The Line Between Jew and Gentile

Before the Lord revealed exactly where Zion was to be built, He gave this clue: “I say unto you that it is not revealed, and no man knoweth where the city Zion shall be built, but it shall be given hereafter. Behold, I say unto you that it shall be on the borders by the Lamanites” (D&C 28:9).  He subsequently declared that Missouri was “the land of promise, and the place for the city of Zion.” He revealed that Independence would be the “center place” and He told the Saints to purchase lands up to “the line running directly between Jew and Gentile” (D&C 57:1-4).  That “line” appears to be the separation between the white settlers on the east and the Indians on the west; in other words it was the “borders by the Lamanites” spoken of in D&C 28.  So what did the Lord mean by saying it divided “Jew and Gentile.”  The Gentiles were clearly the Missourians, and the so that means that the Jews referred to here must have been the Lamanites.  But why would He call the Lamanites Jews?  

                We get part of an answer to that question in an earlier revelation.  The Lord spoke of His word and how “that soon it may go to the Jew, of whom the Lamanites are a remnant” (D&C 19:27).  So here the Lord suggested that the Lamanites descended from the Jews, and it may be that the word Jew is really meant to represent the whole House of Israel, not just the Jews.  We know that Lehi was from the tribe of Joseph—not Judah—but that he lived and taught among the Jews.  So in that respect we might say that the Lamanites were Jews, where Jews is taken loosely as a general term for the whole House of Israel.  Perhaps, though, there is another more direct way in which the Lamanites were in some way descended from the literal tribe of Judah.  At the start of the Book of Mormon we have the family of Lehi who were descendants of Joseph, but then in Omni we have the people of Mulek who were at the land of Zarahemla.  These people also came from Jerusalem at the time of Lehi, and Mulek was the son of Zedekiah.  In the genealogy in 1 Chronicles 3:10-15 we see that Zedekiah was a direct descendant of Solomon and therefore of David, who was obviously of the tribe of Judah.  So this means that Mulek was of the tribe of Judah and was therefore a Jew.  It’s likely that much of his group that came with him were also of the tribe of Judah, and so we could perhaps say that the people of Zarahemla were Jews.  After the Nephites joined the people of Zarahemla, it appears that they became one people with very little distinction afterwards between the two original groups.  So this means that much of the people who were Nephites were likely real descendants of Jews through Mulek or his group.  After many years passed, surely all of the groups were mixed and so those who remained after 400 AD were likely in part descendants of the Mulekites and therefore were literal Jews.