God’s Great Men: Nephi

GOD’S GREAT MEN.

NEPHI.

Dear Friends:—Many young people have been interested, and perhaps astonished and thrilled with narratives of the men of God, a portion of whose history is found in the Old and New Testaments. Cain and Abel; Noah and the flood; the rescue of Lot, and the destruction of Sodom and Gormorrow; the faith and trials of Abra­ham; the wonderful story of Joseph in Egypt; the rescue of Moses from the Nile and his after greatness as the leader of Israel; the bravery of David; the wisdom and riches of Solomon; the power obtained through faith by Elijah and Elisha; Daniel and his Hebrew brethren, and many others— all these are subjects that may be and are frequently dwelt upon to interest and instruct the young as well as the aged.

Instances of the love of our Savior and blessings obtained by His disci­ples through faith, abound in the New Testament and they are or should be kept constantly before our minds as a guide, reproof, correction, or stimulus us our circumstances may require. But it is proper that as Latter-day Saints we should bear in mind that the Lord also led a portion of His chosen people to the Western Continent, and that their history, the Book of Mormon, also contains equal­ly thrilling and remarkable accounts of blessings bestowed upon faithful persons, difficulties overcome, and wonderful feats accomplished.

One of the first of the great and good men spoken of in that book was Nephi. He says that when he left Jerusalem, in obedience to the com­mand of God to his father, Lehi, he was “exceeding young;” (probably under twenty years of age) yet, be­cause of his submission to his father’s counsel and faith in God, he was not only chosen before his three brethren, but also became the pioneer and leader of the family on that long journey by sea and land, to the land of promise. First is shown his faith in believing that they could obtain the records, so essential to his people’s welfare, from the powerful Laban. Then his per­sistence when his brothers murmured and failed in the undertaking. Then his obedience to the dictates of the Spirit to do an act from which his bloodless hands and sensitive spirit shrank is plainly shown forth; but no less so than his strategy in deceiving Zoram and obtaining the records, and his valor and prudence in overcoming the fears of both Zoram and his (Nephi’s) brothers. We then have evidence of his earnestness in prayer and his thirst for knowledge, which enabled him to commune with heavenly beings; to find out the mean­ing of the symbols shown to his father in his dream; to write so plainly con­cerning the birth and mission of Christ; the apostasy from the Church founded and established by Him and His apostles; the rise and power of the great and abominable church founded by the Devil; the rise, great­ness, and decline of the posterity of himself and brethren upon the pro­mised land; the discoveries of Colum­bus and the gathering of the Gentiles to that land; the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the establish­ment of the Gospel among them, and the final triumph of the kingdom of God over all its foes. These things were all shown so plainly to him, that to read his writings, one could easily be led to believe that he was reading history rather than prophecy. The events portrayed in the xi-xiv chaps, of I Nephi, show him to have been a prophet, second to none of whom we read in the Bible.

Then notice how the qualities of Moses and David were combined in him during their eight years of travel across the wilderness of Arabia. Picture him, if you can, on their ar­rival at the sea shore, standing alone upon that mountain in the land Bountiful; without a fire, without tools, without a model, and for aught we know, without a trade; and yet commanded to build a ship. Can you imagine what faith it must have re­quired to take the skins of beasts and make a bellows; to extract fire from the stones; to take the ore and melt it, obtaining therefrom the iron; to temper it and make tools of steel; and with those tools construct a vessel suitable to carry a colony with pro­visions, seeds, etc., across those great and, to them, unknown waters? And all this in opposition to the wishes of his elder brethren, who called him a fool, and declared the task impossible. One may say: If God commanded him, he must have known that He has all power, but we find that Moses demurred to going before Pharaoh, oven when God commanded him. Laman and Lemuel, too, had evi­dences of the power and purposes of God, but those evidences did not kindle any such faith in them. The ship having been built and laden, our noble hero now had to become cap­tain and guide her all that long jour­ney across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, from what we call the Ara­bian Sei to South America. This accomplished and the colony safely lauded, he was soon deprived of the counsel, experience, and assistance of a loving and God-fearing father; his brethren pursued their own lazy and filthy inclinations; and again he led those who would follow him over an unexplored country for hundreds of miles. Here he continued laboring in their interests in the capacity of agriculturist, miner, architect, builder, engraver, warrior, ruler, instructor, prophet, seer and revelator for a period of about forty-five years longer; ably assisted, no doubt, by his elder brother Sam, and his younger brothers, Jacob and Joseph. True, we have but little of their history during that time, as the abridgment made by Mormon and first translated by Joseph Smith was lost, and that which we have is taken from other plates, on which they, the Nephites, engraved their prophecies and teachings; but from what we have, we can understand that their labors in cultivating the soil, building homes and a temple, working in the mines and defending themselves, I must have been very great. No won­der they loved Nephi exceedingly. We can imagine how the young must have venerated him as they heard and thought upon how he had led their fathers and mothers, and with what pleasure they listened to him as with eloquence and earnestness he recount­ed to them the mercies and blessings God had bestowed upon them por­trayed their destiny and entreated them to be obedient and faithful.

There are many other noble charac­ters spoken of in that sacred book and some of their distinguishing traits may be referred to hereafter by yours affectionately,

Uncle James.