They Did Wilfully Rebel

After only a few years, many of the people started to rapidly fall into wickedness. They were blessed, and then they began to be prideful, and there began to be a great inequality among the people, and that caused a lot of division, and eventually, wickedness and iniquity.

How does this happen so quickly?

"15 Now the cause of this iniquity of the people was this—Satan had great power, unto the stirring up of the people to do all manner of iniquity, and to the puffing them up ​with pride, tempting them to seek for power, and authority, and riches, and the vain things of the world.

16 And thus Satan did lead away the hearts of the people to do all manner of iniquity; therefore they had enjoyed peace but a few years." (3 Nephi 6:15-16)

Satan is real. And he is actively "stirring up" the people. He can't force us to do anything, but he knows how to tempt us and push our buttons and try to take away our peace.

So pretty much everyone at this point--except for a few faithful Lamanites who stayed firm in the faith--was in a state of awful wickedness.

Something that stands out to me about the way they were acting, and how quickly they went from righteousness to wickedness.

"Now they did not sin ignorantly, for they knew the will of God concerning them, for it had been taught unto them; therefore they did wilfully rebel against God." (3 Nephi 6:18)

There is a difference between being raised without a knowledge of the Gospel and "wilfully" rebelling against God.  When you have a testimony, and then decide to start to do things that are wrong, you are choosing to go against something you know. The phrase "wilfully rebel against God" sounds so ominous and dangerous. It is definitely not where I want to end up.

This story reminds us how quickly a whole group of people can go from righteous to wicked. I think it's important to remember that once we are converted, we are not "done". If we are not careful, we could end up like these Nephites who had so recently been righteous. We might find ourselves realizing that we are "wilfully rebelling against God", and not doing what we should be doing. We just need to always be actively working to increase our testimonies and doing what is right so we don't find ourselves in this state, wondering how we got there.

I think this is one of the reasons why we regularly do things, like go to Church, attend the temple, and other things like that. It just keeps us in the right path, doing what is right. I hope to stay on that path, and keep tabs with where I am, so I can course-correct when I need to.