These secret societies were already old in the time of the Jaredites, who learned about them from the records they brought with them, which told "them of old . . . secret plans [for getting] kingdoms and great glory" (Ether 8:9). It was a pact "to help such as sought power to gain power" (Ether 8:16). When the Jaredite Akish sought to seize the throne and administered the oath to his supporters with fair promises, it was not by the devil but "by the God of heaven" that they swore (Ether 8:13-17). But God did not approve of such secret combinations, "which combination is most abominable and wicked above all, in the sight of God. For the Lord worketh not in secret combinations, neither doth he will that man should shed blood, but in all things hath forbidden it from the beginning of man" (Ether 8:18-19). Every man may covenant, with God, and may keep or break his covenant, with God alone to judge and punish him. But men may never covenant with each other: "Swear not at all, . . . by heaven . . . nor by the earth" (3 Nephi 12:33-37). It was these secret combinations, Moroni informs us, that destroyed both the Nephites and the Jaredites, and will eventually destroy those who follow them in the land of promise unless they "awake to a sense of your awful situation" (Ether 8:24), that is, the situation which allows the secret combinations to arise and flourish: the societies themselves are the symptom, not the disease.


Hugh Nibley (1910 – 2005) was one of Mormonism's most celebrated scholars. Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol.7 (Since Cumorah), Ch.12, p.368 - p.369 Ether 8:18