1 Nephi 19

God insisted I make plates out of the gold and use them for pages in this book. I was to tell my story and the history of our family, some of them on a bigger set of plates, some on this smaller set, as I mentioned earlier.

Books are for lots of things. I like to think of these as both archival and pedagogical. We need some reference works, particularly if we expect our tribe to thrive in this place. Sometimes we’ll have to look things up, memory being fleeting. But we also need records of our family and beliefs in order to teach our children. Some basic knowledge seems requisite in any culture, much less a transplanted one. (Sorry to get so hoity-toity in the way I’m writing now. But this is really about the founding of a new country.)

Also, our family will always have prophets. It’s in our bloodstream. So we need books to curb any erratic behavior and illuminate the course of our religion and, yes, church. Whatever my skill as a writer, everything I write here I think is ultimately sacred, something you can build good, happy lives on.

Not everyone will see it the same way. They rarely do with books or religion or government. One man’s gold is another man’s tin. And one man’s God is another man’s rug. The God I believe in is used to that.

Which brings me back to that Anointed One, the Lamb, who we expect to come to the earth 600 years from when we left Jerusalem. He’ll be walked on like a rug, whipped like a wild horse, spit on like a street curb, and beaten like, well, a rug that’s been walked on too long. But the amazing thing—and this will really hit people in the right way—he takes all this patiently, even loves his abusers. In a good, non-codependent way.

If you take all you’ve heard about the God that yanked the Israelites out of slavery, you’ve just met the Anointed One I’m talking about, who gives himself to all this abuse (according to Zenock, Neum, and Zenos), eventually to be murdered by the state. At that time, even if you’ve never felt an earthquake, you’ll feel something shudder under your feet.

He’ll be buried as all men are. But unlike any other man he’ll walk on death like it’s his rug. He’ll also come alive again and that will startle pretty much everyone who hears about it. This is a sign that God actually loves everyone, despite what he sometimes says. Anyone who rejects that message will be doomed to a life of spiritual transiency, a gut feeling that life is worthless, which is the feeling that makes it so. In time, even the slouchiest of one-time believers (or lifelong non-believers) will get their second chance. I don’t know how, but my own gut feeling tells me the whole earth will at one time or another see some evidence of God’s love, whether they’re in the nattiest desert or on the balmiest island. I don’t know how big the earth is, or how it’s shaped, but I know God knows. And I can’t believe he’d forget about any slice of it. Everyone will get to hear about the Lamb.

So that’s really why I’m writing: to make the case for all this to anyone who’ll read. There’s something palpable in me, a craze for this message that makes my joints ache. I’ve got to tell everyone, even my crazy brothers, about God’s love for each person, from Jerusalem to this fertile new land, which we haven’t even had time to name yet.

This is no new message. I think it’s planted in the writings of every prophet I’ve ever heard of. My favorite one, who as a bonus is the best writer, is Isaiah. I’ve realized now that he might be the strongest argument for stealing those brass plates. His book is engraved on them.

I told my brothers all this and read aloud to them, who, raised when my parents weren’t as rich, didn’t get so good an education. I read them from the Books of Moses, of course. Those are bedrock. But I had to read from Isaiah too. That’s where you get the best Lamb symbols and teachings.

“Listen to this,” I kept saying to them. “This is written for branches broken off from the treetrunk of Israel!” They remembered what I was talking about and tried to make analogies with their own lives. That’s always the best way to read.

To give you a flavor, I’m going to copy some of what I read them from Isaiah right here. That should tell you how much umph I feel in his words: