=1. Gathering Now in Progress.=--The Latter-day Saints "are
building up stakes of Zion in the Rocky Mountain valleys, and in
this way are fulfilling predictions of the ancient prophets.
Isaiah hath it written, 'And it shall come to pass in the last
days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established
in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the
hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall
go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the
Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of
his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go
forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem' (Isaiah
ii, 2-3). It is remarkable how minutely the Latter-day Saints are
fulfilling the terms of this prophecy: 1. They are building the
temples of God in the tops of the mountains, so that the house of
the Lord is truly where Isaiah saw it would be. 2. The Saints
engaged in this work are people gathered from nearly all the
nations under heaven, so that all nations are flowing unto the
house of the Lord in the top of the mountains. 3. The people who
receive the gospel in foreign lands joyfully say to their
relatives and friends: Come ye, and let us go up to the house of
the Lord, and he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in
his paths."--Roberts' _Outlines of Ecclesiastical History_, p.
409.
=2. Israel a Chosen People.=--"The promise to Abram that he
should become a great nation, has been fulfilled in his chosen
seed occupying the land of Palestine, as such, for fifteen
hundred years. It will again be fulfilled when they become a
nation on that land forever. The history of the eastern
hemisphere for the two thousand years which intervened between
the calling of Abraham and the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Romans, witnesses that every nation that fought against Israel,
or in any way oppressed them, passed away. Time will show the
same general result from the destruction of Jerusalem to the
millennium. The Prophet Isaiah, speaking of the time when the
Lord should favor Israel, said, 'All they that were incensed
against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as
nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish' (xli, 11).
'I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and
they shall be drunken with their own blood' (xlix, 27). 'I have
taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of
the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink of it again: but I
will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have
said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over.'"--_A Compendium
of the Doctrines of the Gospel_, by Elders Franklin D. Richards
and James A. Little, pp. 246-247.
=3. Israel Among the Nations.=--"When we reflect that it is
thirty-two centuries since the enemies of Israel began to oppress
them in the land of Canaan, that about one-third of the time they
were a people in that land they were more or less in bondage to
their enemies; that seven hundred years before the coming of
Christ the ten tribes were scattered throughout western Asia;
that we have no record that any have as yet returned to the land
of their inheritance; that nearly six hundred years before
Christ, the Babylonish captivity took place, and that, according
to the Book of Esther, only a small part of the Jews ever
returned, but were scattered through the 127 provinces of the
Persian empire; that Asia was the hive from which swarmed the
nomadic tribes who over-ran Europe; that at the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Romans the Jews were scattered over the known
world; we may well ask the question, Does not Israel to-day
constitute a large proportion of the human
family?"--_Compendium_, by Elders F. D. Richards and James A.
Little, p. 90.