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Instructions For Baptism And The Sacrament

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Instructions For Baptism And The Sacrament

Moroni is the final book of the Book of Mormon, written, within the text's own account, by Mormon's son after he alone survives the destruction narrated in the book that bears his father's name. Much of Moroni is not narrative at all but instructional material: the text sets out procedures for ordaining priests and teachers, for administering baptism by immersion, and for blessing and distributing the bread and wine, later water, of the sacrament, given in a form close enough to standard liturgical language that Latter-day Saint congregations still use it today in their own sacrament services.

Moroni also preserves an account, attributed to his father Mormon, on the baptism of young children, arguing against the practice on the grounds that children below an age of accountability are not in need of it, a position that has remained part of Latter-day Saint teaching on infant baptism since. The book's instructional chapters read as Moroni gathering and preserving procedural knowledge he judges essential for a people he otherwise no longer expects to encounter directly.

Moroni also includes a short discourse on spiritual gifts and a set of qualifications for church membership, material that reads less as narrative than as a compact manual, consistent with the book's overall character as Moroni gathering practical and procedural knowledge for a community he no longer expects to instruct in person.

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