What is the Book of Mormon?
Read Dave’s answer
Answer 1
Thanks for the A2A - here’s the long story short:
It’s about a prophet, Lehi, in Jerusalem in 600 B.C. who is commanded by God in visions to flee Jerusalem before its destruction during the reign of Zedekiah.
It’s about how his six sons and their families came to the Americas on a boat one of the sons, the prophet Nephi, was commanded to build and shown how to build.
It’s about how his descendants separated into two main groups after two of the brothers, Laman and Lemuel, rebelled and sought to kill Nephi.
It’s about the history and stories, both sacred and secular, much like the Bible, of those two peoples, as well as another people who were already in the Americas.
It’s about the appearance of Jesus Christ to the righteous descendants of Lehi following his resurrection (in fulfillment of John 10:16), and the hundreds of years of peace and prosperity enjoyed by the righteous following that visit of Jesus.
It’s about how the people ultimately turned again to wickedness, and how the prophet Mormon edited and compiled the plates of gold upon which he and many generations of other prophets had been recording their history and stories, and gave the summarized version to his son Moroni, who added to the record and buried the plates according to the command of God, knowing that they would come forth at some future time.
That future time turned out to be September of 1827, when the resurrected angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith, and showed him where the plates were buried.
Joseph then translated portions of those plates into English, and that is what we have today as The Book of Mormon.