Cowley's Talks on Doctrine

by Matthias F. Cowley

It is also stated in Deut. xxviii:63-65: "And ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it. And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy feet have rest; but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind."

History records beyond the possibility of a doubt how literally and terribly the various clauses in these predictions have been fulfilled. Israel has been scattered, and Judah has been persecuted and oppressed and become a hiss and a byword in the mouths of all the Gentile nations.

With the sacred promises before us, that Israel should receive those countries and the history which proves that they were scattered and are still unreturned to their promised land, we must be convinced, if nothing were said in the Scriptures of the restoration, that Israel must be gathered and re-established in the land of their fathers or the promises of the Almighty would come to naught. We are not left, however, without predictions which specify, in considerable detail, that the chosen people shall be gathered and the circumstances and signs of the times associated with the gathering of Israel in the last days.

Four hundred and forty-six years before Christ, the prophet Nehemiah, bowing down in sorrow because of this scattering and destruction of his people, besought the Lord in humble supplication, thus: "Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandest thy servant Moses, saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations; but if ye turn unto me, and keep my commandments and do them; though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there." (Neh. i:8, 9.)

The psalmist David said (Psalms l:5): "Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice." The context of this psalm shows plainly that the fulfillment of the words quoted should take place in the last days, near the time of the coming of the Son of God. Those who should be called saints would be required to sacrifice the associations of their native lands as Abraham was when called upon to turn aside from the false religion of his fathers and go to a land into which the Lord should lead him. The Latter-day Saints have made a covenant with God, and through self-denial are gathering together in fulfillment of the words of David the psalmist.

Another prophecy from the same book is as follows: "O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy; and gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south. They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their souls fainted in them. They cried unto the Lord in their trouble and He delivered them out of their distresses."

The provisions of this prophecy have been and are being verified in the gathering of the Saints to the Rocky Mountains. In Isaiah ii:2, 3, we have the following prediction: "And it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." This prediction is too plain to be mistaken when it is fulfilled. This prophecy was not fulfilled at the coming of the Messiah, neither before nor since His time, but it is being fulfilled in the gathering of the Latter-day Saints. They have established the house of the Lord in a mountainous country; many people are gathering to it, their object being to learn the ways of the Lord that they may more perfectly walk in His paths. This prediction should be verified at a time near which people should beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; "neither shall they learn war any more," as shown by the verse following those we have quoted.

Micah, fifty years after this, uttered a similar prophecy, in almost the same language, as will be found in the first and second verses of his fourth chapter.

Another prophecy of Isaiah on this subject will be found in chapter five, twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh verses. It reads as follows: "And He will lift up an ensign to the nations from afar, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth; and behold, they shall come with speed swiftly; none shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed nor the latchet of their shoes be broken." The wording of this, in connection with verses which follow, seems plainly to have its fulfillment in the manner of travel by which the Saints are being and shall be gathered to the place appointed. They come by railroad, "with speed swiftly," which prevents them, in a great measure, from stumbling or becoming weary by the way. Notice that the words of this prediction, that the ensign was to be set up from afar, undoubtedly indicate a far distant land from the place where Isaiah stood when he uttered the prophecy. He stood upon the Eastern Hemisphere; America was far distant, and upon this land the ensign has been lifted up. Is it not an ensign to the nations? The authority of God, the house of the Lord, where the nations of the earth are invited to repent of their sins and freely partake of the blessings to be obtained where the ensign is established, surely are such.

A prediction very similar to the foregoing in its provisions was uttered by the same prophet and is contained in the eleventh chapter of his book, the eleventh and twelfth verses: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth."