Light and Truth Flood the Earth and Accelerate the Work - Second Chapter of Nephi, Verse Thirty (2 Nephi 30)

You can read the entire chapter at the following link: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/30?lang=eng

This chapter helps us better understand how direct a role the Book of Mormon is playing in the process by which Jesus Christ is carrying out Heavenly Father’s great plan of salvation and redemption. As we learned in the previous chapter, it complements the Bible and its great truths, which of course center around the life, ministry, death, resurrection, and exaltation of our Lord and Savior.

Nephi unfolds to us the effects that truth can have on people across distance and time. There are the Jews who have miraculously maintained their identity as a people over thousands of years and despite bitter hardships and persecutions. There are the lost Israelites, including the people descended from the Nephites and Lamanites on the American continent. And there are the “Gentiles,” many of whom may have ancestral connections with Israel that have been forgotten through the generations. All of them can embrace the truth and enter into the covenant based on repentance and faith in Christ (verse 2).

Great promises attend those who accept the truth and enter into the Lord’s covenant. Verse 6 gives us a taste of some of the blessings these people will find. They shall rejoice. They shall have “scales of darkness” fall from their eyes. They shall begin a process of becoming a “pure and delightsome” people.

As these people allow the Lord to reshape them into something of great virtue and power, the Lord’s work accelerates. This is of course no coincidence, for clearly the Lord uses those who covenant with him to turn to their neighbors and share the benefit of their experience. It is a classic domino or snowball effect. Among those who pay attention, there is so much to discern.

Inspired judgment and restitution are already in evidence among us, as people abide by the principles of truth Lord has taught them either directly or through His authorized messengers. When repentant and humble men and women counsel together for a righteous purpose, there’s nothing like it. The Lord elevates their efforts so that they can help “judge the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth” (verse 9).

As the Lord’s work progresses, aided by the spread of truth to the corners of the world, those who are open to accepting this truth, and thus transforming their lives for the better, become separate from those who close their hearts and minds. This great division has consequences, for just as Biblical stories (especially those in Genesis about the great flood and Sodom and Gomorrah) teach us that the Lord found it necessary at certain times in the past to destroy persistent wickedness in the world, we are taught that this will take place again (verse 10).

Sad as this destruction will be for those who have chosen evil over good, it will represent a deliverance and cleansing of the earth for those who have embraced the Lord’s healing power in their lives. And no longer will they face the opposition that has plagued them and sought to slow their acquisition of further knowledge and illumination.

The point at which this division will become complete is Christ’s Second Coming, when only those who have let light into their lives will be able to abide the refining presence of the Lord. 

Nephi weaves a passage from Isaiah 11 (verses 9-15) into his prophecy to show us the poetic contrast between our current struggles and the peace that will come between all the creatures of the world, and—perhaps most important—the willingness of those who remain on earth to receive truth from whatever source provides it, even if that source is (counterintuitively) a little child rather than a more fully experienced adult. Hence the phrase “and a little child shall lead them” in verse 12.

The images of truth and knowledge flooding the earth are awe-inspiring. From verses 15-17:

For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea…. The things of all nations shall be made known…unto the children of men. There is nothing which is secret save it shall be revealed; there is no work of darkness save it shall be made manifest in the light.

Finally, we learn from Nephi (in verse 18), as we also learn from the apostle John (in Revelation 20), that Satan “shall have power over the hearts of the children of men no more.” Or at least not “for a long time” before he returns for the climactic conflict between the forces of good and evil.