The record of the Jaredites, including many glorious and edifying passages about faith and the relationship between God and man, is abridged by Moroni as the book of Ether. He also gives inspired commentary on the recorded events and reveals the word of the Lord concerning the key role this record, as part of the entire Book of Mormon, is to play in the latter-day Restoration. The power of prayer is demonstrated through the account of the brother of Jared and his extraordinary experience of being admitted into the presence of the Lord by virtue of his exceedingly great faith. We see depicted the immigrant history of a small colony being led from the Tower of Babel to the promised land. We see the rise of a mighty nation from small beginnings, and we begin to understand the inexorable sweep of events as guided by a divine hand and shaped by the choices—both good and evil—that individuals make.
Above all, we see the inescapable truth that joy and happiness are products of obedience to the Lord’s commandments and that misery and destruction are the wages of sin. The Jaredite journey—from the seat of evil to the promised land—is analogous to the journey of every mortal. Consequently, this record becomes a guiding compass for modern-day readers who wish to learn about the pathway toward immortality and eternal life and the pitfalls to avoid while underway. We learn that one family circle at the time of the Lord’s scattering of the people associated with the Tower of Babel is given divine guidance in their journey toward the promised land as a result of the earnest entreaties for help by the spiritual leader of the group, identified as the brother of Jared.