After the king was converted to the Gospel he sent a proclamation throughout all the land over which he reigned forbidding any and all from persecuting Ammon and his fellow-missionaries. This decree gave them the liberty to preach the Word of God anywhere and everywhere that they desired. We may feel assured that this privilege was in no way neglected. To use Ammon’s words, the missionaries entered into the homes of the people and taught them; they also taught them in their temples and synagogues, in the streets and on the hilltops. But often they were cast out, spit upon, smitten, stoned, bound, cast into prison, and made to suffer all manner of afflictions. However, the Lord, in His mercy, delivered them from all evil designs, and the king’s proclamation opened up the way that the promise of the Lord was fulfilled in a far greater measure than even the missionaries, themselves had hoped:
And the Lord said unto them also: Go forth among the Lamanites, thy brethren, and establish My Word; yet ye shall be patient in long-suffering and afflictions, that ye may show forth good examples unto them in Me, and I will make an instrument of thee in My hands unto the salvation of many souls. (Alma 17:11)
The result of the labors of the missionaries was not trifling, but glorious in the saving of many thousand souls. For, we shall soon learn, that unto the Lord were converted the people of the Lamanites who dwelt in the Lands of Ishmael, Midoni, Shilom, and Shemlon; and the Cities of Nephi, Lemuel, and Shimnilon. Under the watchful care of the Nephite missionaries the Lamanites throughout the vast area of their domain became a righteous, peaceful, God-serving people, and from faithful performance of the Gospel teachings they never fell away. But the various bodies of Nephite apostates who dwelt among the Lamanites universally rejected the Gospel Message, with the exception of one Amalekite, and of him we have no record of his end.
History often repeats itself, but we have no recollection of any parallel to the events that followed this marvelous conversion. The Lamanite people now become two distinct peoples, and two different bodies, as separate and divided as had been the Nephites and the Lamanites. But, however, with this strange complication—the apostate Nephites now occupied the place and did the work of the natural Lamanites, while the true descendants of Laman and Lemuel took the ground previously held by the righteous Nephites. So clearly defined did the division become that the supreme ruler (Lamoni’s father), having turned from the traditions, habits, and customs, of the Lamanites, was determined to cast aside the old name. If they were Lamanites in name only, they resolved to cut that weak cord which alone bound them to the past, and be as new in name as they were in feelings, hopes, loyalty, and religion. So, after advising with Ammon and his fellow-missionaries, the king gave to his people the name of Anti-Lehi-Lehies, and to his son, to whom he transferred the royal power, that of Anti-Nephi-Lehi. The renegade Amalekites, Amulonites, and others, were not willing to be ruled by a Christian monarch. They had rejected Christianity altogether, and would not have it as the ruling power, either in Nephi or Zarahemla. With the old sophistries and falsehoods of Nehor in their hearts, they raised a mutiny in the breasts of their associate Lamanites, and urged them on to rebellion against the rightful king and his believing subjects.
However, and notwithstanding the persecutions of the apostate Nephites and their erstwhile Lamanitish brethren, the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi soon became a prosperous and industrious body, and from then on they grew daily in the knowledge and beliefs of the Christian Faith that carried them to unprecedented heights of devotion to the cause they had espoused, and through sacrifices the like of which only hell with its many devious ways could suggest to their tormentors.