Jesus turns from the twelve and addresses the congregation. The declaration that “whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you” is a promise that our righteous prayers will be heard. The key is the phrase: “which is right.” There are certainly times when we may believe that we are praying righteously, but the answer we desire does not come. There is something in God’s wisdom which knows that, for an unknowable divine reason, it isn’t right.
Verse 22 tells the congregation how to deal with those who might come to join with them who are not currently part of their congregation. They are to be accepted, and prayed for.
The important piece of this instruction for the Nephites was: “Therefore ye must always pray unto the Father in my name.” That is the clearest teaching that there is a distinction between the Father and Jesus. This is no longer the assignment of titles based on heaven or earth, where Jehovah is Father while in Heaven, but Son while on earth. This is an instruction to pray to the being that Jesus considers his father, and to do so in Jesus’s name. That makes absolutely clear that the Nephites are to learn a new understanding of their God.
Only at the time of Jesus’s appearance do the Nephites begin to learn of the Godhead as opposed to the belief only in Jehovah.