The Sealed Book from the Mormon Plates
WORDS OF MORONI
1-10
1 And now behold, I desire to speak unto those who shall have the words of this book in their hands, after the Lord has stretched forth his arm upon the Gentiles in the latter days1. For, behold there shall be many of the Gentiles, and also of the Jews, that shall not harden their hearts concerning the words of this book which Nephi prophesied, when this book shall be revealed unto the children of men, and written unto the Gentiles and sealed again to the Lord². (1) RLDS 2Nephi 12:40-41 / LDS 2 Nephi 28:32 | (2) RLDS 2Nephi 12:79-80 / LDS 2 Nephi 30:3
2 But, behold, many shall believe the words of this book, and rejoice to know that it proceedeth out of the hand of God, and from their eyes will fall the scales of the darkness that prevents them from seeing in their fullness the truth sent from the heavens to the children of men, and before many generations pass, they will begin to coalesce in true knowledge, and they will become a pure and pleasing people in the sight of the Lord upon all the inhabited earth.
3 And it shall come to pass that the Lord God will again begin his work among all nations, tribes, tongues, and peoples, to effect in these times, already appointed by the Lord, the full Restoration of all things, of which God spake by his servants, the prophets1. (1) RLDS 2Nephi 12:83-86 / LDS 2 Nephi 30:6-7; Acts 3:19-21
4 Therefore it is in these days that the Lord invites his people: Come to me O ye Gentiles, and I will show you things greater than these. Yea, the knowledge that is hidden because of the hardness of their hearts. Come to me O ye house of Israel, and
great things shall be revealed to you that the Father has reserved for you from the foundation of the world and have not come to you because of your unbelief.
5 Behold, the time has come for you to tear this veil that leads you to remain in thisterrible state of iniquity and hardness of heart and blindness of mind, for the words that come from this record, The Sealed Book of Mormon, are like the hard tip of the
mallet that shatters the hardness of the rock that covers your hearts hardened by your traditions and as the fire of the refiner who refines and purifies the filth of his thoughts stained by the precepts of men1. (1) RLDS Ether 1:109-112 / LDS Ether 4:13-15; Jeremiah 23:29
6 In those days the Lord will stretch out his hand a second time in order to reclaim his people, who are of the house of Israel, and to do a marvelous work among them for the purpose of remembering the covenants which he made with the sons of men, and
to fulfill the promises made to Nephi concerning the descendants of Lehi, his father, in order to recover the remnants of his seed and so that the words of this book, written by the seed of Nephi, come to the seed of his father in the last days and to the knowledge of the house of Israel1. (1) RLDS 2Nephi 12:42-44 / LDS 2Nephi 29:1-2
7 Behold, I am Moroni the son of Mormon, and my father was a descendant of Nephi, who was the son of Lehi our patriarch, who was the son of Shaphan, coming from a family of scribes of the kingdom of Judah, and of the tribe of Joseph, by the seed of Manasseh1, just as one reads in the genealogy of Lehi by his own record described in the first part of these plaques that my father Mormon compiled. (1) RLDS Alma 8:3 / LDS Alma 10:3
8 Shaphan was the scribe secretary of king Josiah in the days when Hilkiah the high priest found under the altar of the temple in Jerusalem the ancient records of Moses1, and among them the book of the law and the sealed book itself of the things that Moses saw when he was snatched to Heavenly Zion2. (1) 2 Kings 22:8 | (2) Hebrews 12: 20-23; RLDS 1 Nephi 6:3; D&C 22:1, 22:24a-25 / LDS 1 Nephi 19:23; Moses 1:1, 40-42
9 And it came to pass in the first days of the reign of Zedekiah, for how much Lehi returned from Babylon together with Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah, when they were jointly commissioned by the king of Judah to go to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and they took with them a letter from Jeremiah the prophet destined for the elders, the priests and the prophets, and all the people exiled in the land of Sinear, that the LORD appeared to him in a pillar of fire and after that event he was no longer called by the birth name Elasah. But he became known by the name that God called him, Lehi, which corresponds to an abbreviation of Eliasib, whose meaning is, "by means of whom God restores1”. (1) Jeremiah 29:1-3
10 Behold, I, Moroni, am the same as I told you before, that if possible I would make known all things, but I was instructed to seal my father's records and with it the record that the Lord asked me to write about what the brother of Jared saw, because the things he has seen are beyond the understanding of the Gentiles until they repent of their iniquity, and become pure before the Lord, and begin to exercise faith in the Son of God as did the brother of Jared.