Post by Nephi –
As I mentioned in my last post, I had a very sacred experience in speaking with the Lord, it was an experience never to be forgotten, yet an experience that I feel will change my life forever. I will probably post about it again sometime in the future.
When I returned from this experience, I went to the tent of my father. He told me of a dream he had wherein the Lord command me and my brothers to return to Jerusalem. He told me that we were supposed to go to Jerusalem to get the Hebrew scriptures, which contained a record of the Jews and a genealogy of my forefathers.
You can imagine how my brothers feel about traveling back several hundred miles through a hot and forbidding desert. When he told them, the murmuring picked back up because they felt it was such a hard thing that he told them to do. Even when my father told them it was not his idea but was a commandment of the Lord, they were not happy about it.
The journey however was not the only challenge we faced, these records the Lord required that we obtain are engraven on plates of brass which are kept in the house of Laban, a very powerful man. None of us think Laban is going to be excited to have the brass plates take a trip into the wilderness.
As I mentioned, my father is a faithful and obedient man and was very appreciative that I did not join my brothers in their murmuring. He assured me that I would be favored of the Lord because of it.
With that, I told my father, that because I knew the Lord doesn’t give commandments to us His children, without preparing a way for us to accomplish whatever He has commanded, I would go and do what the Lord required.
We gathered up some provisions and a couple tents and headed back to Jerusalem. When we finally got there, we made a plan to get the plates.
We decided to cast lots—to determine who of us should go see Laban. And it just so happened that the lot fell upon the oldest, Laman. He went to Laban’s house, and surprisingly he got an audience with Laban. Laman asked Laban for the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass, and which contained the genealogy of our father.
It did not go well, Laban got so angry that he not only refused to give up the records, but he threw Laman out. Laban accused my brother of being a robber, and he tried to kill Laman.
Laman is not as slow physically as he is spiritually, he got away and when he got back to us he told us everything. This was pretty discouraging to all of us. My brothers are ready to pack it up and return back to the wilderness with our father. I am not so ready to do that. There will be a way to get the plates.
1 Nephi 3:1 – 14
