Your Brethren

When the Savior was among the Nephites, He spoke to them about some of what He had taught the people at Jerusalem during His ministry.  After giving the Nephite version of the Sermon on the Mount, He said, “Behold, ye have heard the things which I taught before I ascended to my Father.”  He explained to the Nephite disciples, “Behold, this is the land of your inheritance; and the Father hath given it unto you.  And not at any time hath the Father given me commandment that I should tell it unto your brethren at Jerusalem” (3 Nephi 15:1, 14-15).  The two words “your brethren” struck me as quite odd yesterday as I was reading this.  They seem to imply that those in Jerusalem were family to the Nephites or at least people that the Nephites should be concerned about.  The Savior used the same phrase again two chapters later: “For I perceive that ye desire that I should show unto you what I have done unto your brethren at Jerusalem” (3 Nephi 17:8).  Again He was suggesting that those He had ministered to in Jerusalem were “brethren” to the Nephites.  Of course, the Nephites were related to them, but it had been over 600 years since their ancestral lines split, and they knew very little about what had happened to the Jews in Judea since then.  But I believe the Savior was telling the Nephites that they should care about those in Jerusalem; they should consider them as family and be concerned about what was happening to them.  There should be a sense of unity among all the peoples of the Lord.     

                Other passages similarly suggest a kind of unity that should exist among the Savior’s covenant people scattered through the earth.  He told the Nephites that He had taught the people at Jerusalem about them: “Ye are they of whom I said: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”  But Christ said that the Jews “understood me not, for they supposed it had been the Gentiles” (3 Nephi 15:21-22).  The Savior suggested that those at Jerusalem could have—perhaps should have?—inquired and found out more about the Nephites.  In telling the Nephites to keep their records, the Savior gave the reason being in case “my people at Jerusalem, they who have seen me and been with me in my ministry, do not ask the Father in my name, that they may receive a knowledge of you by the Holy Ghost, and also of the other tribes whom they know not of” (3 Nephi 16:4).  In other words, if those at Jerusalem would have prayed they could have known about the other peoples of the Lord. 

                The Savior taught the Nephites about not only those at Jerusalem but also these “other tribes” scattered elsewhere: “Verily, verily, I say unto you that I have other sheep, which are not of this land, neither of the land of Jerusalem, neither in any parts of that land round about whither I have been to minister….  They shall hear my voice, and shall be numbered among my sheep, that there may be one fold and one shepherd” (3 Nephi 16:3).  He even gave as His reason for needing to leave the Nephites that He needed to go visit these other tribes: “I go unto the Father, and also to show myself unto the lost tribes of Israel, for they are not lost unto the Father” (3 Nephi 17:4).  The Nephites, these lost tribes, and the Jews all were part of the Lord’s covenant people who were meant to be “one fold” unto Him.  Nephi had written many years before that the goal of the Lord was indeed for all of these groups to be united in a knowledge of each other: “And it shall come to pass that the Jews shall have the words of the Nephites, and the Nephites shall have the words of the Jews; and the Nephites and the Jews shall have the words of the lost tribes of Israel…. And it shall come to pass that my people, which are of the house of Israel, shall be gathered home unto the lands of their possessions; and my word also shall be gathered in one” (2 Nephi 29:13-14).  Perhaps the message for us today is that we too should be concerned for the Lord’s people everywhere; our mission, as President Nelson has taught, is to gather scattered Israel through missionary work, wherever they may be across the earth.  And if the Lord were to speak to us today about His scattered people across the world, He would undoubtedly call them “your brethren.”