Alma equates apostasy from the church to “the destruction of the people.” In confronting Nehor’s apostate religion, he had warned that “were priestcraft to be enforced among this people it would prove their entire destruction” (Alma 1:12). Nehor’s teachings included the “great inequality” of social classes, marked by “costly apparel.” As another example, Alma had seen in the Lamanite mark the Lord’s way of preserving the Nephites from “incorrect traditions which would prove their destruction” (Alma 3:8). Alma is not referring to the people’s physical eradication but to the loss of their culture/religion. Adopting Nehorite or Lamanite beliefs would entail abandoning their own religion and, hence, their ability to remain a separate people.
Enos had articulated a similar fear: “And there was nothing save it was exceeding harshness, preaching and prophesying of wars, and contentions, and destructions, and continually reminding them of death, and the duration of eternity, and the judgments and the power of God, and all these things—stirring them up continually to keep them in the fear of the Lord. I say there was nothing short of these things, and exceedingly great plainness of speech, would keep them from going down speedily to destruction” (Enos 1:23).
Thus, the Nephites from their earliest generations had found worldly ways seductive, including inequality. Such inequality characterizes the Mesoamerican competing culture/religion. Benjamin’s people, who had covenanted to abandon inequalities and become Yahweh-Messiah’s people, are returning to those inequalities only a couple of generations later (Mosiah 4:14–26).