An Ensign to the Nations

One of the words very familiar to Latter-day Saints and which appears several times in the scriptures, including a handful of references in the writings of Isaiah, is ensign.  An ensign literally is a “flag or banner” and generally represents a “sign, token, or emblem.”  In 1847 directly after the Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young and a few others climbed a small hill that became known as Ensign Peak and which overlooked the land.  Brigham Young had seen the place in vision previously in Nauvoo when “he received a vision in which the Prophet Joseph, pointing out a specific mountaintop with an ensign, or flag, flying above it, decreed: ‘Build under the point where the colors fall and you will prosper and have peace.’”  It is believed that there “Wilford Woodruff took from his pocket a bandanna handkerchief and waved it as an ensign or a standard to the nations, that from this place should go the word of the Lord, and to this place should come the people of the earth.”  It’s no coincidence that we send forth the words of the prophets every six months in a magazine called Ensign as a continuation of that same symbolism.   

                The references to the word ensign in Isaiah appear to specifically speak about the word of God that would go forth in the last days.  Isaiah wrote that “he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth,” a prophecy that we believe speaks of the great gathering of Israel in the last days (Isaiah 5:26).  He also wrote that “in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious” (Isaiah 11:10).  With the help of D&C 113:5-6 we generally interpret that “root”—which is the “ensign”—to be the Prophet Joseph Smith.  He himself is a symbol of the word of the Lord coming to us through revelation in the dispensation of the fullness of times.  Also speaking of the gathering of the last days Isaiah wrote, “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” (Isaiah 11:12).  Again the ensign helps gather Israel through missionary work.  Speaking of the “land shadowing with wings” (which Joseph Fielding Smith suggested could refer to the Americas), Isaiah wrote, “All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye” (Isaiah 18:3).  This verse also points to a time in the last days when an ensign from the Lord would be given.  These references from Isaiah about ensigns in the last days have been and are being fulfilled through the work of the Restoration.  Indeed, as the Lord said, Zion that is being built up “shall be an ensign unto the people, and there shall come unto her out of every nation under heaven” (D&C 64:42). 

                President Hinckley gave us this invitation: “Beginning with you and me, there can be an entire people who, by the virtue of our lives in our homes, in our vocations, even in our amusements, can become as a city upon a hill to which men may look and learn, and an ensign to the nations from which the people of the earth may gather strength.”  Thus the ensign of the last days is, at least in part, us.  The faithful members of the Church are the Ensign that stands as a witness to the world of the reality of the Restoration.