Nephi and Lehi saw the complete future of their people. And after seeing the destruction of the wicked, the coming of the Savior and the appointing of 12 apostles, it must have been sobering for Nephi and Lehi to see how the symbols of the dream, the river (the depths of hell), the mists of darkness (temptation), and the great and spacious building (pride), would have such a terrible affect on their posterity. After seeing the future destruction of your people, I probably would have said why are we even bothering to go?
We can see three ways that Satan works in verses 17-18. (1) He blinds us so we can't see things as they really are. I think he wants us to see all that is bad, to ruin our hope, to lose our faith in each other, and especially not see those things that are true and really matter. (2) He hardens hearts. He doesn't want us to feel. He wants to dull our senses of the good things, the fruits of the Spirit like love, faith, hope. He wants us to feel discouraged, despair, anger. If he can harden out hearts to the Spirit, he can keep us from the knowing what is true, of knowing and believing in the wonderful plan that our Father has for our lives, and the hope that things will get better, that dreams really can come true.
(3) Finally, he wants us to be prideful. He wants us to feel like we have to be better than everyone else because when we do, he gets us to be judgmental. Not only does this ruin relationships, but the person who is prideful never really feels better than others but will continually feel inferior and will always be caught in the trap of comparing themselves with everyone else. The sad thing is, a prideful person will never come to know their true worth because they are basing their worth on false values.
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