The following post has been a labor of love over several years. By the time I finished it was 17 pages in a Google Doc. With no real way to cut it down and an acknowledgement that no one is likely to read a 17 page blog post I'm cutting it up to publish it in several parts (7 in total) in order to make it more likely that you'll reach the end. 😉
This is Part 1: The Prophecy.
When Mosiah, last king of the Nephites, was compelled to find a new ruler to replace himself he decided to establish an entirely new type of government – one that has similarities to those established among many modern nations of the Americas in our time. To the people he governed he said:
Therefore, choose you by the voice of this people, judges, that ye may be judged according to the laws which have been given you by our fathers, which are correct, and which were given them by the hand of the Lord.
Mosiah 29:25
Mosiah sets up a truly democratic society: one governed entirely by the voice of the people and whose laws are enacted and enforced by elected officials. With this announcement he gives the following commentary behind the rationale for setting up such a government:
Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.
And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land.
Mosiah 29:26-27
What Mosiah is essentially saying is that generally speaking we can trust people to correctly govern themselves because once they are taught the rules by which to live the vast majority of people will choose to do what’s right.
A Warning
In addition to the great – almost God-like – wisdom of allowing a people to govern themselves by common consent there is in this passage a warning message: When the time comes that the people of any nation chooses to blatantly and unashamedly, unremorsefully, or unrepentantly desire and endorse public policy that is contrary to God’s standards for living life, then will that nation be ready to receive the judgements and destructions He has promised those who set Him and His counsels at naught. This is a pattern in God’s dealings with mankind from the beginning and the unpleasant outcome of dismissing God’s instruction is something we have the potential to avoid if that’s what we want to choose.
This warning makes it easy for us to see the tell tale signs of a nation which is becoming “ripe for destruction” – and more importantly to evaluate if we are one of them. Once we have adequately assessed ourselves and recognized our standing in this regard we can then choose to bring ourselves back in line with His righteous instructions (if that is our desire) and thus avoid God’s wrath altogether – kind of like Nineveh did.
The Covenant
Several years ago now (spring 2019) the Spirit directed me to read, study, and consider the prophecies of the Savior Jesus Christ in the book of 3 Nephi in the Book of Mormon. In doing so I discovered they related to Mosiah’s words in an astonishingly timely and accurate way. In an attempt to find a specific passage for an altogether different blog post (yet to be finished) I began reading and listening in 3 Nephi 16 through about 3 Nephi 26. As I listened I noticed that the prophecies of the Lord concerning the house of Israel and the Gentiles in the days before His second coming are a strong reflection of the state of the world in our day – particularly here in the western hemisphere – and recognized in that reflection a strong connection to Mosiah’s warning, which we’ll get back to at the end of this series.
The Lord begins His prophecies in 3 Nephi 16 by quoting and expounding the prophecies of Isaiah. He says:
And I command you that ye shall write these sayings after I am gone, that if it so be that my people at Jerusalem, they who have seen me and been with me in my ministry, do not ask the Father in my name, that they may receive a knowledge of you by the Holy Ghost, and also of the other tribes whom they know not of, that these sayings which ye shall write shall be kept and shall be manifested unto the Gentiles, that through the fulness of the Gentiles, the remnant of their seed, who shall be scattered forth upon the face of the earth because of their unbelief, may be brought in, or may be brought to a knowledge of me, their Redeemer.
And then will I gather them in from the four quarters of the earth; and then will I fulfil the covenant which the Father hath made unto all the people of the house of Israel.
3 Nephi 16:4-5
From this passage we understand that to the Lord there are three groups of people: (1) His people (or the Jews at Jerusalem, in particular those who believed in and followed Him), plus (2) the remaining tribes of Israel (both groups together comprising the house of Israel as a whole), and (3) the Gentiles (those not descendant of Israel either in faith or family lineage). Although in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we generally speak of the house of Israel as all those who have entered the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through baptism regardless of background or family lineage, for reasons that will shortly become clear this cannot be the meaning in this prophecy.
We are reminded in this passage as well that God, the Father, made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which has yet to be completely fulfilled, and which the Savior will fulfill completely once His people (the Jews) are brought to embrace Him as their Redeemer and their God (which, by the way is happening today at an exciting rate).
According to Christ’s words in this passage, at the time of His visit to the Nephites the “other tribes” of Israel are already somewhere else on earth and His followers at Jerusalem are not aware of them, and the Jews – who at that time largely all lived in the vicinity of Jerusalem – will at some future point in time also be scattered throughout the world because they will not believe in Him as their Redeemer and their King.
To us in our day it should be readily apparent that this has indeed happened. The Jews are found everywhere in scattered pockets of communities among the general population of the world, and to this day they in large measure continue to believe that their Messiah is yet to come and not already come. Yet the covenants made between God and Israel still stand and one day those scattered of Israel (including the Jews) will be gathered together again by Him to the places He promised to give them. This gathering and the subsequent fulfillment of the covenant can only happen, however, after the Lord’s people (the Jews) return to their belief in Jesus Christ as their Redeemer and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
In order for that return of beliefs to take place it seems that, based on what the Lord says here, at some future time to this prophecy there must be some sort of exchange of beliefs between the Gentiles and the Lord’s scattered people – an exchange in which the “fulness” of the beliefs of the Gentiles has a dramatic impact on the beliefs of the Jews in a way that leads them to believe that Jesus Christ is their Redeemer and their God.
To be continued in Part 2: The Gentiles . . .
This is the end of Part 1: The Prophecy.
A Russty Follower of Christ 