How is it possible that with a thousand years of being God’s favored people in the New World, could the tables be turned, and the Nephites destroyed, while the Lamanites, supposedly more wicked, should remain? Mormon answers such a possible question by showing that it had happened before. When the Nephites became so wicked that they embraced the Gadiantons, the Lamanites had become so righteous that they hunted them, and the Gadiantons were “utterly destroyed from among the Lamanites.”
This reversal of expectations will lead to the destruction of the Nephite nation, which will have to be rebuilt after Christ comes. At this point, however, it is important to know that there are righteous Lamanites who will be able to send Samuel among the Nephites in Helaman chapters 13 through 15.