#5 The Hill Cumorah

Next we drove down the road a few miles to the Hill Cumorah. We stopped first at the visitor center and then drove up the Hill Cumorah, where they have the pageant. They have a monument there on top of the hill explaining that the Angle Moroni hid the plates somewhere in that hill and then delivered them to Joseph Smith four year after he first showed them to Joseph.

With four years to prepare for the event, I doubt the date on which Joseph Smith received the plates was a coincident. Joseph received the gold plates from Moroni on 22 September 1827, one of the high holy days of the ancient Israelite Calendar. Keep in mind that the Jews start their days at sundown. That day, 22 September 1827 was Rosh ha-Shanah, or the Feast of Trumpets, a day when God remembered His covenants the Israelites to “bring them back from exile.” I think that is why Moroni is depicted on top of the temples with his trumpet.

There is a pillar of stone on top of the Hill Cumorah with the Angle Moroni standing on top, (With his trumpet). There was a special feeling there as well. I connected with Moroni for a few short minutes while there.

Moroni has long been one of my hero’s for all that he did to take care of the plates. Moroni finish his father’s (Mormon) book, wrote his own book and then abridged the record of Ether and the brother of Jared. Moroni also tells us he wrote an interpretation of all that the Brother of Jared saw in his vision of the earth “from the beginning to the end thereof”. Moroni actually wrote about twice as many gold plates as his father Mormon had written. We have most of what Mormon wrote in the Book of Mormon, but most of what Moroni wrote is in the sealed portion of the plates that Joseph was told not to touch or translate.