We hit it pretty hard this week. We read about it in class, discussed it, visited Oskar Shindler’s grave (I left a stone) then capped it all off with a visit to the complex at Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust complex. Its a sobering place, although I confess there wasn’t much new information. I feel like we get pretty well educated about the holocaust (insofar as it is possible to comprehend such an event) in the United States. Even the film footage of the camps is something I have seen before.It still awakens in me a sense of cool terror. I feel like there is no way to appreciate it, or react to such barbarity among our fellow men.
Yad Vashem comes from Isaiah 56:5. The Hebrew word for the Holocaust is the Shoah.
Even unto them will I give in mine ahouse and within my walls a place and a name better than of bsons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.
Right next to the holocaust complex is Mt Hertzel, the resting place of the father of Zionism and arguably Israel (although he died before it came to be). It functions almost like a mix between Arlington National Cemetery and, well, the rest of DC. Our Jewish teacher showed us that Mt Hertzel has actually taken a parallel significance with the Temple mount. It has become the spiritual shrine of the Secular Zionist movement. It has become a symbol of the ability of the Jewish people to overcome adversity and create their own country. It unifies them. It is sacred to them. But it is without God. It is a curious change of events.
There siting on their national shrine I read for reflection the scripture found in 1 Nephi 19. It follows one of the most powerful atonement scriptures I know of. It shows very well the contrast between two mountains, side by side, one for the lowest moment in Jewish history and the other for the glories of the modern free state of Israel.
13 And as for those who are at Jerusalem, saith the prophet, they shall be ascourged by all people, because they crucify the God of Israel, and turn their hearts aside, rejecting signs and wonders, and the power and glory of the God of Israel.
17 Yea, and all the earth shall asee the salvation of the Lord, saith the prophet; every nation, kindred, tongue and people shall be blessed.
Interesting.
The times of the Gentiles begins with the fall of the Jews, namely the destruction of the temple. Its probably connected with the gospel light going from a 2000 year stewardship under the descendants of Abraham to the age of Christianity when the majority of Church members are gentiles. That is connected to the first shall be last and so forth. The Jews got the gospel first, then the gentiles, eventually it will be reversed. SO the time of the gentiles is when the gospel is being poured out to the gentiles. It ends, as far as I can tell, when the elders preaching the gospel are called back from their missions. When the Gentiles reject the gospel in the same way the Jews did and God stops sending missionaries to them that is the end of their time, the end of their chance to hear the gospel, the end of the dispensation of the gospel to the gentiles.
At which point God proceeds to preach his own sermon, the testimony of earthquakes.
D&C 88:88
88 And after your testimony cometh wrath and indignation upon the people.
89 For after your testimony cometh the testimony of earthquakes, that shall cause groanings in the midst of her, and men shall fall upon the ground and shall not be able to stand.
Destruction rains upon the nations of the gentiles (which arguably has been fulfilled) and the elders who were teaching the Gentiles will be reassigned to take the gospel to scattered Israel.
According to Orson Pratt God will say something like this
“It is enough, come away from them, my servants, I will give you a new commission, you shall go to the scattered remnants of the house of Israel. I will gather them in from the four quarters of the earth, and bring them again into their own lands. They shall build Jerusalem on its own heap; they shall rear a Temple on the appointed place in Palestine, and they shall be grafted in again.”
So while the destruction could possibly be counted as being fulfilled I don’t think its fair to say that all the nations of the Gentiles have rejected the gospel. We are still getting into nations, although it has happened we haven’t been kicked out of very many countries thus far. And we aren’t allowed to preach to the Jew just quite yet. I think the gentiles have a few more years.
For more information this is a cool site
http://www.ldslastdays.com/default.aspx?page=psc605a.htm
Riley,
I’ve been reading in D&C 45 (and Luke 21:24). Do you think the “times of the Gentiles” has been fulfilled? The Institute manual suggested that at least some of the signs (gathering, Jerusalem no longer being trodden down, etc) had occurred by 1967. What do you think?