A dear friend received three signs of the end-time from Elder Neal A. Maxwell before his death more than twenty years ago, which I cite here with my friend’s permission:
First, there will occur division in the nation followed by division in the church. Second, a power in the Middle East will gain the capacity to nuke Israel. And third, utilities in America will go down.
Isaiah’s prophecies agree with all three signs. Using the name “Egypt” as a codename of end-time America, Isaiah predicts such a division in this nation: “I will stir up the Egyptians against the Egyptians; they will fight brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor, city against city and state against state” (Isaiah 19:2). He depicts the division among God’s end-time people by contrasting the Ephraimites who Covenant with Death with the house of Israel that makes a Covenant of Life at the time the Lord raises up his servant David (Isaiah 28:15, 18; 55:3–4).
Isaiah’s depiction of an end-time destruction appears to depict nuclear war: “Wickedness shall be set ablaze like a fire, and briars and thorns shall it consume; it shall ignite the jungle forests, and they shall billow upward in mushrooming clouds of smoke” (Isaiah 9:18). As the saying, “Upon my house shall it begin” (Doctrine & Covenants 112:25) includes also the Jews, such nuclear war may start in Israel: “She shall be chastened by Jehovah of Hosts with thunderous quakings, resounding booms, tempestuous blasts and conflagrations of devouring flame” (Isaiah 29:6).
Isaiah also depicts the decline of the nation of God’s people into chaos and privation: “Should one look to the land, there shall be a distressing gloom, for the daylight shall be darkened by an overhanging mist” (Isaiah 5:30); “Surely, while they utter such words devoid of light, they roam about embittered by hunger; and when they are hungry, they become enraged and, gazing upward, curse their king and their God. They will look to the land, but there shall be a depressing scene of anguish and gloom; and thus are they banished into outer darkness” (Isaiah 8:20–22).
