The result of Abinadi’s preaching to the people is that he was taken before the king. That is certainly what the entire experience had been designed to do. Taking Abinadi before the king placed him in a position where he could argue his case, and touch the heart of the one man whose conversion would perhaps become the salvation for all of his people from the ultimate penalty of destruction.
To make sure that the king would hear Abinadi and judge him, the people reported that it was not a generic prophesied doom, but one directed against the king himself. That would certainly have caught his attention. In addition to repeating the prophesy that King Noah’s life would be as a garment in a furnace, there is an additional prophesy that was not recorded earlier. It is reported: “thou shalt be as the blossoms of a thistle, which, when it is fully ripe, if the wind bloweth, it is driven forth upon the face of the land.”
Those are some very specific conditions. Mark A. Wright decided to see if he might find what kind of dry stalk that might have been. After some searching, he found a particular thistle that is native to the area that dries and can be blown around in strong winds. It is also poisonous to animals that might attempt to eat it. Thus, there appears to be a specific thistle that is in the right area that has the very conditions that were part of the prophesied calamity.