Omni

1) Behold, it came to pass that I, Omni, being commanded by my father to continue the family tradition of formulating incomplete sentences...

2) Wherefore, I would that ye should know that I of myself am a wicked man, and I have not kept the statutes and commandments of the Lord as I freely admit that I ought to have done. But behold, my son is looking over my shoulder and telling me what to write, and he is not happy that I said that, but verily there is nothing he can do, for it is already etched on plates.

3) As my first order of business I do hereby forbid my descendants from repeating the phrase "it came to pass" ad nauseam, for behold, linguistic analysis doth make it appear as though each of these short books were written by the same individual. Nevertheless, in order to increase my credibility I shall reduce the generational gap between my father and I to only 44 years. And behold, I have also changed up the formula by claiming under duress that I am a wicked man. So you see, it is a true record after all.

4) And it came to pass that I, Amaron, did take the book away from my father, Omni.

5) Behold, it came to pass that... 38 years separated my generation from my father's. Yes, that's right. and despite the fact that the time between now and when Lehi left Jerusalem is 321 years, or about the same as the amount of time between the actual Salem Witch Trials and when David Michael shall have begun the My Book of Mormon Podcast, nevertheless only four generations have passed away. Yes, you heard me correctly. Jacob, the brother of Nephi, was my great-great-grandfather, and he was born over 300 years ago, nevertheless there is nothing to see here. Move along.

6) Well, nothing to see except that the more wicked part of the Nephites have been destroyed. I mean has been destroyed. Grammar is hard.

7) Wherefore, the Lord did follow his binding, eternal promise that any wicked people who inhabit the Americas must be destroyed. Immediately. Or, you know, after a couple hundred years. He was a little vague on the timescale.

8) Nevertheless, despite the relentless cliches, the good Mormon boys and girls in the future did continue reading enthusiastically, for behold, they were knocking out entire books with single chapters, and that did look good upon their seminary reading logs.

9) Now I, Chemish, am the brother of Amaron, and therefore I did increase the generational gap without adding any generations unto it, and by so doing I have not only not done any favors to my dearly departed brother's narrative, but I have damaged the whole youngest son narrative. And I make an end.

10) Behold, I, Abinadom, am the son of Chemish, and I did murder a lot of Lamanites in my day. Yea, with mine own sword I have run several of them through, and I did watch their eyes fill with horror, and the light did go out.

11) And behold, I would like to have written a lot of prophecies and shit like my forefathers, but those bastards took up most of the space, and we only have one fucking page left to cover the next couple of hundred years. So I shall just stick to the whole murdering Lamanites thing.

12) Behold, I am Amaleki, the son of Abinadom, and being a greedy little shit I shall cease with the whole rapid-fire approach and use up the remaining page all by myself.

13) And I shall do so in a rambling and chaotic manner, as if I were a young man summarizing another story that I had already written, and that was 116 pages long, as though my deadline to get published was drawing near and I was at the last part that needed translating and I just needed to tie the stories together and my money was running out and everyone was pressuring me and wanting to start a church and stuff already and I wish they would all stop getting on my case already damn it!

14) Behold, there was a man named Mosiah who was made king over Zarahemla. Fuck! I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me go back and try that again.

15) There was a man named Mosiah who led the people of Nephi into the wilderness until they came to a land which was called Zarahemla, which was serendipitously inhabited by another group of Jews who had come to America. And Mosiah introduced himself to Zarahemla, and Zarahemla did grow angry that he had been referenced without any introduction as a person, thus leaving all subsequent references to his name ambiguous, since at this point in the story Zarahemla was only introduced as the name of a place.

16) And the people of Zarahemla did rejoice exceedingly, and Zarahemla, the guy that is, did as well, for they had brought no records with them, and the people of Nephi had fancy shmancy brass plates. And I do write in the third person as if I'm not one of those people of Nephi that I am referring to.

17) And at the time Mosiah discovered the people of Zarahemla, they had become exceedingly numerous, despite having had many wars and serious contentions and having fallen by the sword from time to time, for, like us, they did not let that dampen their growth rate.

18) And they denied the existence of a Creator, and neither Mosiah nor the people could understand them. They told him afterwards that is. Damn it, there I go getting ahead of myself again.

19) You see, they first spent a couple of years teaching the people of Zarahemla their language, without any reciprocation, and that's how they later discovered that the land was called Zarahemla, and the dude too, and that they were all Jews. And then Zarahemla, the dude that is, gave them his genealogy from memory according to their oral tradition, but that is on the 116 pages, therefore I shall not repeat it here. I shall just take up a bunch of space to tell you about it.

20) And it came to pass that Mosiah and Zarahemla did play paper-rock-scissors, and after having given up in best 4 out of 7, Zarahemla did concede that Mosiah could be their king. And that solves the problem of having to refer to the dude any more, and brings us back to my original point - Mosiah was made king over Zarahemla. The place, that is.

21) And it came to pass that in the days of Mosiah there was a large stone brought unto him with engravings on it; and he did interpret the engravings by the gift and power of God, or in other words using peep stones placed in his hat.

22) And it gave an account of Coriantumr, being one of only two places in the entire world where his story was written down. And it also spoke of his ancestors all the way to when his first parents came out from the Tower of Babel, thus proving that such a tower wasn't a myth, but an actual thing, even though every expert everywhere shall disagree. And it spoke of the destruction of his people, whose bones lay northward. It spoke of a lot of things. It was a very large stone.

23) Behold, I, Amaleki was one of the people who carried it unto him, and I wish we had just brought the fucking bastard to the stone instead.

24) Behold, I was born in the days of Mosiah, and to be honest I'm glad he died; and Benjamin, his son, reigneth in his stead. And we did fight the Lamanites, as usual, and did drive them out of the land of Zarahemla. How they found us here after the land had been kept secret from all of us for over three hundred years is anybody's guess.

25) And it came to pass that I began to be old, which in our family usually means it's time to marry a teenager and beget an heir, but that didn't work out for me, and knowing Benjamin to be a real badass, I shall deliver up these plates to him.

26) And now, my beloved brethren, blah blah blah.

27) Oh wait, I forgot one last thing to complete the story arc so I can get this thing to the press already. There were a certain number who desired to go back to the land of Nephi to possess the land of their inheritance.

28) And their leader whose name was not recorded, being a strong and stiffnecked man, did lead them through the pass of Cirith Ungol, and when they took shelter within a tower he did cause a contention among them such that by the time Samwise arrived there were only fifty left.

29) And they came back, shrugged it off, and tried again.

30) And I, Amaleki, had a brother who went with them, and I have not since known concerning them, and I am getting very old, and what do you know! These plates are full! Let's wrap it up and take them down to ol' E. B. Grandin.