Another Testament of Nephi

3 Nephi 1

Year 91—six hundred years from when Lehi left Jerusalem. Lachoneus was chief judge and ruler. Just a little context there and a nod to the judiciary. More context:

Helaman’s son Nephi left Zarahemla and on the way out of town handed his son—also named Nephi—stacks of metal plates to cherish and protect. Then he disappeared—lost, killed, something, no one knows what.

As Year 92 began, predictions seemed more plausibly fulfilled than ever. But some apostate calendar-hounds calculated that Samuel’s timetable was up. Nothing came true. Curse that stinking Lamanite.

Believers took it hard. But they had their own chronology and kept hope alive.

Meanwhile, those apostates I mentioned decided that Samuel’s set date for the sign of Jesus’ birth would be the trigger for mass executions if the ultra-light sign didn’t happen.

Young Nephi heard about it and went into a funk. He walked to a private spot in the woods and sobbed in prayer about the state of his people. It was his day off so he could spend all of it praying till he got what he thought was a viable answer.

It came.

“Stop crying. Smile. Laugh, even. Because it’s going to happen tonight. And boy will that stymie the haters. Tomorrow I’m going to be born. This is Jesus, by the way. Ready to get officially named that. And when I’m old enough, I’ll risk charges of narcissism and tell anybody and everybody that I’m the One. The Anointed One. I may not understand every scripture written about me, but we’ll keep working on that. Give it time.

“My aim is to do good, of course. But also to stick up for those who invested their lives in promising so much about me over the centuries. I can’t let them down. Or my Father, who is heavily invested too.

“So again: tonight’s the night.”

And so it was. The sun went down and the light didn’t. Total freakout. Fainting spells. More crying. And suicidal thoughts now by those who’d had homicidal ones earlier in the day.

Coast to coast, north and south, every which way, people’s jaws dropped. And with those jaws, whole bodies as well. The weird sequel to warfare was falling over quasi-dead at the realization God was real and prophet-killers were sunk.

The Ultimate Nightlight, as some called it, lasted till the sun rose again and things went back to normal. Except for a new star that the observant picked up on right away. Samuel was right. That much was clear to almost everyone.

Rationalizations cropped up: swamp gas, mass hypnosis, firefly infestation, etc. But they just didn’t hold weight. Faith didn’t take much anymore with this sort of evidence overkill.

Baptisms skyrocketed, Nephi being the baptizer-in-chief. Civic peace started to seep into even the most ominous locales.

The main upstarts were those who attacked the laws of Moses. After this miracle, they said, old-timey rules seemed worse than pedantic. But even those upstarts started to sneak over to Nephi’s watering hole. Because, one by one, they realized that Jesus was fulfilling the laws of Moses somehow. And they needed to wait to see how he did so before junking the laws.

Year 92: the happiest in memory. The greatest spectacle and novelty of all time had come with a higher purpose than eye candy.

Year 93: Peace continued, except for mini-invasions by the hill-country Gadiantons, who loved to slop around in blood. Their outposts were dug in. No one could take them by force. No preemptive assaults. Those would be suicide missions.

Year 94 saw a large exodus of Nephite defectors to the Gadianton outposts. This hurt the family members that stayed true at home. And it scared everyone—even Lamanites—because Gadianton attacks increased as their numbers swelled. The fear started turning some Lamanite children into proto-gangsters themselves. And so the devil chipped away at the general righteousness quotient.