Mormon provided valuable insight to us today. A key requirement for good government among the Nephites, including their deliverance, lay in the personal righteousness and courage of political and military leaders. Lachoneus, the governor, and Gidgiddoni, the chief captain of Nephite armies, were just men and great prophets. They encouraged their people to make temporal and tactical preparations to confront the opposition in a defensive war and especially to repent and turn to God for help in this time of crisis (see D&C 98:32–38 on the Lord’s law of warfare). They did unite and prepare, and they did repent and plead with God for deliverance.
The parallels between these conditions in the days before the Lord’s first coming to ancient America and the conditions shaping up in these last days—just before the Lord’s Second Coming to the Americas—are striking.