From Elder Neal A. Maxwell:
The plenitude of the Restoration followed “a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, or of thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). The end of that famine was marked by the coming of the Book of Mormon and of “other books.”
Such books of scripture have been and are the Lord’s means of preserving the spiritual of centuries past, including the spiritual memory of centuries past, including motivational examples of submissive spirits. Without such a spiritual memory the generations slacken and die spiritually:
There were many of the rising generation that . . . did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ (Mosiah 26:1-2) . . . . And at the time Mosiah discovered them, . . . their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator (Omni 1:17).
Belief in Deity and in the literal resurrection are usually the first beliefs to be discarded when faith diminishes. Ironically, though we gratefully accept the Bible as the word of God, the very process of its emergence—resulting in a dilution or loss of plain and precious truths—has, alas, led to a slackening or weakening of the Christian faith on the part of some—naturally with an accompanying diminution of obedience to God’s commandments. Because available Bible sources are not “originals,” however, but represent dated derivations and translations, the “other books” of scripture which have come to us directly are even more to be prized.
Paul wrote his first epistle to the Corinthians about A.D. 56. We do not, of course, have that precious parchment. Instead, the earliest document involving the first epistle to the Corinthians is dated about A.D. 200. By comparison, King Benjamin’s sermon (Mosiah chapters 2-5) was given in about 124 B.C. by a prophet under the tutelage of an angel. In the late fourth century A.D. this sermon was selected by another prophet—Mormon—Benjamin’s sermon was translated into English in A.D. 1829 by Joseph Smith, another prophet, through a process involving revelation. Thus there has been an unbroken chain of a prophet originator,a prophet-editor, and a prophet-translator in a remarkable process of collaborating witnesses. ~Neal A. Maxwell, Not My Will, but Thine, (Deseret Book, Salt Lake City, 1988) 20-21
