This book will be made of paper because paper is thin and light and you can fit a lot of pages between two covers. Paper is also nice because when you are done reading, you can fold the corner over to mark your place. But you should know that some people don’t like folded corners. “Why did you not use a bookmark?” they will say. “Soon the corners will fall off. Then it will be much harder to turn the page.”
So there are at least two downsides to paper. It is thin enough to give you a paper cut. And it is very tear-able. You could tear it right now if you wanted. But please don’t. That would prove the point but this page would never be the same because while paper is convenient it is also perishable.
That is why books are not always written on paper. Remember how the prophets wrote on precious metal because precious metal was the most eternal thing they knew and they wanted their writings to last a long time and they didn’t want someone who was reading it to fold over the corner or rip the page in half?
Well this is the story of the metal book. You see, the metal was strong but it was not as thin or as light as paper. And so the people couldn’t fit as many pages between the covers without it becoming so heavy that no one could lift it. This soon became a problem because the book kept wanting to grow.
When one man finished writing in the book he would hand it to his son and say, “son write in the book when you are older so that everyone will know what happened to you.” And that son would grow old and write in the book and then give it to his son and say the same thing.
This could only go on so long before the book filled up.
People started to write less and less so that there would still be room for their sons to write. Nobody wanted to be the person who used the last page. Or the last part of the last page. And definitely not the last corner of the last part of the last page. But eventually, even that was filled and the book ended.
We know very little about all these fathers and sons. Some were righteous and content. And others, like Omni, were sad because they believed they were bad. We know little about Omni. But we know that he took time to write in the book. And God has preserved his words just like he preserved Abraham’s and Moses’ and Lehi’s and Nephi’s. So perhaps he was not as bad as he supposed. And thousands of years later we can shout back across time and say, “God remembered you. And we will remember you.”
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