According to Richard Rust, the Book of Mormon is prophecy designed specifically and intentionally for our day (see Mormon 8:35; 3 Nephi 26:12; 2 Nephi 3:19). When I say "designed," I mean not only planned with a purpose but shaped artistically so that form and content are totally integrated. . . . I have come to realize that the literary aspects of the Book of Mormon are essential to its purposes. . . . Imagery helps teach memorably and vividly the covenants of the Lord. Imagery also helps show latter-day Lamanites they are not cast off forever. For example, dust is an image associated in the Book of Mormon with captivity, obscurity, destruction, and death. The wicked, Nephi prophesied, would be "brought low in the dust" (1 Nephi 22;23). The power of this metaphor is in the emergence of something precious out of nothingness. We discover that the Book of Mormon itself is prophesied to come "out of the dust" (Moroni 10:27), with other great blessings as well coming from the dust. Echoing Isaiah, Moroni cries: "Arise from the dust, O Jerusalem; yea, and put on thy beautiful garments" (Moroni 10:31. Laman and Lemuel are exhorted to "arise from the dust" (2 Nephi 1:14), to "awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell" (2 Nephi 1:13). And . . . yet the words of the righteous shall be written" (2 Nephi 26:15), and the Lord God shall speak concerning them "even as it were out of the ground; and their speech shall whisper out of the dust" (2 Nephi 26:16). In other words, latter-day Lamanites shall obtain renewal through repentance from a voice considered dead; life shall come out of death, words of eternal life from the voice out of the dust. [Richard D. Rust, "The Book of Mormon, Designed for Our Day," in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 2, 1990, pp. 2,16]