If you’re a believer in the Book of Mormon, then you’ve probably read the opening chapters of 1 Nephi seeing the young man Nephi as the example we are to follow. As we read the scriptures – any scriptures – we tend to put ourselves in the shoes of the ‘hero’. After all, we’re to pattern ourselves after the lives of righteous men and women of the past, right? Abraham and Sarah, Enoch, Noah, Deborah, Esther; in the Book of Mormon: Nephi, Alma and Helaman. Of course, Christ is our great exemplar, but many of these ancient prophets show us patterns to follow in our quest to become like Him.

While that is true, I believe there are also other characters and people we are supposed to consider ourselves as – not in terms off what we should be doing, but perhaps given by prophets as something of a ‘reality check’ of where we actually are in our lives. A few years ago as I began another read of the Book of Mormon, the realisation came to me that Laman and Lemuel serve exactly that purpose; and at the very beginning of 1 Nephi, the Jews at Jerusalem do, too.

Latter-day Saints like to talk about how wicked Laman and Lemuel were. We would never be like them, right? Except … maybe we are.

We need to remember that the Book of Mormon was written specifically by prophets who had seen our day. They knew what life would be like, what the church would be like, and what we Christians and Latter-day Saints would be like. 

The chief purposes of the Book of Mormon are the testifying of Christ and of God’s covenants to His people (Title page of the Book of Mormon). Embedded in that are warnings of and to our day. We see those warnings in the great anti-Christs of Sherem, Nehor, and Korihor. We see it in the ‘secret combinations’ that ultimately cause the destruction of both the Jaredite and Nephite nations.

But even as the prophets tell us of those secret combinations, they tell us that those evil organisations will be among us in these days and give us specific instruction to look for them. These warnings are given to those who will read the Book of Mormon – it is this group of people specifically – us – among whom those secret combinations will exist. They do exist.

Back to Laman and Lemuel, however. Nephi tells us that ‘they were like unto the Jews at Jerusalem’ (1 Nephi 2:13). Later, we hear Laman and Lemuel saying that ‘we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his commandments.’ (1 Nephi 17:22).

I find that fascinating – they know the people in Jerusalem are righteous. That sounds a bit like a testimony, as we would call it today. How do they know the people were righteous? Because they kept all the commandments.

Okay, so now let’s put ourselves into the scriptures. Do we ‘know’ that we (the Latter-day Saints, or alternatively whatever church or religion you belong go) are a righteous people? Do we keep God’s commandments? Well, President Nelson has told us to attend the temple a lot more often, and our temples do seem to be very busy – especially in places where there are a lot of church members.

Unless, the Lord doesn’t consider that to be keeping His commandments. Indeed, the Jews in the days of Lehi spent a lot of time at the temple.

Hosea was a contemporary with Isaiah, and this is what he had to say about Israel’s temple worship:

‘Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself: according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the altars; according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly images. Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty: he shall break down their altars, he shall boil their images … They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field … Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lie: because thou didst trust in thy way …’ (Hosea 10:1-2, 4, 13)

If we’re tempted to think that applied to that Israel and not to today’s covenant people, here is what the Lord has said in modern times:

‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, darkness covereth the earth, and gross darkness the minds of the people, and all flesh has become corrupt before my face. Behold, vengeance cometh speedily upon the inhabitants of the earth, a day of wrath, a day of burning, a day of desolation, of weeping, of mourning, and of lamentation; and as a whirlwind it shall come upon all the face of the earth, saith the Lord. And upon my house shall it begin, and from my house shall it go forth, saith the Lord; First among those among you, saith the Lord, who have professed to know my name and have not known me, and have blasphemed against me in the midst of my house, saith the Lord.’ (D&C 112:23-26, emphasis added)

Nephi warns us that the message ‘All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth …’ is a message from the devil (2 Nephi 28:21). It’s exactly like the people of Jerusalem and Laman and Lemuel in Lehi’s day. All was well, so Jerusalem couldn’t be destroyed, right? After all, their own prophets were telling them they’d be fine. It was only those false prophets like Jeremiah and Lehi who were stirring up trouble – better to get rid of them.

Now, I don’t want anyone to misinterpret what I’m saying. I’m not saying that anyone should leave the church. I truly believe the church helps us begin our journey in coming to Christ. I love the church I belong to. I feel the Lord’s Spirit here. I love the temple and feel the Lord’s Spirit there too. But if we believe we can sit back and wait to be told in General Conference what we should be doing, we are mistaken. If we believe we don’t have things to repent of, we are mistaken. If we believe all we need to do is stay in the church and try our best, we are mistaken.

Nephi includes many of the writings of Isaiah in his record. In 2 Nephi 8, we find Isaiah 51 and a portion of 52. In that section, we find the instruction to ‘Awake, awake’ three times. Lehi uses the exact same phrase when he is speaking to Laman and Lemuel shortly before his death:

‘O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe. Awake! and arise from the dust …’ (2 Nephi 1:13-14)

By comparison, here are some of Isaiah’s words:

‘Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.’ (2 Nephi 8:23-24)

According to Christ when He visited the Nephites, Isaiah spoke of our day. Nephi wrote to our day – to us.

Unfortunately, Laman and Lemuel never awoke. They carried on in their self-deception until they drove the righteous from among them and became a wild, ferocious and blood-thirsty people and were cut off from the Lord. The people of Jerusalem never repented. They also drove the righteous from among them and ended up being destroyed by ancient Babylon, where they remained for 70 years.

What will become of you and me? Well, that depends on whether we heed the warnings given to us by Isaiah, Nephi, Mormon and Moroni. Let’s awake, shake off those chains, put on our beautiful garments and truly come to know Christ.

© Copyright, Jeffrey Collyer 2025