When
Columbus sailed out upon the ocean and turned his face toward this land, it
was a preparatory move towards its redemption, that it might be opened up
again to civilization. The people who had occupied it—the Jaredites, the
Nephites, the people of Mulek—had reverted to idolatry. They had turned away
from the Lord, and no people in the history of the world that have turned from
God our Father and renounced their faith in Him, have ever been perpetuated. But
. . . the Lord had said that he would gather scattered Israel together again,
and that gathering, or the preparatory work of it, really began in our
dispensation when Columbus was led to discover a new world. The same applies to
the Pilgrim fathers. (Anthony W. Ivins, Utah Genealogical Magazine,
23:3, January 1932, in Howard H. Barron, Judah, Past and Future: L.D.S.
Teachings Concerning God’s Covenant People [Bountiful, Utah: Horizon
Publishers and Distributors, 1979], 110)