Jesus Christ
visited ancient America after His resurrection.
He taught the Nephites many of the same things that He taught to the
people in the Old World. After speaking
to the people, He prepared to leave in order to visit His “other sheep.”
The Savior was aware that the
people could not understand all that He had taught to them. He gave them a pattern to follow in order to
be prepared to learn more. “Therefore,
go ye into your homes, and they had upon the things which I have said, and ask
of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand, and prepare your minds for
the morrow, and I come unto you again” (3 Nephi 17:3).
The first action He suggested
was to go home and ponder what He taught them.
Ponder means to think deeply. We
are commanded in several places in the scriptures to ponder what we see, read,
and hear. President Marion G. Romney of
the First Presidency explained that there is power in pondering.
“As I have read the scriptures,
I have been challenged by the word ponder,
so frequently used in the Book of Mormon.
The dictionary says that ponder means
`to weigh mentally, think deeply about, deliberate, meditate.’ …
“Pondering is, in my feeling, a form of prayer. It has, at least, been an approach to the Spirit
of the Lord on many occasions. Nephi
tells us of one such occasion.
“`For it came to pass,’ he
wrote, `after, `after I had desired
to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was
able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering
in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an
exceeding high mountain. …’ (1 Ne. 11:1.
Italics added.)
“Then follows Nephi’s account of
the great vision he was given by the Spirit of the Lord, because he believed
the words of his prophet father and had such a great desire to know more that
he pondered and prayed about them” (“Magnifying One’s Calling in the Priesthood,” Ensign, July 1973, 90).
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