Plates of Brass

After Nephi and his brothers returned with the plates of brass from Jerusalem, Lehi took them and “did search them from the beginning” (1 Nephi 5:10).  After discovering their contents, he “was filled with the Spirit, and he began to prophesy concerning his seed—That these plates of brass should go forth unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people who were of his seed.  Wherefore, he said that these plates of brass should never perish; neither should they be dimmed any more by time” (1 Nephi 5:18-19).  This prophecy is two-fold: (1) the plates of brass would be preserved and not be dimmed over time and (2) the plates of brass would go to all people who were Lehi’s seed.  How has the prophecy been fulfilled?  

                The text of the Book of Mormon lets us know that the plates of brass were in deed preserved miraculously, at least through the history of the Nephites.  We know that when Mosiah left the land of Nephi with those who were righteous, he was in possession of the plates of brass (see Omni 1:14).  His son King Benjamin told his own sons that the plates of brass had been “kept and preserved by the hand of God”—this was over 400 years after Lehi’s prophecy and surely we would expect that without the Lord’s protection the plates would have been very much deteriorated by then (Mosiah 1:5).  A few generations later Alma was in possession of the plates and he also told his son Helaman about their miraculous preservation: “It has been prophesied by our fathers, that they should be kept and handed down from one generation to another, and be kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord.”  The famous verse about small and simple things that follows actually is speaking about this divine preservation and how the plates, despite their age, “retain their brightness” (Alma 37:4-6).  After this we don’t hear about the plates of brass again until Mormon adds some commentary to his account of the destructions at the time of the Savior’s death: “These things which testify of us, are they not written upon the plates of brass which our father Lehi brought out of Jerusalem?” (3 Nephi 10:17) The comment implies that the plates of brass were still around in Mormon’s day, that he read them, and that they were still preserved enough to be able to be understood.  And the fact that Moroni could paraphrase the words of Isaiah in the very last chapter of the Book of Mormon suggests at least to me that these plates were still having their impact even 1000 years after Lehi (see Moroni 10:31).  The plates of brass were indeed preserved so that they were not “dimmed” by time as Lehi promised.

                It’s a little less clear to me how the other part of the prophecy has been or is being fulfilled, but I think there are several possible interpretation.  In Lehi’s words of the prophecy he said that the plates of brass would go to all of those “who were of his seed.”  So the fact that during the whole Nephite history the plates of brass were around and used to teach the people surely is one way that the prophecy was fulfilled.  Alma repeated the prophecy, though, and seemed to expand it by saying that they “would go forth unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people,” with no mention of only speaking about Lehi’s seed (Alma 37:4).  Perhaps one way to understand this universality of the prophecy is the fact that the Book of Mormon contains many of the writings of the plates of brass, and those have certainly gone now across the world.  We have almost 1/3^rd of the book of Isaiah, the prophecy of Zenos in Jacob 5, and many other shorter quotations from Old Testament prophets that are all quoted in the Book of Mormon.  Another way perhaps to understand the fulfillment of the prophecy is that the Bible itself has certainly gone to every nation and people, and it contains many of the same writings as the plates of brass.  And who knows, perhaps there is more that we will one day receive as scripture from the plates of brass directly.  However we interpret the fulfillment of the prophecy, one thing is clear: the writings of the plates of brass are of enormous importance. That should inspire us to give more heed to the closest thing that we have to those plates obtained from Laban so long ago—the Old Testament.