THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES

Judah and Israel to Come Into Their Own

WE believe in the literal gathering of Israel, and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes, etc. (Articles of Faith, No. 10).

As complete as was the scattering, so shall the gathering of Israel be. Great as has been the chastisement of the covenant though recreant people, all through their centuries of suffering they have been sustained by the Divine promise of recovery and rehabilitation. Though despised of men, a large part of them gone from the knowledge of the world, the people of Israel are not lost to their God, who knows whither they have been led or driven. Note the paternal affection, in which appears commiseration for the plight into which they had brought themselves through sin: "And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the Lord their God." (Lev. 26:44; see also Deut. 4:26-31).

Isaiah thus forcefully proclaims the purposes of God to be fulfilled in the last, the current, age: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left. . . . And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." (Isa. 11:11-12).

So momentous shall be the assembling of the tribes in their respective places of gathering, that the event shall be held to surpass the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage, for thus hath the Lord spoken: "Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers. Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks." (Jer. 16:14-16).

To these Biblical citations let us add the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, given to His Apostles just prior to His death and specified as one of the signs to precede His later coming: "And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Matt. 24:31).

Two gathering centers are distinctively mentioned, and the maintenance of a separate autonomy for the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel is repeatedly affirmed in Scripture, with Jerusalem and Zion as the respective capitals. In the light of modern revelation by which many ancient passages are illumined and made clear, we hold that the Jerusalem of Judea is to be rebuilt by the reassembled house of Judah, and that Zion is to be built up on the American continent by the gathered hosts of Israel, other than the Jews. When such shall have been accomplished, Christ shall personally rule in the earth, and then shall be realized the glad fulfilment: "For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Isa. 2:3; see also Joel 3:16; Zeph. 3:14).

Book of Mormon prophecies are plain in defining the extent and purpose of the latter-day gathering. Be it remembered that it was the people who once constituted the kingdom of Judah, the Jews, not the entire house of Israel, who rejected Jesus as the Son of God and the foreappointed Redeemer. By the Nephites who dwelt on the American continent, an Israelitish branch, He was received and worshipped as the Christ (see Book of Mormon, 3 Nephi 11); and the tenor of Book of Mormon Scriptures warrants the inference that He was accepted by the Lost Tribes, to whom He went to minister in person after His several visitations in the resurrected state to the Nephites. (See 3 Nephi 15:15 and 16:1-3; compare 2 Nephi 29:12-13).

The rehabilitation of the Jewish nation is assured, and the prominent part to be taken in that work by Gentile nations is defined in prophecy. So spake Jehovah through His prophet Nephi:

"But behold, thus saith the Lord God: When the day cometh that they shall believe in me, that I am Christ, then have I covenanted with their fathers that they shall be restored in the flesh, upon the earth, unto the lands of their inheritance. And it shall come to pass that they shall be gathered in from their long dispersion, from the isles of the sea, and from the four parts of the earth; and the nations of the Gentiles shall be great in the eyes of me, saith God, in carrying them forth to the lands of their inheritance. Yea, the kings of the Gentiles shall be nursing fathers unto them, and their queens shall become nursing mothers; wherefore, the promises of the Lord are great unto the Gentiles, for he hath spoken it, and who can dispute?" (Book of Mormon 2 Nephi 10:7-9; see also 25:15-17).

The work of gathering is well under way; and among the far-reaching results of the World War is the participation of the Gentile nations in providing for the reassembling of Israel. It is the privilege of the Gentiles to assist in the gathering of the Jews on the Eastern, and the other branches of Israel on the Western Continent; and so far as they shall accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Gentiles shall be numbered with the covenant people and share with them the plenitude of blessings, in their own right, for, verily, God is no respecter of persons.