The Savior teaches the people about the scattering and gathering of Israel as part of the Father’s plan “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). On this vital subject, the Prophet Joseph Smith has declared:
One of the most important points in the faith of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, through the fullness of the everlasting gospel is the gathering of Israel (of whom the Lamanites constitute a part)—that happy time when Jacob shall go up to the House of the Lord, to worship Him in spirit and in truth, to live in holiness; when the Lord will restore His judges as at first and His counselors as at the beginning; when every man may sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there will be none to molest or make afraid; when He will turn to them a pure language, and the earth will be filled with sacred knowledge, as the waters cover the great deep; when it shall no longer be said, the Lord lives that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but the Lord lives that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands whither He has driven them. That day is one, all important to all men” (HC 2:357).
President John Taylor continues with this thought: “We have been gathered together from among the nations of the earth in order that God might have a people who would obey His law; who had been baptized into one baptism; who had all been partakers of the same spirit, and who had … learned to approach the Lord in the proper way; for there is a medium opened out whereby man can approach God and learn His mind and will” (Journal of Discourses 24:200, Jun. 18, 1883).
President Joseph Fielding Smith identifies the allegory of the olive tree as a significant document concerning the scattering and gathering of Israel:
One of the most interesting and significant parables ever written is that revealed to Zenos and recorded in the fifth chapter of Jacob in the Book of Mormon. It is a parable of the scattering of Israel. If we had the full key to the interpretation, then we would have in detail how Israel was transplanted in all parts of the earth.
Thus through this scattering the Lord has caused Israel to mix with the nations and bring the Gentiles within the blessings of the seed of Abraham. We are preaching the gospel now in all parts of the world, and for what purpose? To gather out from the Gentile nations the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is by this scattering that the Gentile nations have been blessed, and if they will truly repent they are entitled to all the blessings promised to Israel, “which are the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal.” (Answers to Gospel Questions, 5 vols. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957–1966], 2:56–57)