President Spencer W. Kimball asserted that a dictionary’s most important word “could be ‘remember,’” adding that “because all of [us] have made covenants. . . . ‘Remember’ is the word.”[1] Forms of the word remember appear more than 550 times in the standard works—disproportionately in the Book of Mormon.[2] If remembering characterizes our covenantal relationship with Jesus Christ and is uniquely emphasized in the Book of Mormon, then a deeper understanding of Book of Mormon teachings about remembering can contribute to our covenantal conversion to Christ.

This essay explores remembering in the Book of Mormon and demonstrates a connection between remembering and our Savior Jesus Christ. Academic work studying the remembering in the Book of Mormon has documented linguistic parallels with other ancient texts;[3] has connected remembering theologically with action, repentance, and obedience;[4] and has demonstrated how remembering builds themes of covenant identity both linguistically and narratively.[5] This paper complements these specific research topics by taking a fully categorical approach to what the Book of Mormon teaches about remembering.

In total, there are 221 references to remember and its derivatives[6] in the Book of Mormon; 150 of these are directly connected to Jesus Christ. Christ is repeatedly featured in passages containing the word remember: inviting remembrance, being remembered, and himself remembering. Furthermore, seven doctrinal themes about remembering emerge, providing practical insights into our covenantal connection with Christ—especially our promises to “always remember him” (Moroni 4:3).

Figure 1. Common words in Book of Mormon passages with remember.

In the Book of Mormon Remembering is Connected to Jesus Christ

In the Book of Mormon, passages that mention remembering are filled with titles of Christ. Figure 1 is a word cloud that visualizes the 250 most common words in the verses where remember is used.[7] Larger and more central words occur with greater frequency.[8]

Words like “Lord God,” “Son,” “Christ,” and “Jesus” occur with great regularity in these passages—more than words anecdotally associated with remembrance like “words,” “commandments,” “spoken,” and “fathers.” Furthermore, explicit mentions of “Jesus,” “Christ,” “Lord,” and “Redeemer” occur about twice as often in these verses than in the Book of Mormon on average.[9] Clearly Christ is central.

Word clouds are intuitive and fully data-driven but cannot identify broader themes or less explicit connections with Christ. To explore these connections, I grouped the passages into one of seven themes using an emergent coding procedure.[10] These seven themes, ordered from most to least prevalent, are (1) remembering Jesus Christ; (2) remembering prophetic words; (3) that Jesus remembers; (4) remembering and obedience; (5) agency, accountability, and remembering; (6) afflictions and remembering; and (7) remembering our fathers.

Figure 2. Seven remember themes and Christ-connected passages.

These seven themes teach about Christ and connect him with remembering. Figure 2 visualizes the frequency of each theme as well as what share of the references are connected to Christ. Lighter bars show how many passages are in each theme, and the darker bars show how many of these passages are connected to Christ, which I define as explicitly or contextually referencing Jesus or being spoken by him.[11]

Figure 2 identifies two important patterns about remembering and Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon. First, when Book of Mormon scriptures mention remembering, they are most likely teaching us to remember Jesus Christ. Although this emphasis can be obscured by our focus on oft repeated phrases like “remember the captivity of your fathers,” or “remember the words of the prophet,” the theme of remembering Christ is the most common—more than twice as prevalent as most other themes. Second, many of the remembering themes are intensely Christ-centered. For example, more than half of the passages in the themes about obedience, afflictions, and fathers are directly connected to Jesus Christ. This is in addition to the two full themes that are entirely about him. Jesus Christ is central to themes of remembering in the Book of Mormon.

Specific Themes Related to Remembering

The previous section cemented the connection between Jesus and the idea of remembrance in the Book of Mormon. With that connection in mind, this section explores each of the seven themes, the key truths they teach, and what they can mean in the life of a latter-day disciple. While I divide each theme into subtopics based on the truths they teach, many of the passages could reasonably fit in other subtopics, and other reasonable sets of groupings exist. For each theme I present a table with all the related verses divided by subtopic, but for concision I limit the discussion in the text to one or two key truths taught by the passages.

Remember him

At the heart of the themes of remembering in the Book of Mormon is remembering Jesus Christ. This theme is almost 50 percent larger than the next most common theme. Prophets and our Savior himself emphasize the importance of remembering Jesus, his perfection, his salvific role, and what he has said and done for us. Table 1 reports the related scriptural passages.

There are many rich and repeatedly reinforced truths related to this theme, but two types of verses emerge. Some passages teach us about Christ and ask us to remember what he has done (e.g., delivering us), what he has said (e.g., he laid down his life because he loved us), and what his character is like (e.g., he is merciful, longsuffering, and full of love). These passages reflect the fact that a correct understanding of Christ’s character, perfection, and attributes empowers our faith in him[12] and inspires us to become even as he is (3 Nephi 27:27).

Other passages emphasize remembering that Jesus is the only source of our salvation. We are saved only in his grace (2 Nephi 10:24), we can be clean through his blood (Alma 34:36–37), and we are safe when we build upon the rock of our Redeemer (Helaman 5:6–12). Remembering that he alone can save is the crux of faith, but that doctrine also empowers us to abandon the distractions, false gods, and illusions of control that are so easy to put our trust in.

Interestingly, sacramental ordinances provide double assistance to help us to remember him. In the first place, we partake of his body and blood as an act of remembrance, but in the same moment we additionally demonstrate our covenantal intent to continue that remembrance with renewed dedication in life. Together these experiential and forward-looking acts of remembrance connect us to him. We can remember him, and as we do, we also become more like him.

Remembering prophetic words

The second prominent invitation to remember in the Book of Mormon is to remember prophetic words. Whether from prophets’ public discourses or from inspired parental counsel, the invitation to “remember my words” is repeated again and again. Table 2 lists all occurrences of this invitation.

Most scriptures from this theme reflect one key principle: if we remember prophecies and inspired teachings, they will point us to Christ and help us live his gospel. One-third of these passages explicitly connect remembering prophetic words to Jesus, and there is a lot we can learn from the Nephites about finding these connections. For example, remembering prophecies about Christ led the Nephites to worship him at the temple in Bountiful (3 Nephi 11:12). When the Lord fulfills his promises to us, the only way we can recognize it and worship him for it is if we remember the words by which he made those promises to us. Similarly, remembering the words of Zenos helped early Nephites understand Jacob’s teaching that those who reject Christ will one day build a sure foundation on him—this is the rhetorical purpose of the olive tree allegory (see Jacob 4:15–18, 5:1). This account underscores the truth that the words of prophets (even those as infamously dense as Zenos’s words in Jacob 5) will point us to Christ when aptly remembered and applied.

An interesting implication of this theme is that remembering prophetic promises builds our faith in Christ as we see the promises fulfilled. For example, remembering President Russell M. Nelson’s promise that by “working to remodel your home into a center of gospel learning, over time . . . your children will be excited to learn and to live the Savior’s teachings”[13] has pointed our family to Christ and has grown our faith as we see it fulfilled (we taped this promise on a bathroom mirror). Knowing that we remember prophets’ words to point us to Christ can also change how we hear, study, and apply them.

Jesus Christ remembers

Contrasting with the other six themes, which highlight things that we should remember as we strive to come unto Christ, this third theme is about how Jesus Christ remembers. In a sense, this theme sets a perfect example of remembering that we can apply as we seek to become like him. Table 3 lists the associated passages.

Two fundamental truths stand out from the richness of these verses. First, Jesus Christ remembers all people everywhere, and second, Jesus remembers his covenants. The teaching that Jesus Christ remembers all people features prominently in the early parts of the Book of Mormon. After fleeing Jerusalem] and learning by revelation that their home had been destroyed, the people are reassured by Jacob that “the Lord remembereth all them who have been broken off [from the house of Israel], wherefore he remembereth us also” (2 Nephi 10:22). No matter who we are or how broken off we feel, Jesus Christ remembers us.

Whereas remembering his people demonstrates Jesus’s love for them, remembering his covenants demonstrates his faithfulness to them. Jesus himself repeatedly promises, “I will remember the covenant which I have made with my people” (3 Nephi 20:29; see also 29:3, 8). In fact, the evidence Jesus gives that he remembers is his desire to gather us (see 1 Nephi 19:15–16). This sign began through his atoning sacrifice which he performed so that he could “draw all men unto” him (3 Nephi 27:14)—and this ultimate gathering in him is made possible through his Restoration (see 3 Nephi 16:11–12). Because of his sacrifice, because of the Restoration, and because he remembers forever and will fulfill his promises (see 2 Nephi 29:14; 3 Nephi 29:3–8), Jesus Christ will “sustain us in our hour of need—and always will.”[14]

These truths build our faith in Jesus Christ as our perfect Savior. For example, when we worry that “the Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me,” these passages assure us of his promise “I will not forget thee. . . . Behold I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands” (1 Nephi 21:14–16; compare Isaiah 49:14–16). These passages also set an inspiring standard of covenantal remembering for which we can strive as we seek to use our moral agency to obey him and to become like him.

Obedience and Remembering

A fourth theme of remembering relates remembering to obedience. As scholar Louis Midgely suggested, remembering implies action in the Book of Mormon, such as remembering to keep the commandments of God always (1 Nephi 15:25) or remembering the Sabbath day to keep it Holy (Mosiah 13:16).[15] Table 4 lists the passages relating these ideas.

The scriptures from this theme reinforce two main truths. First, the Lord asks us to remember to obey. Prophets, teachers, and Jesus Christ explicitly ask their audiences to remember specific commandments. For example, Benjamin asks his sons to remember to search the scriptures (Mosiah 1:7), Abinadi tells Noah’s priests to remember the Ten Commandments (Mosiah 13:12, 16), and Jesus quotes Malachi’s invitation to remember the full law of Moses (3 Nephi 25:4). This type of remembering is critical to our enduring to the end. How long will we press forward if we start forgetting to “feast upon the word of Christ” (see 2 Nephi 31:19–20)? Perhaps this is why President Harold B. Lee taught, “The most important of all the commandments of God is that one that you are having the most difficulty keeping today.”[16] We can either choose to repent or rebel, but when we don’t remember, there is no decision left to us.

The complementary half of this theme is that while the Lord does ask us to remember to obey, remembering also enables us to obey. Because Jesus doesn’t demand obedience without assistance, he provides resources like a church and teachers that help us to remember to obey (see Mosiah 6:3). More importantly, he also provides covenants and an unfailingly perfect example which (if remembered) can motivate faith, sustain diligence, and change hearts as we strive to obey him. For example, Alma tries to inspire Helaman’s continued faithfulness by inviting him to remember Jehovah’s covenant that “inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments, they shall prosper in the land” (1 Nephi 4:14; referenced in Alma 37:13; he also tried this with the people in Ammonihah to lesser effect in Alma 9:13–14). Later Helaman himself explicitly connects his warriors’ strict remembrance of Jesus to their observance of his commandments and their success and deliverance (see Alma 58:40).

For busy, distractable mortals, obedience can be hard, but as we try to remember to obey, we can also remember in order to obey. Jesus promises to prosper us in his presence as we do, and in time both remembering and obeying become more natural. When we forget or disobey, we trust that by remembering again we will grow in obedience and in Christ.

Accountability, agency, and remembering

As we are invited to remember to keep his commandments, one resource to do so is the next theme of remembering: remembering our agency and eventual accountability before Christ. Table 5 documents these patterns.

Consider two complementary principles. First, remembering our accountability prepares us to be accountable to Jesus at our eventual judgment. This is true for recognizing sin’s consequences, remembering we will be judged, and feeling our nothingness compared to God. Second, remembering our agency to choose Christ helps him free us from sin and its consequences now. Passages teaching this echo Lehi’s proclamation that we “are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men” (2 Nephi 2:27).

By remembering that I am free to choose and am accountable for my choices, I become a more intentional agent and a more Christlike disciple. This type of remembering lets him change recollections of sorrow, guilt, and pain into experiences of hope, life, and joy. As Mediator and Judge, he clears my account, remembers no more, and makes me his.

Affliction and remembering

Situated between the themes of remembering our eventual judgment and remembering the captivity of our fathers in the past, this sixth theme shows remembering is also closely connected with how we experience afflictions in the present. Even when eventual judgment and accountability seem so distant that we forget Jesus as our Judge, our afflictions are often so unforgettably present in our lives that we can still remember Jesus our Deliverer. Table 6 presents the verses in this theme.

These passages teach two main principles. First, although we are naturally slow to remember Jesus, afflictions can help us remember him. Second, remembering Jesus can help us find deliverance in and from affliction. This second principle is also taught in its converse: not remembering Jesus may lead to additional afflictions (to help us remember).

Despite being about affliction, this principle surprisingly offers a lot of hope. Even in our worst situations, if we remember, we will be delivered (even in afflictions that did not come from our slowness to remember him). And whether we are delivered sooner or later, that deliverance comes, which can then motivate our faithfulness and our remembering.

Remembering our fathers

Although it is the least common theme of remembrance in the Book of Mormon, the invitation to remember our fathers and their captivity is a memorable one. Critically, the Book of Mormon teaches us to remember that our predecessors were delivered from their captivity by Jesus Christ. Table 7 reports the related passages.

The main doctrine taught through this theme is that the Lord delivers his people from spiritual and temporal captivity through miraculous means. Whether the miracles are those surrounding Alma’s escape from the land of Helam, the families of Lehi and Jared being led to the promised land, or the ultimate deliverance of humankind from death and hell, Jesus is the Deliverer who saved our fathers. Remembering this is of paramount import.

Because Jesus has delivered our fathers, we have evidence to inspire us to have faith in him as well. As we act in faith, trusting in his deliverance, methods, and timing, the captivity and miraculous deliverance of our fathers serve as points of departure for our own upward cycle of faith, conversion, and discipleship. By exercising even a particle of faith in Jesus Christ (Alma 32:27), we become more like the faithful saints who came before us, more able to endure our own afflictions, and in the end more like him.

A Thought on Always Remembering Him

The Book of Mormon is brimming with the word remember. By exploring remembering, this paper documented its close connection to Christ and discussed how remembering relates to our journeys of discipleship. As a reluctantly forgetful disciple, I found studying remembering enriched my observance of sacramental covenants to “always remember him.” I conclude with a last insight that has enriched my relationship with my Redeemer.

When I think of “always remembering him,” invitations like “let all [our] thoughts be directed unto the Lord” come to mind (see Alma 37:36). President Russell M. Nelson taught, “Our focus must be riveted on the Savior and his gospel. It is mentally rigorous to strive to look unto him in every thought.”[17] But if this constant focus is the “perfect even as I” ideal (see 3 Nephi 12:48), the reality is that no mortal disciple always remembers him in this way.

Defining remember expanded my understanding of the sacramental covenant. Webster’s 1828 dictionary presents two sets of meanings of the word remember. The first set involves bringing back to mind something that has left (in the sense of recall or recollect). The other set involves retaining something in the forefront of one’s attention (in the sense of bear in mind).[18]

These two types of remembering are reflected in the Book of Mormon. For example, to encourage repentance King Benjamin invites his people to “awake to a remembrance” of sin and “remember” that God’s promises to the righteous are true (or bring it back to mind; see Mosiah 2:40–41). After his people experience the joy of a remission of sin, he points them back to God saying, “I would that ye should . . . always retain in remembrance the greatness of God . . . and [his] long-suffering towards you” (or bear in mind; see Mosiah 4:11). Whereas King Benjamin repeatedly ties bringing Christ back to mind to repentance and receiving a remission of sins, he connects bearing Christ in mind with daily devotion, steadfast faith, and retaining a remission of sins (see Mosiah 4:9–12).

This distinction between types of remembering suggests that our covenant to always remember Christ is not limited to always bearing him in mind. Always bringing him back to mind again is a necessary and complementary facet of our covenant efforts to always remember. When we (inevitably) forget our Master, our only course of action is to repent and return to him. To repent for having forgotten, our faith and repentance must bring Jesus Christ back to our mind. In other words, to repent we must remember him again.

Personally, this insight is enriching my weekly devotion at the altar of the Lord’s supper. Each Sabbath I covenant anew to “always remember him.” And despite my best intentions, each week I forget him again. These insights about remembering reveal that an indispensable part of my covenant to always remember Jesus is my promise that I will always remember him again each time I forget.

This type of remembering guarantees our eventual salvation, for we can only fall by permanently forgetting. Remembering is essential in enduring to the end. Bringing him back to mind makes us better at bearing him in mind, and in the process he perfects us. Our covenant to always remember him is a promise to keep trying until one day we never forget again. Indeed, we will “remember and perish not” (Mosiah 4:30).

Notes

[1] Spencer W. Kimball, Circles of Exaltation (address to religious educators, June 28, 1968), 8.

[2] The word remember occurs once every 1,200 words in the Book of Mormon, more than twice as frequently as in the other standard works (once every 2,800 words).

[3] Louis C. Midgley, “The Ways of Remembrance,” in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon. Insights You May Have Missed Before, ed. John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne (Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1991), 168. See also Louis C. Midgley, “‘O Man, Remember and Perish Not’ (Mosiah 4:30),” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 127–29.

[4] Midgley, “Ways of Remembrance,” 168.

[5] Steven L. Olsen, “Memory and Identity in the Book of Mormon,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 2 (2013): 40–51.

[6] These derivatives include the verb forms remember, remembered, rememberest, remembereth, remembering, and the noun remembrance.

[7] The data underlying figure 1 came from a corpus of all Book of Mormon verses containing any form of the verb remember and for the nouns remembering and remembrance. Because the focus was on the word remember, I did not include related words such as memory, remind, or forget. Furthermore, the corpus only includes words used within the scriptural text, not within chapter headings or footnotes. After identifying 221 uses of remember, I included any noun and verb phrases directly connected with the word in my corpus. As such if a verse contained multiple remember words, words from that verse may appear multiple times in the corpus to appropriately weight the words that remember is collocated with. The result of this search was a corpus of 7601 words with 221 uses of remember.

[8] Figure 1 is built from the text from the verses that contain the 221 uses of remember in the Book of Mormon as detailed in note 6. The word cloud includes the 250 most common words in the corpus. The font size of each word is proportional to the square root of the number of occurrences in the corpus. For example, the word remember occurs 158 times and is presented roughly twice as large as the word words which occurs 44 times (since √158=12.6 and √44=6.3). The figure was generated with online using public software from https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/.

[9] There are 115 uses of these titles out of the 7,601 words from the remember-related passages (1.5%) compared to 2,175 uses of these titles or “Savior” out of the 267,170 words in the Book of Mormon (0.8%). Overall Book of Mormon numbers are accessed from Jeffrey McNeal, “Word Counts in LDS Scriptures,” https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jeffrey.mcneal/viz/WordCountinBibleandBookofMormon/WordCounts.

[10] Themes were identified using a series of three sequential emergent coding exercises. First, I identified the main noun and verb clauses associated with the remember word as discussed in footnote 6 and determined a theme for each verse. For example, I assigned these themes to the first four passages: 1 Nephi 2:24, “affliction leads to remembering”; 1 Nephi 4:14, “The Lehite covenant”; 1 Nephi 7:15, “Remember inspired/prophetic words”; 1 Nephi 10:19–20, “Remember judgement/consequences for actions.” This exercise resulted in 88 themes. Next, I compared these themes and identified natural groupings between them. For example, I combined the themes “Remember judgment/consequences,” “remember the consequences of sin,” “remember agency,” and “the Spirit will not always strive” into one group I called Agency, Accountability, and Remembering. Through this process of aggregation, seven larger patterns emerged as well as an eighth “other” category. The other category mainly included narrative uses of remember like “do ye not remember the priests of your father, whom this people sought to destroy?” or “for he doth remember all of my commands to execute them”. Finally, I aggregated the 88 themes into three to five subgroups within each group for exposition in the paper. These are the groups and subgroups reported in tables 1–7.

[11] I define a passage as being connected to Christ if one of three conditions is met. First, a passage is connected to Christ if it explicitly mentions him or one of his titles (e.g., “I remembered my father speak of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God”). Second, it is connected to Christ if it contains a contextual reference to him or his roles even if not explicit (e.g., “remember also that this is the name that I said I should give unto you”). Finally, a passage may be connected Christ if it is spoken directly by him such as the discourses in 3 Nephi or words reported as a direct quotation by a prophet (e.g., “Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea”).

[12] Joseph Smith, comp., Lectures on Faith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985), 3.4.

[13] Russell M. Nelson, “Becoming Exemplary Latter-day Saints,” Ensign, November 2018, 113.

[14] Jeffrey R. Holland, “‘An High Priest of Good Things to Come,’” Ensign, November 1999, 38; original emphasis removed.

[15] Midgley, “The Ways of Remembrance,” 168.

[16] Harold B. Lee, The Teachings of Harold B. Lee (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000), 82.

[17] Russell M. Nelson, “Drawing the Power of Jesus Christ into Our Lives,” Ensign,May 2017, 41; emphasis in original.

[18] Definitions 1 and 2 are in the first category, whereas 3–4 and 7–14 are in the second (5–6 were archaic in 1828).