17 My heart hath been weighed down with sorrow from time to time, for I have feared, lest for the hardness of your hearts the Lord your God should come out in the fulness of his wrath upon you, that ye be cut off and destroyed forever;
God is extremely patient with us, by our standards
especially. But even He has limits, and when a population gets so wicked that
there is no chance of them turning back to him he removes them. This is what
happened when the children of Israel completely destroyed the nations occupying
their land of inheritance. We often say that the children of Israel were bad or
unfaithful, but they replaced people who were even worse than the Israelites
(see 1 Nephi 17: 32–38). This is what Lehi was afraid would happen to the
generations of Laman and Lemuel. They
would eventually be cut off and destroyed forever. So he pleads with his sons
to repent and be righteous. Of course, one generation’s righteousness does not
guarantee the safety of each subsequent generation. We don’t need to look any
further than the Book of Mormon for evidence of that. After all, it was the Nephites
who eventually were destroyed by the
Lamanites. Of course, by that time the actual bloodlines were mixed, and the
Nephite/Lamanite designation was more political than familial. That being said,
Lehi doesn’t want his sons, his next generation, to be the ones who are cut off
and destroyed. So he calls them to repent and be righteous.
- Genesis 6: 13
- 1 Nephi 17: 32–38
- Mosiah 12: 8
- 3 Nephi 9: 9
