This passage is a prophetic warning against the Gadianton robbers rampant in Moroni’s day (4 Ne. 1:46). Moroni is working on the Jaredite record, including the information that they were destroyed by their own secret combinations. He uses that past example as the basis for his prophecy about the Gadiantons who had constituted the secret combination of his own day. In this commentary’s Mesoamerican correlation, the Gadiantons are the influence and presence of Teotihuacan. Indeed, that city was influential for hundreds of years, from A.D. 1 to about 700, when they were destroyed as Moroni prophesied.