Redaction: Mormon breaks off the sequential narrative and reverts to summary. He has lived through this “awful scene of blood and carnage” and has no desire to relive it in memory. Knowing full well the end of his people, whom he cannot save, his thoughts increasingly turn to those he might save—his future readers. Mormon understands that he is writing “these things” for his future audience that will include “the remnant of these people.” Mormon’s focus on the modern audience—those for whom repentance and conversion are real possibilities—continues through the end of Mormon’s original chapter, which coincides with the end of this chapter in our current edition.
Text: By stating that he is at that moment writing his abridgment, Mormon discloses that he was making what we know as the Book of Mormon during the 380th year when he was nearly seventy.