Make Bare His Arm in the Eyes of the Nations

As he explained the words of Isaiah to his brothers, Nephi said, “And after our seed is scattered the Lord God will proceed to do a marvelous work among the Gentiles, which shall be of great worth unto our seed;… And it shall also be of worth unto the Gentiles; and not only unto the Gentiles but unto all the house of Israel, unto the making known of the covenants of the Father of heaven unto Abraham, saying: In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. And I would, my brethren, that ye should know that all the kindreds of the earth cannot be blessed unless he shall make bare his arm in the eyes of the nations. Wherefore, the Lord God will proceed to make bare his arm in the eyes of all the nations, in bringing about his covenants and his gospel unto those who are of the house of Israel” (1 Nephi 22:8-11). The phrase that the Lord will make bare his arm also comes from Isaiah who said, “Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (Isaiah 52:9-10). So, what does it mean for the Lord to make bare His arm? I have written before how some of the prophets have interpreted this, in particular in pointing out the protection that the Lord has given his Saints. That is surely part of it, but I believe there is more. The symbolism seems to suggest that we will perceive hints of the Lord’s work among us; we see His arm but we will not see His whole body. The reminds me of the experience of the brother of Jared: “And it came to pass that when the brother of Jared had said these words, behold, the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched the stones one by one with his finger. And the veil was taken from off the eyes of the brother of Jared, and he saw the finger of the Lord” (Ether 3:6). He saw part of the arm of the Lord—the hand—but didn’t see (at first) the whole body of the Lord. We too should look for the hand of the Lord in the world even when we don’t see Him in full for the time being.

Nephi’s reference to the Lord making bare His arm comes in the context of missionary work. He was prophesying about the great missionary work of the latter days when Israel should be gathered and bring His covenants and his gospel to those of the house of Israel. He was clear that the Lord would be revealed to “the nations” which suggests not just that it would be seen by the house of Israel or those who would be His covenant people. We know of course that eventually “the time shall come when all shall see the salvation of the Lord; when every nation, kindred, tongue, and people shall see eye to eye and shall confess before God that his judgments are just” (Mosiah 16:1). But that prophecy, I believe, refers to the time of the Second Coming and the Millennium. But Nephi suggested that as Israel was being gathered, the nations of the world would see the arm of the Lord made bare. So, if I understand it correctly, they would see evidences of the hand of the Lord doing something without seeing Him in full or perhaps even recognizing it was Him. It struck me today that one way this is happened is through the explosion of technology we have seen over the past 200 years—the hand of the Lord is evident and in front of our faces all the time as we drive cars, talk on cell phones, connect on the internet to someone across the world, and get in planes that take us in hours distances that used to take months to travel. If we were to take someone from the 1700s and put them in our world for a day, they would be blown away by the technology that we have, and I believe that most of them would express the sentiment that only God could have done such a thing. Humanity has been around for a very long time, but for some reason they did not develop the kind of technology that we have until the past couple of centuries, corresponding with the Restoration of the gospel. I believe that the Lord has made bare His arm by bringing us recently the most incredible methods of transportation and communication that the gospel might be preached. Not only that, but such technology also has made the work of redeeming our dead possible as well as we can store and search billions of records of our ancestors, something that people could not have even fathomed a hundred years ago. Evidence that the Lord has made bare His arm is our time is in front of us all day long as we participate in technology that is nothing short of miraculous. Most importantly, this has propelled the work of the Lord forward so that the promise of the Abrahamic covenant can be fulfilled: “In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.”