Mormon understands spiritual history as being divided by the coming of the Atoning Messiah to the New World. While Christian practice divides our accounting of time into before and after the birth of Christ, Mormon divides the nature of faith into two periods. Mormon’s periods do not center on the birth, however, but on the appearance of the Savior in the New World.
In the world as it was before Christ appeared to the Nephites, prophets promised that he would come. During this period, God still manifest the good things that came through the promise of the Atoning Messiah, and he did this in “divers ways.” Even though there was no atonement, and therefore technically mankind was fallen, nevertheless this promise of Christ was sufficient to allow for the good things to be manifest to mankind. Nevertheless, all of this was based on the promise of his coming, not the fact of his coming. These prophets, and all those who looked for the good things were exercising great faith in something that was promised, but had not yet occurred.