This is an interesting glimpse into the process by which Mormon created his text. Mormon does not often explicitly tell us how he makes his decisions to include or exclude some information. Doubtless there were times when those decisions were left to him. He tells us that in this case, the limitations of the text that we have is the direct result of instruction from the Lord. This helps us to understand why Mormon chose the smaller account when a more complete account was available. Without this explanation we would be left wondering why Mormon was not so impressed with all the words of the Savior that he recorded every one. This is the same Mormon who was impressed to combine the small plates of Nephi with his own text. This is the same Mormon who has entered fairly long citations from his text, and even full letters in the later chapters of Alma. Certainly he would have appreciated every word that the Savior spoke. Unquestionably, he did. He did not include them because he was instructed not to include them.
This makes it even more important that we attempt to understand the reason that the Lord would ask Mormon not to write words that were important enough to be spoken, and then recorded in the large plate tradition. We know that there were some things that were so sacred that they could not even be written (3 Nephi 17:17). That which was not written, Mormon could not have produced in any case, so Mormon’s decision was not whether to write that most sacred information, for it was not even available to him as text. What he had, however, were those things that had been written, and he indicates that there was significantly more than what is now available.
The Lord limits the text to “try the faith of my people.” Even with our understanding of “trying faith” as a purifying process, we must understand that faith is not tried until is is tested against some stress. Muscles are not built unless they work against resistance, and the muscle becomes stronger and healthier for overcoming that resistance. It is an interesting question, and one without a complete answer, as to what there is about the existing text of the Savior’s appearance in the New World that becomes a resistance against which our faith is tried.
Perhaps the nature of this text tries our faith because of the limitations of the way we receive it. Certainly there have been many in the modern world who had disbelieved in the Book of Mormon because our text contains such obvious insertions of KJV material. Many of those same disbelievers and pointed out the possible problems of the appearance of the Sermon on the Mount as a literary whole in 3 Nephi, when the scholarly community sees it as a Matthean construction from traditional materials.
The fact of the appearance of the Savior to the people of the New World has been a comfort and a building block of faith for many who accept the Book of Mormon. The confirmation of the value of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount and the other cited scriptures is an important confirming witness of their value and spiritual power. What we do have has been for many a point of faith, not a test of faith. Perhaps therein lies the test itself. In seeing the words of the Savior, the test may be what we see. If we see the spiritual value, we gain spiritual insight. If we see the scholar’s concerns, we begin to see darkness, and soon we stand in danger of losing the value of the entire text.