Nephi has prophesied the destruction of this people (Hel. 7:23–24, 28). Samuel’s message also predicts destruction but at a given time, four hundred years in the future. Alma2 prophesied a similar four hundred years between the coming of the Messiah and the Nephite destruction (Alma 45:10). In the Mesoamerican context, 400 is a sacred number. The Maya (and most other Mesoamerican peoples) used a calendrical system built around the number 20. Using a 360-day year (called a tun), they accumulated years into the conceptual equivalent of our centuries and millennia, though the time period was shorter. (See commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 19:8.) A century is an important year-marker in our contemporary system because the double zeros are rare, occurring only every hundred years. Similarly, the Maya grouped their accumulations of 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 Zoquean area where the Nephites lived, Samuel could easily have prophesied that the end would come in a baktun. It might have been equivalent to the doomsday thinking associated with 2000, simply because of the number’s symbolism and rarity. The Chilam Balam of Chumayel states that the Maya people would live “four four-hundreds of years and fifteen score.” Four symbolized completion, and therefore the life of the Maya was “complete” after a set of baktuns, plus fifteen katuns. Samuel’s prophecy included such a powerfully evocative number that the people would doubtless have considered the entire prophecy highly symbolic. It was terribly prescient.