An exploration of what letting God prevail means according to different scriptures
The paradox of humans individually being one-of-a-kind and collectively being one is the essence of gathering Israel, which is the most important endeavor happening on the earth today, says President Russell M. Nelson, the prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Genesis 32 tells a story about Jacob wrestling a man. Matthew Bowen, an associate professor in the Faculty of Religious Education, said the Hebrew word used for “man” in this story actually means “divine man,” and sometimes this gets translated as Jacob wrestling God.
Bowen explained this story represents Jacob’s natural man wrestling with Jacob’s divine man in an internal struggle.
After his wrestle, Jacob is given the new name “Israel,” which means “let God prevail,” because his divine self won the fight, explained Bowen. “Thus the very name of Israel,” says President Nelson, “refers to a person who is willing to let God prevail in his or her life.”
When individuals allow God to prevail in their lives, they uniquely fulfill the measure of their creation, said Bowen. As people fulfill the measure of their creation, they become one in Jesus Christ, he continued.
Allegory of the olive vineyard
The Book of Mormon’s Jacob 5 tells an allegory of an olive vineyard. It is a symbolic narrative of Israel’s fall, the atonement and God prevailing, said Bowen.
The allegory of the olive vineyard was broken into seven time periods by Paul Y. Hoskisson, a former professor of ancient scripture at BYU in Provo. In the first period, there is a tame olive tree a man nurtures and tends. The tree grows old and begins to die. Hoskisson connects this to the founding of the House of Israel in the Old Testament.
In the second period, the man cares for the dying tree until it starts to grow new branches. However, the majority of the tree is still dying. Trying to save the tree, the man takes the new branches, plants them in other parts of the vineyard and grafts branches from wild olive trees into the tame tree. Hoskisson compares this to Old Testament prophets, like Moses, Samuel, Isaiah and Lehi, trying to reclaim Israel.
After time passes, the man and a servant return to the vineyard. The tree and the new branches that were planted have good fruit on them. The servant asks the man why he planted the branches in bad soil. The man tells him he improved the soil by tending to it, and the fruitful tree proves this was a good choice. Then they go to look at the one branch he planted in good soil, which has half good fruit and half bad fruit. This is the time period when Gentiles produced good fruit, like the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon, says Hoskisson.
The next time the man and servant return to the vineyard, they find all the trees and branches have bad fruit and the last branch that had half good and half bad fruit has completely withered away. The man cries for his trees. This portion of the allegory represents the Great Apostasy, writes Hoskisson.
Together the man and the servant graft branches from the mother tree into the dispersed branches. They then take branches from the scattered trees and graft them into the mother tree. The man and the servant tend to all the trees and bit by bit clear away the bad branches. The man instructs not to clear away the bad all at once because it would kill the trees. More servants come and everyone works together until the trees start to produce good fruit again, and over become alike. Hoskisson compares this time period to the latter days, or the time we live in.
The sixth time period represents the millennium, says Hoskisson. The man harvests all the good fruit, and for a time, the trees only produce good fruit. Finally, the end of the world comes, Hoskisson explains. Some of the fruit becomes bad again. The man gathers all the fruit, good and bad and sorts it. The bad gets cast away and the good is preserved. Then the vineyard is burned.
Let God prevail
In the allegory, bad fruit is a sign the tree is dying. “This is evident in biology,” said Bowen. “When the processes of an organism are working right, the organism is healthy. When they’re not, the organism isn’t healthy.” Growth isn’t always good, he explained. The bad fruit, like cancer, is a form of unhealthy growth that threatens the vitality of an organism, or in the story, the tree, he said.
“The Lord wants so much for us to do what he has intended us to do,” said Bowen, so we don’t produce the equivalent of bad fruit. “I point to myself as much as anyone else when I say this,” said Bowen, “But [human nature] tends to want to resist. We want our will to prevail over God’s, but that’s not the story [of the olive vineyard].” It is God’s will that we become what we were meant to be, otherwise we are in danger of spiritually dying, Bowen shared.
Self-justifying scripture
Being one is not enough to qualify for Zion, said Bowen. There also needs to be righteousness and an absence of poverty, he said. “No poverty means taking care of the poor, not casting them out,” said Bowen. He said he has seen some people use scriptures like this to self-justify not keeping the commandments.
“When Jesus said we will always have the poor,” said Bowen, he was making a commentary, not a prophecy. He knew, explained Bowen, human nature tends to leave poor people in the dust rather than lifting them up. Some people don’t try to alleviate poverty because they think it would make Jesus a liar, which is the worst way of interpreting scripture, said Bowen.
Fulfilling the measure of our creation means being uniquely what God intends us to be, said Bowen, which is different for everyone. However, we are also commanded to be one. In Doctrine and Covenants 38:27, God says, “Be one; and if ye are not one, ye are not mine.” This means being united in the bonds of love, explained Bowen.
Paul explains this paradox in 1 Corinthians 12. He says members of the Church are like parts of a body. They are all one body, or the body of Christ. But at the same time, a body is made of lots of different parts. Some will be the feet, which have a different function than the hands. Some will be the eyes, and some will be the ears. There are many members, says Paul, but one body.
The privilege of a lifetime
Bowen said in his late 20s, he really wanted to be a librarian. “The doors to that opportunity stayed shut,” he said, “and I wondered why because I thought it was a good thing to want to do.” He said God showed him he was meant to feed His sheep through teaching, which he now knows is why those opportunities remained closed for him.
“If I had kept trying to exert my will, I would never have found this joy,” said Bowen. He would never have met his wife or had his three children, he said since staying at the library would mean he never went to graduate school where he met his wife. “I don’t like that alternative timeline,” said Bowen.
Despite seeking to let God prevail, Bowen said he and his family still have all the ordinary challenges like health, finances and death. While he does not know where life will go from here, he shared, “There has been so much joy” in his life. •