Who were those three remarkable disciples, those "three who were to tarry" (3 Nephi 28:12) who would "never taste of death"? (3 Nephi 28:7) Mormon was about to write their names but was forbidden (see 3 Nephi 28:25.
According to Douglas and Robert Clark, would it not be reasonable to guess that one of the three translated disciples was Nephi, son and twice-great-grandson of men who had been granted similar blessings according to their desires? . . . One cannot help but recollect that Nephi's forefather Alma the younger himself had wished to be an angel (see Alma 29:1) and had apparently got his wish when he was translated (so it would appear) to continue his ministry (see Alma 45:19). Furthermore, Nephi's own righteous father had disappeared quite like Alma and possibly had also been translated (see 3 Nephi 1:3). Would it not be at least plausible to suppose that Nephi likewise possessed this same desire so prominent among his forefathers to continue their ministry?
Truman Madsen reports a tradition that Joseph Smith believed that the three translated Nephite disciples included Nephi and his brother Timothy. If Nephi was indeed one of the chosen three, his translation into an angelic ministrant would be yet another remarkable reflection and repetition of the possible translation of two of his fathers. In addition, Mormon reports that Christ's three translated disciples were cast into prison, but "the prisons could not hold them, for they were rent in twain" (3 Nephi 28:19). The story echoes the deliverance granted to Nephi the younger's father, Nephi (see Helaman 5) and forefather, Alma the younger (see Alma 14). [E. Douglas Clark and Robert S. Clark, Fathers and Sons in the Book of Mormon, pp. 207-208]