Living, as we do, in a world familiar with Jesus’s earthly mission, we can easily miss the way Lehi would have understood this vision. To us, it is clearly Christ and the apostles. To Lehi, it was Jehovah and representatives of the twelve tribes. Of course, the reason that there were twelve apostles was to represent the whole of the twelve tribes—the whole of the covenant people. For Lehi, Jehovah was the very God who would come down among the children of men. Thus, while Lehi’s labels for what he saw had to be slightly different, it was the same scene with the same meaning—but differently perceived.
The heavenly delegation comes to earth. Lehi is not ascended to heaven to meet them. It is possible that this is a reinforcement of the Nephite teaching that God himself would come down to the earth. Remembering that Jehovah is the premortal name for Jesus, their understanding was literally correct. This part of the vision reinforces that understanding. This may also be the beginning of the continuing emphasis among the Nephite prophets on this God come to earth.
Next, we have the heavenly book. The book is a divine record that could surely reveal the past, but also shows the divinely directed future. Lehi reads from this divine book just as John will in the book of Revelation much later in history.