14 Yea, and the Lord said also that: After ye have arrived in the promised land, ye shall know that I, the Lord, am God; and that I, the Lord, did deliver you from destruction; yea, that I did bring you out of the land of Jerusalem.
I have to say that this verse has a dual meaning. First, the
Lord is telling the Lehites that when they get to the Promised Land they would
receive confirmation that they really did leave Jerusalem just before it was
destroyed. That confirmation would come much later when they met the Mulekites.
This particular group of travelers, however, would still need to take that on
faith.
The second meaning relates to this life and our journey
through it to our own “Promised Land,” exaltation. Jerusalem, in that case,
represents the World, or worldly things, which would be destroyed eventually.
As we go through our spiritual journey back to our Heavenly Father we take it
on faith that we are doing the right thing by forsaking the World and following
Him. We take it on faith that the prosperity of the World will not help us,
because there is more to life than “the World” and its type of prosperity or
forms of pleasure. We just have to do our best to follow the Spirit and have
faith that it is worth it. When we get to the end of our journey (death) we
will be given evidence that we did the right thing, and that the World really
was destroyed (or would have destroyed us spiritually), and we were able to
escape that spiritual destruction by allowing ourselves to be delivered from it
by the Lord. That’s the Atonement and the covenants we make with the Lord. At
some point, if we endure to the end, and don’t return to the World, we will
know we made the right decision. For now, we take it on faith.
- 2 Nephi 1:4
- Omni 1:13–16
- D&C 5:2
