The Final Exhortation

I’m amazed at how well two of the very final verses of the Book of Mormon summarize the purpose and message of the whole book.  Moroni’s final verse was a goodbye and promise to meet us at the judgment bar, but the two verses before that are a power witness of the Savior and an invitation to come to Him to be changed: “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.  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” (Moroni 10:32-33).  The invitation to come unto Christ is found throughout the Book of Mormon and is a perfect ending to a book devoted to the Savior. 

               The message that we must come to Christ that Moroni taught is found in numerous passages of the text.  For example, Nephi said, “For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved” (1 Nephi 6:4).  He also spoke of how in the last days some would “come to the knowledge of their Redeemer and the very points of his doctrine, that they may know how to come unto him and be saved” (1 Nephi 15:14).  He also testified that Christ “inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness” (2 Nephi 26:33).  Jacob similarly invited us, “O then, my beloved brethren, come unto the Lord, the Holy One….  Come unto God who is the rock of your salvation,” and wrote that they “labored diligently among our people, that we might persuade them to come unto Christ, and partake of the goodness of God” (2 Nephi 9:41, 45; Jacob 1:7).  Amaleki exhorted “all men to come unto God, the Holy One of Israel” and said to us, “My beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation” (Omni 1:25-26).  Alma expressed the feelings of his heart saying, “Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God” (Alma 29:2).  Moroni wrote elsewhere, “Come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him,” and in his account of the Jaredites he write, “And now, I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written” (Mormon 9:27, Ether 12:41).  The Savior Himself invited the Nephites, and surely us as well, with these words, “Arise and come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world” (3 Nephi 11:14).  Time and again the text witnesses that we should come to Christ through faith and repentance, and Moroni’s final exhortation summarizes the book’s most important invitation.