With God, all things are spiritual, all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal (DC 29:34). So the promises to the house of Israel are both temporal and spiritual. Temporal in the sense that there will be a literal scattering and gathering of Israel from the four corners of the earth and spiritual in that those who turn unto the Lord in the last days will be spiritually gathered into the fold of God, he numbereth his sheep, and they know him; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd (v. 25).
One of the most contended issues in ecclesiastical history is whether to interpret a scripture in a literal (temporal) or a figurative (spiritual) sense.
"No question is more basic to scriptural interpretation than the determination of whether a particular passage, story, or even an entire book of scripture is to be understood as figurative or literal. Having read to his brothers what we know as Isaiah chapters 48 and 49, Nephi was asked if what he had read was to be understood in a figurative or a literal sense. Short of the actual destruction of scriptural records, Satan has no more effective way of opposing scriptural truths than confusing the figurative and the literal. Like potter's clay, some simply mold the scriptures into the likeness of the theories of men. Conversely, by making scriptural metaphors literal, the most marvelous truths are distorted beyond recognition. The bread and wine of the sacrament are an obvious illustration. By eating the sacramental bread, do we literally eat the body of Christ? And in drinking the wine or water in a sacramental ritual are we figuratively drinking Christ's blood, or