Mormon, the abridger, saw in retrospect the vast amount of suffering that had befallen the Nephites during the fifteen years that had transpired since King Mosiah had established a republic as the Nephite form of government. He saw in these years where the teachings and influence of Nehor had led many of his brethren to destruction. He saw where priestcraft had entered into the worship of Nehor's followers. He saw where brethren had been turned against brethren, and where strife and angry passion had mocked divine guidance. He also saw where the ambitions of Amlici had been frustrated, but not without the loss of many lives. Mormon, in making the abridgment of Alma's record had read over and over again Alma's and Amulek's account of the wickedness that abounded in Ammonihah, and where that City with all its iniquitous people had been destroyed by the Lamanites. All in all he saw in the first fifteen years of the Reign of the Judges "an awful scene of bloodshed," and that therein those years had "brought to pass the destruction of many thousand lives." The annals of those times revealed to him the depravity into which some of the Nephites had fallen.
May we imagine the sorrow, and in fact, the indignation that filled Mormon's breast as he contemplated the appalling destruction that had taken place among his forebears, many of whose dead bodies, he read from the Larger Plates of Nephi, lay strewn about the battlefields on which they had fought and bled that righteousness should prevail, and that God alone should be their King. He saw in it all the awful penalties of disobedience to God's laws, wherein men had chosen to follow darkness instead of that which cometh from the light. Alma recorded, and Mormon thought it was important to include in his abridgment, that there were at least two important conclusions drawn by the Nephites of this period: First, that many of the dead, because of unbelief, had been "consigned to a state of endless wo." Therefore they feared for the future of their loved ones who had not kept God's commandments. They remembered the "promises of the Lord" in which the warning was given that all such ones would suffer as if tortured in a "lake of fire and brimstone." Then, too, there were the Lamanites who had refused to accept the light when it was placed before them. It must be kept in mind when studying the Nephite Records that the children of Nephi always regarded the Lamanites as brethren, and saw in them the victims of a corruption that had been foisted upon them by a wicked ancestry. The Nephites therefore truly mourned for the Lamanites who had been slain, they seeing no redemption for their fallen brethren. Secondly, according to the same promises that had been made to the wicked, those who had died in Christ were assured of a grand and glorious hereafter. The Sacred Record says, "Many thousands of others truly mourn for the loss of their kindred, yet they rejoice and exult in the hope, and even know, according to the promises of the Lord, that they are raised to dwell at the right hand of God, in a state of never-ending happiness."