The type and precedent of an end-time great reversal of circumstances among God’s people happened when Israel’s natural lineages rejected their Messiah and his gospel turned to the Gentiles. Alluding to this, Jesus said to the chief priests and Pharisees, “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof“ (Matthew 21:43).
Speaking to the Gentiles about the Jews’ blindness, Paul says, “Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid! Rather, through their fall has salvation come to the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy. But if their fall has become the enriching of the world, and their diminishing the enriching of the Gentiles, how much more so shall their fullness?” (Romans 11:11–12).
“For if God didn’t spare the natural branches, take heed lest he also not spare you! See, then, the goodness and severity of God. On those who fell, severity, but toward you, goodness—if you continue in his goodness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off. And they, if they abide not still in unbelief, will be grafted back in. For God is able to graft them in again (Romans 11:21–23).
“For if you, being cut out of the olive tree that is wild by nature, was grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree, how much more shall these, who are the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree?” (Romans 11:24). When? “When the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Romans 11:25). On that occasion occurs the great end-time reversal of circumstances:
“At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fullness of my gospel, and shall be lifted up in the pride of their hearts above all nations, and above all the people of the whole earth, and shall be filled with all manner of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret abominations; and if they shall do all those things, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, behold, saith the Father, I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them.
“And then will I remember my covenant which I have made unto my people, O house of Israel, and I will bring my gospel unto them. And I will show unto thee, O house of Israel, that the Gentiles shall not have power over you; but I will remember my covenant unto you, O house of Israel, and ye shall come unto the knowledge of the fulness of my gospel” (3 Nephi 16:10–12).
Identifying this as an end-time sequence of events, Jesus follows with, “Then the words of the prophet Isaiah shall be fulfilled, which say: Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing, for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem; for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God” (3 Nephi 16:17–21).
The role of God’s “arm”—his end-time servant—in this reversal of circumstances is key: “The Lord God will proceed to make bare his arm in the eyes of all the nations, in bringing about his covenants and his gospel unto those who are of the house of Israel” (1 Nephi 22:11; cf. Isaiah 51–11; 52:10). When grafted in, that new nation brings forth good fruit (Jacob 61–76).
