Destruction

In 1 Nephi chapter 1 Lehi has a vision and sees the destruction of Jerusalem. Lehi was from Jerusalem. Suppose you saw a vision of the destruction of your city where almost everyone was killed or marched captive to a foreign land. How would you feel to see such suffering among your peers? Lehi's response was to praise God, say his ways were just and that he was merciful. This was before Lehi was told to leave Jerusalem and maybe he imagined himself and his family being taken in the slaughter and surely if God had told him to stay he would have obeyed and suffered the consequences. 

I am not sure what all the wickedness of Jerusalem entailed. In the church movie it shows a slave market, drunkeness, prostitution and people unwilling to listen to prophetic warning. Isaiah and the Book of Mormon talk a lot about a society's oppression of the poor as meriting God judgement. We all know that our society is profoundly in trouble. It amazes me how vehemently both sides accuse the other side of the same things: corruption, authoritarianism, violence, etc. Armed conflict appears unstoppable. In the Book of Mormon this is one way God swept the land clean. Famine and poisonous serpents thinned the population but civil war had the ability to destroy everyone down to the last man standing. If it is to come to this in the United States what should our attitude be? It should be that of Lehi: 

Great and marvelous are thy works, O Lord God Almighty! Thy throne is high in the heavens, and thy ^apower, and goodness, and mercy are over all the inhabitants of the earth; and, because thou art merciful, thou wilt not suffer those who ^bcome unto thee that they shall perish!