Moroni 2: DVD Extras

Now Moroni starts to go into some Book of Mormon bonus features—as in, deleted scenes from when the Son of God appeared and taught the people.  Stuff that totally could have wound up on the cutting room floor since it's not that important.

When is an Ordination not an Ordination?

Apparently, somewhere around Third Nephi, Jesus basically gave his disciples the power to give themselves the power to confer the gift of the holy ghost (verse 2):

Ye shall call on the Father in my name, in mighty prayer; and after ye have done this ye shall have power that to him upon whom ye shall lay your hands, ye shall give the Holy Ghost;

When the average deacon, teacher, priest, elder, or high priest is ordained to the office, there's nothing about praying mightily.  The powers are granted by the conferring authority in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of God's priesthood.  End of story.  It seems totally bizarre that Jesus, who by all accounts should have way more priesthood mojo than the average modern day bishop or stake president, would require an extra step inserted into his process.  If you get the confirmation power from your bishop, it's plug-and-play.  But if it's from Jesus, you have to download a driver first.  

That makes perfect sense.  Right?

Add-ons and Tie-ins

It's pretty odd that when Moroni realizes that he may still have time to write before he dies, he doesn't cover his personal history, he says, "oh yeah, and I forgot to mention..." and then proceeds to share details (purportedly verbatim quotations) from events that took place 300 years before he was born.  What's weirder is the secretive nature of the information he shares (verse 3):

Now Christ spake these words unto them at the time of his first appearing; and the multitude heard it not, but the disciples heard it;

So what he's telling us is not something that was common knowledge that could have been passed down by oral tradition or anything.  This is stuff that only twelve guys heard, which means that probably one of the very few places it was written down was in the record that eventually became the book of Third Nephi.  So either Moroni should not have known any of this or he was too dumb to include something so doctrinally and organizationally fundamental to the church in the regular record.  Good thing he lived longer than he expected and had time to add this in.