Nephi has prophesied the destruction of this people. Now Samuel also predicts destruction. In Samuel’s destruction, however, there is a specific time, and it appears to relate to a different destruction that did Nephi. Nephi’s prophecy of destruction as the element of immediacy. Samuel’s prophecy is one of finality. Both the near and the distant destructions will destroy the government of the Nephites, but the Nephites as a people will survive the first. The second destruction will be complete. They will be gone, not only as a government, but as a people.
This final destruction will come in four hundred years. In the Mesoamerican context, the number 400 would be considered to be a sacred number. The Maya used a calendrical system built around the number 20. Using a 360 day year (called a tun) the accumulated years into the conceptual equivalent of our centuries and millennia, though the time period was shorter. A century is an important marker of years because it hits an important number in a decimal system. The presence of the double zeros is rare (occurring only every 100 years) and therefore significant.
In a similar way the Maya accumulated their years. Twenty “tuns” was a katun. Twenty “katuns” was a baktun or four hundred years. In the calendrical system that would have been prevalent in the area of the Nephites, Samuel’s prophecy could easily have been that the end would come in a baktun. It might be equivalent to the modern fears that were associated with the year 2000, not because of anything other than the symbolic and rare nature of the number.
In the Chilam Balam of Chumayel there is a statement that the entire life of the Maya people would be “four four-hundreds of years and fifteen score.” (Ralph L. Roys. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1967, p. 83) The number 4 was considered a number symbolic of completion, and therefore the life of the Maya was “complete” after a set of baktuns, plus fifteen katuns. Samuel’s prophecy would have been in such a powerfully symbolic number that the people would doubtless have considered the entire prophecy merely symbolic. It was terribly prescient.