Daniel Peterson comments that Nephi, the son of Helaman, knew just as well as would the later chronicler Mormon that the fundamental problem of the Nephites at this period was spiritual rather than military. For this reason he decided to devote all his energies to a spiritual solution. In the year 30 B.C., he resigned the judgment seat and, with his brother Lehi, undertook full-time preaching of the gospel.
The task was urgent if the Nephites were to be saved from themselves. "For as their laws and their governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted." (Helaman 5;2) This was precisely the situation King Mosiah2 had foreseen as a frightening but remote possibility six decades earlier, when he abolished the monarchy and established the Nephite system of judges. The laws of the Nephites, he had said, were correct and divinely given. Further, he had said, placing the direction of the nation in the hands of a more representative form of government would tend to ensure the continuation of those laws in their correct form, since the majority of the people were unlikely to choose evil over good. But, he had continued, "if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you" (Mosiah 29:25-27.) And now, probably within the lifetimes of some who had heard him give that historic address, his fears had been realized. Mosiah's comments had been recalled a decade later by Amulek, speaking to the people of Ammonihah:
Yea, well did Mosiah say, who was our last king, when he was about to deliver up the kingdom, having no one to confer it upon, causing that his people should be governed by their own voices--yea, well did he say that if the time should come that the voice of this people should choose iniquity, that is, if the time should come that this people should fall into transgression, they would be ripe for destruction. (Alma 10:19)
The similarity between the wording of these passages and that of Helaman 5:2 is striking. [Daniel C. Peterson, "Their Own Worst Enemies," in Studies in Scripture: Book of Mormon, Part 2, pp. 100-101, 106]