Here again a distinction seems to be made between his people, which were the descendants of Jacob, the Patriarch, whose other name was Israel (Gen. 32:28), and those of some other origin. But who could they be?
It would not be wise to speak categorically on a subject of which Revelation is silent and the sciences still are groping in the dark. But it is not to anticipate revelation, nor to assume scientific superiority, to call attention to the promise of the Lord to the Brother of Jared, when he instructed him to cross over to the western world: “There,”—in what to us is America—“I will raise up unto me of thy seed, and the seed of thy brother, and they who shall go with thee, a great nation. And there shall be no greater nation than the nation which I will raise up unto me of thy seed, upon all the face of the earth.” (Omni 19). Others may have rejected the message of Nephi and remained idolators. Conditions in the first settlements of both the Nephites and the Lamanites may have developed during the first fifty years very much as they did during the first few decades in Utah after the colonization by President Brigham Young and the Pioneers. That would explain some difficult passages in the Book of Mormon.
But, whoever they were, neither they nor the descendants of Nephi and his followers, had been instructed sufficiently to understand the prophets (vv. 4 and 6). For that reason Nephi wrote this discourse, this “prophecy,” (v. 7), for the benefit of future generations. (v. 8)