Delivered from Destruction

At some point on their journey to the promised land, before building their ship, the Lord said to Lehi’s group, “After ye have arrived in the promised land, ye shall know that I, the Lord, am God; and that I, the Lord, did deliver you from destruction; yea, that I did bring you out of the land of Jerusalem” (1 Nephi 17:14).  I believe there are multiple ways in which this promise was fulfilled to them.  The most obvious relates to the knowledge that Jerusalem was indeed destroyed as Lehi had prophesied.  Near the time of his death he told his sons, “I have seen a vision, in which I know that Jerusalem is destroyed; and had we remained in Jerusalem we should also have perished” (2 Nephi 1:4).  The group’s posterity also received a sure witness of this fact many years later when they joined up with the Mulekites at Zarahemla.  They learned that this group “came out of Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah, king of Judah, was carried away captive into Babylon” (Omni 1:15).  This group left later than Lehi’s group, and so if they knew that Zedekiah had been taken away into Babylon then they were eye witnesses to the destruction of Jerusalem.  The Nephites who were the descendants of Lehi’s family did indeed “know that…  the Lord did deliver [them] from destruction.” 

               In addition to receiving a testimony of the destruction of Jerusalem, Lehi’s group also received many witnesses on their journey that the Lord did deliver them from destruction.  They had the witness of the Liahona which guided them “in the more fertile parts of the wilderness” to find food on their journey.  At one point when they “did suffer much for the want of food,” once they repented they were given “directions” on the Liahona so that Nephi could “slay wild beasts” and “obtain food for [their] families.”  Surely they knew at that point that the Lord indeed deliver them from destruction, for Nephi recorded, “When they beheld that I had obtained food, how great was their joy! And it came to pass that they did humble themselves before the Lord, and did give thanks unto him” (1 Nephi 16:16, 19, 31-32).  They saw other life-saving miracles on their trek across the Arabian desert.  For example, Nephi said, “So great were the blessings of the Lord upon us, that while we did live upon raw meat in the wilderness, our women did give plenty of suck for their children, and were strong” (1 Nephi 17:2).  It is likely that there were robbers and other dangerous people on the lonely trails across the desert, and the Lord was preserving their lives by miraculously allowing them to not have to cook their meat (the smoke from fires would have no doubt attracted numerous dangers for them).  The Lord “did provide means” for them while they “did sojourn in the wilderness” in general, and surely they each had a witness of the way that the Lord did deliver them from destruction again and again by providing them food in that desolate wilderness.  This was again evident when they were led to the land of Bountiful, an oasis with “much fruit and also wild honey” which “were prepared of the Lord that [they] might not perish” (1 Nephi 17:5).  The experience of arriving at this lush place of resort with fruit and honey after having traveled eight years in the hot, sandy, forsaken wilderness surely was seen as nothing short of miraculous to them.

            Their witnesses of being saved from destruction continued in the remainder of their journey.  That Nephi was able to build a ship in that place without prior experience doing so was astounding and could only be attributed to the help of the Lord.  Even Laman and Lemuel “beheld that it was good, and that the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine; wherefore they did humble themselves again before the Lord.”  They must have known that the ship had saved their lives, for they would have quickly overrun the small haven of Bountiful and run out of means to subsist there.  Then as they traveled on the boat they were saved from destruction by the Lord on the waters.  When a storm had been upon them for days and did “threaten them with destruction” and when Laman and Lemuel saw “that they were about to be swallowed up in the depths of the sea,” they finally turned to God and were indeed delivered by the Lord when Nephi prayed (1 Nephi 18:4, 20).  There could have been no doubt in any of their minds that the Lord had indeed delivered them from death on the water.  Again and again Lehi’s group saw that they had been saved by God from destruction, and His promise to them recorded in 1 Nephi 17:14 was fulfilled.