How Isaiah Defines the Gathering of Israel

Because literary devices transform the entire Book of Isaiah into an end-time scenario—in which the events of Isaiah’s day act as types and shadows of the end of the world—the gathering of Israel, as Isaiah and other prophets define it, is an end-time event. In other words, it occurs within a window of only a few years at the time God’s judgments are coming upon the world.

In his vision of the end from the beginning, Isaiah saw Israel’s gathering as part of a twofold end-time scenario: (1) of God’s destruction of the world’s wicked inhabitants, all who refuse to repent after being warned; and (2) of God’s deliverance and restoration of the house of Israel, whom the Book of Mormon defines as the Jews, Israel’s Ten Tribes, and Lehi’s descendants.

At the time Babylon—the world at large in its corrupt state—is thrown down “as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah” (Isaiah 13:1, 11, 19), that is the time God’s elect are to “Go forth out of Babylon and flee from Chaldea,” participating in a new wandering in the wilderness to Zion (Isaiah 48:20–21; 52:11–12). God’s “trumpet” announces this event (Isaiah 18:3; 27:12–13).

Persons in the spiritual category of seraphs or translated beings gather them to Zion just as the angels of God led Lot and his family out of Sodom when destruction threatened (Genesis 19:12–17): “The righteous disappear, and no man gives it a thought; the godly are gathered out, but no one perceives that from impending calamity the righteous are withdrawn” (Isaiah 57:1).

God’s end-time servant initiates Israel’s gathering in a new exodus to Zion: “In that day the sprig of Jesse, who stands for an ensign to the peoples, shall be sought by the Gentiles, and his rest shall be glorious. . . . He will raise the ensign to the nations and assemble the exiled of Israel; he will gather the scattered of Judah from the four directions of the earth” (Isaiah 11:10 12, 15).

The spiritual kings and queens of the Ephraimite Gentiles who attain a translated state help gather Israel: “Thus says my Lord Jehovah: I will lift up my hand to the nations, raise my ensign to the peoples; and they will bring your sons in their bosoms and carry your daughters on their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers, queens your nursing mothers” (Isaiah 49:22–23).

As did Jesus’ three Nephite disciples, these kings and queens become “as the angels of God,” so that no adverse elements can stand in their way: “When you cross the waters, I will be with you; [when you traverse] the rivers, you shall not be overwhelmed. Though you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned; its flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2; cf. 3 Nephi 28:30).

No human power can stop them: “Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bring your offspring from the east and gather you from the west; I will say to the north, Give up! to the south, Withhold not! Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth—all who are called by my name, whom I have formed, molded and wrought or my own glory” (Isaiah 43:5–7).

As at Israel’s ancient exodus, joy abounds: “Was it not you who dried up the Sea, the waters of the mighty deep, and made of ocean depths a way by which the redeemed might pass? Let the ransomed of Jehovah return! Let them come singing to Zion, their heads crowned with everlasting joy; let them obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing flee away” (Isaiah 51:10–11).