Nephi has come back from Jerusalem with the brass plates. They are camping in the valley of Lemuel, unique in the fact that it has a regular source of water in the stream that flows through it. He has also brought Zoram and Ishmael and his family to the encampment. They spend some time in the valley as a respite from the wilderness and there Lehi has a vision of the tree of life. He tells the story to his growing family and tells them to some extent of the history of the Jews, specifically the coming of a Messiah who would save them.
Nephi desires to understand the dream of his father and so asks the Lord about it. He is given a tour of history by an angel where each object in the Lehi’s dream is attached to a moment or event in the upcoming history of his people. He sees the birth of Christ and the coming of European colonists. He sees the establishment of the United States and the restoration of the gospel. He even sees the end of the world though he does not tell us of it. He gives particular detail about his own descendants, even that:
The seed of my brethren did contend against my seed, according to the word of the angel; and because of the pride of my seed, and the temptations of the devil, I beheld that the seed of my brethren did overpower the people of my seed.
1 Ne 12:19
Nephi has just seen the destruction of his people. He watched the thousand years of history as his children spread over the Promised Land he was then trying to reach. He saw his nephews and nieces split away from his children and saw them fight in great wars. He saw Jesus Christ come out of the clouds to visit them and bring them together in peace for three generations. And he saw the filthy waters divide them again until the day the children of his brothers waged an extinction war against his own descendants. He probably saw Mormon overseeing those final battles and the lonely end of Moroni, the last of all the Nephites.
Upon awaking from the dream he walks into his father’s tent and sees his brothers arguing over the meaning of Lehi’s Dream. The brothers whose children will someday wage war on his own for nearly a thousand years. He writes:
And it came to pass that I was overcome because of my afflictions, for I considered that mine afflictions were great above all, because of the destruction of my people, for I had beheld their fall.
1 Ne 15:5
He then indicates that after he receives strength he intercedes between his brothers. Did Nephi faint? Did he fall over? Did he just sit down to mourn the beginnings of all those generations of conflict? It is important to remember how old Nephi was. He was of large stature, sure but this is still near the beginning of his story. He is the young man who has just distressed over slaying Laban. He is also unmarried. They have picked up the daughters of Ishmael with one of them standing up for him when his brothers threaten his life (again) in the desert. He has met the girl he will marry and immediately following the account of this vision he marries her. So this is a young man, about to take a wife and full of dreams of his future family. This is the Nephi that has just seen the ultimate destruction of his unborn children, still but a twinkle in his eye.
Nephi reflects on the experience later, after sailing to the new land and watching his father die. He lives through the final separation between himself and his brothers as he flees into a new wilderness in the promised land. He has children and sees the rising of the new generation. He writes:
O the pain, and the anguish of my soul for the loss of the slain of my people! For I, Nephi, have seen it, and it well nigh consumeth me before the presence of the Lord; but I must cry unto my God: Thy ways are just.
2 Ne 26:7
And then again at the end of his writings:
But I, Nephi, have written what I have written, and I esteem it as of great worth, and especially unto my people. For I pray continually for them by day, and mine eyes water my pillow by night, because of them; and I cry unto my God in faith, and I know that he will hear my cry. And I know that the Lord God will consecrate my prayers for the gain of my people. And the words which I have written in weakness will be made strong unto them;
2 Ne 33:3-4
This Nephi doesn’t write like a young man. He writes like a grandfather, a patriarch. A man who has spent his life raising a family in some exceptionally difficult circumstances. A father who fought with the sword to protect his children from his own brothers. A son who carried his father’s prophetic mantle when his father wearied of bearing it. And throughout his life in all of those struggles he carried the haunting memory of the ultimate demise of his people. How would that vision change your wedding day? How would it temper the day your first child is born? Or your grandchildren? This is the Nephi who cries out in the great psalm:
O then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in his condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions? And why should I yield to sin, because of my flesh? Yea, why should I give way to temptations, that the evil one have place in my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul? Why am I angry because of mine enemy?
Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul. Do not anger again because of mine enemies. Do not slacken my strength because of mine afflictions. Rejoice, O my heart, and cry unto the Lord, and say: O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation.
2 Ne 4:26-30
Remember who his enemies are who make him so angry? The rebellious older brothers who conspired to kill him again and again, who would pass their hatred on to their children such that for hundreds of years wars would be fought again and again between their descendants until all of Nephi’s kids would be gone, down to the last Moroni. The same brothers of whom Nephi writes:
And it came to pass that I did frankly forgive them all that they had done
1 Ne 7:21
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