2 Nephi 31

Alright. I, Nephi, am about done. I’ve written the most important things. But I want to say just a few things more plainly. I like straight talk, though that may seem hard to believe with some of my carrying on. I like it because I think that, ultimately, that’s how God tries to communicate. He comes to our level, speaks how we speak.

I told you about the Lamb’s pre-prophet, the one who will dip the Lamb in water as a sign. If the Lamb needs that, who doesn’t? The Lamb is basically God-on-earth and we’re basically not. So where do we get off thinking we have to do less than he consented to do? He showed what to do by being dipped by the prophet—baptized, to use the technical term. His point was: Hey, if I’m doing it, shouldn’t you? I’m the most righteous person you know. And I’m going under the water.

This is all part of his showing people how direct and disciplined he likes to be. Also, how humble and unassuming. What a man. He could have made threats or demands. But instead he just says, “Follow me.” That includes doing his will in other things, by the way, not only going under the water.

I heard his voice actually say to me, “If you follow me, do all the things I do. I’ll send God’s spirit to help you.” So I’m quite sure that if you do, without fakery or showing off, then you will be baptized in God’s spirit itself, not just water. How that will affect you it’s hard to say. But your language will certainly improve, your ability to speak truth and to endorse God’s conduct.

If all this happens to you and then you go back to your old, unchanged ways, you’d have been better off not doing any of it. You have to keep improving till you die in order to go to God’s kingdom after death.

So start with the steps I’ve given you: change your hearts, follow Jesus, go under the water in his name, learn to work with God’s spirit. Those constitute the stepping stones to God’s kingdom. If you do them, you’re halfway through the gate to heaven.

You can only go the rest of the distance if you stay enthusiastic, trusting Jesus, who is the only person whose merits mean anything in this process.

You also have to keep your hope strong, bright as the glare of summer sun. You have to take the kind of words I’ve written in this relatively brief memoir and make yourself feast on them. If you’d do that, heaven could not restrain you from getting in. Ours are certainly transitory. His are fixed, eternal.