“I looked… I saw… I beheld… I bear record…” In 1 Nephi 11-14 some variation of these statements appears 180 times. It is Nephi’s vision of the tree of life and other things pertaining to the kingdom of God as he sought out Heavenly Father to unfold his mysteries.
Nephi’s gratitude journal contained everything he saw and some things that he heard and other things of which he was asked to bear record. He saw other things that he was commanded not to write. Why was Nephi allowed this privilege? Nephi after hearing what his father had to say about his vision “desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord (1 Nephi 11:1).”
He sought after more because he was so enriched and full because of what his father had shared.
Nephi was wise enough to look and he saw marvelous things, even to add on to all that his father had seen. Christ asks us to “Look unto me in every thought” he promises that as we do this we will “doubt not, fear not (Doctrine and Covenants 6:36).” God has done so much for us, he is doing so much for us, and he will yet do so much for us, and if we look, see, behold, and bear record that he is there, he will show us so much more than we now know and understand.
Satan and his followers are seeking to “blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the children of men (1 Nephi 13:27).” Many are in “that awful state of blindness, which thou beholdest they are in, because of the plain and most precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back by that abominable church, whose formation thou hast seen (1 Nephi 13:32).”
It is the privilege of those who look, see, and behold to bear record of it. “And blessed are they who shall seek to bring forth my Zion at that day, for they shall have the gift and the power of the Holy Ghost; and if they endure unto the end they shall be lifted up at the last day, and shall be saved in the everlasting kingdom of the Lamb; and whoso shall publish peace, yea, tidings of great joy, how beautiful upon the mountains shall they be (1 Nephi 13:37).”
The choice is simple “either to the convincing of them unto peace and life eternal, or unto the deliverance of them to the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds unto their being brought down into captivity, and also into destruction, both temporally and spiritually, according to the captivity of the devil (1 Nephi 14:7).”
May we look, see, behold, and bear record so that we are ready when Christ “shall manifest himself unto all nations… in that day that he shall manifest himself unto them in word, and also in power, in very deed, unto the taking away of their stumbling blocks—” (1 Nephi 13:42-14:1).