1 Nephi 8:5-7
5 And it came to pass that I saw a man, and he was dressed in a white robe; and he came and stood before me.
6 And it came to pass that he spake unto me, and bade me follow him.
7 And it came to pass that as I followed him I beheld myself that I was in a dark and dreary waste.
It is important for us to know about the man in the white robe. If Lehi had begun by describing the dreary wasteland, one might say his “dream” began as a nightmare. But it did not. It began as a vision—as a conversation with an angel who was there to teach the prophet.
The words Lehi chooses to describe his long journey are instructive to us. He says he was in a “dark and dreary wilderness” and “dark and dreary waste.” Later in the chapter he used similar phrases to describe the universal experience: “an exceedingly great mist of darkness,” and “multitudes feeling their way towards that great and spacious building” (1 Nephi 8: 23, 31).
All these bring an image of struggle within a state of disorientation. Whatever else it may be, Lehi’s is a perfect description of how we all feel at some time or other. Each of us would speak the words of Hamlet’s despair, “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, seem to me all the uses of this world!”{1}
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FOOTNOTES
{1} Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.2.
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