Chapter 7 - “Somewhat remarkably, Mormon makes an urgent, generous appeal to the posterity of the enemies who have just annihilated his people.” Grant Hardy, The Annotated Book of Mormon, chapter seven footnote.
Chapter 8 - Moroni wrote his first farewell in the 400th year (see Mormon 8:6), approximately 15 years after the final battle at Cumorah (see Mormon 6:5), with no date for his second farewell (Ether 12) and his final farewell was delivered after the 420th year (see Moroni 10:1), 20 years after his first farewell.
Three Farewells
1. The Voice of Justice - Moroni 8
2. Moved by Sympathy - Ether 12
3. Turned the matter over to the grace and will of God - Moroni 10
"Readers may wonder why Moroni would deliver a farewell address and then later go on to include an abridgment of the book of Ether, ten more chapters of a book bearing his own name, and two more farewell endings, one in Ether 12:38–41 and the other in Moroni 10:34. One consideration is that, as time progressed, his circumstances and perspectives may have changed and the agony of defeat may have dimmed and healed. In any event, Moroni may have welcomed the opportunity to convey different concluding messages that he felt the Book of Mormon deserved.
As Elder M. Russell Ballard has pointed out, “The Restoration is not an event, but it continues to unfold.” So too, with Moroni, his endings for the Book of Mormon also unfolded, as he was able to revisit and add point upon point to his concluding messages."
https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-did-moroni-write-so-many-farewells
Kimberly Matheson - Mormon 7-9: Hope in Christ
"Moroni reminds us that even despair is an acceptable posture before Christ. Righteousness does not always result in happy, shiny people. Here a prophet of God, tasked with one of the most crucial steps in the transmission of the Book of Mormon, feels desolate in the face of certain trials. Surely, then, modern Latter-day Saints can also struggle under depression and loneliness and still be welcome in the pews, in prayer, in their callings. It is at times like these, in fact, that pews and prayers and callings arguably matter most.
But I am struck by something else in this early introduction to Moroni. Somewhere around verse 11, his tone begins to change. The change is slight—barely perceptible, even. But ever so faintly, Moroni begins to dwell less on his present and more on the future; he speaks less in terms of what he does not know, and more in terms of what might be possible (Mormon 8:12). And there are clues about the reason for this slightly renewed hope: he reports being “ministered” to by Jesus’ Nephite disciples (Mormon 8:11) and hints at some kind of revelation of “all things” (Mormon 8:12) that includes, at the very least, a vision of his latter-day readers (Mormon 8:35). Though we can’t be sure of what, exactly, Moroni has seen, it’s clearly something that begins to outstrip his individual despair. As he witnesses the larger scope of Jesus’s redemptive work, his individual misery begins, just barely, to matter less."
Chapter 9
Chapter 9:19 Unchangeable God
Kimberly Matheson - "Mormon 1-6: The Day of Grace"
"In the sorrow of true repentance, we change by turning toward God, whose love is constant. In the sorrow of unrepentant sin, God appears to change by turning our sin against us, while we remain constant in our resentment.
Having a soft and repentant heart turns out to be just one side of our relationship with God. Someone in this relationship will be changeable and someone will not; either the Lord or we ourselves will turn out to be fixed in our attributes. But when we refuse to be the changeable party, we find ourselves among the stagnant bitterness of the damned. It is only when we are humble enough to repent that God’s constancy can come into view.
If we refuse to grant any change on our side of the ledger, God can only appear to us as erratic and unreliable. But where we are willing to change, to break our hearts and come with contrition before Him, we will find on the other side God’s goodness unchanging."
Jack Welch - 9:27-29 Moroni gives us 22 commandments to know how to live and to be successful -
BYU Hawaii speech - September 2021 - Jack Welch
1. Despise not.
2. Wonder not.
3. Hearken unto the words of the Lord.
4. Ask the Father in the name of Jesus Christ for whatever ye shall stand in need.
5. Doubt not.
6. Be believing.
7. Begin as in times of old.
8. Come unto the Lord with all your heart.
9. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before God.
10. Be wise in the days of your probation.
11. Strip yourselves of all uncleanness.
12. Ask not to consume uncleanness on your lusts.
13. Ask with a firmness unshaken that ye will yield to no temptation.
14. Serve the true and living God.
15. See that ye are not baptized unworthily.
16. See that ye partake not of the sacrament of Christ unworthily.
17. See that ye do all things in worthiness.
18. Do all things in the name of Jesus Christ, the son of the living God.
19. Endure to the end.
20. Condemn me [or others] not because of mine [or their] imperfections.
21. Condemn not my father [Mormon] or those who have written before him.
22. Give thanks that God has made manifest our imperfections, that ye may be wiser than we have been.
Mark D. Thomas - “Moroni: The Final Voice.” 2003
This holy wanderer on the border of life and death, on the boundary of meaning and meaninglessness, passes a note to us regarding the collapse of our own house on the top of our own final Cumorah. We think we are reading of the fall of Moroni’s world when we are only reading of what can happen in our own world if we disregard his salvific call to “come unto Christ” (Moroni 10:32)
Kimberly Matheson - Mormon 7-9: Hope in Christ
He presses forward in fidelity to a covenant work that outstrips his individual griefs, acute and unimaginable though they may be. He is a saint who lived and experienced life in its entirety, who expressed hope in Christ not by being happy and smiley all the time, but by showing up in faith precisely when he was not feeling happy and smiley.
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