Farewell

The time has come to say good-bye to this blog. In August 2016, I began this project to “flood the earth” with the Book of Mormon. Two and a half years and 773 blog entries later, I have completed my mission, having sadly not accomplished my goal. I set out to flood the earth one drop at a time. My blog has made only the tiniest of drops in the ocean of humanity that needs the message of the Book of Mormon. Perhaps it was only my thirst that needed to be slaked, but I have received a downpour of knowledge and inspiration from having studied the word of God and listened to the impressions of the Holy Ghost.

I will now leave it to others to take up the call of the prophets of God to send his word into the world while I pause and take a breath. Nevertheless, I will not stop studying the Book of Mormon. Even as I have recorded my learnings from a single pass through this sacred volume, additional subsequent readings have already added new layers to my understanding. I may feel impressed to share more truths in another forum and another time.

But for now, I close with a final testimony. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God, brought forth in these last days by a prophet of God to witness afresh the reality and divinity of Jesus Christ. Through the words of the Book of Mormon, my faith in Christ has grown, deepened, and matured immeasurably. He is the anchor of my soul, the light of my life, my Savior and Redeemer. Without the Book of Mormon, my knowledge of Christ would be impoverished, my light only half lit, my soul tossed about. I thank God every day for the exquisite power of the Book of Mormon to touch my life and my heart. I join my testimony with millions of others: IT IS TRUE.

In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

--David A. Armstrong, Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019

Moroni 10:33

And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot.

Here is hope! Moroni's final words are of hope. We can hope to be spotless and holy and acceptable to God because Christ has ransomed us and paid our price. God can be merciful because of Christ, which fills both the Father and the Son with joy. Their joy is our one true hope.

Moroni 10:32

Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

We are perfected, or completed, only by Christ. We cannot do it on our own. All the self-help books in the world cannot change us enough to meet God's standards. Only Jesus and the atonement and the power of the Holy Ghost can make the kind of changes in us that qualify as perfection.  We must try and do our best, but we must always remember where the power to please God comes from.

Moroni 10:30

And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing.

When we have faith in Christ and turn ourselves over to him, he can endow us with every gift we need to serve him. He will not let us fail. We must take the offered gifts, however, and use them. A gift unused is no gift at all. God will not help us if we do not accept the help.

Moroni 10:29

And God shall show unto you, that that which I have written is true.

Moroni appeals to God to prove his words. Or rather, he challenges us to look to God to prove that his writings are true. He knows the source of the truths he had written, and he directs us to go to that source to learn for ourselves. We do not have to take the word of any human. We can appeal to God himself. Moroni promises that God will give us an answer. No other book in the world makes such a bold assertion. No other book claims that God will testify of it. The test is infallible. The results are miraculous.

Moroni 10:26

And wo unto them who shall do these things away and die, for they die in their sins, and they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God; and I speak it according to the words of Christ; and I lie not.

If Joseph Smith made up these words as a fraud, he is the boldest liar in history. He is either a liar or a prophet. He does not quibble on the middle ground. It is so simple to take him at his word and put him to the test. Ask God. Surely the Lord would not let such a liar take his name in vain and not make the fraud known to any honest seeker. An evil man could not write such a book and a good man would not try -- unless it were true.

Moroni 10:25

And wo be unto the children of men if this be the case; for there shall be none that doeth good among you, no not one. For if there be one among you that doeth good, he shall work by the power and gifts of God.

Moroni wrote earlier that all good comes from God. Therefore, if anyone does anything truly good, he does it through God's grace, which are the gifts of the Spirit. The glory thus belongs to God. The definition, then, of a good work is something we do for God. The Savior scolded the hypocrites of his day for putting on a pious show of good for their own gain. True, they gave to the poor and prayed regularly, but they did these things for the wrong reasons. Therefore, they were not truly good works. They may have been helpful, but they were not good. According to Jesus, the widow who contributed two mites did more good than the rich man who donated a large sum, for she gave all she had to God, while the rich man kept most of his fortune for himself. If anyone does real good, it is because he or she has one goal in mind, which is to serve God with the gifts he has given them.