Question: I have heard from the pulpit that the power of God has descended on the Latter-day Saints in fulfillment of Nephi’s words in 1 Nephi 14. Does that agree with what Nephi taught?
Answer: The verse you refer to states, “And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory” (1 Nephi 14:14).
According to the context of this passage, that is the time when the great and abominable church of the devil gathers multitudes “among all the nations of the Gentiles” to make war against the saints of the Lamb—at which time God’s wrath is poured out upon the great and abominable church, causing wars and rumors of wars throughout the earth (1 Nephi 14:13, 15).
Those events don’t occur until after there has taken place a great and “everlasting” division among the Gentiles. Namely, between those who repent and those who harden their hearts when presented with the true nature of the Lord’s great and marvelous work. That work is the house of Israel’s restoration in fulfillment of the Father’s covenant with them (1 Nephi 14:1–8).
The expression “power of God,” moreover, is limited in the scriptures to special circumstances—as when a prophet translates sacred records or sees in vision (Mormon 8:15–16; Ether 5:3–4; Doctrine and Covenants 1:29; 8:7). Those very things characterize the prophecies of Isaiah and of Book of Mormon prophets that depict such events (2 Nephi 30:8–10; 3 Nephi 21:9–11).
They also follow a sequence in what is called the Day of Power: “First, the rich and the learned, the wise and the noble; And after that cometh the day of my power; then shall the poor, the lame, and the blind, and the deaf, come in unto the marriage of the Lamb, and partake of the supper of the Lord, prepared for the great day to come” (Doctrine & Covenants 58:9–11).
That “great day to come” is the “Day of Jehovah”—God’s Day of Judgment—of destruction of the wicked and deliverance of the righteous (Isaiah 13:6, 9). According to the terms of his covenant, however, it is only when God tests his people to the utmost, and they are threatened with their lives, that he reverses their circumstances, as Nephi describes in 1 Nephi 14:14.
A key player in the events of that time is God’s end-time servant, whom God “hid” from the world as an essential element of his testing his end-time people (Isaiah 49:1–2; 55:3–5; 3 Nephi 21:9–11). The prophet Joseph Smith spoke of this latter-day David in reference to God’s Day of Power, inferring that in that day the house of Israel would reconvert to their God:
“Christ, in the days of His flesh, proposed to make a covenant with them, but they rejected Him and His proposals, and in consequence thereof, they were broken off, and no covenant was made with them at that time. But their unbelief has not rendered the promise of God of none effect: no, for there was another day limited in David, which was the day of His power; and then His people, Israel, should be a willing people” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p 14). See also a second prophecy of the latter-day David by Joseph Smith in TPJS, p 339).
