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The following has been gleaned from the writings of Hugh Nibley: Since Cumorah
One point that needs emphasizing: The Book of Mormon narrative of people, places and events did take place somewhere. There were real people called Nephi, Alma, Mormon and Mononi. They did live somewhere in the Promised Land - the Americas. With the striking correlation between the book's account and the events, time chronology, and geography of Mesoamerica, it is appropriate to place them in the semi-tropical setting of Central America.
From the onset of the departure of Lehi and his family from Jerusalem, the Lord instructed these people to keep a record of their travels and life in the Promised Land. They were to record any revelations they received from God, as well as preserve their genealogies. They were to record their government institutions, their trade with one another, and their wars. This they were instructed to do, not specifically for themselves, but for the benefit of future generations. The question is why? How would a knowledge of their civilization benefit another. The records that were kept were never really intended for the people whose lives are portrayed in the pages of the book - the Nephites, the Lamanites, the Jaredites. No, these records, this story was intended for another people living far in the future.
The two core messages of the Book of Mormon are powerful, insightful and motivating, and can not to be ignored. Recognizing the circumstances under which the records were written and preserved, which circumstances take into account the complete and total destruction of two mighty civilizations upon the American Continent, the records are now like voices that speak from the dust, and invite one and all to listen to their messages.
That Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, is the core message of the Book of Mormon. The secondary core message, however, is quite different, but equally powerful. It is a message of warning to the inhabitants of the land, the Gentiles as the Book of Mormon calls them, who will occupy the Promised Land in future generations. Its message is blunt and to the point. In effect it says: Our civilization (meaning the Nephites) has come to an end, our people and our way of life have been destroyed. Not only our people but the inhabitants of an earlier civilization that occupied the land before us have also been destroyed. Learn from our mistakes, be wiser than we have been, otherwise, your fate will be the same as ours, and that of the Jaredites. Intertwined through a thousand years of historical writings are the follies and weaknesses of Nephite society that contributed to their downfall and eventual destruction. The writers of the Book of Mormon categorize the major weaknesses of their society, point out their pitfalls and in the end proscribe a cure to avoid the fateful "Nephite Disease."
The opening pages of the Book of Mormon begins with a proclamation, by the Lord, (I Nephi 1:13) of the impending destruction of the city of Jerusalem. The closing pages of the Book of Mormon ends with a vivid description of the destruction of another civilization - the Nephites in the Promised Land a 1,000 years after the destruction of Jerusalem. Scattered between the 531 pages of the Book of Mormon are numerous examples of the kinds of mistakes these people made that led to their final war of extermination in 385 AD The Book of Mormon is a guide to understanding the type of life-styles that led to the breakdown of their society and eventually their ultimate annihilation. The two primary writers of the Book of Mormon, Mormon and his son Moroni are holding up their civilization as a prime example of how evils, if left unchecked, will ultimately bring about the destruction of a civilization.
Learn from our mistakes they plead, plot a different course, otherwise, it is assured your fate will be the same as ours and that of the Jaredites before us.
After traveling in the wilderness for a period of time, the Jaredites halted in the Valley of Nimrod. Here the Lord came to the Brother of Jared, in a cloud, and gave him the conditions under which they would be permitted to live in the Promised Land, to which he was leading them towards.
Then Moroni, who has just witnessed the total annihilation of his own people pauses in his abridgment of the Jaredite record, to emphasize this point to the future inhabitants of the land.
"The tragedy of the Nephites, who brought destruction by war upon their own heads, was not what became of them but what they themselves had become. Mormon minces no words in describing for our benefit just what the Nephites had become on the eve of their destruction." (Hugh Nibley)
In plain terms, the secondary core message of the Book of Mormon is this. Whatever nation or people shall inhabit the Promised Land will serve God or will be swept off the land. There are no other conditions. There are no other alternatives.
Since 1492, Gentiles have inhabited the Promised Land. We are the Nephites of the latter days, and we are inflicted with the Nephite Disease. What happen to them stands to happen to us. Said the Lord:
Civilizations in the Old World have come and gone, yet we can still identify the lands where the events transpired, and something about the people who occupied the lands: Rome, Greece, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, etc. But not so in the New World, in the Promised Land. Here mighty civilizations have risen and fallen, and we know virtually nothing about them, which strongly reinforces the proclamation of the Lord: Acknowledge and serve the God of this land, repent of wickedness, refrain from evil, seek the interest of your neighbor, or else when fully ripe in inequity, you'll be history.
The Book of Mormon lists several ominous warning signs, that are symptoms of the Nephite Disease
Wealth is a fringe benefit, not a goal
Wealth as such is not described as an evil in the Book of Mormon; indeed prosperity is depicted as the normal reward of righteousness.
Q. Why did God always prosper the Nephites because of their virtues, when that prosperity almost always destroyed their well being?
A. The answer lies in the word "almost." Wealth need not be destructive, but is one of the necessary oppositions to test mankind in this life of probation. It is our attitude about wealth that becomes destructive. In the beginning of the story, with Lehi leaving Jerusalem, Lehi is a very wealthy man, but chooses to leave it all behind for his love of righteousness. His sons however had a much different attitude towards wealth, they were very bitter about giving it up and having to go and live in the desert. The difference between Lehi and his sons was not of wealth, but their attitude towards wealth. The old man was willing to give it up, but the sons were bitter about doing so.
This becomes the situation throughout the Book of Mormon, the core of the fatal Nephite Disease - one's attitude towards wealth. It is a struggle we latter-day Nephites struggle with.
Says Hugh Nibley, "The righteous can be trusted with unlimited wealth, why, because they do not set their hearts upon it."
The condemnation of the Nephites in the days of wickedness and vengeance is ever that:
Why does the Book of Mormon labor this particular point:
Because it is for our benefit. It was the number one fatal error that brought about the eventual fate of the Nephites.
Wealth Breeds Inequality
The Nephites hadn't been in the Promised Land but a few years when Jacob sounds this warning:
Inequality is not only the result of wealth-seeking; it is sometimes actually its purpose.
Even members of the ancient church began to be lifted up in the pride of their eyes, as they sought for their fair share of wealth.
The poor suffer, not that anyone goes out of their way to oppress the poor, as Mormon puts it, you simply suffer the poor "to pass by you, and notice them not." (Mormon 8:39) In other words, they simply don't exist.
Both Alma and Moroni had pointed out to the people on occasion that the worst danger their society had to fear was inequality. It was inequality that had broken up the church according to Alma:
The Book of Mormon is greatly concerned with the issue of power. In a good connotation, the word occurs over 100 times when it refers to the power of God which is available to men through righteous living and over 40 times in a negative sense, as in "power and gain" when it refers to the power which men seek for themselves and which is available through the possession of wealth. In the history of the Nephites, the prologue to disaster was always the accumulation of wealth, but invariably the driving force behind the desire for wealth was an ambitious man.
The test to distinguishing between good and bad leaders is the willingness of great leaders to give up their power and retire; yield it to others. Ambitious men do not give up power, they seek it. Laman sought the kingship that Nephi refused, and generations of Jaredites fought and bled to seize the throne that all the righteous sons of the Brother of Jared had wisely turned down.
The most tragic and dramatic episodes in the Book of Mormon have usually resulted from the ambitious seeking of certain individuals for power and gain, and we must remember that it is the accumulation of wealth that provides power.
The corrupt and evil activities of power hungry individuals can best be viewed by examining their activities associated with "secret combinations."
As practiced among the Nephites:
To get gain, and to avoid the inconvenience of the law, the Nephites quickly learned that it paid to belong to a protective society, such as the Gadianton society. This was a secret society whose members had pledged to assist one another, regardless of the action required, even murder.
Of critical note: to operate with impunity, they needed public support. Businessmen of all types found it lucrative to deal with and be a part of the "secret societies" otherwise they could not exist.
At one point, the band of robbers was utterly destroyed by preaching the word of God to them. Says Hugh Hibley, We must remember that we are dealing here not with a small and peculiar band of professional or congenital criminals, but with the general public gone mad after money--people not really criminal at heart, but unable to resist the appeal of wealth and the things it could buy.
Says Helaman: Among the Nephites these things actually seduced the more part of the righteous until they had come down to believe in the system of the Gadiantons and partake of their spoils. (Helaman 6:38)
In the end, the robbers became so powerful, that the Nephites had to enter into formal treaties with them, as an independent power, sharing their lands with them.
Since the first step in the Nephite Disease is exposure to wealth, the only sure cure would seem to be the strict avoidance of wealth. But it would be a most inappropriate approach to the problem. As said before, the acquisition is not the problem, but one's attitude towards it. Circumstances will always reveal the nature and intent of the man.
Violent means are not employed in the cure, but rather the gentlest of treatments, namely charity and a strong emphasis of preaching the tenants of the gospel. As they watched the final sequences of their civilization go down into smoldering heaps, both Mormon and Moroni concluded that the fatal weakness of their people was a genuine lack of charity. And, on the other hand, whenever the worst epidemics of Nephite disease were brought under control, it was always through a marvelous display of charity on the part of their leaders and eventually the people themselves.
Charity: The pure love of Christ. Total submission to God, keeping all of his commandments without question (Elder Vaughn Featherstone)
Charity: "Every man seeking the interest of his neighbor..." (D & C 82:19)
A look at the three internal danger signals and what was done to meet the threat of them.
The cure for inequality was first of all preaching, then royal decrees or other laws for the support of the indigent, and when thing went too far--economic collapse.
Nephite civilization was not extinguished at Cumorah. It had ceased to exist for some time before the final house cleaning. War had become the order of the day, "every heart was hardened." (Mormon 4:11), with the military requisitioning the necessities of life and leaving the noncombatants "to faint by the way and die." (Moroni 9:16)
Here is the real calamity of the people, they were without order and without mercy,...without principle and past feeling. May it not be so with us, who now inhabit the Promised Land of America.
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