Into the Wilderness

After more than a year of preparation, and after receiving the Liahona, Lehi's party headed out into the Arabian wilderness. Talk about a flight of faith into the unknown!

Lehi's flight into the desert is an allegory for our day. The import and example can be a source of great comfort for us as we look forward to an uncertain future. Consider how events played out: The Lord gave Lehi time to prepare and step by step, got him ready for the trip. Then when the time was right, He led them into the wilderness of Arabia.

Lehi spent a significant amount of time in the Valley of Lemuel before heading into the wilderness. There were a lot of preparations the Lord knew they needed to make.

1.    They needed a written, non-perishable record of scripture, the Brass Plates of Laban. This helped them and future generations to remember the covenants Israel had made with God. It became the touchstone of the Nephite cultural identity. It had to be metallic plates so they'd withstand the ravages of time.

2.    You need people to make a colony. Lehi's sons needed good Jewish girls for wives to preserve their culture in a distant land. There would be none where they were going, so Ishmael's family was as important to preserving the expedition's culture as the plates were.

3.    They would need food for the trip and for their final destination, hence the gathering of seeds. It's interesting that they gathered "fruit" seeds as well as grain seeds. 

4.    As city dwellers, they had to adjust and get familiar or comfortable with living in tents. Maybe Lehi was already familiar with doing so. Ishmael? We don't know, but there was probably some time needed to get used to the rhythm and patterns of living in a tent in the desert wilderness after living in a city.

Finally, after all the marriages were completed, the supplies and seeds gathered and their written history was assured, the Lord gave them the next key component of the trip: a "map" in the form of the Liahona.

And off they went.

They had prepared for the trip, but it was still a leap into the unknown. A leap which took great faith. All they "knew" is the Liahona would guide them to their eventual new home. Talk about an epic journey! They crossed a deadly desert and a great ocean before arriving at their new home.

When I think about today and what that means for me, I think of the scriptures which say, "if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." I also think of Pres. Nelson's invitation to learn to live by revelation: to learn to live by our own personal Liahona's as it were.

It's as important today as it was for Lehi. For while the physical dangers aren't as significant today as then, the uncertainty of the future is just as unsettling. With our personal Liahonas (revelation) and a determined faith, we can navigate our time just as surely as Lehi did those wilderness deserts. After years of effort, they ended up in their Promised Land. We can too.

1 Nephi 15-16 - The Incense Trail

If you’ve ever wondered how Lehi obtained his wealth, these chapters give a powerful clue. He was likely a Frankincense trader. In the first millennium BC two routes were used transporting spices to the Mediterranean nations. The later was by boat sailing from India along the southern coasts of the Arabian peninsula then up the Red Sea and the Nile river. The other earlier one was via camel caravan following the same route down to Yemen and then to a region in Oman which produced Frankincense.

One of the interesting aspects of the trail is it passed through Marib, Yemen, which two and a half thousand years ago was known as Nahom or Nihim. There it turned East across the barren quarter of Arabia until it hit Wadi Al Sayq which Nephi and Lehi named, “Bountiful.”

Critics of the Book of Mormon's authenticity resort to calling these alignments of archeology with the book, random, lucky guesses. Yet, fifty years ago they scoffed at the preposterous idea of the narrative’s course and way points. Today, the preponderance solid archeological evidence can't be swept away.

While Lehi had the Liahona, he also had the knowledge of how to survive in the desert from years of experience. It still must have been a daunting task to lead a caravan of women and children into some of the most desolate stretches of land on this planet. But that’s what he did.

The other thought I have about this is Nephi’s explanation to his brothers not of the vision but of how to get the information for themselves. By the time he wrote this, his brothers were long gone… left behind when he fled from them. Written for us, it explains how we can learn and experience for ourselves the things he saw and learned.

Included in 1 Nephi 14:27 is Nephi’s observation that his father didn’t notice all the things he did because he was distracted by other things. It’s telling to us because it shows while God may give us great things in visions, it’s still up to us to observe, think and analyze what we see. Lehi missed things Nephi didn’t. I suspect Lehi saw some things Nephi didn’t see, but we don’t have his account. It’s a valuable insight into how revelation works.