Written By Way of Commandment

This is part two of a three-part series about record keeping in the Book of Mormon:

  1. The Difficulty of Engraving Our Words
  2. Written by Way of Commandment
  3. The Record Which I Make is True

In the first part of this series we considered how the authors wrote the Book of Mormon. (Short version: it was not easy.) Now we will consider why they did it.

Mormon’s day job was to lead the Nephite armies in a war that he knew would be unsuccessful. He wrote the Book of Mormon while he camped in the land of Cumorah with his armies, waiting for the Lamanites to approach.

“And it came to pass that when we had gathered in all our people in one to the land of Cumorah, behold I, Mormon, began to be old; and knowing it to be the last struggle of my people, and having been commanded of the Lord that I should not suffer the records which had been handed down by our fathers, which were sacred, to fall into the hands of the Lamanites, (for the Lamanites would destroy them) therefore I made this record out of the plates of Nephi, and hid up in the hill Cumorah all the records which had been entrusted to me by the hand of the Lord, save it were these few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni.

“And it came to pass that my people, with their wives and their children, did now behold the armies of the Lamanites marching towards them; and with that awful fear of death which fills the breasts of all the wicked, did they await to receive them” (Mormon 6:6-7, emphasis added).

The battle at Cumorah was a wipe-out. Hundreds of thousands of Nephites were killed in a single day, and by the end of the chapter only twenty four of them were left standing. Would the outcome of the battle have been different if Mormon had put more effort towards mustering and training his armies, preparing defenses, and managing logistics instead of writing the Book of Mormon? We don’t know the answer to that question, and I don’t mean to suggest that Mormon was negligent in his professional duties. But why did Mormon spend so much of his time in the weeks before this battle studying and abridging these ancient records?

Written By Way of Commandment

Notice in the passage quoted above that Mormon said that he had been “commanded of the Lord.” All of the principal writers of the Book of Mormon made similar statements. They understood that they were doing work that the Lord expected them to do, and testified of this no less than 43 times in the book. Here is a highlight reel of these passages:

  • “Written by way of commandment” (Title Page of the Book of Mormon).
  • “Nevertheless, I have received a commandment of the Lord that I should make these plates, for the special purpose that there should be an account engraven of the ministry of my people” (1 Nephi 9:3).
  • “Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in him, which purpose I know not” (1 Nephi 9:5).
  • “And it came to pass that the Lord commanded me, wherefore I did make plates of ore that I might engraven upon them the record of my people” (1 Nephi 19:1).
  • “And after I had made these plates by way of commandment, I, Nephi, received a commandment that the ministry and the prophecies, the more plain and precious parts of them, should be written upon these plates; and that the things which were written should be kept for the instruction of my people, who should possess the land, and also for other wise purposes, which purposes are known unto the Lord” (1 Nephi 19:3).
  • “And it came to pass that the Lord God said unto me: Make other plates; and thou shalt engraven many things upon them which are good in my sight, for the profit of thy people. Wherefore, I, Nephi, to be obedient to the commandments of the Lord, went and made these plates upon which I have engraven these things” (2 Nephi 5:30-31).
  • “And if they are not the words of Christ, judge ye—for Christ will show unto you, with power and great glory, that they are his words, at the last day; and you and I shall stand face to face before his bar; and ye shall know that I have been commanded of him to write these things, notwithstanding my weakness” (2 Nephi 33:11).
  • “Therefore I, Mormon, do write the things which have been commanded me of the Lord. And now I, Mormon, make an end of my sayings, and proceed to write the things which have been commanded me” (3 Nephi 26:12).
  • “Hearken, O ye Gentiles, and hear the words of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, which he hath commanded me that I should speak concerning you, for, behold he commandeth me that I should write” (3 Nephi 30:1),
  • “And the Lord commanded the brother of Jared to go down out of the mount from the presence of the Lord, and write the things which he had seen” (Ether 4:1)
  • “Wherefore the Lord hath commanded me to write them; and I have written them. And he commanded me that I should seal them up; and he also hath commanded that I should seal up the interpretation thereof; wherefore I have sealed up the interpreters, according to the commandment of the Lord” (Ether 4:5).
  • “Wherefore, I, Moroni, am commanded to write these things that evil may be done away, and that the time may come that Satan may have no power upon the hearts of the children of men, but that they may be persuaded to do good continually, that they may come unto the fountain of all righteousness and be saved” (Ether 8:26).
  • “And it is by faith that my fathers have obtained the promise that these things should come unto their brethren through the Gentiles; therefore the Lord hath commanded me, yea, even Jesus Christ” (Ether 12:22).

The record of Jesus’s ministry in ancient America includes multiple instances of his direct commandments to his disciples that they should record and preserve the words he was teaching them:

  • “And I command you that ye shall write these sayings after I am gone” (3 Nephi 16:4).
  • “Therefore give heed to my words; write the things which I have told you; and according to the time and the will of the Father they shall go forth unto the Gentiles” (3 Nephi 23:4).
  • “And it came to pass that Jesus commanded that it should be written; therefore it was written according as he commanded” (3 Nephi 23:13).
  • “And it came to pass that he commanded them that they should write the words which the Father had given unto Malachi, which he should tell unto them. And it came to pass that after they were written he expounded them” (3 Nephi 24:1).
  • “Write the things which ye have seen and heard, save it be those which are forbidden. Write the works of this people, which shall be, even as hath been written, of that which hath been” (3 Nephi 27:23-24).

This pattern is not unique to the people in the Book of Mormon. We can expect that whenever and wherever the Lord reveals himself that he will give a similar command.

“For I command all men, both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them; for out of the books which shall be written I will judge the world, every man according to their works, according to that which is written.

“For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it” (2 Nephi 29:10-12).

Have you written in your personal journal the things God has revealed to you?

Additional Motivations

We all struggle from time to time to do the things we know we are supposed to do. Sometimes we let the urgent things crowd out the important and even the essential things in our lives. It is very hard to maintain a high level of motivation for a very long time. (Quick quiz: what were your New Year’s resolutions? Are you still on task to accomplish them?)

How did the writers of the Book of Mormon maintain their motivation and actually accomplish the task of recording and compiling their thousand-year history? They told us how: by remembering their purpose. I counted 51 verses in 33 passages in which the writer describes something about why they were writing the records. These purposes fall into several major categories:

In my previous study of the narrator comments in the Book of Mormon, I described four main themes that the narrators emphasized as lessons to be learned from the history they were writing:

  • The value of scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon.
  • The Lord’s character and power.
  • The reward of the faithful.
  • The wages of sin.

There is substantial overlap between these four themes and the purposes listed above.

Working on the UFO

I know a thing or two about long-term writing projects. In the fall of 2004, during my first year in medical school, my wife Marisa decided that we should start a family newsletter to keep our family and friends back in Utah supplied with fresh pictures and stories about our cute little kids. She called it the “Update From Ohio,” or “UFO” for short, and Marisa made a little flying saucer logo for the header.

For over twenty years now we have published an issue of the UFO for every month. As of December 2024 we have written 6,000 pages worth of them. We don’t always finish them on time; I spent many hours last month organizing photos and stories so that we could publish the issues for May through November 2024 before the end of the year. We are caught up as of January 2025, and I have made a resolution to stay on top of the work more efficiently this coming year.

Why are we doing this, and why did we not stop doing it at some point in the past two decades? It’s not like we haven’t been busy. The answer lies in our motivation.

When we were still relatively new at this family project we heard a story told by President Henry B. Eyring about a similar project he did in his family:

“When our children were very small, I started to write down a few things about what happened every day. Let me tell you how that got started. I came home late from a Church assignment. It was after dark. My father-in-law, who lived near us, surprised me as I walked toward the front door of my house. He was carrying a load of pipes over his shoulder, walking very fast and dressed in his work clothes. I knew that he had been building a system to pump water from a stream below us up to our property.

“He smiled, spoke softly, and then rushed past me into the darkness to go on with his work. I took a few steps toward the house, thinking of what he was doing for us, and just as I got to the door, I heard in my mind—not in my own voice—these words: ‘I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.’

“I went inside. I didn’t go to bed. Although I was tired, I took out some paper and began to write. And as I did, I understood the message I had heard in my mind. I was supposed to record for my children to read, someday in the future, how I had seen the hand of God blessing our family. Grandpa didn’t have to do what he was doing for us. He could have had someone else do it or not have done it at all. But he was serving us, his family, in the way covenant disciples of Jesus Christ always do. I knew that was true. And so I wrote it down, so that my children could have the memory someday when they would need it” (October 2007 General Conference).

Like President Eyring, we know that we are writing for our children and our children’s children. We want them to know what kind of people we were, what kind of challenges we faced, and how our faith in Jesus Christ helped us to endure and overcome. We want them to know the blessings we enjoyed and the miracles we witnessed. Above all, we want them to know that they can also turn to the Savior and receive the same blessings through their faith.

Notice that most of the motivations for writing the Book of Mormon involved wanting to help and bless the people who would read their book. That is a topic we will focus on in the final post of this series.

Cover art: Mormon Bids Farewell to a Once Great Nation, by Arnold Friberg

Alan B. Sanderson, MD is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is a practicing neurologist.

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