It is perhaps this that is most deeply meant when Latter-day Saints speak--quite commonly--of the Book of Mormon as the "missionary tool for conversion."  It does not mean that scriptural texts are means to an end, but ends in themselves--or perhpas means without end.  It is a tool of conversion indeed, but the work of conversion is not therefore outside or beyond the task of reading the book; conversion is, rather, the work of reading the book itself, of reading the book in a certain way--on its own terms or in the way it itself prescribes.  The Book of Mormon thus comes, as every graceful thing does, announcing only itself.  It asks its reader nothing more than to read it, nothing more than to be converted in reading it.

Joseph M. Spencer, "An Other Testament: On Typology" pg. 27