Delivered Out of the Depths

In the midst of a years-long personal trial as a teenager, I wrote in my journal that it felt like I was in a pit, and try as I might, I could never quite reach the top. I was trapped.

So reading about the “Three Nephites” being cast into prison, into furnaces, into dens of wild beasts, 

and cast down into the earth...

I felt it a bit.

But- the prisons could not hold them. 

The furnaces & wild beasts could not harm them. 

And, “by [God’s] power they were delivered out of the depths of the earth; and therefore they could not dig pits sufficient to hold them.” (28:20)

The “Three Nephites” greatest desire was to “bring the souls of men unto [Christ], while the world shall stand.” (3 Ne. 28:9) 

Who are they? Where are they? 

What’s it like to “behold all the doings of the Father unto the children of men”? (7) 

What’s it like feeling no pain or sorrow, save for the sins of the world (which sounds like a lot of sorrow to me)? (9)

What’s it like to minister one by one among us, who “know them not”? (27)

To do “great and marvelous works” (31) while “hid from the world” (25) for nearly 2000 years?!

What have they endured? I can’t imagine. But one thing we know for sure: “The powers of the earth [can] not hold them.” (39)

The earth may hold us for a time. But it cannot hold us forever.

Eventually, I DID get out of the pit, and I NEVER returned. If I didn’t have my journals to remember, I wouldn’t even know the girl in the pit. God gave me the strength to climb out! And because He did, I know I can climb out of others! There’s always other pits. Sigh. This is life! 

But- 

“If thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou... that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. 

“The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

“Hold on thy way.” (D&C 122:7-9)