When Nephi’s brothers wanted to abandon their mission to obtain the brass plates containing the scriptures, Nephi testified to them:
Behold, it is wisdom in God that we should obtain these records, that we may preserve unto our children the language of our fathers;
And also that we may preserve unto them the words which have been spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets, which have been delivered unto them by the Spirit and power of God, since the world began, even down unto this present time.
1 Nephi 3:19-20; see also 1 Nephi 5:22
About 500 years later, as the prophet Alma passed those same plates along to his son Helaman, he explained:
It has hitherto been wisdom in God that these things should be preserved; for behold, they have enlarged the memory of this people, yea, and convinced many of the error of their ways, and brought them to the knowledge of their God unto the salvation of their souls.
Alma 37:8
Jesus Christ told the Nephites and the Lamanites that the Gentiles would one day establish a free nation on this continent and that this was “wisdom in the Father,” so that the Book of Mormon could be made available to their descendants. (See 3 Nephi 21:4.) He also told quoted to them some scriptures which they did not have, from the book of Malachi, telling them it was “wisdom in [the Father] that they should be given unto future generations” (3 Nephi 26:2).
So by the time Moroni promises that God will reveal the truth of the Book of Mormon to us, we have already learned to associate the phrase “wisdom in God” with the careful preservation of scripture for later generations.
“I would exhort you,” he writes, “that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts” (Moroni 10:3).
Not only has God in His wisdom inspired prophets to write scripture, He has helped others to preserve and transmit those sacred words to future generations. In the case of the Book of Mormon, He inspired Moroni to “seal up the records” (Moroni 10:2), and He kept them safe for 1,400 years, until Joseph Smith was directed to unearth and translate them. He has made the scriptures easily accessible and searchable through modern technology. And He has placed each of us in circumstances where we had the ability and the motivation to study those texts. Surely, as we ponder the truthfulness and importance of these words, we would benefit from considering the layers of wisdom which placed those words in our hands.
Today, I will be grateful for God’s wisdom in making eternal truths accessible to me through ancient writings, carefully preserved. I will be grateful for the miraculous preservation of these records and for the miracles in my own life which have made them meaningful to me.
Leave a Reply