Post by Nephi –
Keeping records has always been important to our Heavenly Father. The more secure the better. After we arrived in the Promised Land, the Lord commanded me to create a secure back up of this blog. The best way to do that is to etch into metal plates, a record that will be timeless. Therefore I made metal plates and am engraving on them this record. You might say it is a permanent backup of our journey in the wilderness, my father’s prophesies and many of my own prophesies.
Now, I have another set of plates. They are not necessarily a back up of my blog, but on those plates I have been keeping a record of my father and the genealogy of his fathers. Those plates also contain more of the stories of what happened in the wilderness. As you can imagine, in all the years we traveled in the wilderness a lot took place and a record was kept, I just didn’t share it all in this blog.
Since the Lord commanded me to make a new set of plates, He also told me what to keep on them. The Lord commanded me to keep the ministry and prophecies and the more plain and precious parts of them on this new set of plates. He told me that the things written should be kept for the instruction of my people who would possess this land and for some other reasons He didn’t tell me about.
So, as I said, on one set of plates I kept the greater account of the wars, contentions and destructions of my people and there are plenty of them, and the other set of plates I’m keeping the sacred stuff.
Just like this blog will probably be kept by other members of my family when I die and am deeply underground, I’ve told my family to keep the metal plates as a back up and pass them down from generation to generation. I am confident the Lord will keep the prophets on task as He gives them commandments until one day He is done and has other plans for these metal plates.
I’ll tell you more about making the plates later but for now just know that the sacred things need to be kept for the knowledge of all those that come after me. I don’t plan on keeping track of things that are not sacred. Keep in mind I am just a man and I am not making excuses, but if there are errors, it is because I’ve got weaknesses like anybody else.
The other challenge is that some men will think one thing is of great worth to both body and soul and another man will think it worthless. There are great things of the very God of Israel that some men trample under their feet, or in other words they don’t find any value in them at all and they won’t listen to the Lord’s counsels.
Therefore, the things I will write in this blog and etch on metal plates, will be to the best of my ability, the sacred things of great worth to the souls of men and when I make mistakes, please forgive me.
(Book of Mormon | 1 Nephi 19:1 – 7)
