“And They Shall Believe in Me That I Am Jesus Christ, the Son of God”
The Jews ’shall begin to believe in Christ’ [2 Nephi 30:7] before he comes the second time. Some of them will accept the gospel and forsake the traditions of their fathers; a few will find ill Jesus the fulfillment of their ancient Messianic hopes; but their nation as a whole, their people as the distinct body that they now are in all nations, the Jews as a unit shall not, at that time, accept the word of truth. But a beginning will be made a foundation will be laid; and then Christ will come and usher in the millennial year of his redeemed.
“ (Bruce R. McConkie, Millennial Messiah, pp. 228-29.) As to the gathering of the Jews to the land of Israel since the end of the nineteenth century, Elder McConkie has written: ”Judah will gather to old Jerusalem in due course; of this, there is no doubt. But this gathering will consist of accepting Christ, joining the Church, and receiving anew the Abrahamic covenant as it is administered in holy places. The present assembling of people of Jewish ancestry into the Palestinian nation of Israel is not the scriptural gathering of Israel or of Judah. It may be prelude thereto, and some of the people so assembled may in due course be gathered into the true church and kingdom of God on earth, and they may then assist in building the temple that is destined to grace Jerusalem’s soil. But a political gathering is not a spiritual gathering, and the Lord’s kingdom is not of this world.“ (New Witness, pp. 520-21 see also pp. 511, 564-65; Millennial Messiah, p. 291”