Prayer as a Commandment (1 Nephi 15)

After Nephi had received this vision, he had to come back to the harsh realities of this world, for his brothers, Laman and Lemuel, despite their previous experiences with angels and God's protection, were still not believers in revelation from God.

Nephi relates that his brothers came to him with many questions about what he and their father, Lehi, had seen.

3 For he truly spake many great things unto them, which were hard to be ^aunderstood, save a man should inquire of the Lord; and they being hard in their hearts, therefore they did not look unto the Lord as they ought.

They told Nephi that they couldn't understand what Lehi and Nephi were telling them about natural branches of an olive tree, a rod of iron, a tree with fruit, and a filthy river. Nephi was direct in asking them, "Have ye inquired of the Lord?"

"We have not;" they said, "for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us."

Nephi responded, "How is it that ye do not keep the commandments of the Lord? How is it that ye will perish, because of the hardness of your hearts?"

In other words, they had been taught, correctly, that asking God is a commandment whenever we are in doubt or are confused about anything at all. It's not something to be treated lightly or tossed aside because of our unbelief or doubts. We have an obligation to approach God and ask Him for wisdom.

This is the principle problem with the Book of Mormon. Not that the book itself has problems, but that people will renounce it out of hand, after reading just a few pages, by declaring it unreadable, boring, difficult to understand.

What they really mean is that they don't understand or don't want to comply with the commandment from God to "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." (Matt. 7:7)

How is it done? Through prayer! When we feel that we should not pray to know the truth of something, we are paying more attention to the devil than we are to God. For, "if ye would hearken unto the ^aSpirit which teacheth a man to ^bpray ye would know that ye must ^cpray; for the ^devil spirit teacheth not a man to pray, but teacheth him that he must not pray."

Alma, a prophet we will read about in a later book, taught:

Alma 34:17-27

17 Therefore may God grant unto you, my brethren, that ye may begin to exercise your ^afaith unto repentance, that ye begin to ^bcall upon his holy name, that he would have mercy upon you;

18 Yea, cry unto him for mercy; for he is ^amighty to save.

19 Yea, humble yourselves, and continue in ^aprayer unto him.

20 Cry unto him when ye are in your ^afields, yea, over all your flocks.

21 ^aCry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening.

22 Yea, cry unto him against the power of your ^aenemies.

23 Yea, ^acry unto him against the ^bdevil, who is an enemy to all ^crighteousness.

24 Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them.

25 Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase.

26 But this is not all; ye must ^apour out your souls in your ^bclosets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness.

27 Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your ^ahearts be ^bfull, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your ^cwelfare, and also for the welfare of ^dthose who are around you.

It is a theme that is repeated frequently in scripture.

1. Matt. 21: 22
   22 And all ^athings, whatsoever ye shall ^bask in ^cprayer, believing, ye shall receive.
2. John 16: 24
   24 Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ^aask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.
3. James 4: 3
   3 Ye ^aask, and receive not, because ye ^bask ^camiss, that ye may ^dconsume it upon your ^elusts.
4. 1 Jn. 3: 22
   22 And whatsoever we ^aask, we receive of him, because we ^bkeep his ^ccommandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.
5. Enos 1: 15
   15 Wherefore, I knowing that the Lord God was able to ^apreserve our records, I cried unto him continually, for he had said unto me: Whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it.
6. Mosiah 4: 21
   21 And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive...
7. 3 Ne. 18: 20
   20 And ^awhatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you.
8. 3 Ne. 27: 29
   29 Therefore, ^aask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for he that asketh, receiveth; and unto him that knocketh, it shall be opened.
9. Moro. 7: 26
   26 And after that he came men also were ^asaved by faith in his name; and by faith, they become the ^bsons of God. And as surely as Christ liveth he spake these words unto our fathers, saying: ^cWhatsoever thing ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is good, in faith believing that ye shall receive, behold, it shall be done unto you.
10. Moro. 10: 4
    4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ^aask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not ^btrue; and if ye shall ask with a ^csincere heart, with ^dreal intent, having ^efaith in Christ, he will ^fmanifest the ^gtruth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
11. D&C 35: 9
    9 And whoso shall ask it in my name in ^afaith, they shall ^bcast out ^cdevils; they shall heal the ^dsick; they shall cause the blind to receive their ^esight, and the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak, and the lame to walk.
12. D&C 50: 31
    31 Wherefore, it shall come to pass, that if you behold a ^aspirit manifested that you cannot understand, and you receive not that spirit, ye shall ask of the Father in the name of Jesus; and if he give not unto you that spirit, then you may know that it is not of God.
13. D&C 66: 9
    9 Lay your ^ahands upon the ^bsick, and they shall ^crecover. Return not till I, the Lord, shall send you. Be patient in affliction. ^dAsk, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
14. D&C 88: 63
    63 ^aDraw ^bnear unto me and I will draw near unto you; ^cseek me diligently and ye shall ^dfind me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
15. Moses 6: 52
    52 And he also said unto him: If thou wilt turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, and believe, and repent of all thy transgressions, and be ^abaptized, even in water, in the name of mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of ^bgrace and truth, which is Jesus ^cChrist, the only ^dname which shall be given under heaven, whereby ^esalvation shall come unto the children of men, ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, asking all things in his name, and whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be given you.

It is clear from these and many other passages what the Lord wants us to do. He wants us to talk to Him and ask Him for wisdom.

Will you ask God whether what you are reading in the Book of Mormon is true?

Nephi Sees Conditions Leading to Latter-day Events (1 Nephi 13, Part III)

In Part II of this chapter, we covered the arrival of the Gentiles and their wars and contentions with their mother nations. We also covered the book they brought with them which, it is abundantly apparent, is the Bible as we know it today.

In Part III, we finish 1 Nephi Chapter 13 by discussing Gentile influences on the descendants of Nephi's brothers, Laman and Lemuel.

Christopher Columbus wrote in journals regarding his experience in mounting his voyage to the New World:

It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel his hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit because He comforted me.... For the execution of the journey to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps. It is simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah had prophesied.

The passages of Isaiah he refers to are as follows:

Isaiah 18:1-2

1 ^aWoe to the land shadowing with wings, which is ^bbeyond the rivers of ^cEthiopia:

2 That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of ^abulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have ^bspoiled!

Isaiah 49:1, 5-6

1 ^aListen, O isles, unto me; and ^bhearken, ye people, from far; The Lord hath ^ccalled me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.

5 ¶ And now, saith the Lord that ^aformed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength.

6 And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a ^alight to the ^bGentiles, that thou mayest be my ^csalvation unto the end of the earth.

Samuel Eliot Morison of Harvard, who studied the extremely spiritual character of Columbus, wrote:

Men may doubt this, but there can be no doubt that the faith of Columbus was genuine and sincere, and that his frequent communion with forces unseen was a vital element in his achievements. It gave him confidence in his destiny, assurance that his performance would be equal to the promise.... This conviction that god destined him to be an instrument for spreading the faith was far more potent than the desire to win glory, wealth, and worldly honors, to which he was certainly far from indifferent.

In the secularized world of today, with its so-called "separation of church and state", and perpetual hand-wringing over America's erstwhile participation in the slave trade, the topic of Columbus can certainly make for uncomfortable dinner conversation among mixed company. For, as the argument goes, if Columbus hadn't set foot on his ship and come here, nothing bad would have happened.

Utter nonsense. To believe such a thing is to ignore patterns of human development and behavior in all nations and by all nations, especially their tendency to invade and enslave their neighbors. It is to imagine that only Columbus would ever have stumbled upon the Americas.

If not Columbus, then someone else--perhaps with unabashedly ignoble motivations--would have taken his place.

It certainly can't be denied that the impact of European contact with American natives was enormous. However, contrary to popular, uninformed opinion today, Europeans unknowingly carried with them certain strains of microbes and viruses that had not existed in the Americas, accidentally causing the deaths of great numbers of those already living here. They didn't arrive with a knowledge of what would happen in the future any more than you or I know whether we will be safe going to and from work in the morning or if we will, by some innocent choice or errant left turn, cause accident or injury to others.

Columbus was a humble, yet noble, learned, and religious man. So were several (but not all) of those who traveled with him on his first voyages. Those who were the more righteous and well-intentioned part did the best they knew how with what knowledge of the Gospel they possessed in the scriptures they had inherited from their fathers. They were therefore zealous in their desire to convert the natives they found on Hispañola and other islands of what is now known as the Bahamas.

Among many, a great example of these good intentions is found in a quote from a copy of Columbus' original Journal of the First Voyage as written by Bartolomé de Las Casas and quoted in America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations:

...And I say that Your Highness ought not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here, except Christian Catholics, since this was the end and the beginning of the enterprise, that it should be for the enhancement and glory of the Christian religion nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts.

Tragically, when word got out about the great resources and riches of the New World, others who were not so much inclined towards religious benevolence as to monetary gain, took it upon themselves to exploit and plunder whatever they could find. The Native Americans, being in the way of their greed, took the brunt of this exploitation in that they were turned from friends into slaves and made to do the work of those who wanted what the new land had to offer.

Again, in today's political climate, we often hear a revisionist interpretation of these events: as if somehow Columbus was the purposeful instigator of the mistreatment of God's children on the American continents. However, those who malign Columbus do not have the perspective that the Book of Mormon offers to us--and to Native American descendants who remain. God foresaw all of these events and has designed a higher purpose in their tragedy and suffering that transcends our own limited perspective and interpretation of events. When people make wrong choices and suffer consequences, God provides for even greater blessings than those that were lost, if they will but repent and obey Him. Sometimes those blessings come much later, but the do come.

30 Nevertheless, thou beholdest that the Gentiles who have gone forth out of captivity, and have been lifted up by the power of God above all other nations, upon the face of the land which is choice above all other lands, which is the land that the Lord God hath covenanted with thy father that his seed should have for the ^aland of their inheritance; wherefore, thou seest that the Lord God will not suffer that the Gentiles will utterly destroy the ^bmixture of thy ^cseed, which are among thy brethren.

31 Neither will he suffer that the Gentiles shall ^adestroy the seed of thy brethren.

32 Neither will the Lord God suffer that the Gentiles shall forever remain in that awful state of blindness, which thou beholdest they are in, because of the plain and most precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back by that ^aabominable church, whose formation thou hast seen.

33 Wherefore saith the Lamb of God: I will be ^amerciful unto the Gentiles, unto the visiting of the remnant of the house of Israel in great judgment.

First, God makes a promise to Nephi that his family's descendants will not be completely eliminated. He promises to be merciful to the Gentiles and, through them, to restore what was once lost from the written Gospel they carried with them. How would he do this? Through the seed of Nephi and his brethren.

35 For, behold, saith the Lamb: I will manifest myself unto thy seed, that they shall write many things which I shall minister unto them [the Book of Mormon], which shall be plain and precious; and after thy seed shall be destroyed, and dwindle in unbelief, and also the seed of thy brethren, behold, ^athese things shall be hid up, to come forth unto the Gentiles, by the gift and power of the Lamb.

36 And in them shall be written my ^agospel, saith the Lamb, and my ^brock and my salvation.

37 And ^ablessed are they who shall seek to bring forth my ^bZion at that day, for they shall have the ^cgift and the ^dpower of the Holy Ghost; and if they ^eendure unto the end they shall be ^flifted up at the last day, and shall be saved in the everlasting ^gkingdom of the Lamb; and whoso shall ^hpublish peace, yea, tidings of great joy, how beautiful upon the mountains shall they be.

The fulfillment of this prophecy is the restoration of the Gospel, through Joseph Smith, who descended from these first European-American Gentiles, and the Book of Mormon, which was written by Nephi's, Laman's, and Lemuel's descendants.

Verses 38 through 42 can be summed up thusly: God saw that people would make wrong choices and intervened to help them. When precious parts were taken out of the Bible, either intentionally or unintentionally, He made sure that the Book of Mormon would be made available to support the Bible's teachings and provide clarification as to what was lost. In the end, the Jews, who were the first to receive the Gospel, and the Gentiles, who received it second, would be brought together and unified towards fulfilling all of the prophecies in both books.

Research hints that Columbus was of Jewish descent. It is certainly possible that God meant for Columbus' journey to be one of many symbols of the literal fulfillment of the unification of Gentiles and Jews in the latter days in this vision given to Nephi.