3 And after I had made these plates by way of commandment, I, Nephi, received a commandment that the ministry and the prophecies, the more plain and precious parts of them, should be written upon these plates; and that the things which were written should be kept for the instruction of my people, who should possess the land, and also for other wise purposes, which purposes are known unto the Lord.
Although not as dramatic as, say, obtaining the brass plates
from Laban, here is another example of the importance of obeying the Lord on
faith, even if you don’t know why. If Nephi had ignored the commandment to make
this smaller set of plates, the bad guys could have won when they took the 116
pages of manuscript for the Book of Mormon translation from Martin Harris.
Nephi could have been wondering why the Lord wanted this redundancy in the
records. After all, this was essentially the same information as in the larger
plates of Nephi, just with a more spiritual emphasis. Nephi just knew that the
Lord had His reasons, and that was good enough for him.
This kind of thing really makes Nephi real and human.
Sometimes we are tempted to think of the Lord’s prophets as “all-knowing, and
all-seeing,” as seers, having a pipeline straight to the Lord’s mind and will.
But no, just like us, the Lord reveals to his prophets on a need-to-know basis.
He could have easily shown Nephi the circumstances that in the latter days
would make these small plates so important. Instead, He let Nephi act on, and
exercise, his faith once again.
- Jacob 1:1 (1–4)
- D&C 10:38 (1–51)
