Those who are spared because they were “more righteous” still have need of repentance and conversion in order to be healed. Lehi has taught Jacob and his sons this truth: “And by the law no flesh is justified” (2 Nephi 2:5). No one keeps the law to perfection. All are sinners. All have need of repentance, even those who are not the vilest of sinners—caught up in divine judgment of the kind manifested in the Book of Mormon during the upheavals attendant to the crucifixion of the Lord—have continuing need of repentance.
Evidence: External Evidences of Destruction
“In the midst of this expansion [the diffusion of a theocratic pattern of society toward the north], the southern tradition seemed to lose its thrust, yet activity picked up in the northern territory. The movement toward ceremonial- and class-dominated society that had spurted around the end of the pre-Christian era soon faltered. Something we can see only dimly held up continued development. About AD 50, give or take a few decades, in two of the best-known centers in Chiapas, Santa Rosa and Chiapa de Corzo, important buildings burned. Immediately afterward a drastically different, more restrained cultural development appeared on the scene, evidently interacting now not so much with highland Guatemala, as had been the case earlier, but with the isthmus area. These events bring to mind the Book of Mormon, which describes the burning of Zarahemla and other cities in the land southward, part of the destruction that marked the death of Jesus Christ around AD 30. After that, of course, the Savior appeared to the surviving Nephites at Bountiful. His teachings then led to the establishment of a new classless society in which all things were possessed in ‘common.’ It spread from the isthmian sacred center to surrounding lands, including reconstructed Zarahemla (4 Nephi 1:1–8)” (John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book, Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1985], 128).