The Three Nephite Disciples were three of the twelve disciples Jesus chose during his ministry among the Nephites. When Jesus asked the twelve what they desired of him after he returned to the Father, nine asked to come to him in his kingdom after living to the age of man; the other three did not speak the thing they wanted (3 Nephi 28:1-6). Jesus knew their thought: they had desired what John, his beloved, desired of him, to remain and bring souls to him while the world stood. He told them they would never taste of death, would never endure its pains, and would feel no sorrow except for the sins of the world, and that at his coming in glory they would be changed in the twinkling of an eye from mortality to immortality (3 Nephi 28:7-9).
After Jesus touched the other nine but not the three, the heavens opened and the three were caught up and saw and heard things they were forbidden to utter (3 Nephi 28:13-18). They returned to minister across the land, baptizing those who believed and conferring the Holy Ghost (3 Nephi 28:18-23). Those who did not belong to the church cast them into prison, into the earth, three times into a furnace, and twice into a den of wild beasts; the prisons were rent, and they took no harm (3 Nephi 28:19-22). Mormon records that the change wrought on them left Satan no power to tempt them, that they were sanctified in the flesh, and that they were to remain until the judgment day, when they would receive a greater change and dwell with God (3 Nephi 28:7-10, 39-40).
Mormon was about to write their names but was forbidden, so they remain hidden from the world (3 Nephi 28:25). He had seen them and they had ministered to him (3 Nephi 28:26); Moroni records that he and his father both saw them (Mormon 8:10-11). By about a hundred years after Christ’s visit, the other nine disciples had died, while the three continued to tarry (4 Nephi 1:14), and in a later generation they were again imprisoned and delivered while doing miracles (4 Nephi 1:30). When wickedness prevailed, the Lord took the disciples from among the people and the working of miracles and healing ceased (Mormon 1:13). Jesus said they would be among the Gentiles and the Jews unrecognized, would minister to the scattered tribes of Israel and all nations, and would do great and marvelous works before the day all must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ (3 Nephi 28:27-32).