Leading Away the Righteous

Jacob warned the new Nephite nation of his time in these words, “And the time speedily cometh, that except ye repent [the Lamanites] shall possess the land of your inheritance, and the Lord God will lead away the righteous out from among you” (Jacob 3:4).  His people did repent, at least to some degree, and this prophecy was not fulfilled in his day.  Jacob’s son Enos told how they were close to being destroyed in his day: “Nothing short” of “stirring them up continually to keep them in the fear of the Lord” did “keep them from going down speedily to destruction” (Enos 1:23).  Jarom, the son of Enos, warned how the warning was still in effect in his time: “And it came to pass that the prophets of the Lord did threaten the people of Nephi, according to the word of God, that if they did not keep the commandments, but should fall into transgression, they should be destroyed from off the face of the land” (Jarom 1:10).  They were not destroyed then either, but apparently it was only because the prophets did “labor diligently” to exhort the people: “And it came to pass that by so doing they kept them from being destroyed upon the face of the land; for they did prick their hearts with the word, continually stirring them up unto repentance” (Jarom 1:11-12).  They were, spiritually speaking, hanging on by a thread.     

               Jarom’s grandson Amaron recorded, though, that the prophecy was at least in part fulfilled in his day: “It came to pass that three hundred and twenty years had passed away, and the more wicked part of the Nephites were destroyed” (Omni 1:5).  The wickedness finally became too much and many of them were destroyed.  After this some Nephites were still there in the land of Nephi, but in the days of Amaleki, the grandson of Amaron’s brother, it appears that the full original prediction of Jacob was fulfilled.  Amaleki told how Mosiah, a righteous Nephite, was “warned of the Lord that he should flee out of the land of Nephi, and as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord should also depart out of the land with him, into the wilderness” (Omni 1:12).  They ended up in Zarahemla where they joined with the Mulekites and built up the Nephite nation again.  Our text doesn’t explicitly say this combined group took upon the name of Nephites, but it does say that “Mosiah did unite together; and Mosiah was appointed to be their king” (Omni 1:19).  They are subsequently called the Nephites, and so clearly they chose that as the name of their people (and it is a tribute to Mosiah’s humility that he did not choose to call them after his own name).  We actually never hear what happened to the rest of the original Nephites who were left in the land of Nephi when Mosiah departed with the righteous.  But we can assume that what Jacob prophesied is exactly what happened: “the Lord God [did] lead away the righteous out from among [the Nephites]” and the Lamanites came in to “possess the land of [their] inheritance.”  We know that within not too many years, still in Amaleki’s lifetime, the Nephites of Zarahemla were fighting the Lamanites of the land of Nephi, and no mention was made of any remaining Nephites in the land of Nephi: “In the days of king Benjamin, a serious war and much bloodshed between the Nephites and the Lamanites. But behold, the Nephites did obtain much advantage over them; yea, insomuch that king Benjamin did drive them out of the land of Zarahemla” (Omni 1:24).  The Nephites who did not flee the land of Nephi with Mosiah were, in all likelihood, simply destroyed by the Lamanites.  So, if nothing else, this story teaches us this important principle: when the prophet leads us out of danger, don’t stay behind.