# Journey

Faith-guided journey from tent pegs to eternity: how scripture frames each stage of travel by fidelity to a divine compass.

A journey is a going out from a settled place toward a destination God has appointed but not yet disclosed, as when Lehi “left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things,” and “departed into the wilderness” with his family (1 Nephi 2:4). The English word passed through the French *journée* from the Latin *diurnum*, a single day’s portion of travel or labor. When Moses recorded “the journeys of the children of Israel,” he used the Hebrew *massa’*, drawn from *nasa’*, the pulling up of tent pegs before the camp moved on (Numbers 33:1). Popular usage casts a journey as open-ended self-discovery, yet scripture measures each stage by fidelity to a guide.

## The Director in the Wilderness

One morning in the wilderness, Lehi found at his tent door “a round ball of curious workmanship,” within which “the one pointed the way whither we should go into the wilderness.” Nephi soon learned that the pointers worked “according to the faith and diligence and heed which we did give unto them” (1 Nephi 16:10, 28), faltering when the company quarreled and resuming their course when it repented. George Tate and S. Kent Brown have shown that the narrative recapitulates the Exodus, with murmuring in the desert, miraculous provision, and a crossing of great waters. The Liahona occupies the place of the pillar of cloud and fire, a divine guide made portable and responsive to the moral condition of its followers.

Alma, entrusting the records and the instrument to Helaman, drew out their meaning for later travelers. When the fathers grew slothful, he recalled, “they did not progress in their journey,” and he added that “it is as easy to give heed to the word of Christ, which will point to you a straight course to eternal bliss, as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass.” Alma then asked whether there was not “a type in this thing,” and he answered that the words of Christ would carry the faithful “beyond this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise” (Alma 37:41, 44-45). The desert crossing thereby became a figure of the soul’s passage through mortality.

## Strangers and Pilgrims

The Epistle to the Hebrews gathers Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah into one company of travelers: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). The passage makes the patriarchal wanderings a pattern for the church, whose members likewise “seek a country,” and the epistle insists further that the patriarchs’ journey outlasted their lives. They died on the road, and the chapter closes by declaring that they would not be made perfect apart from the generations who followed them.

The Restoration enlarges this pilgrimage into the full arc of the plan of salvation. Joseph Smith taught that the spirits of humankind dwelt with God before the world was, came to earth to receive bodies and to be proved, and pass through death and resurrection toward a fulness of glory in the Father’s presence. The Savior’s farewell discourse supplies destination and road. He promised that “in my Father’s house are many mansions,” and when Thomas protested, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:2, 5-6). Christ answered a question about the route by naming Himself, and Latter-day Saints speak accordingly of a covenant path.

## Vessels for the Great Deep

The Book of Mormon preserves a second journey made without sight of the way. The brother of Jared built barges sealed against the sea, lit by stones the Lord had touched with His finger and stocked with flocks and herds. Though often buried in the deep, the company came to no harm, “their vessels being tight like unto a dish, and also they were tight like unto the ark of Noah.” The Jaredite crossing deliberately recapitulates the Flood, a sealed vessel bearing a remnant of life through the waters of chaos. The voyage lasted “three hundred and forty and four days upon the water” (Ether 6:7, 11), and the people landed weeping for joy.

Cosmist and transhumanist thinkers have long imagined voyages of the same kind. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky described in 1928 a multigenerational space colony he called Noah’s Ark, and engineers have since sketched worldships whose crews would live and die for centuries before their descendants reached another star. Elon Musk speaks of making humanity multiplanetary, and SpaceX designs its Starship toward that end. Any such vessel would need to be as tight as the Jaredite barges and as self-sufficient as their stocked holds. Biosphere 2 in Arizona demonstrated the difficulty: between 1991 and 1993 the oxygen inside its sealed ecosystem fell from nearly 21 percent to about 14.5 percent, and oxygen had to be pumped in before its eight inhabitants emerged.

## The Shipborn and the Land of Promise

The philosopher James S. J. Schwartz has argued that worldship travel risks wrongfully exploiting the shipborn, those born aboard who must live their entire lives within a mission they never chose. The objection presses upon a feature the scriptural journeys also record. Laman and Lemuel complained their father had led them out of Jerusalem to perish in the wilderness, and the children who crossed with the Jaredites inherited a voyage their parents had covenanted to make. The scriptures answered that burden with a guide that responded to the heed of each traveler and with a land of promise that all would share. A generation ship governed solely by the decisions of its founders, with no voice for those born in transit, would impose the patriarchs’ hardship without offering their hope.

A journey, seen whole, is a going out from a settled place toward a destination God has appointed and discloses to those who keep faith along the way, undertaken by families and generations together. Lehi’s household, the Jaredite mariners, and the patriarchs who died seeing the promises afar off all traveled by a guide that answered their heed, and all carried their children with them. The plan of salvation extends that pattern from the premortal council to the Father’s house of many mansions. Vessels humanity may someday launch toward other stars will be arks in the scriptural sense, and their builders will owe the shipborn a voice in the voyage, a guide that answers their own heed, and a share in the land of promise.

*See also*: [Children](/topical-guide/children), [Consent](/topical-guide/consent), [Earth](/topical-guide/earth), [Faith](/topical-guide/faith), [Posterity](/topical-guide/posterity), [Probation](/topical-guide/probation), [Promised Land](/topical-guide/promised-land), [Salvation](/topical-guide/salvation)