2 Nephi 25:21
1830 Edition
Wherefore, for this cause hath the Lord God promised unto me that these things which I write, shall be kept and preserved, and handed down unto my seed, from generation to generation, that the promise may be fulfilled unto Joseph, that his seed should never perish as long as the earth should stand.
Changes
Simple English
Because of this, the Lord God has promised me that these things I write will be kept safe. They will be passed down to my children. They will go from one generation to the next. This is so God’s promise to Joseph will come true. His children will never die out as long as the earth stands.
Paraphrase
That’s why the Lord God promised me these things I’m writing will be preserved and passed down through my family line, generation after generation. This fulfills the promise to Joseph—that his descendants would never disappear as long as the earth stands.
Notes
Written in approximately 550 B.C., 2 Nephi 25:16-26 provides an excellent example of a "theological anachronism."
LDS scholar, Grant Hardy observes: "In 1831, Alexander Campbell, one of the book's first critics (and certainly the first one to read it carefully), famously observed that it seemed to weigh in on all the popular religious questions of the day, including 'infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry , the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of freemasonry, republican government, and the right of the man.' This is a fair list, and references to these topics-or their analogous counterparts-can be found throughout the Book of Mormon." -Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon, p. 184
M.T. Lamb writes, "The whole Old Testament, as we have it, proceeds upon the assumption that these new Testament truths were not fully understood by the Old Testament writers. The entire system of bloody sacrifices, as found in the law of Moses, would have been the silliest nonsense to him had he understood in full the great plan of redemption to which this system looked forward in type... It would hardly seem possible for language to state more clearly or positively that the mystery of Christ's incarnation and the modus operandi or method of human salvation HAD NOT been revealed to the world until the Apostle's day. That while the Old Testament authors had presented the truth, it had been so presented in type, shadow, symbol and figure that it was not an could not be understood by them, not even by the angels of God..." -M.T. Lamb, The Golden Bible; or The Book of Mormon, Is It From God? (New York: Ward and Drummand, 1887), pp. 148.