The series of writers in Omni continue the trend that was becoming apparent in Jarom where they kept the record as a family charge but seemed to be losing sight of the original purpose then with Amaleki as he ran out of room on the plates (and apparently posterity as well) we see a glimmer of rekindled understanding of the purpose of the plates. As I consider the context of his time—being born in the days of Mosiah and seeing Benjamin, the son of Mosiah, begin to reign and knowing that those two kings were led by the Lord and worked to build up a righteous people—I suspect that one of the outcomes of the efforts to reestablish righteousness among the Nephites was that this descendant of Jacob began to recognize the history and purpose of the records that had been handed down to him.
It’s like the stories of conversion that we hear today where someone discovers the church and as they start looking into it, especially when they explore some genealogy, they discover that they had a grandparent or similar progenitor who had been a member of the church in the past.
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