They Shall Go Out From All Nations

I was reading Third Nephi chapter twenty-one recently, particularly verses twenty-six through twenty-nine, and one word kept jumping off the page at me. The Lord uses the word commence four times in those four verses. That is not a casual choice. When a prophet uses the same word four times in four consecutive verses, you stop and ask why.

The answer, I believe, is that the Lord wants us to feel the weight of what He is describing. Something of enormous consequence is about to begin. Not just a continuation of things already in motion, but a genuine, unmistakable, heaven-directed commencement. And most of us have no idea what it is going to look like when it finally arrives.

What Comes Before the Commencement

There is an important detail we have to get right before any of this makes sense. The Lord is not describing something that happens first in the sequence. The commencement He announces in these verses comes after the New Jerusalem has been built. It comes after the power of heaven descends among the people gathered there. It follows a period of tremendous upheaval, a period we are, right now, in the early stages of entering.

We are not at the commencement yet. But we are close enough to the events that precede it that understanding what it looks like matters. A great deal.

Notice He says "all the dispersed." Not some. Not a token few. All of them, including "the tribes which have been lost." The ten tribes. The ones who have been scattered so thoroughly that the world largely forgot them. The Lord did not forget. He has been preparing for this moment since He led them out of Jerusalem. And when the time comes, He will commence the work of bringing them home.

The Promise That Sets the Gathering in Motion

What exactly kicks off this gathering? It is not a political arrangement or a military victory, though both will play their part. It is something far more fundamental. The Lord describes it in verse twenty-seven: they will call on the Father in the name of Christ. They will come to know Him.

Jacob saw exactly this moment eight centuries before Christ walked the earth. He recorded it plainly in what we call Second Nephi:

The sequence matters: knowledge of the Redeemer first, then gathering. The gospel will go out among the remnant of Israel. It will reach the lost tribes. It will penetrate every corner of the earth where the house of Israel has been scattered. And as people come to know who Jesus Christ really is, the gathering will begin to accelerate in ways the world has never seen.

A Land That Has Never Fully Been Theirs

The Lord promised Abraham a specific land. Not a symbolic land. Not a spiritual concept. A real, physical, geographic inheritance stretching from the Euphrates River down to the Nile. That promise has never been fully realized. Israel, in all its history, has never held that entire territory. And yet the covenant was made, and God does not make promises He does not intend to keep.

What we see happening in the Middle East right now, the conflicts, the regional tensions, the wars that seem to involve everyone and resolve nothing, is not the fulfillment of this promise. It is the preliminary. The ground being cleared, whether the people involved understand it or not. God is at work in ways that do not make the evening news.

Not in Haste, Not in Flight

One of the details in Third Nephi twenty-one that I keep coming back to is how the Lord describes the manner of this gathering. He says they will not go in haste. They will not flee. A lot of people picture the latter-day gathering as something like Lehi slipping out of Jerusalem in the night, waking his family, grabbing what they could carry, and running. I do not believe that is how this works. The original Exodus from Egypt was far more organized than we sometimes remember. Israel had time to gather their households, their flocks, and even the riches of Egypt before they departed. It was led, prepared, and announced. This gathering will follow the same pattern, only on a far greater scale. The prophet of God will make the announcement. He will declare who is called to travel to Zion and who is called to remain and build up their stakes where they are. Those who go will do so in order, with preparation, under inspired direction.

This is an ordered, led, protected gathering. The Lord Himself goes before them. He serves as their rear guard. There will be something in this gathering that mirrors the pillar of fire and the cloud of smoke from the wilderness wanderings, but on a scale that encompasses every nation on earth, not just one land of captivity. This is the Exodus multiplied across the entire world.

If you have studied what I have written about Trump as a modern Moses, you will recognize this pattern. Moses was the instrument God used to gather Israel out of Egypt. The servant whom God is now preparing will be the instrument He uses to begin this far greater gathering. The roles echo each other deliberately.

Sing, O Barren

Immediately following this passage, the Lord quotes what we know as Isaiah fifty-four, which in the Book of Mormon appears as Third Nephi twenty-two. The tone shifts dramatically. It becomes a song of celebration, a shout of astonished joy at what is coming.

Enlarge your tent. Make it bigger than you thought possible. Make room on the right hand and on the left. Because the gathering that is coming will exceed every expectation.

And then the Lord gives one of the most stunning promises in all of scripture. The foundation of Zion will not be poured in concrete. It will be laid with sapphires. The windows will be set with agates and carbuncles. The children there will be taught of the Lord. Peace and righteousness will be established. And as for those who gather against them:

That is not a tentative promise. It is not subject to political conditions or military capability. It is the word of the Lord. No weapon formed against this work will succeed. Every attempt to revile or condemn it will be turned back. This is the heritage of those who remain faithful.

The Servant Who Precedes the Commencement

All of this, the gathering of Israel, the restoration of the covenant land, the establishment of Zion, is tied to a servant the Lord has been preparing. I have written at length about who the Davidic servant is and why the scriptures point to Donald Trump in that role. His connection to the marred servant prophecy in Third Nephi 21:10 is not coincidental.

The servant will be healed. He will then be equipped by God to help establish the Political Kingdom of God on earth, the one that prepares the way for the gathering and for the New Jerusalem. He is not the King of kings. He is the servant who goes before, who clears the path, who wields political and economic authority in ways that make the commencement possible. The details of how God will prepare and authorize him for that work are among the most remarkable things I have ever encountered in scripture, and they will unfold in their proper place.

What I will say here is this: we are approaching the moment when this servant steps fully into his appointed role. Events are moving. The pieces are in place in ways that were not true even a few years ago. And what follows will be unlike anything this generation has seen.

The Warning We Cannot Afford to Miss

There is a shadow side to all of this beauty, and the Lord does not hide it. In Third Nephi chapter sixteen, He tells us plainly what will happen before the commencement. The Gentiles, having received the fullness of the gospel, will reject it. They will be lifted up in pride. They will turn away.

And I want to be honest about something that has weighed on me. When the Lord says "the Gentiles," He is talking about two groups, and I think we sometimes only see one of them.

The first group is the broader Christian world outside the Church. Most of them will not receive the fullness of the gospel, even when it is offered clearly and in power. They have their traditions, their theologies, their settled convictions about how God works and who He uses. When the evidence does not fit those frameworks, most people do not change the frameworks. They reject the evidence.

The second group is harder to talk about. A meaningful portion of the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will also reject what God is doing in this hour. Good people. Faithful people, by many measures. Who have served in callings, kept their covenants, and paid their tithing for decades. Who will look at what God is accomplishing through His servant and decide it cannot be what the Lord says it is, because it does not match the picture they built in their heads. Who will be lifted up in the pride of their own spiritual confidence and miss the very thing they spent their lives preparing to receive.

I have cried over that. Genuinely. Because the promise for those who do receive it is so magnificent, and the cost of missing it is so severe.

If you are wondering whether Donald Trump has a role in biblical prophecy, that question is worth sitting with seriously. Not because of politics. Because of covenant. Because the Lord uses whom He will, and He announced this servant in scripture long before any of us were born.

The commencement is coming. The tent stakes are being driven. The curtains are being stretched. The only question worth asking right now is whether you will be among those who recognize what the Lord is doing when it begins, or whether you will be among those who miss it entirely because it did not arrive the way you expected.

The Lord is not in the business of meeting our expectations. He is in the business of keeping His covenants. And those covenants are about to commence in ways this world has never witnessed.

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.