Lehi¹ was a prophet who lived at Jerusalem in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, when many prophets warned the people to repent or the city would be destroyed (1 Nephi 1:4). As he prayed for his people he was overcome by the Spirit and saw a vision: the heavens opened, God on his throne surrounded by angels, and One descending who gave him a book foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming of a Messiah (1 Nephi 1:8-14).
When Lehi preached what he had seen, the Jews mocked him and sought his life, and the Lord commanded him in a dream to take his family and depart into the wilderness. He obeyed, leaving his house, his land of inheritance, and his gold and silver, and took only his family, provisions, and tents (1 Nephi 2:2-4). He sent his sons back to Jerusalem to obtain the plates of brass and to persuade Ishmael’s family to join them (1 Nephi 3; 7).
In the wilderness Lehi saw the vision of the tree of life (1 Nephi 8), in which he partook of fruit that filled his soul with joy and desired that his family partake also (1 Nephi 8:10-12). One morning he found at his tent door a brass ball of curious workmanship, the Liahona, with spindles that pointed the way the family should travel (1 Nephi 16:10).
Lehi also prophesied of the future of his people within the wider covenant history of Israel, likening the house of Israel to an olive tree whose branches would be broken off and scattered upon all the face of the earth, and foretelling that after the Gentiles received the fulness of the gospel, the natural branches—including his own descendants—would be grafted back in and come to the knowledge of the true Messiah (1 Nephi 10:12-14).
His elder sons Laman and Lemuel murmured against him, calling him a visionary man who had led them from their inheritance to perish, yet he exhorted them to repentance (1 Nephi 2:11; 8:37). Before his death Lehi gave blessings to his children (2 Nephi 1-4; 2 Nephi 4), teaching that Adam fell that men might be, that the Messiah redeems men from the fall, and that men are free to choose liberty and eternal life through the Mediator or captivity and death (2 Nephi 2:25-28). After speaking to all his household, Lehi grew old, died, and was buried (2 Nephi 4:12).