“I Shall Proceed to Do a Marvelous Work Among Them”

Bryan Richards

This represents the fifth time that Nephi has mentioned this doctrine. Apparently, he understands that we learn through repetition. The marvelous work and a wonder which the Lord brings to pass in the last days is the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth, the gathering of Israel, and the fulfillment of the covenants that the Lord has made with the ancient prophets. See also commentary for 1 Nephi 14:7 and 2 Nephi 25:17.

George Q. Cannon

"It is a marvelous work. It is contrary to all human experience outside of this Church, to see people dwelling together as the Latter-day Saints have done and do in these valleys. It is phenomenal in its character, because nowhere else can you see an exhibition of it. Men say all manner of things concerning it because of its strangeness, it being so different from anything else that is known. Men attempt to philosophize upon it. They try to explain the reason for it, and have recourse to all manner of views, as erroneous as they possibly can be, concerning the causes that produce these results that we see throughout these valleys, ignoring entirely the true cause and denying the possibility that God is in this movement, and that His Spirit produces these results. Yet this is the only clear and sufficient reason. It is the only one by which all this can be accounted for. Human power could not have done what has been done among the Latter-day Saints. It was beyond the power of human wisdom; it was beyond the limit of human power. It required a divine power to work out these grand results. For contemptible as the Latter-day Saints may be in the eyes of some, despised as they may be, this power that has brought this congregation together and that has gathered these people from the remotest parts of the earth is a grand power; it is a power that is beyond that of man. Man in no instance, in and of himself, has ever been able to accomplish anything comparable with it. And to say that there is no God in this, it would require more faith on my part to believe that than it does to believe that God is in this movement." (Collected Discourses 1886-1898, ed. by Brian Stuy, vol. 2, George Q. Cannon, March 1, 1891)

GospelDoctrine.Com

References