1 Nephi 22: 1

1 And now it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had read these things which were engraven upon the plates of brass, my brethren came unto me and said unto me: What meaneth these things which ye have read? Behold, are they to be understood according to things which are spiritual, which shall come to pass according to the spirit and not the flesh?

Nephi’s less in-tune-with-the-Spirit brothers must have been affected by these Isaiah chapters pretty much as Nephi hoped they would be. They appear to be sincere as they ask about the interpretation of what Nephi read to them from the brass plates. Times like this must have given Nephi and Lehi hope for Laman and Lemuel. I think that in the end these older brothers let their pride and jealousy finally put them over the edge, but they were raised well. And I think at the times when they allowed themselves to feel the Spirit that they realized they wanted that spiritual feeling.

However, the fact that they were always turning to Nephi for interpretation tells me that they didn’t spend much time in the scriptures. Therefore, they simply lacked the raw material needed to build a testimony. Christ taught us to, “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think you have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5: 39). Scriptures are critical building blocks of testimony.

In Lehi’s dream the iron rod leading to the Tree of Life represents the word of God. I still find it telling that of all the things we can do to increase our testimonies and help us return to our Heavenly Father, the iron rod leading to the Tree of Life represents the word of God (see 1 Nephi 11: 25). Why was it not prayer, or church attendance, or genealogy research, or any of a number of other commandments we have received? Most of those other things are ways to obtain or put into practice the word of God, but they are not the word itself. Prayer, General Conference, Ensign articles, scriptures, church attendance, these are all good sources to find and study the word of God, the iron rod leading to the Tree of Life. For whatever reason, Laman and Lemuel did not study the scriptures as Nephi did, so when they did read them, or hear them, as Nephi shared words of Isaiah here, they didn’t understand them. The best way to understand God’s words is to study them. You can’t understand that which is unfamiliar to you. Maybe that’s why they asked Nephi the same question here as they did at the end of the Tree of Life vision: “Is this temporal or spiritual?” (1 Nephi 15: 31). They simply had not progressed in spiritual things.

• 1 Nephi 19: 22