"Therefore, I would that ye should know, that after the Lord had shown so many marvelous things unto my father, Lehi, yea, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, behold he went forth among the people, and began to prophecy and to declare unto them concerning the things which he had both seen and heard."
Okay, there are some relatively harebrained ideas going on with this one so just bear with me. I think we read this story so often that we just assume that Lehi knows from the beginning that they are going to be commanded to leave. We have Lehi receiving all of these visions about the destruction of Jerusalem and at first I don't think they knew that leaving was an option. Keep in mind that leaving at that time was not like moving now. I assume that Jerusalem was the city center at the time and though you could probably get outside the blast radius, what do the suburbs of New York do without New York? So when Lehi starts declaring unto Jerusalem the things that are going to happen he probably has just as much skin in the game as anyone else.
I also wonder if this beginning chapter is kind of Lehi's Genesis story. I mean, we don't really have much evidence before this of Lehi being a prophet. We know that he was a holy man, but as far as a full-blown prophet? Correct me if I am wrong, but one of the defining characteristics of a prophet is to proclaim to the people. I would love it if we just read Lehi's calling to be a prophet. Wouldn't that be sweet?
My parting message would be on the destruction of Jerusalem. The footnote leads to some interesting places. In 2 Nephi, Nephi talks about a generation being destroyed because of iniquity. The olive branches rarely come to mind in general scripture reading, but a single generation being picked out and considered failed, seems a lot like taking the branches and replacing with new ones. Also, Nephi talks about there has never been a destruction unless God has warned and prophesied about it first. So we know that God does all he can to save his people.
Okay, there are some relatively harebrained ideas going on with this one so just bear with me. I think we read this story so often that we just assume that Lehi knows from the beginning that they are going to be commanded to leave. We have Lehi receiving all of these visions about the destruction of Jerusalem and at first I don't think they knew that leaving was an option. Keep in mind that leaving at that time was not like moving now. I assume that Jerusalem was the city center at the time and though you could probably get outside the blast radius, what do the suburbs of New York do without New York? So when Lehi starts declaring unto Jerusalem the things that are going to happen he probably has just as much skin in the game as anyone else.
I also wonder if this beginning chapter is kind of Lehi's Genesis story. I mean, we don't really have much evidence before this of Lehi being a prophet. We know that he was a holy man, but as far as a full-blown prophet? Correct me if I am wrong, but one of the defining characteristics of a prophet is to proclaim to the people. I would love it if we just read Lehi's calling to be a prophet. Wouldn't that be sweet?
My parting message would be on the destruction of Jerusalem. The footnote leads to some interesting places. In 2 Nephi, Nephi talks about a generation being destroyed because of iniquity. The olive branches rarely come to mind in general scripture reading, but a single generation being picked out and considered failed, seems a lot like taking the branches and replacing with new ones. Also, Nephi talks about there has never been a destruction unless God has warned and prophesied about it first. So we know that God does all he can to save his people.
Comments
Post a Comment