Who is the Prophet Mormon?

This is according to the beliefs of the LDS.



The Nephite prophet Mormon

The prophet Mormon was born about AD 311 in what is today upstate New York.  He was a member of the Nephite tribe. When he was 10, he was visited by the Prophet Ammaron, who told him about the location of the sacred Nephite records and told him to wait until he was 24 to retrieve them.  Mormon had access to 1000 years of Nephite records and he redacted (edited) them into the Book of Mormon, which includes some of his own words.  Mormon wrote on gold plates and wrote in a language called "reformed Egyptian".  He buried them in a hill named Cumorah (near present-day Manchester, New York).  He entrusted them to his son, the prophet Moroni.  In about AD 385, the prophet Mormon then led the Nephites in a great battle against the Lamanites, and the Nephites were totally wiped out, except for Moroni, the last surviving Nephite.

Moroni (not to be confused with Captain Moroni) completed the work of his father, and added his own book, the Book of Moroni, which he added to the records at Hill Cumorah.  After Moroni's death, he was resurrected and became an angel. 

The angel Moroni first appeared to Joseph Smith Jr, on September 21, 1823.  Joseph found the gold plates the next day, but the angel prevented him from taking them.  He finally was able to retrieve them in September 1827.  Over the next several years, he was able to translate them with the assistance of a seer stone.  In about 1830, he was finished with the translation and returned them to the cave in the Hill.  And then the angel Moroni took them back.