1 Nephi 4:3

3  Now behold ye know that this is true; and ye also know that an ^aangel hath spoken unto you; wherefore can ye ^bdoubt?  Let us go up; the Lord is able to ^cdeliver us, even as our fathers, and to destroy Laban, even as the Egyptians.

            -They saw an angel and they can doubt? "Wherefore can ye doubt?" Why weren't they

             completely overwhelmed by the angel? Why didn't that convince them for the rest of

            their lives? This is an interesting phenomenon. Brigham Young said, "Pray that you will not

see an angel, because everyone who has seen an angel has apostatized from the

Church." Nearly all of them did. "Wherefore can ye doubt?" When the angel is gone,

you are still there. That's the   point. You are still yourself; you haven't changed your

character. You may see ten angels, but that doesn't make any difference. Do these things

leave a permanent imprint? A person goes back to his normal life, and in this life the

earth has a very strong hold on us. Nothing is more   powerful than gravitation—the

weakest form in the universe.

-Hugh Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 1, p.158

      “wherefore can ye doubt?”

            -but they still doubted.  Yes, they knew that they had seen an angel and we will assume they knew the truth of Moses and the exodus.  There must, therefore, be more to having faith than knowing of these things. To Nephi this knowledge strengthened him, but to Laman and Lemuel this knowledge did little to help.  They were missing something else, but what?  Their hearts were not set on doing the Lord’s work, they were not obedient but were rebellious in their desires/hearts therefore these wonderful things (experience and knowledge) turned to their destruction as equally as it turned to Nephi’s exaltation (his deliverance in this specific trial is but one case example of his progressing/movement towards exaltation).

       *Exaltation is a process made up of many incremental steps/experiences.

       “the Lord is able to deliver us even as our fathers…”

            -there is great strength, power and confidence to be drawn from the experiences of others, particularly those whose lives and tests are recorded in the scriptures.  When they are able to determine key actions, beliefs or other means they employed to find deliverance and success.  We are bound to follow their footsteps just as we use a map to help us get through unfamiliar ground.