The Lord is all-knowing. His vision encompasses the entire destiny of mankind. He guides His prophets to act so as to maximize the spiritual harvest among the faithful and obedient. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland explains the nature of the “wise purposes” of the Lord in granting unto His sons and daughters “greater views” of the gospel:
At least six times in the Book of Mormon, the phrase for a wise purpose is used in reference to the making, writing, and preserving of the small plates. One such wise purpose—the most obvious one—was to compensate for the future loss of 116 pages of manuscript translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith from the first part of Mormon’s abridgment of the large plates of Nephi.
But there is another “wise purpose” for the inclusion of these smaller plates in the highly edited material that would constitute the Book of Mormon. In Doctrine and Covenants 10:45 the Lord declared to Joseph Smith, “Behold, there are many things engraven upon the [small] plates of Nephi which do throw greater views upon my gospel.”
All the details and information contained in those first 116 pages of manuscript are not yet known. What is known is that most of the “greater views” of the gospel found in the teachings of the small plates of Nephi come from the personal declarations of these three great prophetic witnesses of the premortal Jesus Christ—Nephi, Jacob, and Isaiah. These three doctrinal and visionary voices make clear at the very outset of the Book of Mormon why it is “another testament of Jesus Christ.”
In declaring the special preparation these three had for receiving and teaching such “greater views” of the gospel, Nephi revealed the most persuasive qualification of all: They had seen the premortal Jesus Christ. (Christ and the New Covenant: The Messianic Message of the Book of Mormon [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997], 34–35)