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3 Nephi 6

Distinguished by Ranks — The Inequality That Broke the Church

3 Nephi 6: the years of prosperity and the swift return of pride. The people return to their lands, rebuild cities, cast up highways, and prosper in great order under just laws — there is nothing to hinder them from prospering continually 'except they should fall into transgression.' And they fall. By the twenty-ninth year pride and boasting because of exceeding riches breed persecution; the people become 'distinguished by ranks,' some ignorant in poverty and others learned through riches, a great inequality opening across the land until 'the church began to be broken up' — saved only among a few firm and steadfast Lamanites. Satan stirs the people to seek power, authority, riches, and the vain things of the world; they do not sin ignorantly but wilfully rebel against a God whose will they know. Men inspired from heaven preach boldly of Christ's death, suffering, and resurrection — and the chief judges, high priests, and lawyers, enraged, secretly put these prophets to death, contrary to the law. When the murdering judges are brought to trial, their friends and kindreds — nearly all the lawyers and high priests — unite in the old secret covenant 'given and administered by the devil,' combining to deliver the murderers from justice, to set the law at defiance, to destroy the governor, and to establish a king. The chapter is the anatomy of how a righteous, prosperous, orderly society unmakes itself in a few short years — pride breeding inequality, inequality breaking the church, and the secret combination rising again to murder the prophets and overthrow the rule of law.

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Where we are

This is the chapter where it all comes apart — and the speed of it is the point. A few years ago the Nephites were unanimous in faith, wholly repentant, serving God day and night, delivered from their enemies by a miracle, singing Hosanna. Now, in 3 Nephi 6, Mormon shows us that same people rebuilding their cities, prospering in great order under just laws — and then unmaking themselves so fast it takes the breath away. By the end of the chapter the church is broken up, the prophets are being murdered, and a secret combination is plotting to overthrow the government and install a king. The whole collapse happens in the same generation that saw the heavens declare the birth of Christ. Mormon is showing us, one more time and at its starkest, how quickly prosperity rots a people — and he names the exact mechanism, which is worth attending to because it is so precise and so contemporary: pride breeds inequality, and inequality breaks the church.

Watch the sequence, because Mormon lays it out like a diagnosis. First comes prosperity — they began again to prosper and to wax great, with great order in the land and laws according to equity and justice (v. 4). And Mormon pauses to make the crucial observation: there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression (v. 5). Nothing external could stop them. No enemy, no famine, no disaster. The only thing that could undo them was themselves — their own transgression. And so, of course, that is exactly what undoes them. The danger to a prosperous, secure, well-governed people is never from outside; it is always the slow inner corruption that prosperity itself breeds. The Nephites had defeated every external threat and were left with the only enemy that could actually destroy them: their own hearts in a season of ease.

And the corruption takes a specific, social shape that the chapter names with unusual clarity. Pride and boastings because of their exceedingly great riches (v. 10) produce a stratified society: the people began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning; yea, some were ignorant because of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their riches (v. 12). This is the heart of the chapter. The pride did not stay in individual hearts; it built a class system — ranks, distinctions, the rich and learned set above the poor and ignorant, a great inequality in all the land (v. 14). And that inequality, Mormon says, is precisely what broke up the church (v. 14). This is one of the most important social teachings in the Book of Mormon, and it cuts directly against the assumptions of every prosperous society: that the deadliest spiritual disease of a wealthy people is inequality — the dividing of a covenant community into ranks, the exalting of some over others by riches and learning. The church cannot survive that, because the church is, by its nature, a community where such ranks do not exist — where the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, are one body before God. When the Nephites built ranks, they unbuilt the church, because ranks and the church are incompatible. The body of Christ has no first class and steerage.

The chapter has three movements.

  1. Prosperity and order (vv. 1–9). The people return, rebuild, cast up highways, and prosper in great order under just laws — nothing to hinder them but their own transgression.
  2. Pride, ranks, and the broken church (vv. 10–18). Riches breed pride and persecution; the people are distinguished by ranks; a great inequality opens and the church is broken up; Satan leads them to wilful rebellion against a God whose will they know.
  3. The murdered prophets and the secret covenant (vv. 19–30). Inspired men preach Christ boldly; the chief judges, high priests, and lawyers murder them secretly against the law; brought to trial, their kindreds unite in the old devil's covenant to free the murderers, destroy the governor, and establish a king.

The verses to carry are these. Verse 5 names the only real danger — there was nothing... to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression. Verse 12 names the disease — they began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning. And verse 14 names the cost — there became a great inequality in all the land, insomuch that the church began to be broken up. The chapter exists to show how fast a prosperous, righteous, orderly people destroys itself — pride breeding inequality, inequality breaking the church, and the secret combination rising again to murder the prophets and overthrow the rule of law.

Prosperity, and the only thing that could undo it (verses 1–9)

And now there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression. — 3 Nephi 6:5

The chapter opens on a picture of a society at its peak. The people return to their lands with all they own (vv. 1–2); they even grant lands to the repentant robbers who covenanted to keep the peace (v. 3); they prosper and wax great, with great order in the land and laws according to equity and justice (v. 4). They build many cities... many old cities repaired, cast up many highways... many roads... from city to city, and from land to land (vv. 7–8). It is a flourishing, orderly, well-governed, prosperous civilization — the fruit of the repentance and deliverance of the previous chapters. And Mormon, who has seen this movie before, drops in the verse that tells us how it ends before it has begun: there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression (v. 5).

That verse is one of the most quietly devastating in the Book of Mormon, because of what it reveals about the nature of the danger. The Nephites had no external enemy left that could stop them. The robbers were defeated, the combinations uprooted, the land at peace, the government just. There was nothing to hinder their prospering — except their own transgression. The only thing in the universe that could undo this prosperous people was the people themselves. And this is the permanent condition of every secure and prosperous society: that having defeated every outward threat, it is left alone with the only enemy that can actually destroy it, which is its own corruption in the absence of any pressure to keep it honest. Adversity, paradoxically, protects people — it drives them to God, keeps them humble, unites them in need. Prosperity removes the protection and leaves the heart exposed to itself. Mormon has been teaching this since Helaman 12 (at the very time he doth prosper his people... then is the time that they do harden their hearts), and here he states it as a law of the Nephite condition: when nothing outside can hurt you, you become the only thing that can. The verse hangs over the whole chapter like a verdict waiting to be fulfilled — and the rest of the chapter is the people fulfilling it.

Ranks, inequality, and the broken church (verses 10–18)

And the people began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning; yea, some were ignorant because of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their riches. — 3 Nephi 6:12

The transgression that verse 5 warned of arrives precisely on schedule, and it takes the form Mormon has watched it take every time: pride born of riches. Some were lifted up unto pride and boastings because of their exceedingly great riches, yea, even unto great persecutions (v. 10). But watch what the pride builds, because this is the chapter's distinctive and penetrating insight. The pride does not stay private; it constructs a social order. The land fills with merchants... lawyers... officers (v. 11), and the people began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning (v. 12). A class system emerges — the rich and educated on top, the poor and ignorant below, some ignorant because of their poverty, and others... great learning because of their riches (v. 12). The two things that should never determine a person's standing in the covenant community — wealth and access to learning — become the very things that sort people into ranks.

And Mormon names the consequence with stark clarity: there became a great inequality in all the land, insomuch that the church began to be broken up (v. 14). This is the doctrinal heart of the chapter, and it is one of the most socially radical statements in scripture. Inequality breaks the church. Why? Because the church is, by its very nature, the one community where ranks do not exist — where, as Paul would say, there is neither rich nor poor, bond nor free, but all are one body, equal members, equally beloved, equally needful. The whole logic of the gospel is that the ground is level at the foot of the cross: the rich man and the beggar, the scholar and the unlettered, stand in the same need of the same grace and receive the same Christ. A church that has ranks — that exalts the wealthy and the educated over the poor and the ignorant — has stopped being the church, because it has reintroduced the very distinctions the gospel exists to dissolve. So when the Nephites built a class system, they did not merely become unequal; they broke the church, because a stratified church is a contradiction in terms. The body of Christ cannot have a hierarchy of worth.

And notice who survives the breaking: the church was broken up in all the land save it were among a few of the Lamanites who were converted unto the true faith; and they would not depart from it, for they were firm, and steadfast, and immovable (v. 14). The church survived only among the once-despised, the converted Lamanites, the very people who in any rank system would have been at the bottom. The poor in worldly terms held the church together when the rich and learned broke it. There is a deep and recurring truth here: that the church is most reliably kept not by the privileged but by the humble, not by those with the most to lose but by those who were never invested in the ranks at all. And Mormon names the spiritual source of the whole collapse: Satan had great power, unto the stirring up of the people... tempting them to seek for power, and authority, and riches, and the vain things of the world (v. 15). The adversary's standard toolkit — power, authority, riches, vanity — and the standard result: they had enjoyed peace but a few years (v. 16). And worst of all, they did not sin ignorantly, for they knew the will of God concerning them... therefore they did wilfully rebel against God (v. 18). The word study below opens up that wilful rebellion; for now, mark the aggravation it names. This was not the sin of people who didn't know better. They knew the will of God — it had been taught to them, they had seen the signs, they had sung the Hosanna — and they rebelled anyway, with open eyes. That is the deepest kind of sin: not ignorance but defiance, knowing the good and choosing against it.

The murdered prophets and the covenant of the devil (verses 19–30)

And they did enter into a covenant one with another, yea, even into that covenant which was given by them of old, which covenant was given and administered by the devil, to combine against all righteousness. — 3 Nephi 6:28

The final movement shows the rot reaching the law itself, and it moves with terrible logic. Into this proud, stratified, wilfully rebellious society God sends prophets — men inspired from heaven... preaching and testifying boldly of the sins and iniquities of the people, and testifying... concerning the redemption which the Lord would make, the resurrection of Christ, his death and sufferings (v. 20). And the response of the privileged is rage and murder. Those who were angry were chiefly the chief judges, and they who had been high priests and lawyers (v. 21) — the very ranks the pride had created, the wealthy and the learned, the people at the top of the new hierarchy. They put to death secretly the prophets who testified of Christ (v. 23), contrary to the laws of the land (v. 24), murdering them in secret precisely because the law forbade execution without the governor's signature. The men who held power used it to silence the witnesses of Christ — the recurring pattern of every corrupt establishment in this record, the captured institution turned against the prophets sent to save it.

And when the murdering judges are finally brought to trial according to the law (v. 26), the rot completes itself. The judges' friends and kindreds... almost all the lawyers and the high priests unite to protect them (v. 27) — and the way they unite is the chapter's darkest moment: they did enter into a covenant one with another, yea, even into that covenant which was given by them of old, which covenant was given and administered by the devil, to combine against all righteousness (v. 28). The secret combination is back — not a new one, but the old one, the covenant given by them of old, the satanic anti-covenant that Helaman 6 traced all the way to Cain. The same dark brotherhood, the same sworn oath to protect each other's crimes, rises again among the ruling class to deliver those who were guilty of murder from the grasp of justice (v. 29). And it does not stop at obstructing one trial; it reaches for the whole government: they did covenant one with another to destroy the governor, and to establish a king over the land, that the land should no more be at liberty but should be subject unto kings (v. 30). The full arc is now visible — from pride, to inequality, to the breaking of the church, to the murder of the prophets, to the secret covenant, to the overthrow of the republic itself. Each step grew from the one before, and all of them grew from the first root, the pride that built ranks. Mormon ends the chapter on the edge of total collapse: the prophets murdered, the law defied, the secret combination ascendant, and a conspiracy underway to destroy the free government and crown a king. The prosperous, orderly, righteous people of verse 4 have, in the space of a few years and a few verses, become a society murdering its prophets and plotting tyranny — undone by nothing outside itself, exactly as verse 5 foretold, by the one enemy it could not defeat: its own pride.

How the chapter is built

3 Nephi 6 is built as a swift, almost vertiginous descent, and Mormon structures it so that the reader feels how fast a righteous society can unmake itself. The chapter opens at the height — prosperity, order, just laws, peace (vv. 1–9) — and then falls, step by step, each step the cause of the next: pride breeds ranks (vv. 10–12), ranks breed inequality, inequality breaks the church (v. 14), the broken church and wilful rebellion invite the murder of prophets (vv. 19–23), and the murder of prophets summons back the secret covenant and the plot to overthrow the government (vv. 24–30). The architecture is a chain of consequence in which each link is forged from the one before, so that the whole collapse is shown to be a single connected motion flowing from one source. And Mormon plants the interpretive key at the very top, in verse 5: nothing... to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression. The entire descent that follows is the fulfillment of that verse — the proof that a people with no external enemy will, in prosperity, become its own destroyer. The structure makes the warning inescapable: the danger was never outside; it was the pride that prosperity bred.

And the chapter is built as the necessary darkening before the destruction of chapter 8 and the descent of Christ in chapter 11 — the account of why the great storm and earthquake fall on this particular people. Mormon constructs it to establish the full measure of Nephite guilt: not ignorant error but wilful rebellion against a known God (v. 18); not random wickedness but the systematic murder of the prophets who testified of Christ (vv. 20–23); not a new evil but the return of the old satanic covenant (v. 28). Every element is placed to make the coming judgment intelligible and just — these are people who knew the will of God, killed his messengers, and swore the devil's oath to overthrow the rule of law. By the time the storm comes in chapter 8, the reader understands exactly why; the voice of Christ in chapter 9 will name the very cities and the very crimes (the blood of the prophets and the saints) that this chapter records. Mormon builds 3 Nephi 6 as the indictment that the destruction will execute, and as the dark backdrop against which the mercy of the descending Christ will shine the brighter. The chapter is the bottom of the fall before the bottom drops out entirely — a people who had everything, undone by pride into murdering their prophets and plotting tyranny, ripening, in the very year of Christ's death, for the destruction that the year of his death will bring.