Day 18 Nephi's Vision and the Guiding Holy Ghost

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells his followers that they are the salt of the earth, and in the same sentence offers a warning that savorless salt is good for nothing. Join me in an attempt to be savory salt as I share each day one verse of scripture and one small thought. Perhaps this small daily emphasis can lead to greater savor in your life and ultimately you and I can be savory salt.

Hello, my friends and family, wherever you're listening from. Thank you for joining me and know that I'm cheering for your every success. Congratulations.

Today, if you do the reading today, you go from completing 5% of the Book of Mormon to 6%. Well done taking your 1% step today on our 365-day journey. Today we are reading from 1 Nephi chapter 12, verses 1 through 14.

We continue this visionary experience from Nephi, and oh my goodness, Nephi is going to give us a major spoiler alert here. Now he is receiving a vision, and it is a vision of the future, but still, spoiler alert: Nephi is going to give a spoiler here on verse six. And I guess I say spoiler alert a little bit.

If you don't know where the Book of Mormon heads, or if you didn't do the reading all the way back at the introductory pages of the Book of Mormon, you may have forgotten that Jesus Christ reveals himself. Now let's dive into verse 6 here and see it from the point of view of Nephi. He's talking about this vision that he's experiencing, and he says this, verse 6: "And I saw the heavens open and the Lamb of God descending out of heaven, and he came down and showed himself unto them." Jesus Christ manifests himself to his people.

Now, the spoiler alert is that Nephi is the front end of the book. We're only on Chapter 12 here. And he's talking about something that's going to happen near the end of the Book of Mormon.

Inside, if you want to jump ahead and maybe do a little sneak peek on everything that Nephi is seeing here — kind of the destructive stuff he's talking about on the front end of the chapter — and those things that kind of 3 Nephi 8, 9, 10 around that range somewhere. And then 3 Nephi 11 is going to be the chapter that explains exactly what Nephi is experiencing here with this visitation with the angel. Now, you know, it got me thinking, I talked before about living prophets today.

Currently, as of this recording for this podcast, a living prophet: Russell M. Nelson. And I thought, wow, if Nephi's having these revelatory experiences, what have we heard from President Nelson?

And what has he given us? And if you go back to the first talk that he gave as president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you get a really interesting insight. He maybe has a little bit of a spoiler alert of his own.

And this is what he says. This is President Nelson speaking in April of 2018. And he says, "In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost." And since then, President Nelson has repeatedly given invitations for us to step our game up, to increase the influence of the Holy Ghost in our own lives, and to live our lives at a totally different level.

We have a living prophet today giving us guidance, just as Nephi was given guidance from the angel that he talked to. That gets me excited, and I want to do the best that I can to have that guiding, directing, comforting, constant influence of the Spirit in my life, and I encourage you to do so as well. That's all for today, my friends.

Remember that "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass." Keep it small, keep it simple, and always seek to be savory salt. I'll be here tomorrow. I hope you are too.