The OTHER Promised Land

Here's a little piece of Book of Mormon trivia for you: Of the people who traveled with Lehi toward the Promised Land, which person is (probably) the only one specifically mentioned as not having completed the journey?

If you know who it is, Awesome! If not, go find the answer; It's in first Nephi somewhere, or you could wait until the end of the blog post, and I'll just tell you the answer then.

I was a bit surprised by this when I read it (for the umpteenth time and finally caught this tidbit), not that I was surprised by who it was, but I was surprised that there was a person in Lehi's group that didn't make it to the Promised Land.

Or did they?

The scriptures speak of more than one location which each were called the "Promised Land" by the people who were trying to get there, whom God told of its existence and led there. But there's another place that we only know about because God told us. (Though some people claim to have gone there and come back. Maybe they have. I'm skeptical. Let's not talk about that right now.) This place is also supposed to be really, really good - "choice above all other lands" would be a good way to describe it -  and only really good people can go there. So how do we get there? Just as the Lehites and Israelites, we have to follow God, and God has promised us that if we follow Him, we will eventually be privileged to live in that land.

The land I'm referring to is heaven. Comparing Lehi's Promised Land to heaven provides some great insights into our journey to heaven. First, we have to leave Jerusalem, where people were being sinful. We should try to take others with us as well. We'll need the scriptures and a good moral compass. The journey will be hard, with plenty of toil and suffering along the way. And eventually, we'll get to an ocean, where to finally get to heaven, we'll need to cross over to the other side.

For a more detailed analogy connecting Lehi's journey to our mortal journey, I plan to reread first Nephi (as so many other Mormons have done), but this time, I'll do so with the perspective that Lehi's journey is a parable for our life on earth. I'll see what other insights I can gain out of that.

In the meantime, I'd better tell you the answer to that trivia question. It was Ishmael. He dies in first Nephi 16:34, and they didn't cross the ocean until chapter 18. Though, now that I think about it, it may be that Ishmael reached the "Promised Land" well before any of the others.