“That He May Redeem the Children of Men from the Fall”

"Standing alone, these verses (verses 22-26) would justify the eternal worth of the Book of Mormon. The most transcendent event in all history was the atoning sacrifice of Christ. The Atonement came in answer to the Fall. Without an understanding of the Fall there can be no meaningful understanding of the Atonement. In turn, to understand the Fall one must understand the nature of the Creation, for it is from the original state in which things were created that they have fallen and to which, through the Atonement, they are in large measure intended to return. These three principles - the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement - are inseparable and have properly been called the three pillars of eternity.

"Within the covers of the Bible we can read an account of the Creation, of Adam's fall, and of the events that surrounded Christ's atoning sacrifice. Yet it is to the Book of Mormon that we must turn to learn why things were created as they were, why it was essential to the eternal plan for the salvation of man that Adam fall, and why the blood of Christ needed to be shed in an infinite sacrifice. To this end, few verses have ever been penned that are more instructive than those here written by father Lehi. First, he told us that if Adam had not fallen, all created things- that is, Adam, Eve, plants, animals, and even the earth itself- would have remained forever in the paradisiacal state in which they had been created. None would know death, none would know corruption or change of any kind, and none could produce after their own kind. All must have remained forever as they existed at the completion of the creative act." (McConkie and Millet, Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 1, p. 199-200)