I Nephi 12

"Nephi's vision 2: and this time it gets ugly"

This is a continuation of Nephi's vision of the tree of life, which basically turns into a vision of the history of the world. Although at this point none of it had happened yet so it was actually a vision of the future rather than a mere history. Which is pretty cool. Quite often I wish I could see the future.

1. Nephi beholds the promised land and sees the he and his brethren have lots and lots of descendants. Keeping with familial tradition, they fight amongst each other.

2. Nephi sees all he destruction that precedes the Coming of the Savior to the Nephites. I always wonder if watching something like that would be more like watching a disaster movie, where people just run out of the way and look scared but you don't see any real violence, or more like Peter Jackson's King Kong where you actually witness the individual people suffering? If it's the second I'm glad I didn't have to see that. I think it's an all-around good thing that I'm not a prophet, actually.

3. Next, Nephi sees Christ's ministry among the Nephites, which I'm positive is exactly like it's shown in the movie The Testaments.

Here's an interesting tidbit: Nephi mentions that Christ calls twelve men to be Apostles among his seed in order to judge them in the afterlife, whereas the Jerusalem Twelve (as they shall henceforth be called) will judge the Jews. First question: the Jerusalem Twelve, is that plus or minus Judas? I'm going to assume he won't qualify, so who will they pick to take his place? Matthias, maybe? Joseph Smith? Who knows?

Seriously, the Joseph Smith thing was 100% speculation. Please don't quote me on that.

Second question: so different ethnic groups have different judges? Or is it different time periods? How does this massive organization of post-mortal judging teams work? I'm afraid this is another one of those questions I will most likely not know until I die unless I somehow end up married to the prophet. Possibly not even then. Not that I'm complaining. I recognize that it's not MASSIVELY important.

4. Next, and this must have been hard to watch too, but for different reasons, Nephi watches four generations pass away in righteousness, which must have been heartening. Yet I'm sure Nephi probably figure it out pretty quickly that it wasn't going to last. He sees his descendants gathered against his brothers' descendants in battle, and he basically watches them wipe each other. Even if he only saw the PG version, that must have been painful to watch. The more I think about it, the happier I am that I can't see the future, because you know the future will always contain good things and bad things. I'd rather be surprised by both.

6. Lastly, we have a quick review of the rest of the symbolism of the vision.

River = Hell
Great and Spacious Building = Pride of Man

7. The angel then reiterates that The Lamanites totally kick the Nephites' trash (as if he needed him to rub it in any more) and that the Lamanites forget all the traditions of their fathers and dabble in all sorts of wickedness. Which seems a pretty harsh dismissal of the Native Americans, but maybe he was only talking about the really bloodthirsty ones.