After nearly a millennium of painstaking archiving of the historical record by an uninterrupted series of inspired prophets beginning with Lehi and Nephi, the sacred trust is passed on to Mormon, who is guided to write the message of truth to the future Gentiles, to the future house of Israel, and “unto all the ends of the earth” (Mormon 3:18) so that the Lord’s plan of salvation might go forward in the latter days according to the heavenly design, “unto the fulfilling of his covenant” (Mormon 5:14). Ultimately, Mormon will hide up all the records in the Hill Cumorah, “save it were these few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni” (Mormon 6:6). In this manner, the extraordinary chain of witnesses continues until the final hours of the Nephite nation and then is suspended until Moroni, the last of the archivists, appears as a resurrected messenger of God to the Prophet Joseph Smith at the dawn of a new and glorious dispensation.
President Ezra Taft Benson succinctly expresses the purpose of the Book of Mormon: “It should be comforting to all Latter-day Saints that the Lord has given great promises in that sacred volume, the Book of Mormon, promises that should give us comfort and assurance on the condition that we live the gospel. How I wish that every person would read the Book of Mormon, and in it the prophetic history of the Americas and the clear warnings for the future” (God, Family, Country: Our Three Great Loyalties [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1974], 94).
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland speaks of the power of the Book of Mormon to bring about a miraculous spiritual transformation:
The Book of Mormon is the sacred expression of Christ’s great last covenant with mankind. It is a new covenant, a new testament from the New World to the entire world. Reading it was the beginning of my light. It was the source of my first spiritual certainty that God lives, that he is my Heavenly Father, and that a plan of happiness was outlined in eternity for me. It led me to love the Holy Bible and the rest of the Standard Works of the Church. It taught me to love the Lord Jesus Christ, to glimpse his merciful compassion, and to consider the grace and grandeur of his atoning sacrifice for my sins and the sins of all men, women, and children from Adam to the end of time. The light I walk by is his light. His mercy and magnificence lead me in my witness of him to the world. (Christ and the New Covenant: The Messianic Message of the Book of Mormon [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997], 350)