Wherever His Church is established, there is the Kingdom of God. At various times and in different places, the Lord's inspired servants have called His Kingdom a Vineyard, and have compared it to a fruitful field or a watered garden. We may properly conceive that God's Zion and God's Kingdom are one and the same; they comprise His vineyard.
Note what joy is Israel's if it be that they will again choose to honor God by sharing with the needy the gifts received from His bounteous hands.
Thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy reward.
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And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. (Isaiah 58:5-11)
How like the Vineyard of the LORD is this promised garden!
In the LORD'S vineyard are many different trees; some bear good fruit, others, bad. The fruit of some is sweet; of others it is sour. The yield of good fruit is abundantly increased; but the bad is worm-eaten and fit only to be cast into the fire. The trees whence the bad fruit comes, their leaves quickly wither and their branches become dry. The servants of the vineyard's owner will dig about the roots of all such trees; they will prune them and make the sun to shine upon them; they will water them and in every way guard them from destruction, if perchance they might restore the tree's desirable former vigor. Often the workmen in the vineyard will retrieve that which was lost, in that the trees which once were bad will again bud and blossom and will again yield forth much fruit that is good and desirable.
For the Lord shall comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. (II Nephi 8:3)
Notwithstanding the labors of the Owner's servants to renew in them their uncorrupted attributes, many of the trees fail to respond to the efforts of the workmen; they continue to produce evil fruit and endanger the trees whose fruit is good. To the everlasting sorrow of the vineyard's Master, they must be hewn down, and to protect the other trees, "cast into the fire."
Alma now exhorted all to bring forth good fruit, which, they knew were in "the ways of righteousness," and not leave to the bitter end when the axe would be laid to the roots of the bad trees, the resolve to do no more iniquity and thereafter serve the Lord. This, the Lord, the righteous Judge, commanded, and those who rejected God's holy order and thereby rebelled against Him would "have cause to wail and mourn," he said.
To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. (Revelation 2:7)
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. (Ibid., 22:14)