Lest our hearts fail us and we assume we can’t bridge the divide between where we are today and where we need to be to restore the house of Israel—the Jews, Ten Tribes, and Lamanites—let us recall that the Lord will bring to pass a compression of events. When the days come—in his “own due time” (3 Nephi 5:23–25; 20:29)—for him to “hasten his work” (Isaiah 5:19; 66:22), “those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:22). As he says, “I will cut my work short in righteousness, for the days come that I will send forth judgment unto victory” (Doctrine & Covenants 52:11).
We note past compressions of time when “the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day” as Joshua’s army smote an alliance of Amorites (Joshua 10:12–14); when Zeniff’s modest army battled the Lamanites “in the strength of the Lord” and slaughtered them ten to one (Mosiah 9:17–18; 10:10–11); and when Ammon—“in the strength of the Lord” (Alma 20:4)—fought off a band of Lamanites who scattered the king’s flocks (Alma 17:36–37). Was this a slippage from telestial to terrestrial time for those who call upon God?
Even as we live in a day in which Babylon’s norms permeate our culture and the sickness of Sodom seeps into society’s every nook and cranny—among “both old and young” as in ancient times (Genesis 19:4)—yet we know that somewhere today there also exist the equivalent of “seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him,” as in the days of Elijah (1 Kings 19:18). Like Isaiah, such souls will affirm, “I will wait for the Lord, who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and expect him” (Isaiah 8:17).
Of them, it is said, “They who hope in the Lord shall be renewed in strength: they shall ascend as on eagles’ wings; they shall run without wearying, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31); “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing come from the presence of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus Christ, who before was preached to you, whom the heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:19–21).
Indeed, the house of Israel’s restitution (1 Nephi 15:20; 2 Nephi 30:8) forms an integral part of that same “restoration of all things” (Doctrine & Covenants 27:6), which includes the Lord’s servant’s rebuilding his temple in Jerusalem (Isaiah 44:28) and the two witnesses prophesying to the Jews: “They are two prophets that are to be raised up to the Jewish nation in the last days, at the time of the restoration, and to prophesy to the Jews after they are gathered and have built the city of Jerusalem in the land of their fathers” (Doctrine & Covenants 77:15; Revelation 11:3).
So rapidly—within a seven-year period—will the thirty end-time events unfold that Isaiah predicts are patterned after ancient events, we shall see them fall like dominos once the first is set in motion. When God’s judgments are poured out upon the world without measure, that is the time his servants will go forth to restore his people of the house of Israel. That hastening of the “work”—the Lord’s “great and marvelous work”—the scriptures define as the restoration of the house of Israel that builds upon the precursory work accomplished by the prophet Joseph Smith.
At that time shall the house of Israel not say—those who are restored to God’s covenant: “This is our God, whom we expected would save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us joyfully celebrate his salvation!” (Isaiah 25:9); “I praise you, O Lord. Although you have been angry with me, your anger is turned away and you have consoled me. In the God of my salvation I will trust without fear; for the Lord was my strength and my song when he became my salvation. Then shall you rejoice in drawing water from the fountains of salvation” (Isaiah 12:1–3)?
