Moroni's Warnings

One of the themes of the writings of Moroni is a warning of the judgments of God that will come upon the unbelieving and the wicked, particularly in the last days. We see this in particular in the first chapter he wrote. Speaking of the Book of Mormon he wrote, “He that condemneth, let him be aware lest he shall be in danger of hell fire. And he that saith: Show unto me, or ye shall be smitten—let him beware lest he commandeth that which is forbidden of the Lord.” He likewise warned to those who fight against the covenant people of the Lord: “He that shall breathe out wrath and strifes against the work of the Lord, and against the covenant people of the Lord who are the house of Israel, and shall say: We will destroy the work of the Lord, and the Lord will not remember his covenant which he hath made unto the house of Israel—the same is in danger to be hewn down and cast into the fire.” He described those who participate in “murders, and robbing, and lying, and deceivings, and whoredoms, and all manner of abominations” in the last days, saying, “Wo unto such, for they are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity.” Moroni warned the wicked who pervert the ways of the Lord that they “bring damnation upon [their] souls?” and that will receive as a reward “misery which never dies—because of the praise of the world.” His sober caution to the wicked in our day was this: “Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you; and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you, for he will not suffer their cries any longer” (Mormon 8:17-18, 21, 31, 33, 38, 41). It can be hard to understand how there can be so much wickedness in the world and so much suffering of the innocent because of it, but Moroni’s warning is that there will in the end be justice—the wicked will surely mourn and suffer one day for their iniquities if they do not repent.

                Moroni continued his warnings to the wicked in the subsequent chapters that he wrote in the Book of Mormon. He described how all will “stand before the Lamb of God” and those who are filthy will be miserable as it will “kindle a flame of unquenchable fire upon [them]…. then cometh the judgment of the Holy One upon them; and then cometh the time that he that is filthy shall be filthy still” (Mormon 9:2,5,14). He continued issuing warnings against the wicked in his account of the Jaredites, telling inhabitants of this land: “Whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity.” He pled with the people of our day, “And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles, that ye may know the decrees of God—that ye may repent, and not continue in your iniquities until the fulness come, that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done” (Ether 2:9,11). As he described the terrible secret combinations among the Jaredites, he left us this warning: “And whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinations, to get power and gain, until they shall spread over the nation, behold, they shall be destroyed…. Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you” (Ether 8:22,24). He showed what happened to them as a warning to what could happen to us if we become ripened in iniquity: “And thus we see that the Lord did visit them in the fulness of his wrath, and their wickedness and abominations had prepared a way for their everlasting destruction” (Ether 14:25).

                As Moroni finished up his record he warned those who rejected the things of God: “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.” All will stand at the “bar of God” and know that his prophecies and admonitions were true as we see him there. In his final verse he told us he would “meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead” (Moroni 10:26-27,34). We will all face judgment before the throne of God and will have to account for how we treated his words to us. But his warnings didn’t end there, for when he came to the boy Joseph Smith he continued with prophecies about the difficulties in the last days for the wicked. Joseph summarized, “he informed me of great judgments which were coming upon the earth, with great desolations by famine, sword, and pestilence; and that these grievous judgments would come on the earth in this generation” (JSH 1:45). Moroni’s words stand as a warning against the evil and terrible wickedness in our day, and though it can seem that the wicked do not go punished, his testimony and promise is that one day they will face the dire consequences of their actions. Our safest course is always to “come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift” no matter how wicked the world around us becomes (Moroni 10:30).