The Sacrament
The record preserves the church’s sacrament as two things at once: a one-time institution and a standing liturgy. The risen Christ institutes it at the temple in Bountiful — bread and wine given, with charges to witness, to remember, and to keep his Spirit (3 Nephi 18:1–11). Near the end of the plates, Moroni records the fixed prayers the church actually said over the bread and the wine (Moroni 4:1–3; 5:1–2) — the record’s only set prayers spoken by the church as a body. The fixed-form class has three other members: the ordination formula (Moroni 3:2–3) and the prescribed baptismal words (3 Nephi 11:24–25), each spoken by an officiator rather than prayed with the church, and — outside the church altogether — the Zoramite prayer on the Rameumptom (Alma 31:15–18), which “every man” offered as “the selfsame prayer” (Alma 31:20, 31:22): a congregational set form, but of a people the record presents as having denied Christ (Alma 31:16). This page quotes both prayers in full, sets them beside the institution, and registers the one verifiable textual contact — the covenant-witness charge — as a paraphrase, holding the larger “one continuous ordinance” claim to a hedged reading.
The two prayers (the record’s fixed forms for the sacrament)
Moroni gives the sacrament its own short pair of chapters. They are not narrative; they are forms — the exact words the church prayed, each framed by a rubric: two verses for the bread (Moroni 4:1–2), one for the wine (Moroni 5:1). The bread first:
Moroni 4:1: “The manner of their elders and priests administering the flesh and blood of Christ unto the church; and they administered it according to the commandments of Christ; wherefore we know the manner to be true; and the elder or priest did minister it—”
Moroni 4:2: “And they did kneel down with the church, and pray to the Father in the name of Christ, saying:”
Moroni 4:3: “O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it; that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him, and keep his commandments which he hath given them, that they may always have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.”
Then the wine, with the same address to “God, the Eternal Father” and the same closing “his Spirit to be with them”, but pared to a single charge — remembrance — where the bread prayer carried three (take the name, remember, keep commandments):
Moroni 5:1: “The manner of administering the wine—Behold, they took the cup, and said:”
Moroni 5:2: “O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee, in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this wine to the souls of all those who drink of it, that they may do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for them; that they may witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they do always remember him, that they may have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.”
Two textual facts about the frame, reported as facts. First, the prayers are presented as fixed forms — Moroni writes the rubric (“the manner of… administering,” “and said”) and then the set words, not a paraphrase of what was said on some occasion. Second, the frame asserts their authority: the manner was administered “according to the commandments of Christ… wherefore we know the manner to be true” (Moroni 4:1). The prayers carry no self-attribution — no “I, Moroni” stands over them; they are Moroni’s by their position in his book, and their voice is the church’s (“we ask thee”).
The institution at Bountiful (3 Nephi 18:1–11)
The commandment the prayers claim to obey is recorded earlier, in reading order, at the temple in Bountiful. There the risen Christ institutes the ordinance himself, in two movements — bread, then wine.
The bread: Christ “took of the bread and brake and blessed it; and he gave unto the disciples and commanded that they should eat” (3 Nephi 18:3); the disciples then give to the multitude (18:4–5). He fixes it as a repeating rite and attaches the charges:
3 Nephi 18:6: “And this shall ye always observe to do, even as I have done, even as I have broken bread and blessed it and given it unto you.”
3 Nephi 18:7: “And this shall ye do in remembrance of my body, which I have shown unto you. And it shall be a testimony unto the Father that ye do always remember me. And if ye do always remember me ye shall have my Spirit to be with you.”
The wine follows (18:8–9), and Christ ratifies the disciples’ act and repeats the charges in the same grammar:
3 Nephi 18:10: “…this doth witness unto the Father that ye are willing to do that which I have commanded you.”
3 Nephi 18:11: “And this shall ye always do to those who repent and are baptized in my name; and ye shall do it in remembrance of my blood, which I have shed for you, that ye may witness unto the Father that ye do always remember me. And if ye do always remember me ye shall have my Spirit to be with you.”
Four charges recur across these institution verses — remembrance (of body / of blood), witness unto the Father, always remember, and having his Spirit to be with you. They are the same four the fixed prayers pray. That overlap is the page’s one registered connection.
The covenant-witness charge, prayer and institution
[Textual]— paraphrase. The bread prayer restates the institution’s covenant-witness charge in the church’s own praying voice. The registered leg is the “willing” clause — which is not the page’s longest shared word-run, and the difference is stated rather than glossed. Measured as the longest contiguous run of words shared between a prayer verse and an institution verse (case-folded, punctuation ignored), the tightest contact on the page is the wine pair at five words — Moroni 5:2 ↔ 3 Nephi 18:11, “do it in remembrance of” — while the bread prayer shares four with 3 Nephi 18:7 and 18:11 (“Spirit to be with”) and three with 3 Nephi 18:10 (“are willing to”). What the “willing” clause has that the longer runs do not is a whole-clause correspondence — witness, willingness, and commandments in the same order:
- Moroni 4:3: “…and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him, and keep his commandments which he hath given them, that they may always have his Spirit to be with them.”
- 3 Nephi 18:10: “…this doth witness unto the Father that ye are willing to do that which I have commanded you.”
Both quotes are verbatim from their own verse. The prayer’s other three charges track the same institution passage: remembrance of the body (Moroni 4:3 “in remembrance of the body of thy Son” ↔ 3 Nephi 18:7 “in remembrance of my body”); always-remember and his Spirit (Moroni 4:3 “always remember him… always have his Spirit to be with them” ↔ 3 Nephi 18:7 / 18:11 “ye do always remember me… ye shall have my Spirit to be with you”). The wine prayer (Moroni 5:2) stands to 3 Nephi 18:11 as the bread prayer stands to the bread institution: “in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for them… that they do always remember him” ↔ “in remembrance of my blood, which I have shed for you… that ye do always remember me.”
One disclosure, so the contact is not overstated. The exact string “witness unto the Father” is not shared. A case-insensitive search of the whole record finds it at exactly two verses — 3 Nephi 18:10 and 18:11, both in this one chapter — and nowhere else. Both Moroni prayers instead read “witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father” (Moroni 4:3, Moroni 5:2). The contact is therefore a paraphrase of the charge (tier ③), not a verbatim quotation; it is registered as such, and on that clause, not on anything larger.
Whether the two are one continuous ordinance
⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. It is natural to read the fixed prayers as the codified form of the institution — the standing liturgy that carries Christ’s Bountiful charges into the church’s weekly practice — and the text gives real support for it: Moroni 4:1 says the manner was administered “according to the commandments of Christ”, and the four charges the prayers pray (witness, remembrance, always-remember, his Spirit) are exactly the four Christ attaches at 3 Nephi 18:7, 10, 11. Against over-reading: the record never says the wording of the prayers was dictated at Bountiful. The Bountiful account supplies the charges but no set prayer-form; the fixed forms appear only in Moroni, generations later, and differ in voice (“we ask thee,” third-person “him”) from Christ’s first-person institution (“my body,” “remember me”). That the prayers obey the institution’s charges is a textual fact; that they are one continuous ordinance — a single rite in two records — is a reading, offered to weigh, not the text’s stated claim.
The guard against unworthy partaking (3 Nephi 18:28–30)
At Bountiful Christ gives the ministers a further commandment governing who may partake — the ordinance’s one explicit restriction in the record:
3 Nephi 18:28: “…this is the commandment which I give unto you, that ye shall not suffer any one knowingly to partake of my flesh and blood unworthily, when ye shall minister it;”
3 Nephi 18:29: “For whoso eateth and drinketh my flesh and blood unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to his soul…”
The guard is not expulsion but restraint with ministry: the unworthy are to be forbidden the emblems, yet “ye shall not cast him out from among you, but ye shall minister unto him and shall pray for him unto the Father” (18:30), and received back on repentance and baptism. The phrase Christ uses of the emblems here — “my flesh and blood” — is the same substance Moroni’s rubric names when it calls the ordinance “administering the flesh and blood of Christ unto the church” (Moroni 4:1). That exact phrase, “the flesh and blood of Christ”, occurs once in the corpus (Moroni 4:1); Christ’s first-person “my flesh and blood” is its counterpart at the institution.
The second administration: bread and wine provided (3 Nephi 20:3–9)
On the second day the Lord administers the ordinance again, and the account records something the first did not — the emblems themselves were given miraculously. He “brake bread again and blessed it, and gave to the disciples to eat” (3 Nephi 20:3), had them serve the multitude bread and wine (20:4–5), and the text pauses to state the fact plainly:
3 Nephi 20:6: “Now, there had been no bread, neither wine, brought by the disciples, neither by the multitude;”
3 Nephi 20:7: “But he truly gave unto them bread to eat, and also wine to drink.”
Here the text speaks its most direct word about what the emblems are: “He that eateth this bread eateth of my body to his soul; and he that drinketh of this wine drinketh of my blood to his soul; and his soul shall never hunger nor thirst, but shall be filled” (3 Nephi 20:8) — and the multitude, having eaten and drunk, “were filled with the Spirit… and gave glory to Jesus” (20:9). Reported as the text stands: on this occasion the bread and wine were provided without any being brought, and the partaking is tied to being “filled with the Spirit” — the same Spirit the prayers ask to “be with them.” What the giving of the emblems means beyond the words on the page is left where the text leaves it.
The kept practice
The record shows the ordinance actually kept as a settled custom. In Moroni’s account of the early church, the sacrament is a recurring meeting:
Moroni 6:6: “And they did meet together oft to partake of bread and wine, in remembrance of the Lord Jesus.”
And in the golden generation after the visitation, the people “did walk after the commandments which they had received from their Lord and their God, continuing in fasting and prayer, and in meeting together oft both to pray and to hear the word of the Lord” (4 Nephi 1:12). (Read exactly: 4 Nephi 1:12 names the meeting practice — fasting, prayer, hearing the word — and does not itself mention the sacrament; it is the same “meet together oft” habit, not a second sacrament notice.) The “meet together oft” pattern that gathers the church for the ordinance is registered on The Church of God; it is cross-linked here, not re-registered on this page.
The terms across the corpus
Inside the record, the sacrament’s language is rare and tightly clustered — almost entirely in the institution (3 Nephi 18) and the two prayers (Moroni 4–5), the notable instances outside them being the second administration (3 Nephi 20:3–9) and the kept-practice notice (Moroni 6:6). Across the whole frozen corpus that clustering does not hold, and this page does not treat what falls outside the record: the New Testament carries four further institutions of the same ordinance — Matthew 26:26–28, Mark 14:22–24, Luke 22:19–20, and 1 Corinthians 11:23–26. Each count below was recounted for this page over all of raw/ top-level (case-insensitive, punctuation-tolerant), so the figures are corpus-wide, not record-only:
| Term / phrase (as it stands) | Verses | Where |
|---|---|---|
| in remembrance of [the/my] body / blood (template, not a verse’s exact words) | 4 | 3 Nephi 18:7, 18:11; Moroni 4:3, 5:2 |
| ”always remember me” (Christ’s first person) | 2 | 3 Nephi 18:7, 18:11 |
| ”always remember him” (the prayers’ third person) | 2 | Moroni 4:3, 5:2 |
| ”witness unto the Father” (exact string) | 2 | 3 Nephi 18:10, 18:11 — this chapter only |
| ”the flesh and blood of Christ” | 1 | Moroni 4:1 |
| ”meet together oft” (exact string) | 3 | 3 Nephi 18:22; Moroni 6:5, 6:6 |
Two facts fall out of the counts, both reported as textual facts. First, the emblem-remembrance phrase (“in remembrance of… body/blood”) is a closed set of four verses — two in the institution, two in the prayers — and the search that returns them ran over the whole frozen corpus, so the set is closed corpus-wide and not merely inside the record. What does not follow is that the ordinance’s language stays put. The bare remembrance formula “in remembrance of me” stands over bread and cup at Luke 22:19 and 1 Corinthians 11:24, 11:25 — and, in an unrelated sense, at 2 Nephi 5:25; the body-and-blood identification stands at Matthew 26:26, 26:28 and Mark 14:22, 14:24; and inside the record 3 Nephi 20:8 says “eateth of my body… drinketh of my blood”. What is closed is the exact body/blood template, not the ordinance’s vocabulary. Second, the always-remember charge shifts person exactly at the boundary between institution and liturgy: Christ says “always remember me” (18:7, 18:11); the church’s prayers say “always remember him” (Moroni 4:3, 5:2) — the same charge, re-voiced from the first person of the one who commanded it to the third person of the congregation that obeys. The exact string “meet together oft” is 3 verses; 4 Nephi 1:12 carries the inflected “meeting together oft” and is not counted among them.
Key references / appearances
| Reference | What it contains |
|---|---|
| 3 Nephi 18:1–7 | The institution of the bread; the charges to observe, remember, witness, keep the Spirit |
| 3 Nephi 18:8–11 | The institution of the wine; the covenant-witness ratification (“witness unto the Father”) |
| 3 Nephi 18:28–30 | The guard against partaking “my flesh and blood unworthily,” with ministry to the unworthy |
| 3 Nephi 20:3–9 | The second administration; bread and wine provided though none was brought; “eateth of my body… drinketh of my blood” |
| Moroni 4:1–3 | The administering frame and the fixed bread prayer |
| Moroni 5:1–2 | The administering frame and the fixed wine prayer |
| Moroni 6:6 | The kept practice: “did meet together oft to partake of bread and wine, in remembrance of the Lord Jesus” |
| 4 Nephi 1:12 | The golden-generation meeting habit (fasting, prayer, hearing the word) — cross-reference, not a sacrament notice |
Related
Concepts / events: The Visitation at Bountiful (the ministry in which the sacrament is instituted) · The Doctrine of Christ (holds the covenant-witness reading of 3 Nephi 18:10 toward baptism — — and keeps it) · The Church of God (the “meet together oft” gathering; the church’s ordinances and discipline) · The Atonement (the body and blood the emblems remember)
People: Moroni (records the fixed prayers) · Messiah (the risen Lord who institutes the ordinance) · The Twelve Disciples (they receive the bread and give it to the multitude, 3 Nephi 18:3–4; the office of breaking and blessing it is given to one of their number, not to the twelve — “there shall one be ordained among you”, 3 Nephi 18:5)
Connections:
Pages: Index · Connections
Sources
The Book of Mormon — ten chapters are cited on this page: 3 Nephi 11 (the prescribed baptismal words), 3 Nephi 18 (the institution and the guard), 3 Nephi 20 (the second administration), Moroni 3 (the ordination formula), Moroni 4 and Moroni 5 (the two prayers), Moroni 6 (the kept practice), 4 Nephi 1 (the meeting habit), Alma 31 (the Zoramite set prayer, named in the lede as a fourth member of the fixed-form class), and 2 Nephi 5 (one non-sacramental occurrence of the remembrance formula).
The New Testament — four chapters are cited, only where this page discloses that its clustering claims are scoped to the record: Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, and 1 Corinthians 11. These are frozen corpus texts, not outside material; this page names them, quotes the phrase “in remembrance of me” from Luke 22:19 and 1 Corinthians 11:24, 11:25, and registers no connection to any of them.
Every quote is drawn verbatim from the frozen source at the reference given with it. The chapters actually quoted are 3 Nephi 18, 3 Nephi 20, Moroni 4, Moroni 5, Moroni 6, 4 Nephi 1, Alma 31, 2 Nephi 5, Luke 22, and 1 Corinthians 11; 3 Nephi 11, Moroni 3, Matthew 26, and Mark 14 are cited without being quoted.
Every quote on this page is taken verbatim from the frozen source chapters named above. This page registers exactly one connection (, Moroni 4:3 ↔ 3 Nephi 18:10), a paraphrase of the covenant-witness charge; the wine-prayer leg and the institution’s other three charges are shown in prose, not registered as separate records — including the wine pair (Moroni 5:2 ↔ 3 Nephi 18:11), which carries the longest shared word-run on the page and is disclosed as unregistered rather than described as looser. The exact string “witness unto the Father” is disclosed as unique to 3 Nephi 18 so the paraphrase is not mistaken for a quotation. The claim that the fixed prayers and the Bountiful institution are one continuous ordinance is set apart as a ⚖️ interpretation, offered to weigh. The “meet together oft” gathering record is hosted on The Church of God and cross-linked, not re-registered here. All counts were recounted for this page over all of raw/ top-level, so they are corpus-wide figures; external, real-world questions about the ordinance’s history are out of scope.