What Country Is Isaiah Actually Talking About?

A thirteen-year-old in my Sunday School class figured it out before I told him. Here is the key he used.

There is exactly one book of scripture that Jesus Christ commanded us to search.

Not read. Search.

He had just finished quoting a full chapter of Isaiah aloud to the Nephites. Then He stopped and said this:

“And now, behold, I say unto you, that ye ought to search these things. Yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah.”

— 3 Nephi 23:1

A commandment. Not a recommendation. And of everything He could have pointed at — the law of Moses, the Psalms, His own sermon delivered two chapters earlier — He pointed at Isaiah.

We have never noticed that verse, and we skip Isaiah.

I have taught Come Follow Me for years, and I will tell you what happens in almost every class. We reach 2 Nephi 12. Eyes go to the floor. Somebody says the words are beautiful, everybody agrees, and we move on to something we can talk about. Here is the part nobody says out loud: that is not a failure of faith. It is a missing key.

Isaiah is written in code. Not poetry that happens to be hard — code, on purpose, by design. And nobody ever handed us the key.

I want to hand you one today.

Solomon gave us the key, and almost nobody picked it up

Look at what the Church has been reading for the last three weeks. Psalms — written largely by King David, who saw the coming of Christ in vision and wrote it into the hymnbook. Then Proverbs and Ecclesiastes — written by David’s own son, Solomon, who asked God for wisdom and got it.

And then, immediately, Isaiah.

That order is not an accident, and Solomon’s wisdom turns out to be the decoder ring.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

— Ecclesiastes 1:9

He says it twice, because once was not enough:

“That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been.”

— Ecclesiastes 3:15

Read that again slowly. What has been is what will be. That is not a poem about futility. That is a rule about how prophecy works — and it is the single most important sentence you can carry into the book of Isaiah.

And if you think that rule is just Solomon’s opinion, listen to who else says it. In that same chapter where the Savior commands us to search Isaiah, He explains why:

“And all things that he spake have been and shall be, even according to the words which he spake.”

— 3 Nephi 23:3

Have been. And shall be.

Solomon and the Savior, saying the same thing about the same book.

Now here is your first code

Isaiah lived more than seven hundred years before Christ. He watched the northern tribes carried away. He watched Assyria come. And in his day there was one nation everybody looked to when trouble came — the great power with the strongest military, the biggest economy, centuries of history behind it, and a growing habit of forgetting God.

Isaiah’s people kept running to that nation for help instead of running to the Lord. He named it constantly. He warned them about it constantly.

Egypt.

Now apply Solomon’s rule: what has been is what will be. If Isaiah saw our day — and he says he did — then when he writes about the great superpower his people trust instead of God, he is not only writing about the Egypt on the map in 700 BC.

So in my Sunday School class two weeks ago, I gave my thirteen-year-olds the rule from Ecclesiastes. Then I described the nation. Superpower. Biggest military. Biggest economy. Losing its way. And I mentioned, almost in passing, that ancient Egypt’s emblem was a bird of prey.

Then I asked: what country do you think he means?

A hand went up.

“America.”

I did not tell him. He worked it out with the same key you just got.

Write it down. When Isaiah says Egypt, look for the superpower. Then read Isaiah 30 this week and watch the whole chapter change on you — “they are bent on going down to Egypt, but have not inquired at my mouth.”

That is one code. There are more.

This is a two-year invitation

Avraham Gileadi has spent his life inside this book. I began studying Isaiah in the summer of 2016. He says it takes about two years of steady study before Isaiah really opens.

That number is good news, and I will tell you why in another post. For now it is enough to say the door has a timetable — and that two years is simply what it costs.

So here is the plan, and it is longer than one article.

We start where the Church starts — Isaiah 1–12, this coming week. We finish in 3 Nephi 23, in October of 2028.

Read that order twice. We begin at the first chapter of Isaiah, and we arrive, two years from now, at the commandment to search it — because that is when Come Follow Me comes back around to Third Nephi.

We do not start at the commandment. We end there, able to keep it.

Two years of hand-holding. Coaching. Tools. Articles. Training. Seminars. Videos. And a newsletter that gently prompts you a hundred and four times — once a week, every week, for two years.

A week before you need it, every time. The chapters. What to watch for. Where Christ is in them. And whatever code surfaces in that week’s text — because it usually does. We will name it, teach it, and build on it.

And if you are thinking the trail goes cold next year when the Church moves to the New Testament, it does not. Isaiah is the most quoted book in the New Testament. When the Savior stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth to begin His ministry, He opened the scroll and read — Isaiah. Between Isaiah and the Psalms of David there is more prophecy of the Messiah than in any other source we have.

So 2027 is not a detour. It is the same road, walked with better eyes.

And when a week has nothing to do with Isaiah, we will keep handing you the next building block anyway — because graduation happens in the greatest sermon Christ ever gave to Latter-day Saints, and everything we collect between now and then is what lets you understand it when you get there.

Before Sunday

This week the Church reads Isaiah 1–12. In the Book of Mormon that is 2 Nephi 12–22 — and there is something strange about which chapters Nephi chose to include, which I will get to next week.

Five questions to carry:

1. Where are we?
2. What is the story?
3. What should I watch for?
4. Where is Christ?
5. What question should I bring Sunday?

And one assignment, the same one I gave my thirteen-year-olds: Read Isaiah 1–12 looking for Jesus Christ. Bring one thing you notice.

Sunday should be the place you discuss what you found — not the first time you see it.

One last thing, and I do not have the answer yet

Go back to the commandment.

“a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently”

I used to think diligently meant consistently. Persistently. Keep at it. Years ago I asked Avraham Gileadi what he thought that word meant. His answer took the roof off, and it was nothing I expected.

I am going to tell you next week.

And then I am going to ask you a question I have been working on for a while and cannot yet answer: how many commandments are there in scripture given directly to you — the person holding the book — the way 3 Nephi 23:1 does?

I have found a few. I will tell you when I know.

Ken Krogue is the founder of The Covenant Project and has been studying Isaiah for more than ten years.

Human → AI → Human: Conceived and directed by Ken Krogue → researched, challenged, and developed with Orson (Claude) and Nathan (ChatGPT) → reviewed, revised, and approved by Ken before publication. Visual concepts and production were developed with AI under human editorial direction.

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