In chapter 8, verses 26 to 32, Moroni began to talk about the time when the Book of Mormon would come forth. Six times, he wrote, “It shall come in a day when…”. He forecasts clearly:
forecasts clearly:The number six is often thought of as a number of incompleteness or defectiveness (being one short of the number 7, which symbolically bespeaks completeness). Here, Moroni gives us no good news about the many things that would be in place when the Book of Mormon would come forth. After all, he has just experienced the destruction of his own people. These six things had been problems for centuries within the Nephite world, with people like Nehor and Korihor, with the blood of martyrs like Abinadi and the women and children in Ammonihah, with the destructions at the time of the Crucifixion, and with priestcrafts. Moroni recognized these problems and hoped that the Book of Mormon would help to prevent those problems from repeating themselves at some future time.