The Tree, the Rod, and the Dragon

This is a continuation of a prior blog post.

Revelation Is Lehi’s Dream on Steroids

For years I treated Lehi’s dream and the book of Revelation as two completely separate files in my brain.

Lehi’s dream = Book of Mormon, baptism, enduring to the end.

Revelation = scary New Testament stuff with trumpets, beasts, and war.

Then I re-read 1 Nephi 11–14, slowly, and something clicked so hard it turned my whole framework sideways.

Nephi prays to understand his father’s dream.

An angel shows him the tree, the rod, the river, the great and spacious building… and then just keeps going. The vision flows without a break into wars, apostasy, the Restoration, and finally “the apostle of the Lamb, whose name was John” writing the exact things Nephi is now seeing.

This wasn’t a new topic. Revelation is the second half of the same answer.

Lehi’s dream is the simple children’s version.

Revelation is the same story shot through with dragons, trumpets, and cosmic warfare because the stakes aren’t just one family in the desert; they’re the entire human family across all of time.

Same tree. Same fruit. Same rod. Same mocking building. Same mists and filthy river. John just zooms out and adds dragons.

Three more realizations locked this home for me.

First: Lehi’s dream isn’t a one-time event that ends at baptism.

I noticed that every single human interaction replays the dream in miniature:

  • There’s always a person (the tree) bearing fruit that could feed my soul with connection and joy.
  • There’s always an iron rod (the quiet choice to honor their humanity no matter what).
  • There’s almost always a great and spacious building in my head whispering, “That person is cringe/boring/dumb/wrong—don’t bother.”
  • And there’s always the choice: cling to the rod and taste the fruit, or let pride drag me into the river (hell) to try and prove the whispers right.

When I started treating every conversation that way, life got lighter. I stopped needing people to act a certain way for me to feel joy. I could restart the path at any moment. A stumble didn’t spell eternal doom; I could grab the rod again the next second. Perfectionism lost its fangs.

Second: the way I see others is the way I secretly see myself.

Jesus gave us the golden rule in both directions. Whatever measuring stick I use on you is the same one I’m already using on me.

If I decide you’re not worth my time, I’ve just declared that worthiness is a measurable commodity—and I live in quiet terror that one day I’ll fall short, too.

That is the real lake of fire and brimstone (Revelation 14:10; 19:20).

It isn’t a place God throws people. It’s the torment we manufacture when we refuse to believe we are lovable exactly as we are. We stand in the presence of the Lamb and his perfect standard (the iron rod), yet we frantically insist we still need more proof of our value. That self-rejection burns.

Third: war starts in the heart.

I felt this truth land while reading The Anatomy of Peace. All the battles Revelation depicts—armies, beasts, Babylon, Armageddon—start with the same justification we give when we refuse to see another person as a person: “I have to be seen as right/smart/successful/chosen/better.” That need to be seen a particular way is the first act of war. We turn people into enemies so we can feel secure in our identity.

The only way to end any war (personal or global) is to drop the “need to be seen as” anything and simply see the other as a human being. In that moment the heart justifies peace instead of conflict, and the external fighting loses its fuel.

So here’s where this lands:

Revelation isn’t primarily about Middle-East geopolitics or chip implants or some future antichrist. It’s Lehi’s dream writ large—across history and inside every human heart, every single day.

The dragon isn’t coming someday. He’s the voice in the great and spacious building that says worth must be earned, displayed, and defended with the right evidence (gold, silver, silks, or status).

And the mark of the beast? We’re almost there.

But once you realize Revelation and Lehi’s dream are telling the same story, the mark can’t just be something forced on us from the outside. It has to be a sign we willingly reach for because we believe that without it we’re not the right kind of people.

The torment comes from the fact that no mark ever silences the question. We still need fresh proof tomorrow. We still need people who lack the mark to give our identity contrast, which is against (or anti-) Christ. And so we remain chained to pride, the great dragon, forever.

In my next post, we'll look at the symbolism of marks in our foreheads and grounding the visuals in the book of Revelation.

(NOTE: As with all my posts, the ideas in this post are all mine, but I did leverage AI to help structure and refine it)

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