When Jesus warned the Nephites, “Satan desireth to have you, that he may sift you as wheat” (3 Nephi 18:18), He was teaching the same message He had expressed to Peter (see Luke 22:31).
Elder Bruce R. McConkie (1915–85) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained Jesus’s words: “This is an idiomatic expression which was clear to the people in that day, more so than to people in our day. In essence and thought content Jesus is saying, ‘Peter, Satan wants you in his harvest. He wants to harvest your soul, and bring you into his granary, into his garner, where he will have you as his disciple.’ It is the same figure that we use when we say that the field is white, already to harvest. And we go out and preach the gospel and harvest the souls of men. Well, Satan wanted Peter; he wanted to sift him as wheat or to harvest his soul” (Sermons and Writings of Bruce R. McConkie, ed. Mark L. McConkie [1998], 127).