Alma’s direction that Helaman not disclose his prophecies until they were fulfilled (v. 9), has implications for our day. Do the leaders in the Church today know more than they tell us? Why do they not tell us? The answer to the first question can only come from our leaders, but some day we will know the answer. The answer to the second question is probably because of the principle of agency. We are on the earth to be tested and learn for ourselves and from the records of others. Our leaders will give us guidance even though they do not tell us some of the things they know. We can also learn to be guided by the Spirit or receive personal revelation.
The things Alma prophesied were fulfilled and noted in the record at the time of their fulfillment, as we will now discuss. When the Savior visited the Nephites, he repeated the prophecy of the destruction of the Nephites in four hundred years from the time that Christ manifested himself to the Nephites (vv. 10–12; see 3 Nephi 27:32). “More than four hundred and twenty years [had] passed away since the sign was given of the coming of Christ” when Moroni, the son of Mormon the abridger of the record, recorded the last book of the Book of Mormon record (Moroni 10:1). The gradual destruction of the fourth generation is recorded in 4 Nephi and Mormon.
The surviving Nephites being numbered among the Lamanites (v. 14) was also a fulfillment. When Mormon, the abridger of the Book of Mormon, turned over the record to his son Moroni in A.D. 385 (Mormon 6:5), there were only “twenty and four [Nephites] who were with [Mormon], and a few who had escaped into the south countries” (Mormon 6:15). In A.D. 400, when Moroni begins to record upon the plates, “the Lamanites [had] hunted my people, the Nephites, …even until they are no more … And there are none that do know the true God save it be the disciples of Jesus” (Moroni 8:7, 10). We will leave further verification of these prophecies for the future volumes of this work, but sufficient is given to verify their fulfillment.