Isaiah class: My view

My view on some of the ideas concerning the last of the last days in response to what was discussed by Avraham Gileadi during the ten-week Isaiah class Michael and I attended in Provo last fall. I wrote this little piece in early December, near the end of the series.

The Lord's way of keeping time does not correspond to the way we measure the passing of days and weeks and months and years. There are hints of that fact throughout the scriptures. In a revelation through the Prophet Joseph Smith on September 11, 1831, the Lord declared, "Behold, now it is called today until the coming of the Son of Man" (D&C 64:23). Apparently the period of time from 1831 until the Second Coming, however soon that might be, is as a single day to the Lord.

The Lord expects us to study the scriptures (see, for example, John 5:39; 2 Timothy 3:14–17; 3 Nephi 10:14; D&C 26:1; and D&C 33:16), with particular command to search the words of Isaiah (see 3 Nephi 20:11; 3 Nephi 23:1; and Mormon 8:23). However, do we need to exercise a little caution before making too fine a distinction about sequences and timing that were prophesied millennia ago concerning events that will occur during this "day" we are in—particularly when that "day" extends for at least a couple hundred of years according to our present reckoning?

To say that Isaiah, confirmed by Book of Mormon prophets, talks about certain events as a single end-of-time scenario, happening all at once or in short succession, all of it yet future to us, may not correspond precisely to what the Lord Himself has revealed in our day. Additionally, there are examples of prophecies that have multiple fulfillments.

Let's consider some specific examples:

The Lord performs a great and marvelous work.  In at least five separate revelations given through the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Lord declares that "a great and marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men" (see D&C 4:1; 6:1; 11:1; 12:1; 14:1). All five of these revelations came in a five-month period from February to June 1829, at about the time the priesthood was being restored and less than a year before the Book of Mormon would be published and the church of Christ would be officially organized. It seems from the context of these latter-day revelations that the Lord expected us to understand that the "great and marvelous work" was then beginning in the early decades of the nineteenth century, not at some point yet future to us in the opening years of the twenty-first century.

In confirmation of that fact, the Lord told Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer in June 1829 that "by your hands I will work a marvelous work among the children of men" (D&C 18:44; see also D&C 121:12). If we believe the revelations, there will be a great and marvelous work yet to happen in this dispensation, greater and more marvelous than anything we have yet seen, but it does not seem accurate to say that the great and marvelous work does not also refer to what the Lord has already been accomplishing in the earth over the past 180 years.

The Lord sets His hand the second time.  In a vision given to the Prophet Joseph in January 1836, the Prophet used this very phrase to describe the restoration of the gospel when he referred to the death of his brother Alvin in November 1823, which occurred some six years before the restoration of the priesthood and reestablishment of the Church: "And [I] marveled how it was that he had obtained  an inheritance in that kingdom, seeing that he had departed this life before the Lord set his hand to gather Israel the second time" (D&C 137:6). In January 1833 the Prophet wrote, "The time has at last arrived when the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has set his hand again the second time to recover the remnants of his people" (Teachings, 14).

Gentiles reject the gospel after receiving it.  In the same January 1833 letter, the Prophet wrote of the gospel going to the gentiles in the meridian dispensation: "And the Gentiles received the covenant, and were grafted in from whence the chosen family were broken off; but the Gentiles have not continued in the goodness of God, but have departed from the faith that was once delivered to the Saints, and have broken the covenant in which their fathers were established (see Isaiah 24:5); and have become high-minded, and have not feared; therefore, but few of them will be gathered with the chosen family. Have not the pride, high-mindedness, and unbelief of the Gentiles, provoked the Holy One of Israel to withdraw His Holy Spirit from them, and send forth His judgments to scourge them for their wickedness? This is certainly the case" (Teachings, 15).

The Prophet in this missive clearly refers to a rejection of the gospel by the gentiles as an already accomplished fact in that day, either an instance of the prophecy already being fulfilled or an instance of multiple fulfillments of the prophecy. He says that not many gentiles will be gathered, suggesting that the millions of Latter-day Saints gathered over the past 180 years have been primarily from scattered Israel.

Israel receives the gospel.  Isaiah and the prophets in the Book of Mormon may preserve the distinction that Latter-day Saints are those "who are identified with the Gentiles" (D&C 109:60), as the Prophet Joseph prayed in the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple, but the Lord apparently does not always maintain that distinction in the latter-day revelations: "For ye are the children of Israel, and of the seed of Abraham" (D&C 103:17), the Lord said of the Saints in Missouri in February 1834. A few months later, in June 1834, the Lord refers to the Latter-day Saints as "the army of Israel" (D&C 105: 26, 30).

"Thou shalt preach the fulness of my gospel," the Lord said in a January 1831 revelation, "which I have sent forth in these last days, the covenant which I have sent forth to recover my people, which are of the house of Israel" (D&C 39:11). In another revelation, in August 1831, the Lord spoke of Edward Partridge as "a judge in Israel" (D&C 58:17; see also D&C 107:72, 76).

In the revelation through President Brigham Young, the Lord declared "the word and will of the Lord concerning the Camp of Israel in their journeying to the West" (D&C 136:1). In that revelation the Lord declares, "I am the Lord your God, even the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. . . . and my arm is stretched out in the last days, to save my people Israel" (D&C 136:21–22). In context, the Lord is clearly referring in this revelation to saving the Latter-day Saints, whom He calls "my people Israel," who were heading toward the Great Basin in the West.

Latter-day prophets, from the days of Joseph Smith down to our present day, have consistently referred to the gathering that has been going on for the past nearly two centuries as the gathering of Israel despite the fact that certain identifiable portions of the house of Israel (such as the Jews and the Ten Tribes) are yet to be gathered.

Many fight against Zion.  This has been the lot of the Latter-day Saints since the beginning of the Restoration. The fight may well intensify in the very end of times, before the Savior returns, but opposition and persecution has been characteristic of the entire latter-day dispensation, beginning as soon as Joseph walked out of the Sacred Grove and continuing in Missouri and later in Illinois and in Utah and on down to our present day, in some seasons more intense than others.

When the Saints were being driven from their lands in Missouri in the 1830s, the Lord referred to the enemies of the Church who were fighting against Zion and said concerning His people, "I do not require at their hands to fight the battles of Zion; for, as I said in a former commandment, even so I will fulfill—I will fight your battles" (D&C 105:14). Once again, the fighting against Zion appears to be one of those prophecies with multiple (or even ongoing) fulfillments.