As the Resurrection was the tangible evidence that Jesus was the Christ for those living in the meridian of time, so the Book of Mormon is the tangible evidence of the truthfulness of the restored gospel in this dispensation. It is our greatest missionary tool. Here Nephi notes that from it the descendants of Lehi will learn of their fathers, and that their fathers, contrary to the concepts of Christian churches generally, knew and worshipped Christ.
Indeed, it is in the Book of Mormon that we have restored to us a knowledge of the most basic and fundamental principles of the gospel, principles lost to the Bible as we presently have it. The Book of Mormon, not the Bible, teaches that there is “a plan of salvation,” that Christ is literally and unequivocally the Son of God, that it was necessary for Adam to fall in order that we be born, that without the Atonement we would all become angels to the devil, and on through a host of doctrines fundamental to the exercise of faith and the obtaining of salvation.