The Nephites were not an inferior people. They were not born into poverty, nor nurtured in darkness. When they kept God's commandments, they were prospered. They became rich in worldly goods, and the light of God's Holy Word illumined the way before them. As we have said: "They had revelations from Heaven to guide them; angels from the Courts of Glory ministered unto them; they prospered in material things; and those who were zealous in keeping the Lord's commandments were benefited and blessed." But, at length they were destroyed.
Their destruction came upon them because of wickedness; however, in the thousand years in which they dwelt upon the Promised Land of America, they were mostly a good and a just people, holy unto the Lord. Like the Jews who were a contemporary people in the East, the last generation of Nephites lived in the twilight of a brilliant past. In times of peace and prosperity, pride and class distinction because of the worldly things they possessed, became a menace to their welfare. Not only did the Nephites indulge themselves in all carnal pleasures, but pride in their fine clothes and their jewelry crowded all thoughts of God from their hearts.
We do not know the period in their history of which Moroni wrote, however our opinion is that the same things may be said of each. He notes, "They were strict to observe that there should be no iniquity among them." This became a rule, because time and time again the Nephites had seen in their own history where wickedness was the offspring of pride, and stiffneckedness the sire of both. Pride was the Nephites' undoing. If required, we could state the story of the Nephites in a very few words: Prosperity and Pride-Pride and Wickedness-Wickedness and Destruction.
Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the demands of clean and moral living which righteousness made, the Nephites were slow to condemn their fellow man. They gave him that was accused before the Elders of the Church, every opportunity to right a wrong if he was found guilty by that court of righteous and holy decisions. In that court for the Judges to accept any evidence whatsoever it was required that the testimony of at least three witnesses corroborate one another's word. If then the guilty one repented of the wrong he had done, and therein asked to be forgiven, he was forgiven. If he did not repent, his name was "blotted out and he was not numbered among the people of Christ."
The meetings of the Nephite Saints, wherever and whenever they might have been, were presided over by one in authority who by the power of the Holy Ghost and the united support of the congregation, "led them whether to preach, or to exhort, or to pray, or to supplicate, or to sing, even so it was done."