Modern Revelation and the Gathering of Israel

It has been my privilege to represent the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon more than one mission and in more than one nation; and I feel that God has blessed me in the labor in which I am engaged. The longer I live the more fully and thoroughly do I understand the great and mighty things which are being done in the earth in this the greatest dispensation that the earth ever saw. The Latter-day Saints are looked upon as a peculiar people, and they are the most peculiar people to be found upon the face of the earth. In standing before this congregation, I see people before me who came from a great many different nations of the earth and the blood of the different nationalities is being blended together in the people growing up in these mountains that will yet be acknowledged as the greatest in strength, in wisdom and in the knowledge of the affairs of God of any people who ever lived upon the earth. ¶

I say to the young men and young ladies, Does it ever dawn upon you how much you owe to the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Does it ever come to your mind where the Gospel found your mother, where it found your father, where the Gospel of Christ made them acquainted with each other, and the faith in that Gospel gave you a lovely or a happy home in these valleys of the mountains? And yet the Gospel has done this; and if there is a people upon the earth who should realize that they are not of the world, and therefore should love one another, it is the people called Latter-day Saints. No matter what your associations may be with others, I would have you understand that as a people you are a distinct people in and of yourselves, that you have been brought out of the world, that you are not of the world; and if the words and promises of Christ can be relied upon, you are not beloved by the world. ¶

The people of the earth at the present time occupy the same position that the people have in various ages of the world when God has had Prophets upon the earth. In fact, the sin, the condemnation of the people of this earth always has been that they stood ready to revere the memory of dead Prophets, to worship the memory of the people of God who were in their silent graves, and who had lived in former dispensations, while they refused to listen to Prophets of God who were sent unto them. In the days of Noah, the people rejected the revelation that God gave to them through that great Prophet, and it was to their condemnation that they rejected the revelation of God which was sent to them. In the days of our Master and His Apostles, it was the condemnation of the people who lived then, that they rejected Christ, that they turned a deaf ear to Peter, James and John although they were willing to worship the memory of a Moses, of a Noah, or an Abraham, or any of the other Prophets who lived in former dispensations. Yet they rejected the message sent to them by those living prophets, and this was their condemnation. Mankind has always believed in ancient revelation, and in every dispensation they have rejected, and reject now, immediate revelation, which alone can bring eternal life and salvation in the presence of God to any people who lives upon the earth, or who have ever lived upon the face of the earth. Belief in former revelation never did and never will save an individual; but belief in modern revelation has always been the test of life and salvation when God has had a people upon the earth. ¶

Not long ago it was my privilege to spend an evening with a Rabbi, a very learned man who had read something in an interview in a newspaper which had attracted his attention, and I received an invitation to go to him; and during the evening he began to talk about the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. I asked him what his idea of God was and to my surprise he defined the deity very much in the same way, in fact in the same way, as He is looked upon by modern Christianity today, that He was a being without a body, without parts, without passions; that He did not exist in any shape, that He was found in everything. And when he was through I asked him the difference between that God and the God of an Ingersoll, who believed that nature was the only God. And I said to him that it seemed to me that the only difference between the Jews of today and modern Christianity of today, concerning a belief in God, and the followers of an Ingersoll or a Bradlaugh, was that one of them called it God and the other called it Nature. And then I opened the Bible, and I said, "Now you believe in the prophecies of Moses?" "Yes." "Well," said I, "here is a prophecy uttered by Moses, found in one of the books of Moses, which says that Israel will be scattered among the nations of the earth, that they will degenerate to such an extent that they will not believe in a God who can eat or speak or smell." "Now," said I, "after the definition that you have given me, that the Supreme Being in your estimation and in the estimation of the Jews, which is the same as the estimation of modern Christianity, that He has no body, no parts, no passions, seems to me as though we saw that day when Israel has not only been scattered among the nations of the earth but that they have actually degenerated to such an extent that they do not believe in a God who can eat or speak or smell; and it also seems to me as though that Being believed in by Moses, by Abraham, by Isaac and by Jacob, your fathers -- that in Him they did believe in a God who could eat, who could speak, and who could smell, and in whose being and presence and likeness we, His children, were created when we were placed upon the earth. I do not believe I ever had a greater illustration of the fulfillment of a prophecy than came to my mind that night, when I was talking to that Rabbi, supposed to be a minister of the Gospel of ancient Judah, through which source has come to us the mighty revelations of God as He gave them to His children upon the earth, which have been permitted to come down through the stream of time unto us. ¶

Now the Gospel of Christ has been restored to the earth, in fulfillment of prophecy. Once more mankind is clothed with authority, and those bearing that authority are sent out to all the nations of the earth, and their business is to gather Israel from where they have been scattered, bring them here and teach them how to worship the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and of Jacob, that they may once more stand upon the earth as their fathers stood, and say that they believe in "a God who can eat and speak and smell," and who does speak to His children upon the earth, and believe in modern revelation as their fathers did. May God bless you, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶