Elder Bruce R. McConkie has written:
“Divorce is totally foreign to celestial standards, a verity that Jesus will one day expound in more detail to the people of Jewry. For now, as far as the record reveals, he merely specifies the high law that his people should live, but that is beyond our capability even today. If husbands and wives lived the law as the Lord would have them live it they would neither do nor say the things that would even permit the fleeting thought of divorce to enter the mind of their eternal companions. Though we today have the gospel, we have yet to grow into that high state of marital association where marrying a divorced person constitutes adultery. The Lord has not yet given us the high standard he here named as that which ultimately will replace the Mosaic practice of writing a bill of divorcement.” (Mortal Messiah 2:139; see also 3:291-96; Doctrinal New Testament Commentary 1:546-48.)
We are uncertain as to whether such marital difficulties also existed among the Nephites or whether the Savior provided these teachings so that the Nephites would know what was taught on the eastern hemisphere.