The Nephites had been warned that “if the time should come that the voice of this people should choose iniquity, that is, if the time should come that this people should fall into transgression, they would be ripe for destruction” (Alma 10:19). Then will be the time that the “judgments of God will come upon you” (Mosiah 29:27).
Nephi had seen in vision the destruction of his descendants (1 Nephi 12:19). He recounts, “They sell themselves for naught; for, for the reward of their pride and their foolishness they shall reap destruction; for because they yield unto the devil and choose works of darkness rather than light, therefore they must go down to hell” (2 Nephi 26:10).
Jesus, too, had predicted that the Nephites would ultimately be “led away captive by him [the devil] even as was the son of perdition; for they will sell me for silver and for gold, and for that which moth doth corrupt and which thieves can break through and steal” (3 Nephi 27:32).
In their day, Mormon and Moroni recorded the fulfillment of these prophecies (W. of M. 1:1; Mormon 6:1; 8:3). Moroni comments, “Great has been their fall; yea, great and marvelous is the destruction of my people, the Nephites. And behold, it is the hand of the Lord which hath done it” (Mormon 8:7–8). In his description of the Nephites’ defeat at Cumorah, Mormon uses the word “fallen” ten times (Mormon 6:10–19). Even in their wars leading up to that final battle, the Lamanites “did tread the people of the Nephites under their feet” and they “were swept down and destroyed” (Mormon 5:6–7).
As terrible as the destruction of the Nephites was, how is it that Mormon himself could cry, “Wo unto this people. Come out in judgment, O God!” (Moroni 9:15)? What could cause their own leader to ask such a thing? Was it that God might “hide their sins, and wickedness, and abominations from before my face” (ibid.)? Mormon saw that the Nephites had “willfully rebelled against their God” and that “the day of grace was passed with them” (Mormon 1:16; 2:15). He says, “The Spirit of the Lord hath already ceased to strive with their fathers; and they are without Christ and God in the world; and they are driven about as chaff before the wind” (Mormon 5:16).
During his people’s final days, Mormon notes, “there were no gifts from the Lord, and the Holy Ghost did not come upon any, because of their wickedness and unbelief” (Mormon 1:14). “Every heart was hardened, so that they delighted in the shedding of blood continually” (Mormon 4:11). Having grown “strong in their perversion,” delighting “in everything save that which is good,” they were “without principle, and past feeling” (Moroni 9:19–20).
In fact, so gross had their abominations and sufferings become that it was an act of mercy as well as justice to wipe them from the face of the earth. Underlying all their wickedness was the sin of pride: “The pride of this nation, or the people of the Nephites, hath proven their destruction” (Moroni 8:27).
Such genocide had happened before to the inhabitants of this land. The Jaredites, like the Nephites after them, had been warned from the time of their ancestors that “whoso should possess this land of promise… should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness of his wrath should come upon them” (Ether 2:8; cf. 2 Nephi 1:9–11, 20).
Like the Jaredites, the Nephites harbored and upheld secret combinations, which, in the end, “did prove the overthrow, yea, almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi” (Helaman 2:13). Alma says of the Jaredites that “they murdered all the prophets of the Lord who came among them to declare unto them concerning their iniquities… and thus the judgments of God did come upon these workers of darkness and secret combinations” (Alma 37:30).
Moroni, who abridged the Jaredites’ history, records, “And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity. For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God. And it is not until the fulness of iniquity among the children of the land, that they are swept off” (Ether 2:9–10; cf. 9:20).
In the process of describing the Jaredites’ destruction, Moroni warns the Gentiles who will come upon this land about a similar consequence for them: “And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles, that ye may know the decrees of God—that ye may repent, and not continue in your iniquities until the fulness come, that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done” (Ether 2:11). Nephi and Jesus, however, had prophesied just such an eventuality (2 Nephi 28:1–32; 3 Nephi 16:10–15; 20:15–20).
In depicting that latter-day destruction, Nephi says, “The time cometh, saith the Lamb of God, that I will work a great and a marvelous work among the children of men; a work which shall be everlasting, either on the one hand or on the other—either to the convincing of them unto peace and life eternal, or unto the deliverance of them to the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds unto their being brought down into captivity, and also into destruction, both temporally and spiritually, according to the captivity of the devil” (1 Nephi 14:7).
An integral part of the future great and marvelous work was thus the destruction of the wicked as well as the deliverance of the righteous (cf. 1 Nephi 22:8–14; 3 Nephi 21:9–18). Of that work, the Nephites’ destruction serves as a type. Mormon says, “And then, O ye Gentiles, how can ye stand before the power of God, except ye shall repent and turn from your evil ways?… Therefore, repent ye, and humble yourselves before him, lest he shall come out in justice against you—lest a remnant of the seed of Jacob shall go forth among you as a lion, and tear you in pieces, and there is none to deliver” (Mormon 5:22, 24).
Mormon’s identifying the latter-day Lamanites with Micah’s prophecy of the “remnant of Jacob” tearing the Gentiles in pieces “as a lion” (Micah 5:8) follows Jesus’ citing of Micah to describe the latter-day Gentiles’ demise (3 Nephi 20:16–19; 21:12–18, 21; cf. Micah 4:12–13; 5:8–15).