The Greatest Gathering in History Is Coming

The gathering of Israel is one of the most consistently repeated promises in all of scripture. Isaiah returns to it again and again. Jeremiah declared it would be so significant that it would eclipse the Exodus from Egypt in the memory of the world. The Book of Mormon opens with a family fleeing Jerusalem as part of a scattering and closes with a vision of the gathering that will reverse it. Joseph Smith called it the greatest work on earth.

Most people who know anything about it think it is already happening. They point to the modern state of Israel and the Jewish return to Palestine. They point to the growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across the globe. And they are not wrong that these things are part of the picture. But what the prophets described goes so far beyond anything we have seen yet that what we are witnessing now is the opening movement of a symphony that has barely begun.

The gathering the prophets foresaw will be so vast, so miraculous, and so unmistakable that Jeremiah's comparison to the Exodus will finally make sense. We are not there yet. But we are closer than most people realize, and the signs of its acceleration are visible for those who know what to look for.

What the Gathering Actually Is

Before you can understand the timeline, you have to understand what the gathering actually involves. Most people think of it in purely spiritual terms: people join the Church, they make covenants, they gather into congregations. That is real, and it has been happening for nearly two centuries. But the prophets describe something more than a spiritual metaphor. They describe a physical reality.

Isaiah sees caravans on highways, ships crossing oceans, and multitudes streaming toward places of safety. He describes highways being cast up in the desert and across the depths of the sea. He describes ice flowing down at the presence of God's servants. He describes the islands of the sea gathering. He describes kings and queens acting as nursing fathers and nursing mothers to the covenant people coming home. This is not a description of people joining a church in their local community. This is a description of literal, physical movement on a global scale toward actual places of refuge.

The gathering has two dimensions that work together: the spiritual gathering comes first, and the physical gathering follows. You cannot gather to Zion physically if you have not first gathered to Christ spiritually. The covenants made at baptism and in the temple are what create the bonds that make physical gathering meaningful. No one whose heart is still in Babylon will even be in Zion. The entry itself requires a transformation that Babylon cannot produce.

Why the Gathering Has to Be This Large

Here is something that stops most people when they first encounter it. The blood of Israel — the covenant lineage going back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — was not contained to the Jewish people after the scattering. When the Assyrians conquered the ten northern tribes over 2,700 years ago, they used a deliberate military tactic: they broke the conquered people apart and scattered them across the empire to prevent organized resistance. Then they brought in other peoples to replace them.

Those ten tribes intermarried across centuries. They migrated. Their descendants spread across every continent. People living today in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas carry Abrahamic covenant blood in their veins and have absolutely no idea. They have never heard of Abraham. They have never seen a temple. They have no knowledge that promises were made thousands of years ago that apply directly to them.

Four corners of the earth. Not a regional regathering. Not a return of a small remnant. Every scattered branch of the house of Israel, from every direction on the globe. This is why the prophesied gathering will dwarf anything we have witnessed. The blood of Israel is quite literally everywhere, and when the Spirit confirms to those people who they actually are — that they are covenant children of God and that the time has come to claim their inheritance — the response will stun the world.

The Timeline: Three Phases

The gathering does not happen all at once. Scripture describes a progression with distinct phases, each building on the one before it.

The first phase is already underway. For nearly two hundred years, the tribe of Ephraim has been doing what Ephraim was always designated to do: gathering Israel. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is comprised primarily of the house of Ephraim, and the missionary work of these two centuries has been the opening movement of the great gathering. It has been real, it has been significant, and it has been building something most members do not yet fully appreciate.

The second phase begins with a specific triggering event. Something happens — described in detail in the prophets — that opens doors for missionary work on a scale never before possible. From that moment, the pace of the gathering accelerates beyond anything the first phase achieved. Missionaries from Zion go to nations previously closed to the gospel. The Spirit works on the hearts of people carrying covenant blood they knew nothing about. Hundreds of millions respond. The gathering is no longer a slow accumulation. It becomes a flood.

The third phase is the culmination. At the opening of the sixth seal, 144,000 high priests — drawn from all twelve tribes of Israel, prepared and sealed — go forth with power unlike anything since the days of Enoch. Mountains move. Highways are cast up in the desert and across the depths of the sea. Ice flows down at their presence as prophesied. The elements obey their commands. They go to every nation, every isolated community, every place where covenant people have never heard the gospel, and they gather the final harvest before the seventh seal opens.

The 144,000 did not appear from nowhere. They are the fruit of the gathering work accomplished across the first two phases, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. While war rages and famine spreads and the world descends into chaos, missionaries from Zion are finding the scattered remnants of all twelve tribes and bringing them home.

The Two Jerusalems

The gathering flows toward two centers, not one. This is something most people — including most Christians — do not realize. The prophets describe a New Jerusalem built in America as the center place of Zion, and the old Jerusalem in Israel as a second holy city. Both must be established. Both play distinct roles in what is coming.

The New Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri is where the Political Kingdom of God will be established — the headquarters of Zion from which the Lord will ultimately reign. The old Jerusalem is where the Jewish remnant gathers after their spiritual conversion, where the temple is built, and where Christ appears to them in power and great glory at a moment that will finally answer a two-thousand-year-old question about who their Messiah actually is.

Both gatherings require a prior spiritual conversion. The Jewish return to the land we see today is not the fulfillment of the prophesied gathering. Jacob was explicit: they must first come to the knowledge of their Redeemer, and then they are gathered to the lands of their inheritance. The modern state of Israel, however significant in other ways, gathered for political and cultural reasons, not because its people accepted Jesus Christ as their Messiah. The prophesied gathering of Judah is still ahead.

What to Watch For

If the gathering is going to accelerate in the way scripture describes, what are the signs that the second phase is beginning? Several things stand out as markers worth watching.

The first and most important sign is the calling of the servant and the establishment of the Political Kingdom of God. The Book of Mormon identifies this as the specific event that signals the Father's work has commenced among the Gentiles. It is the trigger that sets everything else in motion. Traditional missionary work will continue before and after this event — it has been building toward this moment for two centuries — but when God's servant is called, set apart, and the kingdom is established, the gathering enters a phase no prior generation has witnessed. The first of the four horsemen is directly connected to this event — his going forth conquering and to conquer is the establishment of that kingdom, and everything that follows flows from it.

Watch for missionary work opening in nations currently closed to it. When nations that have historically excluded missionaries suddenly become accessible — not through slow diplomatic progress but through dramatic, unexpected political change — that is a sign the second phase is fully underway.

Watch for the pace of conversion to accelerate dramatically. The current growth of the Church, while real, is modest compared to what the prophets describe. When hundreds of millions begin responding to the gospel — particularly in areas where the Church has had little or no previous presence — you are watching the second phase in real time.

Watch for the fall of Babylon's economic system. As we examined in Babylon the Great: The Economic System Behind the Name, the collapse of the world's corrupt commercial order is not the end of the story — it is the moment when the command to "come out of her" becomes urgent and literal. The gathering to Zion and the fall of Babylon are not separate events. They happen in the same prophetic window, and one makes the other both necessary and possible.

Watch for stakes of Zion being organized in unexpected places. The Lord has been emphatic through the living prophet that stakes are places of safety, and that strong stakes throughout the world are essential. The establishment of Zion is not only about Missouri. It is about a network of covenant communities on every continent that together form the tent of which Jackson County is the center stake.

And watch for the triggering event itself — the thing that sets all of this in motion. I have written about when the Father's work commences and what 3 Nephi 21 identifies as the sign that the great gathering has officially begun. That sign involves a specific individual, a specific event, and a specific sequence that the Book of Mormon describes with remarkable precision.

The Lost Tribes Return With Their Records

One of the most extraordinary dimensions of the gathering involves what the lost tribes bring with them when they return. We have assumed for generations that we know almost nothing about what happened to those ten tribes after the Assyrian conquest. That assumption is correct on our end. But it is not correct on theirs.

The lost tribes have records. They have histories. They have accounts of prophets who ministered among them across thousands of years of wandering. When they return, they will bring volumes that will add to our understanding of God's dealings with His covenant people in ways we cannot yet imagine. The Doctrine and Covenants promises this plainly, and it is one of the most underappreciated elements of what the gathering actually involves.

We have one Testament from the Jews. We have another from a branch of Joseph's family in the Americas. We are waiting for the records from the ten tribes, and when they arrive, the scriptural record will be complete in a way it has not been since the scattering began.

Where Do You Fit in This?

The gathering is not something that happens to other people while you watch. The prophets make clear that every person who has received the gospel and made covenants is already part of it. Every testimony shared, every family strengthened in the gospel, every person brought to Christ is part of the work that Ephraim has been doing for two centuries and that is about to accelerate beyond anything we have known.

The call to gather spiritually — to come out of the philosophies and priorities of Babylon, to build Zion conditions wherever you are right now — is already sounding. The physical call will come through the living prophet when the time arrives, and you will not need to guess. But your readiness to respond to that call is being determined right now by what you are choosing today.

If you are not a member of the Church reading this, the answer to whether this applies to you is yes — absolutely yes. The 144,000 are not sent only to current Church members. They go to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, specifically to find the billions who carry covenant blood they know nothing about. You may be among those they are coming to find. The question is whether you will be spiritually prepared to recognize what they are offering when they arrive.

The gathering of Israel is not background scenery in the prophetic picture. It is the central mission — the thing the dragon has been fighting from the beginning, the thing every prophet pointed toward, the fulfillment of every covenant God made with Abraham. Understanding it changes how you read the structure of Revelation, how you interpret current events, and how you understand your own place in what is coming.

The full prophetic picture — including who triggers the second phase, what event sets the acceleration in motion, and how it connects to the first horseman of Revelation — is laid out in detail in The First Horseman: Donald Trump and Biblical Prophecy. The evidence is more specific than most people expect, and it is unfolding right now.

Kelly Smith is the author of The First Horseman: Donald Trump and Biblical Prophecy. He is a lifelong student of biblical prophecy and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.