Nephi is looking forward into the future some 2,400 years and sees the present day. He is viewing with the spiritual eye, with the vision of the Lord, who declares unto Moses: “There is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all” (Moses 1:6). What Nephi sees is an array of misguided churches in the latter days whose constitutions and policies are aptly described by the bolded key words from the scriptural passages just cited. With amazing accuracy, these words characterize the ecclesiastical world in which the young Joseph Smith found nothing but confusion, as confirmed for him by the voice of the Father: “I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: ‘they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.’” (JS—H 1:19).