“Persuaded to Believe in Christ”

Joseph F. McConkie, Robert L. Millet

Even those in the Christian world today who profess allegiance to Jesus Christ have not received him in the fullest sense: the greatest evidence of a modern people’s inability to read and discern the signs of the times is their failure to accept The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the predicted kingdom of God on earth, Elder Bruce R. McConkie asked the following questions of the religious world: “Who will believe our words, and who will hear our message? Who will honor the name of Joseph Smith and accept the gospel restored through his instrumentality?”

“Until They Shall Be Persuaded to Believe in Christ”

The gospel will go to the Jews in the Lord’s own way and in his own time. The message of salvation must be presented and received “only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness, and meekness, and by love unfeigned” (D&C 121:41).

To accomplish this very end the Book of Mormon has been revealed in our day with the divinely ordained mission to convince Jew and Gentile that Jesus is their Christ and that salvation is in him.

As shown repeatedly in the Book of Mormon, persons of all persuasions, Jews and Gentiles, are scattered whenever they reject the Christ and his Church.

However, when they humble themselves, listen and respond to the testimony of the Lord’s legal administrators, and receive the ordinances of salvation, then and only then are they gathered into the true fold and to the lands of their inheritances—those places where the Saints of that age are assembled.

Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 1

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