Angel Moroni

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The angel Moroni is an important figure in Latter-day Saint belief. Joseph Smith said Moroni visited him starting on September 21, 1823, and Moroni was the guardian of the golden plates buried near Smith’s home in western New York. The plates are believed to be the source of the Book of Mormon.

In the Book of Mormon, Moroni is a prophet-warrior, the son of Mormon. He finished writing on the plates and, after his death, became an angel who guided Smith to the buried plates. Smith later translated the plates and Moroni is said to still have them in 1838.

Early accounts varied on the angel’s name. Smith sometimes spoke of “an angel” before identifying him as Moroni in 1835. A scribal error in an 1838 history briefly called the angel Nephi, the name of the Book of Mormon’s first narrator. Church publications later corrected this to Moroni, though some family sources mention a “Brother Nephi.” Most Latter-day Saints view the angel as Moroni, not Nephi.

Moroni is also connected to Revelation 14:6, with Moroni described as bringing the everlasting gospel to all people. The image of the angel Moroni blowing a trumpet has become a common symbol of the LDS Church. Moroni appears on the cover of some Book of Mormon editions and sits atop many temples in statue form.

The first Moroni statue atop a temple was Cyrus Dallin’s on the Salt Lake Temple in 1892. Earlier, Nauvoo’s temple used a white weather vane figure. Dallin’s statue is tall and gold-leafed. Since then, other sculptors created Moroni statues for temples around the world. Notable later versions include:

- 1953: Millard F. Malin’s Moroni on the Los Angeles Temple (aluminum, with a left-hand golden plates)
- 1974: Avard Fairbanks’s Moroni on the Washington, D.C. Temple
- 1983: Castings placed on Idaho Falls Temple and Atlanta Temple
- 1978–1998: Karl Quilter’s designs, used on many temples with fiberglass and gold leaf
- 1998 and beyond: Quilter’s newer Moroni statues for many of the newer, smaller temples

In 2020 a Salt Lake Temple Moroni trumpet statue was damaged when an earthquake caused the trumpet to fall. The Moroni statues remain widely recognized as a symbol of the church’s heritage and mission.