Concluding this series from Elder Neal A. Maxwell:
“For the serious reader, the Restoration scriptures provide a deeply significant response to modern man’s architectonic needs—that is, our deep needs to discern some design, purpose, pattern or plan regarding human existence.
No less than fifteen times, the Book of Mormon uses the plan in connection with the plan of salvation or its components. Likewise the book of Moses signifies much in this summation: “And now, behold, I say unto you: This is the plan of salvation unto all men, through the blood of mine Only Begotten, who shall come in the meridian of time.” (Moses 6:62).
The very use of the word plan in this connection is itself striking. In bringing back this particular “plain and precious” truth—that God not only lives but does have a loving and redeeming plan for mankind—the Book of Mormon is unusually relevant for our age and time. Phrases about God’s plan for us from the creation of the “foundation of the world’ appear not at all in the Old Testament, ten times in the New Testament, but thirty-five times in the “other books” (twenty-two times in the Book of Mormon, ten time in the Doctrine and Covenants, and three times in the Pearl of Great Price). Foundation, of course, denotes the creation, which was overseen by a loving and planning God.
Restoration scriptures lay further and heavy emphasis on the fact that the gospel has been with mankind from Adam on down. Only six pages into the Book of Mormon we read of the converging and testifying words of all the prophets “since the world began” (1 Nephi 3:20). Five pages later a recitation refers to the words of the “holy prophets from the beginning” (1 Nephi 5:13). The following single verse represents many: “For behold, did not Moses prophecy unto them concerning the coming of the Messiah, and that God should redeem his people? Yea, even all the prophets who have prophesied ever since the world began—have they not spoken more or less concerning these things? (Mosiah 13:33; see also 2 Nephi 25:19)
~Neal A. Maxwell, Not My Will, but Thine, (Deseret Book, Salt Lake City, 1988) 21-22
