At this point, Moroni begins describing the world into which the Book of Mormon will come, a world he has seen in vision (v. 35). Obviously, he had specific information about Joseph Smith, but many of the other details are really generic scriptural prophecies of the last days. As I read the description, much of what Moroni saw was a prophetic vision of the last days, and the descriptions are simply intended to show that the Book of Mormon would come forth in the last days. Some of the descriptions also pertain to events after Joseph Smith’s day. For instance, it is quite probable that Joseph and his contemporaries saw, in the anti-Masonic movement in New York during the 1820s, the prophetic fulfillment of Moroni’s declaration that there would be “secret combinations and works of darkness.” “Secret combinations” was applied to the Masons, and a “work of darkness” was the disappearance in September 1826 and presumed murder of William Morgan, a former Mason in New York, who was threatening to expose Masonic secrets. Some Book of Mormon critics therefore read its statements about secret combinations as a reflection of Joseph Smith’s contemporary anti-Masonic feelings.
I have noted that the Gadianton robbers as a secret combination play a specific symbolic role in the Book of Mormon (Helaman, Part 1: Context, Chapter 3, “The Gadianton Robbers in Mormon’s Theological History: Their Structural Role and Plausible Identification), so I see the term “secret combinations” as a linguistic artifact. Literary critic Mark D. Thomas, came to the same conclusion: “I am aware of almost no significant parallels between Masonic narratives and those in the Book of Mormon. The clear allusions to Masonry in the Book of Mormon are verbal and not part of the plot.” Nevertheless, many early readers saw Moroni’s prophecy fulfilled in the Morgan disappearance just before the Book of Mormon’s coming forth.