Robert Millet notes that Alma and Amulek were preaching to the poor people of the Zoramites who had been cast out of the synagogues so they felt their could not worship (or pray). Alma responded in the same way that all the great teachers in the Book of Mormon do. They stand up, introduce the subject, then they go back and cite the ancient prophets, and then they bear their own witness. Anyway, Alma declared:
Do ye remember to have read what Zenos, the prophet of old, has said concerning prayer or worship? For he said: Thou art merciful, O God, for thou hast heard my prayer, even when I was in the wilderness . . . when I did cry unto thee in my field . . . And again, O God, when I did turn to my house thou didst hear me in prayer . . . And thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity; and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me, therefore I will cry unto thee in all mine afflictions, for in thee is my joy; for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me, because of thy Son. (Alma 33:3-11)
Notice that Alma is not only drawing upon the teachings of Zenos to establish that you can pray anywhere--that is important--but notice what he does. We discover in the brass plates a concept of godhead that is very much like the concept we have. What is the concept of godhead that we find in our present Old Testament? Jehovah. You don't know anything about Father and Son in our present Old Testament. Here we find from the brass plates a Father and a Son, and the Father turns away his judgment because of the atoning sacrifice of the Son. Let me give you a quote on the brass plates from Elder Bruce R. McConkie:
From various Book of Mormon references we gain a glimpse of what is on the brass plates. They contain the record of the Jews down to the days of Zedekiah, including . . . the prophecies of the holy prophets . . . They contain books of holy scripture of which the world does not dream, including the writings of Zenock, Neum, and Zenos. But what interests us more than the books included on the brass plates is the tone and tenor and general approach to the gospel and to salvation that they set forth. They are gospel oriented and speak of Christ and the various Christian concepts which the world falsely assumes to have originated with Jesus and the early apostles. (Bruce R. McConkie, "The Doctrinal Restoration," in The Joseph Smith Translation, the Restoration of Plain and Precious Things, ed. Monte Nyman and Robert L. Millet, Provo, 1985, 17.)
Remember, that one of the major purposes of the Book of Mormon was to establish the essential truthfulness of the Bible (see 1 Nephi 13:40). For many years, you know, we have approached this in the wrong direction. We have gone out trying to prove the Book of Mormon from the Bible. The Lord never intended that. The Lord's purpose is that he knew there would come a time when the Bible itself would be in question. So he raises up a prophet, restores to him ancient records, gives him power to translate them, and they come forth and help establish essential truthfulness. That is why the Lord would say, in the 20th section of the Doctrine and Covenants, that the Book of Mormon is given for the purpose of proving to the world that the holy scriptures are true. [Robert L. Millet, "The Prophets of the Brass Plates," Video Transcript, FARMS, 1996, pp. 10-12, 3-4] [See the commentary on 1 Nephi 11:21; 13:40; Helaman 8:17]