Helaman 6
I forgot to mention that when there is more righteousness among those who had not previously been believers than there is among those who were historically Christian those newly converted peoples will share their new-found knowledge with those who have believed but become hardened. The essential element here is that there will be a period of peace after so many years of tumult in which the gospel will spread to all the world – that is probably when the gospel shall finally be preached to every nation in their own tongue. That peace cannot be expected to last but when it is ended that may well be the time when “the great Jehovah shall say ‘the work is done’” and our missionary forces will be called home. Some people will mistake this as the millenium or believe it to be proof that secularism and a central world government are the foundations of peace – mistaking the fact that the gospel is the basis of even this temporary peace. Those who mistake it for the millenium will be easily fooled into the notion that Christ as the literal Son of God is fiction and that He was speaking in metaphor when He promised to come and reign personally. The short peace will also help to convince them that the ensuing wars (after so much less than the 1000 expected years) are the final battle between good and evil. This great peace in the Book of Mormon lasted as long as four years – I would be very surprised if our even lasted that length of time. The reaction to the discovery of secret societies among the historically Christian will be weak and functionally supportive of the wicked combinations while the reaction of the newly converted people will be an aggressive effort to remove such secret combinations from among their people.
A part of me keeps wondering if the peace and free economic and social interaction that leads to great prosperity – and really all the prophecies – is specific to the United States or the American continents but I feel that such an interpretation is incorrect considering the global nature of our modern world and the universal message of the gospel.