As the conflict intensified, all the people who had not been slain—men ‘with their wives and their children’ (Eth. 15:15)—gathered about that hill Cumorah (see Eth. 15:11)… .
Thus perished at the foot of Cumorah the remnant of the once mighty Jaredite nation, of whom the Lord had said, ‘There shall be none greater … upon all the face of the earth.’ (Eth. 1:43.)
As I contemplated this tragic scene from the crest of Cumorah and viewed the beautiful land of the Restoration as it appears today, I cried in my soul, ‘How could it have happened?’
The answer came immediately as I remembered that some fifteen to twenty centuries before their destruction, as the small group of their ancestors was being divinely led from the tower of Babel, the Lord ‘would that they should come forth even unto [this] land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people… .’ (Eth. 2:7–10.)
Pursuant to this decree concerning the land of America, the Jaredites were swept off in the manner we have reviewed, because, rebelling against the laws of Jesus Christ—the God of the land—they ‘ripened in iniquity.’
(Marion G. Romney, Ensign, Nov. 1975, pp. 35–36)