“He Went Forth, and Beheld That the Words of the Lord Had All Been Fulfilled; and He Finished His Record”

Ed J. Pinegar, Richard J. Allen

Besides the severely wounded Coriantumr, Ether is the only Jaredite left alive among the millions that once constituted the great nation. His witness confirms the decrees of God that we must repent or perish. As for Coriantumr, he wanders across the deserted landscape until he is discovered, perhaps around 500 BC, by the descendants of Mulek in the land of Zarahemla, where he dwells with them for “nine moons” (Omni 1:21) and reports concerning his nation that “the severity of the Lord fell upon them according to his judgments” (Omni 1:22). Then, just as Ether has prophesied, the torch of leadership is passed from the Jaredites to “another people receiving the land for their inheritance” (Ether 13:21). In accordance with the prophecy made by Ether, Coriantumr indeed comes among the very people—the descendants of the Mulekites in Zarahemla—who, after their eventual union with Mosiah I and his people from the land of Nephi, sometime in the period 279 BC to 130 BC, would serve as heirs of the promised land for as long as they were righteous. Ether’s record of the Jaredites, made on twenty-four plates of gold, is later discovered by the search party sent by king Limhi during the second half of the second century BC to relocate the route to Zarahemla (see Mosiah 8:9; 21:27). Mosiah makes a translation of the record (see Mosiah 28:17), which Moroni later abridges and includes in the Book of Mormon as the book of Ether (see Ether 1:2, 6). The life of Coriantumr, the last of the Jaredite kings, is a stunning confirmation of Alma’s dictum—“Wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10)—and conclusive evidence that the word of the Lord will always be fulfilled.

Commentaries and Insights on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 2

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