“Ammon Began to Speak”
Ammon began his instruction to Lamoni as the scriptures begin their instruction to all of us, that is, by rehearsing the story of the Creation in order that the Lamanite king might know the power of God and know that God is the creator of all things both in heaven and on earth.
Ammon recounted the story of Adam’s creation, with the testimony that the first of all men was made in the image and likeness of God his Father. Then-and all this is in the order and pattern of the scriptures-Ammon unfolded the doctrine of the Fall: the story of how Adam and Eve introduced corruption and death into their previously paradisiacal state so that they might fill the measure of their creation, having posterity and becoming subject to death. “Adam fell,” Lehi said, “that men might be; and men are that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25).
The Fall, in turn, created the need for a Redeemer, one who could free Adam, Eve, an all their posterity from the effects of their. fallen state and make it possible for them to return to that God who gave them life. Thus God “created Adam, and by Adam came the fall of man. And because of the fall of man came Jesus Christ, even the Father and the Son; and because of Jesus Christ came the redemption of man.” (Mormon 9:12.) Such, Ammon testified, was the “plan of redemption, which was prepared from the foundation of the world” (v. 39). And “the king believed all his words” (v. 40).