Every Creature of His Creating

One of the promises to Israel by the Lord is that He will not forget us. Isaiah recorded these words of Jehovah: “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee” (Isaiah 49:15). This is powerfully evident in the allegory of the olive tree as we see the Lord and His servant laboring diligently to preserve the fruit of the vineyard. Zenos recorded, “Have I slackened mine hand, that I have not nourished it? Nay, I have nourished it, and I have digged about it, and I have pruned it, and I have dunged it; and I have stretched forth mine hand almost all the day long” (Jacob 5:47). He never stops seeking to “nourish” the house of Israel and gather His people. I love the symbolism of the fact that this allegory is the longest chapter in the Book of Mormon, underscoring for me the fact that the Lord keeps laboring tirelessly to bless His people, digging and nourishing and dunging and pruning and doing all things to bless His people. It reminds me of Isaiah’s question to the Lord when He was called to the ministry: “Lord, How long?” The answer was this: “Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate” (Isaiah 6:11). In other words, the work of gathering and salvation was to continue until the very end, until there is no more inhabitant of the earth to take the gospel to. The Lord will not forget us, and He will until the end of the world to gather us home to Him.

               Not only is the Lord’s promise one of long duration for each of us individually—He will work as long as He can to gather us in and bring us unto Him—but it is also far reaching in scope. His promise is to remember and seek to bless all. When the Savior organized His missionary efforts with the apostles, He gave this instruction: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Moroni recorded something similar about the Savior’s message to the Nephite disciples: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature; And he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mormon 9:22-23). In our dispensation the Lord similarly instructed missionaries: “And if they desire to take upon them my name with full purpose of heart, they are called to go into all the world to preach my gospel unto every creature” (Doctrine and Covenants 18:28). To show that He was serious about this, the Lord repeated it many times in the revelations He gave to Joseph: “The gospel must be preached unto every creature…. Go ye into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature…. Go ye, go ye into the world and preach the gospel to every creature that cometh under the sound of your voice…. Therefore, go ye into all the world; and unto whatsoever place ye cannot go ye shall send, that the testimony may go from you into all the world unto every creature…. Go ye into all the world, and preach my gospel unto every creature who has not received it” (58:64, 68:8, 80:1, 84:62, 112:28). The gospel must be preached to all of God’s children, for the Lord will not forget any. I love the way that Alma put it, “He remembereth every creature of his creating, he will make himself manifest to all” (Mosiah 27:30). The Lord’s promise to covenant Israel is that He will not forget us, and to those not of Israel He promises to seek to gather them in to the gospel fold as well, for He “remembereth every creature of his creating.”