While Latter-day Saints see this passage as a genealogical promise (which it is), the Nephites would have understood it as linking them to their descendants (“children”) through their scriptural record, the Book of Mormon. The Nephites making the record are the “fathers.” The Book of Mormon’s coming forth forms a bond between these generations. In the context of Jesus’s emphasis on the importance of written scriptures, the Book of Mormon thus literally becomes Malachi’s book of remembrance (3 Ne. 24:16).
Text: There is no chapter break at this point in the 1830 edition.