Helaman 4
Having identified our place in the time line, I am seeking to identify the pattern of wickedness and righteousness that the Nephites experienced before the coming of the Lord. I do not necessarily expect the same time frame but I do expect that we will have a similar pattern of belief and unbelief. For example, the pattern from the war with Amalakiah to the 51st year took just over 30 years for the Nephites but took nearly 70 years for us (if I have identified things correctly). The Nephites took 80 more years of history before the Savior came among them. If we had the same time line the second coming would be in about 2090 – I don’t expect that. If our time line was simply stretched proportionally to theirs the second coming would be in about 2190 – I don’t expect that either. What I believe is that our time line is independent of theirs but will have a similar pattern of behavior (belief, pride, wickedness, partial repentance) – it is the pattern that I hope to identify. I expect our time line will be less than 80 years from now.
In this chapter the pattern is one of pride to the point of losing almost all their possessions and then repentance until they are able to regain a portion of them. The pride translated into trampling their inspired legal foundation (which we are doing), corrupting their laws, and disbelieving in their spiritual foundation – a turn to secularism – we have done those as well, but I expect even more corrupt laws and more secularism to come. The question for us is, are those possessions that we lose our lands (I don’t really expect that) or our prestige or our means of producing wealth (in other words control of our economy and our business enterprises and entities).