoral in their sexual behaviors.

00:09:02 Speaker_00
So I just want to point out once again, this quote that I have already shared from President Benson, who was then the president of the Council of the Twelve,

00:09:14 Speaker_00
Many Americans have lost sight of the truth that righteousness is the one indispensable ingredient to liberty. One more time, many Americans have lost sight of the truth that righteousness is the indispensable ingredient to liberty.

00:09:34 Speaker_00
I think I skipped a word, is the one indispensable ingredient to liberty.

00:09:39 Speaker_00
So we talked about this even before the election, that while I do think some political approaches are better than others, better for citizens, better for the economy, better for the protection of the country, nevertheless, nobody has the answer

00:10:02 Speaker_00
to all the problems of America without including worship of God, without taking that seriously and being an obedient people, obedient to the Ten Commandments, for Pete's sake, just basic Judeo-Christian moral code that would allow God to bless this people.

00:10:20 Speaker_00
And that is the Book of Mormon promise. We've talked about it so much. Moroni echoed that again in the second chapter of Ether three times in a row. And the fourth one was listed to us or addressed to us, the Gentiles, repent, repent.

00:10:36 Speaker_00
So President Benson went on to quote Abraham Lincoln. I'm not going to read the whole quote here.

00:10:41 Speaker_00
I did before, but the end of the quote is, it behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Okay, podcast listener, and thank you for this correction.

00:11:00 Speaker_00
I actually, when I gave the source on this, when I read it before, I mistakenly went to the year that the messages and papers of the presidents was published in the United States Congress in 1897.

00:11:14 Speaker_00
And this sharp listener said, I think the quote is accurate, but the year must not be because I had said 1897, skipping to the end of the reference here, And this listener mentioned that Abraham Lincoln, of course, was assassinated in 1865.

00:11:31 Speaker_00
So I'm correcting the date on Lincoln's proclamation. It was one of the proclamations of Lincoln as President of the United States, and it was March 30th, 1865. 1863. So let me go on the record as correcting that.

00:11:47 Speaker_00
Thank you for watching those things and being vigilant and letting me know. I try to be accurate but certainly mistakes are made and I'm super grateful when somebody catches those or lets me know so that I can share with you the correct information.

00:12:01 Speaker_00
Okay, let's look at this section of verses here, or chapters, almost like verses, because they are actually very short.

00:12:15 Speaker_00
And I'm going to echo again what my son Harper said last week when he joined me for the second part, saying that in some respects, it seems like Moroni was sort of a reluctant contributor to the record here.

00:12:30 Speaker_00
I'm not trying to say I know exactly how he felt, because I don't. But you do see some indications of that. He didn't think he would be writing his own book, and perhaps he saw the Book of Mormon as his father's great opus. And it was.

00:12:47 Speaker_00
It was his father's great stewardship and work to bring forth this condensed version of all the plates that had been engraved by prophet after prophet after prophet in the New World.

00:13:02 Speaker_00
Mormon did definitely have that stewardship, and Moroni must have been a witness to some of what his father was doing, or certainly heard him talk about it, or knew of it, and reverenced that assignment and supported it to the point where then when his father is killed by the Lamanites, it is recorded near the end of the Book of Mormon, in the Book of Mormon, he

00:13:29 Speaker_00
picks up the record to complete his father's work, and he thinks that that will do it.

00:13:33 Speaker_00
So he records the loss of his father to the Lamanites, and then he finishes the record of the destruction of the Nephites completely, and the last ones being hunted by the Lamanites, and then he gives his own testimony.

00:13:49 Speaker_00
And that's all part of Mormon's own book in the Book of Mormon. And then he thinks he will be done, having completed just that last ending to his father's work, but he finds himself still alive.

00:14:06 Speaker_00
And remember, at the end of his father's book, he says, I am alone. And he mentions that he doesn't have any oar to write further anyway. So he's just completing this record.

00:14:18 Speaker_00
But while he doesn't explain it, he seems to have been provided with additional material to record a little more because he Moroni condenses the Book of Ether.

00:14:31 Speaker_00
So he does have some materials that become available to him, and he is able to condense that second civilizational witness to the Book of Mormon promise, that if people stray from worshiping Jesus Christ, who is the God of the land, that they will be destroyed.

00:14:49 Speaker_00
And we see that in that tender Book of Ether. Also, We then find that he had enough material to write a little more. And he starts again with the same kind of almost disclaimer or apology about continuing.

00:15:10 Speaker_00
In verse 1 of chapter 1 of the Book of Moroni, this final book to the Book of Mormon that's written because he finds himself still there, and this is what he says, I had supposed not to have written more, but I have not as yet perished.

00:15:27 Speaker_00
and I make not myself known to the Lamanites, lest they should destroy me." So he knows that if they find him, they will kill him. Verse two, he says that the wars are exceedingly fierce among themselves.

00:15:40 Speaker_00
And because of their hatred, this is verse two, they put to death every Nephite that will not deny the Christ. And I, Moroni, verse three, will not deny the Christ, wherefore I wander with us whoever I can for the safety of mine own life.

00:15:54 Speaker_00
And then the end of his chapter one explanation as to why this book even exists, he says, wherefore, I write a few more things, contrary to that which I had supposed.

00:16:04 Speaker_00
I didn't think I would write any more, but I write something that perhaps they may be of worth unto my brethren, the Lamanites, in some future day, according to the will of the Lord. Now, he has seen our day, and the Lord had given it unto him to see.

00:16:19 Speaker_00
And he has already prophesied that there will be three witnesses and eight witnesses also of the plates. And he is thinking about what would be useful.

00:16:32 Speaker_00
Now, we know that God instructs us, but we also know that he asks us to use our prefrontal cortex here and to think about things, to study it out in our minds and then ask for confirmations. So it seems that

00:16:48 Speaker_00
When we write a record, when these prophets wrote a record, it was a part of themselves. It wasn't just given to them. It was something that they prayed about.

00:16:57 Speaker_00
So I suspect that that's what we're seeing here, that Moroni is prayerfully considering what the Spirit will direct him to add since he is still alive and has a little more space to offer.

00:17:11 Speaker_00
This is a beautiful book, but again, speaking to the perhaps reluctance of Moroni to

00:17:17 Speaker_00
write much himself, we see these first six chapters are very brief, some of them extremely brief, as he's giving almost a handbook of instructions for the Latter-day Church.

00:17:29 Speaker_00
Let me get some of these ordinances and practices, as revealed by God, on the record so that the Latter-day Church will have access to them as soon as this book is translated. And that's what we see. verse six chapters are basically handbook content.

00:17:48 Speaker_00
Chapter six has a little more additional information of Moroni's, but then the next three chapters that Moroni includes here are not even his own words. The lengthier chapters in the book of Moroni are content given by Moroni's father, Mormon.

00:18:09 Speaker_00
So again, you can only imagine the esteem and love in which he held his father, and he has kept communications from his father.

00:18:16 Speaker_00
So he writes about that, my father taught this, and or my father wrote this in an epistle to me so that I could teach in the correct way or help people in the correct way.

00:18:27 Speaker_00
So he adds additional content from his father, Mormon, in his own book, and those constitute the three longer chapters of Moroni. And then finally, Chapter 10 is the famous Book of Mormon promise about what we can do when we receive these things.

00:18:45 Speaker_00
We can pray to know their truthfulness, and we'll talk about that, of course, when we get to Chapter 10. And then Moroni's last testimony. But you see what I mean? He's a little bit feeling, it seems, that this isn't really my work.

00:18:59 Speaker_00
It wasn't really my stewardship. And certainly, Mormon wrote or condensed the records of all these other prophets from Nephi on to the destruction of the Nephites, and that was his great opus.

00:19:14 Speaker_00
But Moroni is honoring what the Spirit is telling him to complete his father's work, add the record of the Jaredites in a condensed form that he condenses, and then he adds a little more information just to be helpful to the Latter-day Church and to the Lamanites, because he has seen that they will not be utterly destroyed.

00:19:34 Speaker_00
and that they will, in the last day, be given the opportunity to come again to Christ.

00:19:42 Speaker_00
And he obviously is grateful for that knowledge and hopes that they will then be blessed by the great sacrifices made by his Father and himself to complete this record. Okay, so just another little bit of information that I thought was interesting.

00:20:01 Speaker_00
A couple of things. something on the BYU Religious Studies website, an article by H. Donald Peterson called Moroni, The Last of the Nephite Prophets. And I think this is interesting and important to share.

00:20:16 Speaker_00
Mormon who was well aware of the prophecies about his people knew that his newly born son would experience a lifetime of bloodshed. turmoil, and strife.

00:20:27 Speaker_00
Prophecies in the scriptures were clear that the once mighty Nephite civilization would deteriorate, divide, and finally end in tragic destruction during Moroni's lifetime.

00:20:40 Speaker_00
Now, why do I think that's so wonderful and important to share is that, I mean, obviously tragedy of the Nephites, but Mormon went ahead and had a son. We don't know if Moroni had any siblings.

00:20:52 Speaker_00
We don't hear about a wife that he might have had, but obviously Mormon was married and had at least one son, perhaps others, but he had children knowing of the destruction to come. Now, I think that's so important.

00:21:09 Speaker_00
able to be a guest on The True Millennial for a few episodes. We talked about my book, Choosing Glory, and thanks again to Parker and Lexi Walbeck for that great opportunity. I really enjoyed it. They asked that question.

00:21:25 Speaker_00
They said, in our generation, these younger generations, some people are wondering if they should have children. If this is, in fact, the last of the last days, which it is, then should people have children? This is a nice answer.

00:21:37 Speaker_00
My answer was, of course, yes. Yes, it's part of the plan. God has a plan for us, and he has not revoked the commandment given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. So yes, we should have children. Yes, of course.

00:21:52 Speaker_00
I mean, some people aren't given that opportunity in this life. I understand. I truly believe that that will all be restored. Those righteous desires will be fulfilled during the millennium. But yes, if we're able to marry and have children,

00:22:06 Speaker_00
Of course we do. Of course we do. And I think that's a nice point, that Mormon had children, knowing as he did of the pending destruction of his people that would happen in his son Moroni's lifetime, at least.

00:22:21 Speaker_00
Then we also kind of have estimates that this book was written, this Book of Moroni, the final chapters of the Book of Mormon, was written between 400 and 421 AD, give or take.

00:22:36 Speaker_00
And then we know that Moroni was given another assignment that is quite beautiful, but I'm gonna just mention that in a moment.

00:22:46 Speaker_00
Okay, chapter one, we've just explained how he's giving sort of a disclaimer as to like, well, I didn't think I was gonna write more, but this is why. Chapter two, he gives the instruction that, or the record,

00:23:01 Speaker_00
that the disciples of Christ were given the power to lay their hands upon recipients and give them the gift of the Holy Ghost. So that means they had the Melchizedek priesthood because that is the power by which that gift is conferred.

00:23:14 Speaker_00
Chapter three talks about the instruction of the ordination of teachers and priests. Chapter four, these are really fast and they are very short, is the sacrament prayer for the bread. And chapter five, the sacrament prayer for the water. And

00:23:31 Speaker_00
That kind of constitutes those first five chapters. Very brief, sort of handbook instruction. Now, I just wanted to finish part one with this, that Moroni gets one more assignment before his death. And we know this from Latter-day Prophets.

00:23:47 Speaker_00
Maybe some of you are aware of this, but Moroni went around North America and actually dedicated some future temple sites for the Latter-days. Now, how do we know this? President Brigham Young

00:24:01 Speaker_00
when he went to choose the location for the Manti Temple, said that the temple should be built on Manti stone quarry ground.

00:24:10 Speaker_00
Early in the morning of April 25th, 1877, President Brigham Young asked Brother Warren Snow to go with him to the Temple Hill. Brother Snow says, we two were alone. President Young took me to the spot where the Temple was to stand.

00:24:25 Speaker_00
We went to the southeast corner and President Young said, here is the spot where the Prophet Moroni stood and dedicated this piece of land for a Temple site. And that is the reason why the location is made here and we can't move it from this spot.

00:24:40 Speaker_00
And if you and I are the only persons that come here at high noon today, we will dedicate this ground. So that's kind of sweet, isn't it?

00:24:46 Speaker_00
I think that's tender and a gift for Moroni that he actually was directed to certain places to dedicate for future temples in the latter days. Now, the Manti area had every year, they had, and right by the temple, there was a hill and they

00:25:03 Speaker_00
had a pageant for a long time until they stopped the pageants. And the Manti Temple pageant actually included this bit of revealed understanding through Brigham Young, and it showed Moroni dedicating the temple site.

00:25:18 Speaker_00
So it was sweet to think that Moroni was able to do some of those things. after he completed the record. And then William McBride, who was a patriarch from the Richfield, Utah State, spoke at a prayer meeting in St. George in January of 1881.

00:25:33 Speaker_00
And recalling many experiences from the Nauvoo period and quoting the Prophet Joseph Smith on many issues, Patriarch McBride referred to the route the old Nephites took traveling to Kimura.

00:25:44 Speaker_00
from the South and Southwest of having to bury their treasures as they journeyed and finally bearing the records and precious things." Well, this is Moroni, the Nephite Moroni, and precious things in the Hill Cumorah.

00:25:56 Speaker_00
Of course, he included some other artifacts, Urim and Thummim and so on. And of Moroni, so this is Patriarch McBride quoting things that he heard from the Prophet in Nauvoo, Prophet Joseph in Nauvoo.

00:26:11 Speaker_00
included information about Moroni dedicating the temple site of what we now call St. George. He also mentioned Nauvoo, Jackson County, Kirtland, and others we know not of as yet.

00:26:27 Speaker_00
So that's kind of tender, I think, and I'd like to end on that high note and just then say that if, in fact,

00:26:35 Speaker_00
and Moroni's life ends at an unspecified time after he does some of those temple mount or temple ground dedications, then 1,400 years after he finishes this record, he is authorized to come back and appear to the Prophet Joseph Smith and his youth and disclose the location

00:27:05 Speaker_00
of the plates that become the Book of Mormon. And he came, of course, to deliver other messages to Joseph Smith. And this is why we've had the statues of the angel Moroni on a lot of our temples.

00:27:21 Speaker_00
We're not doing that so much anymore, and that's fine, but what a great tribute to this incredible man who lived a life of such sacrifice and sorrow. But God gave him the sweetness of seeing the completion

00:27:33 Speaker_00
of the intention of this work in the early 1800s when he was the Angel of the Restoration, we have called him. Bless God for his mercies and kindness, even in times where it is hard to find kindness.

00:27:55 Speaker_00
And we may not always feel the kindness of the Lord, but we know that he is kind and he is good. And ultimately, His mercies will be made known to all of us.

00:28:07 Speaker_00
We will see His hand in our lives if we invite it to be there, and we will see the blessings that He offers us every day, seen and unseen. Brothers and sisters, as ever, I hope that we will choose glory and prepare to build Zion.

00:28:22 Speaker_00
We'll talk a little bit more about that in Part Two. As ever, thank you to my dear husband, Chris Anderson, and Doug Larson of Point Digital. Take care.