In the Father’s “gift of his Son” (Ether 12:11)—a gift that keeps on giving—we observe the great “condescension of God” (1 Nephi 11:26) that underlies his plan of salvation and exaltation. Born in the flesh as a babe in Bethlehem (beit lehem, “the House of Bread”), Jehovah, God of the Old Testament, manifests himself to […]
If you have ever ventured to discuss some aspect of Isaiah’s prophecies with someone who was unacquainted with it, you may have inadvertently provoked the sometimes hostile response of “That’s controversial!” or “That isn’t in the manual!” or “I haven’t heard that before!”—as if what they haven’t heard before can’t be true, or that the
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The prophetic construct of a “Messiah Son of Joseph” that relies on rabbinical interpretations of Zechariah and other prophets was pounced on by many Ephraimite Gentiles when popularized by Joseph Klausner in his book, The Messianic Idea in Israel. To them, resemblances of this hypothetical figure to the prophet Joseph Smith were too good to
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When Isaiah asks God’s people of our day, “You have heard the whole vision [hazut kullah]; how is it you do not proclaim it?” (Isaiah 48:6), he is predicting the Ephraimite Gentiles’ neglect of his end-time prophecies whose understanding would most empower them through the time the world has now entered. When he adds, “For
Vague ideas exist about the so-called “gathering” or “gathering of Israel,” but do we really know how the scriptures define what this is? The same applies to the idea of “hastening the work.” As both are an integral part of the same end-time scenario, and as neither has yet occurred according to their scriptural definitions,
Book of Mormon examples of the Davidic Covenant in action exist for anyone who wants a clear idea of how it operates. Without its end-time reinstitution among the Ephraimite Gentiles, the prophesied gathering and restoration of the house of Israel—Jews, Ten Tribes, and Lamanites—cannot occur. Nor can the coming in glory of Jehovah/Jesus to reign
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Because people’s spiritual awareness is proportional to the purity of their lives—to the degree they live by God’s divine laws—one can rarely say he knows God until he does so experientially through that process. The opposite is to never know God. When worldliness becomes the norm, it shuts out people’s ability to reach him and
When a corrupt few come to power who are upheld by the many—who themselves are on the high road to corruption—they can’t expect the few not to exercise controls over the many contrary to the latter’s expectations when their own lawlessness demands it. Nor—under those same ostensibly lawful auspices—can the many expect the few not
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We can observe a huge difference between “searching” the words of Isaiah and not doing so in responses to the question and answer in Doctrine & Covenant 113:5–6: “What is the root of Jesse spoken of in the 10th verse of the 11th chapter? Behold, thus saith the Lord, it is a descendant of Jesse,
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When first learning how the prophecy of Isaiah informs us today, it is important to understand four basic points. (1) That Isaiah spoke simultaneously of things that “have been”—in own his day or soon thereafter—and also of what “shall be” at the coming of the Lord (3 Nephi 23:3). In other words, even the purely
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Hugh Nibley used to tell of his grandfather who served in the church’s First Presidency in the early twentieth century that he personally knew of no one who had seen an angel, and that if one should appear to him he would “jump out of that window!” Almost a century earlier, the prophet Joseph Smith
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An eminent danger in following a man rather than Jesus Christ is that people so habituated who become disillusioned with one leader will simply transfer their allegiance to another. As false christs and false prophets will be the order of the day (Matthew 24:24), these will find fertile soil among persons who aren’t grounded in
