The Angel Moroni Quotes from the Eleventh Chapter of Isaiah
Joseph Smith—History 1:40
40 In addition to these, he quoted the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, saying that it was about to be fulfilled. . . .
Elder LeGrand Richards said:
“There is [a] great principle that was made plain by the coming forth of the Book of Mormon that no one could understand until then; that is the fact that there were to be two gathering places for the Lord’s children. All through the scriptures, after the division of Israel into two great kingdoms, there were the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel; the kingdom of Israel was scattered among the nations, and the world does not understand that there should be two gathering places. They think that Israel will all be gathered back to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Yet the scriptures in the Book of Mormon make so plain that when the Lord provided this land of America for the descendants of Joseph, the New Jerusalem should be built upon this land and that this should be the land of the gathering of many descendants of Joseph.
“There isn’t time to go into all the scriptures, but you remember when the angel Moroni appeared to the Prophet Joseph three times during the night and again the next morning, he quoted the eleventh chapter of Isaiah [see Joseph Smith—History 1:40] wherein Isaiah said the Lord would set His hand again the second time to gather scattered Israel, and that He would bring in the dispersed of Judah and would set up an ensign unto the nations [see Isaiah 11:11–12]. Thus there were to be two great gathering places.”
(In Conference Report, Apr. 1967, 22.)
Randal S. Chase spent his childhood years in Nephi, Utah, where his father was a dry land wheat farmer and a businessman. In 1959 their family moved to Salt Lake City and settled in the Holladay area. He served a full-time mission in the Central British (England Central) Mission from 1968 to 1970. He returned home and married Deborah Johnsen in 1971. They are the parents of six children—two daughters and four sons—and an ever-expanding number of grandchildren.
He was called to serve as a bishop at the age of 27 in the Sandy Crescent South Stake area of the Salt Lake Valley. He served six years in that capacity, and has since served as a high councilor, a stake executive secretary and clerk, and in many other stake and ward callings. Regardless of whatever other callings he has received over the years, one was nearly constant: He has taught Gospel Doctrine classes in every ward he has ever lived in as an adult—a total of 35 years.
Dr. Chase was a well-known media personality on Salt Lake City radio stations in the 1970s. He left on-air broadcasting in 1978 to develop and market a computer-based management, sales, and music programming system to radio and television stations in the United States, Canada, South America, and Australia. After the business was sold in 1984, he supported his family as a media and business consultant in the Salt Lake City area.
Having a great desire to teach young people of college age, he determined in the late 1980s to pursue his doctorate, and received his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Utah in 1997. He has taught communication courses at that institution as well as at Salt Lake Community College and Dixie State University for 21 years. He served as Communication Department chair and is currently a full-time professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah.
Concurrently with his academic career, Brother Chase has served as a volunteer LDS Institute and Adult Education instructor in the CES system since 1994, both in Salt Lake City and St. George, where he currently teaches a weekly Adult Education class for three stakes in the Washington area. He has also conducted multiple Church History tours and seminars. During these years of gospel teaching, he has developed an extensive library of lesson plans and handouts which are the predecessors to these study guides.
Dr. Chase previously published a thirteen-volume series of study guides on the Book of Mormon, Church History, the Old Testament, and the New Testament. The series, titled Making Precious Things Plain, along with four smaller study guides on Isaiah, Jeremiah, the story of the Nativity, and the final week of our Lord’s atoning sacrifice, are designed to assist teachers and students of the gospel, as well as those who simply want to study on their own. Several of these books are also available in the Spanish language.
