Shortly after the arrival of Lehi and his little colony on the promised land, Nephi received a commandment from the Lord to make certain "plates of ore" upon which to engrave a record of the doings of his people. Some time later, or between thirty and forty years after the departure of Lehi from Jerusalem, Nephi was further instructed regarding the records. The Lord said unto him, Make other plates; and thou shalt engraven many things upon them which are good in my sight, for the profit of thy people. Nephi, to be obedient to the commandment of the Lord, went and made these other plates, and upon them were engraven the records from which the first portions of the Book of Mormon are translated; or those parts known to us as the First and Second Books of Nephi, and the Books of Jacob, Enos, Jarom, and Omni.
The two sets of plates manufactured by Nephi were both used as records of his people and called by his name; but their contents were not identical. Upon the first set was engraven the political history of the Nephites, upon the second their religious growth and development. The one described the acts of their kings, and the wars, contentions and destructions which came upon the nation; the other contained the story of the dealings of the Lord with that people, the ministry of his servants, the teachings and prophecies. Of the contents of the first we know but little, simply that which we gather from incidental remarks made in the second; but the second is given to us in its completeness in the translation contained in the Book of Mormon.
It would have been very interesting to students of history to have received the detailed account of the reigns of the kings who governed the people of Nephi, that is, to those who would accept these records as of God; but it was far more important that those most sacred truths contained in the revelations of heaven to that people should be made manifest to this generation. The one would be a satisfaction to our intellectual natures, but the other is necessary to our eternal salvation; for the Book of Mormon contains the fullness of the gospel, and also many things plain and most precious that have been taken out of the Jewish scriptures, through the craft or ignorance of apostate Jews and Christians. For this most important reason those portions of the Nephite records that are now contained in the Book of Mormon were first revealed; we should never have been willing to have accepted the others without them, for it is upon the basis of religion, not of history, that the Latter-day Saints accept the Book of Mormon. We also have the promise that other plates will be translated and given unto us in the Lord's due time, and doubtless among them will be those first plates upon which Nephi recorded, with such detail, the travels and labors in the wilderness of his father and associates.