Multigenerational Promises

God keeps His promises—even over long time horizons.

Enos made a very specific request of God. If his people, the Nephites were to be destroyed at some point in the future (as his uncle Nephi had seen in a vision), would God preserve their records for the benefit of their enemies, the Lamanites? This event was hundreds of years in the future. Nevertheless, God promised to do as Enos asked. Then He pointed out that Enos wasn’t the first person to make this request:

Thy fathers have also required of me this thing; and it shall be done unto them according to their faith; for their faith was like unto thine.

Enos 1:18

In the Old Testament, we read that God promised Noah and his sons that He would never again destroy the earth by flood. (See Genesis 9:8-17.) But in Joseph Smith’s inspired revision of Genesis, we learn that God had made that promise years earlier, to Noah’s great-grandfather, Enoch. (See Moses 7:50-51, Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 9:15.) God clarified to Noah that this promise was about more than floods: it was about the spiritual well-being of Noah’s descendants:

This is mine everlasting covenant, that when thy posterity shall embrace the truth, and look upward, then shall Zion look downward, and all the heavens shall shake with gladness, and the earth shall tremble with joy.

Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 9:22

Elder Gerrit W. Gong has taught that one of the ways we can always remember God is by “having confidence in His covenants, promises, and assurances.” Elder Gong said:

The Lord remembers and assures nations and peoples. In these days of motion and commotion, “some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God,” who guides “the future as he has the past.” In “perilous times,” we “remember that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men.”

“Always Remember Him,” General Conference, April 2016

Today, I will remember and trust in God’s promises. I will “look upward,” knowing that He will answer not only my prayers but the prayers of many people who have gone before.