Mormon concludes with his fatal vision of the destruction of his people, just as he did in the previous letter. That vision and the reality of seeing it unfold obviously weighed heavily upon him. As he sees the destruction and death of the people, he prays that Moroni will not be one of them, that the Lord will spare Moroni’s life. We do not know if Mormon knows at this point of the mission Moroni will have. These letters come prior to Cumorah where it does appear that Mormon understands that Moroni will survive that awful last battle. Whatever prophetic assurance he later received, it appears that it remains future to this letter.
“It Will Be Like Unto the Jaredites”
Textual: Mormon compares the destruction of his people to the destruction of the Jaredites. This is not surprising, as he made that a theme of the latter part of his writing of the Book of Mormon. What is interesting here is that while he makes the conceptual linkage between the two destructions, he ascribes a different cause. In the latter part of his writing, Mormon created a complex thematic model where the secret combinations were the element that was in common and caused the destruction of the two peoples. In this verse, he suggests that the similarity comes from “the willfulness of their hearts, seeking for blood and revenge.” Mormon is completely accurate in describing the desire of “blood and revenge” as motivations for both peoples. It was certainly part of the destructions of each, and quite certainly one of the immediate causes. It simply isn’t the cause that he emphasized in his formal writing.
This tells us that the secret combination theme is confirmed as a literary theme that Mormon has extracted and used in his writing. It was not the only cause, for Mormon himself understands other causes, and other motivations. It was, however, the one that Mormon elected to use for his own purposes. Because that theme is a literary construction, we cannot tell from this alternate cause whether or not Mormon had yet written that explanation in the Book of Mormon prior to writing this letter. It is possible that this idea is a previous understanding, and the Book of Mormon explanation is a later explanation that came because Mormon wrote that part of the Book of Mormon after he had written this letter.
While that is possible, it is also possible that the difference between the formal and informal makes the difference in the explanations. Mormon’s text had a particular purpose, and the secret combination theme fit in to that narrative purpose. This is a letter to his son, and not intended to be public. Therefore, there is no need for the letter to contain the formal argument, and other perhaps more obvious similarities were appropriate to the letter. It would be nice if this information allowed us to reconstruct some of the timeline for the writing of the Book of Mormon, but it does not.