Zion, it's the cause that has interested the people of God in every age.

That’s coming up next on the Joseph Smith Papers.

KJZZ Television, in cooperation with the Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, presents this weekly series highlighting the research of scholars and historians as they prepare for the publication of the Joseph Smith Papers. And now your host, Glenn Rawson.

As the biblical prophet Isaiah proclaimed, “Awake, awake, put on thy strength oh Zion, put on thy beautiful garments.”

Joseph Smith and his people believed that that awakening and strengthening of Zion would come in the latter days

and that they would be the ones honored to lay the foundation of the latter-day Zion.

Since the days of Joseph Smith Jr. Zion has been an integral part of Latter-day Saint history

and theology. Here then we have Joseph Smith writing the prophecies of Moses, prophecies particularly here, of Enoch that we have in the Book of Moses today and the Pearl of Great Price.

I keep emphasizing that because I want people to understand it’s all about Zion.

It's about how Enoch took his people.

They lived in a filthy and corrupted world.

They were widely opposed,

but by by obeying the commandments of God,

they transcended that world. They created Zion.

“Soon after the words of Enoch were given,

the Lord gave the following commandment.

And this a revelation to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon given December 1830" is what most of us know as Doctrine and

Covenants section 37. Short, just three or four verses, as I recall. And it's a commandment for Joseph and Sidney to not work on their revision of the Bible any further.

What we call sometimes the Joseph Smith Translation.

They don't need to do that right now. What they need to do now is move to Ohio.

Section 38 of the Doctrine and Covenants is absolutely huge.

It’s a watershed of a revelation. It's very, very important.

What we have in these revelations is a call to migrate again, both geographically but especially culturally,

whereas their world is partisan. The revelations say “be one.”

This one does. “And if you’re not one, you’re not mine.”

And whereas the world is materialistic,

this revelation commands them to stop being materialistic

and to forsake their own selfish interests.

And so you can see that if the Lord is calling them to the temple to receive an endowment of power, which he promises in the revelation,

“if you move to Ohio, I will endow you with power from on high.

If you move to Ohio there, I will give you my law.” Law of consecration. So to prepare these people for consecrated lives that culminate in Zion,

they get these preparatory Commandments.

Now, you'll remember that those missionaries had left New York

to, quote, “go into the wilderness among the Lamanites.” Their responsibility was not only to preach to the Lamanites,

but they were to look for the location of Zion as well.

The journey was very, very difficult. It was a harsh winter. But they do arrive in Jackson County in January on the 13th of January, 1830. And

the brethren arrive in Independence.

Now, Independence is the county seat of the county. It's a very, very important little village.

It's right on the frontier, about ten miles from the border of the Lamanites.

And also it is the outfitting station for the Santa Fe Trail,

a very wild town. It was not a logical place for

a group of spiritual people to get a lot of friends.

It was the wild frontier? It was the wild frontier, indeed.

Joseph and the Saints in their several branches in New York,

paid a price in leaving their homes and their farms and sometimes their families to come to

the gathering place of Kirtland.

But upon arriving there, Joseph arrived there the first week of February 1831,

and he had three great concerns.

Three, I will say, captivating interests that he wanted to pursue. One of those interests was, where is Zion?

He knew from a revelation that he'd received in New York that it was out West, on the border of the Lamanites, which meant the western boundary of Missouri.

But where? He didn’t know.

The second great interest he had at that time that he was focusing on was how do you finance it?

How are you going to pay for this marvelous endeavor?

And the third interest he had was that of publishing the revelations. Those were his three great interests.

In June of 1831, Joseph Smith received a revelation while still in Kirtland that commanded him to journey to the land of Missouri.

The revelation also commissioned 28 pairs of elders to make the same journey. “Inasmuch as they were faithful,”

The revelation went on to say, “they were given a promise.”

Upon arriving there, Joseph would locate or identify the site for the city of God, the new Jerusalem. And in fact, he does. He arrives there on the 14th of July 1831,

and he'll receive a revelation identifying Jackson County as the site for Zion and Independence as the center place. And that’s recorded in

the revelation that we have in the Doctrine and Covenants Section 57.

Later, the Prophet Joseph will publish a brief statement about

a revelation which we did not canonize about his identifying Zion. “I arrived in Jackson County, Missouri, and after viewing the country,

seeking diligently at the hand of God,

He [God] manifested himself unto me and designated to me and others

the very spot upon which he designed to commence the work of the gathering, and the upbuilding of an holy city,

which shall be called Zion—Zion because it is to be a place of righteousness,

and all who build thereon, are to worship the true and living God.”

that meant this was going to be a millennial city.

Independence was to be a new Jerusalem.

And one day during the millennium, it would be a capital and it would be a place of peace and refuge. So subsequently,

people, Latter-day Saints during the ’30s, were moving constantly from Ohio to Missouri. And Joseph made five trips to Missouri during that period of time. Missouri was really the major gathering place where most of the Saints lived.

But Ohio was headquarters of the Church, because Ohio was where Joseph Smith was living.

July the 20th, 1831. While still in the land of Missouri, Joseph Smith received a revelation that said the following. “Behold, the place which is now called Independence,

is the center place; and a spot for the temple is lying westward, upon a lot

not far from the Court House” end of quote.

Independence now is the center place, and then the revelation also indicated not far from the courthouse. They had a little frontier two-story brick courthouse right in the middle of the town square.

And the revelation refers to that courthouse. And says “not far from the courthouse,” which meant a half of a mile west, “will be the site for the temple.”

So Joseph, upon arriving in Jackson County, Missouri, began to look around with his entourage of brethren to look at the land and identify good land verses the not so good land.

Many people were already there.

Frontiersmen were buying up land in the county, and they had to scout it out. And they eventually will begin to acquire land.

Joseph will assign Bishop Partridge, who is with him, to take that responsibility.

And Zion will soon begin to be established by virtue of

appointing a few brethren to be the managers of

the building up of the city and the Mormon holdings there in Jackson County.

Now, Zion might be given to the Saints as the land of their inheritance, but that doesn't mean they could just walk in and take it.

Joseph Smith received a revelation that said, “it is wisdom that the land should be purchased by the Saints.”

How do you finance Zion?

How are you going to pay for this enormous endeavor?

And the Lord at Kirtland gave the prophet a revelation. We speak of it as Section 42, or “The Law.”

And this becomes known as, among other things, the Law of Consecration and Stewardship.

So they're going to establish

a new economic program to gather funds, receive assets, and then to use those assets to buy land in Jackson County.

With so many diverse assets scattered over 900 miles apart from Kirtland to Missouri,

Joseph Smith was under the necessity to create some kind of organization that could both manage, as well as unite, these resources.

The result of that was called the United Firm.

In Kirtland, the prophet Joseph Smith received a revelation indicating to him that the Lord wanted to establish a business management firm to organize and to direct the affairs of these properties and others that might be added.

The revelation was given to the Prophet Joseph in Kirtland

on March 1st, 1832, “For verily, I say unto you,

the time has come and is now at hand that behold and lo,

it must needs be that there be an organization of the literary and mercantile establishments of my church.” So he’s going to manage these two wings of business,

“both in this place,” that would be in Kirtland, “and in the land of Zion for a permanent and everlasting establishment

and firm unto my church.”

So after receiving this revelation,

he and a few of the brethren then joined together in a trip to Jackson County, Missouri to meet with the brethren out there and to establish this new management firm that he has been told to do so. The Prophet Joseph indicates as they organize this new combined unified company,

they're going to name it the United Firm,

because they're uniting the literary and the mercantile arms of the Church.

And this firm organization will

be that body of Church leadership that will manage

the bishop's property in Zion, the mercantile, the publishing company,

and the other businesses and assets which the church owns.

Now, one of the great and important projects of this United Firm is that Joseph is very much concerned about building the city of God out in Missouri,

in Jackson County. Well, it's going to be slow,

but their plans are big and their plans are very ambitious.

Joseph Smith said, “we ought to have the building up of Zion as our greatest object.”

That's worthy of note just what it was that Joseph Smith wanted the Saints to build beginning in 1832.

As we look at Joseph Smith's life, it becomes apparent, I believe,

and looking at his life and his revelations that he is much more interested in the creation of cities than he is of congregations.

The organization of the Church, as

it’s described in the 20th section of the Doctrine and Covenants,

has very little to say.

About congregational organization,

he is greatly concerned about the organization of cities or stakes, because stakes were cities.

So in Joseph's mind, the structure of the Church is basically cities with a temple at the core.

As illustrated in the plats that he made for all of these cities,

not only for a city of Zion in Missouri,

but for Kirtland, for far West, and for Nauvoo.

And there the basic unit are houses, residences,

and then a temple or temples at the center.

That is basically how we conceived the Church and the fact that when we did develop congregations in Utah,

they're called Wards, which is a subdivision of the city,

shows the precedence of

a civic organization in Joseph Smith's mind.

Joseph Smith said, “the whole of America is Zion itself from North

to South.” So beginning in Jackson County, the center stake, city by city Zion would spread herself until eventually she would fill the whole earth.

In June of 1833, the prophet Joseph and

the other officers of the United Firm in Kirtland

prepare this rather magnificent plat map of Zion. This is a proposed design for the City of Zion, it’s one mile square, with three large blocks in the middle that have numbers on it.

The numbers go from 1 to 24, indicating there will be 24 Church buildings.

These will be business buildings, administration buildings, schools,

sacred buildings. This is the center of the great city of the New Jerusalem when they get it underway. The city is to be a mile square. And the writing here describes each block to be 10 acres. And the blocks are to be divided into twenty lots, halfacre each, with the temples in the center. And the industry, it is described as to be outside of town, the agricultures to be outside town. Everybody is to live inside of town.

In this one mile square.

And to build up Zion this way. The idea later expressed by the Prophet Joseph suggests that once this is filled up, then they’ll build another city out here, on the same design and principles and so forth.

And then once that's filled, they'll build another one. And then in August of 1833,

the prophet Joseph Smith sent another package out to

the brethren in Independence, Missouri, with an enlarged city. So this is a little bit larger than the one mile square. And

about two miles, actually, just a little bit under two miles square.

Why did Joseph build a city like this, so small in geographical area, with farms and industry on the outside? That's very different than what we see now. Why did he do that?

It is. There was a lot of discussion in America about

the way America should be built.

Joseph was kind of a semi-Jeffersonian in the sense that he liked agricultural land and Jefferson loved agricultural land and people should live

on the farm. So Joseph is is kind of combining the Jeffersonian idea of living on the farm, out in the agrarian area and doing away with cities,

with small cities where people had all the benefits of cities because cities did provide benefits in terms of culture and education. People live on the inside of the village or the city in this case,

accommodating maybe 20,000 people or thereabouts,

but enough to have a nucleus for culture and refinement.

Now, the City of Zion was to be much more than just a cultural center. “It was” Joseph Smith said, “to be a holy city.”

And central to that purpose and to the city itself was the temple. I think what most thrilled him about these cities was not only the orderly society, but was this center,

the temple, where people could become instructed in the knowledge of God.

My own impression of the work was to go forth and gather people,

gather Israel from the world,

bring them into these centers where they could be instructed in the temple and empowered and then sent back out into the world to gather more people and bring them into Zion.

Among the Saints, the concept emerged of the Latter-day Zion being likened unto a tent, with the center stake thereof represented by Jackson County, Missouri. And then, cords and stakes would branch out in all directions until eventually

they would fill the whole earth and represent the strength of Zion.

One of the first of those stakes ever established was

in Kirtland, Ohio. During that summer of 1833, when the prophet Joseph was sending this material out to

the leadership in Independence, Missouri,

he was also making plans for a city of the stake of Zion in Kirtland.

And the revelations directed him on that as well.

So consequently, that summer,

he had plans drawn up for the new city of the stake of Zion at Kirtland, which would be Church headquarters for a short period of time, is what they assumed. And then they would move out to Jackson County, Missouri,

as their permanent home.

But going back to Jackson County, Missouri, though they had designated the intent to build twenty-four houses of the Lord or temples, they didn’t have the funds to begin the first building, and they were gathering resources to commence that when their duration in Jackson County, funny, unfortunately, came to an end due to mobocracy.

A mob gathered on the town square, where the courthouse was,

and rounded up Bishop Partridge and another brother in the Church, Brother Allen, and tarred and feathered them as a demonstration to the Mormons that they are to leave the county.

They also tore down the Church press.

The W. W. Phelps printing house,

destroyed the papers that were underway, being printed for the Book of Commandments, which was the first attempt to publish the revelations.

Joseph Smith wrote to the Saints in Missouri in a letter and said,

“This one thing is sure, that they who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” Oh, and suffer they did. The Saints were sorely hated and tried in the land in Missouri.

The animosity

between the Mormons and the Missourians in Jackson County was primarily religious.

Religious? Certainly, because, again, we represented a religion that was so different than they,

went against the grain of traditional Protestant Christianity.

Living prophet, revelation, additional scripture.

The Mormons were perceived as being antislavery.

Even though that was probably not a legitimate argument. Mormons recognized

the Constitution guaranteed the rights of the slave owner.

But they made it an issue.

They also made an issue, of course, of the fact that Mormons had a press.

Mormons are the only ones that had a press in Jackson County.

Well it’s interesting what they go after is the press.

The next issue that they were facing was, if the Mormons continue this influx into Jackson County,

it’s only a matter of time we’re going to be outnumbered. And with the Mormons eventually becoming the majority,

that means they, of course, will elect their own officials,

The political element of this was just going to happen down the road. There was no Mormons elected to any office in Jackson County in 1833

But given a couple more years, continued influx, continued immigration,

it was only a matter of time the Mormons would probably be the majority.

Section 101 of the Doctrine and Covenants clearly reveals that the Mormons created part of the problem themselves.

I think for the most part, most of the Saints were trying to do what the prophet and the revelations encourage them to do.

But there was some jealousy, some backbiting, some “jarrings and contentions,” Section 101 states.

So we shouldn't minimize the fact that Mormons probably,

you know, brought upon themselves a little bit of this themselves.

And the Lord does acknowledge that and mention that.

But at the same time, of course, we have this antagonistic element that's going to operate

on their own against us because of our religious views

and because of our gaining political strength and numbers

and because of our differences.

So those kinds of things always play into that, not just—the Mormons certainly were somewhat responsible. And unfortunately, the Mormons at times were not the best neighbors.

We sometimes, you know, told our neighbor friends, “this is Zion. God has given us this land. And it's only a matter of time before you're out of here. You’re out of here. And we’re we’re taking over.” So we could have probably used

a little better discretion in terms of our view of Zion.

And the Lord mentioned that in one of the revelations of judgements,

don’t talk about those things and those kinds of things regarding Zion.

We need to be a little bit in a lower profile, and discreet in our in our activities

and in our beliefs concerning Zion and this sort of thing.

Caught in a desperate situation,

Edward Partridge and the other Church leaders in Jackson County

were forced by the mob to sign an agreement that they would leave the county.

So basically, we had signed away our rights and privileges as citizens in Jackson County. This devastated Joseph Smith.

He had had revelations on the establishment of Zion

and this Zionic community.

And now to abandon that,

that whole program, just probably hit him so hard. Devastated him,

in short.

they would indeed leave the county, half by the end of the year and half by spring.

Joseph received a notice from them that they had been persecuted and attacked and they had signed the agreement. The Prophet Joseph, however, took a different position:

“You’re not going anywhere.

You're going to remain on your consecrated land. You're going to because this is the city of God.

This is too serious for us to abandon it.”

Joseph immediately sent word.

“We’ve got to try to reconcile this problem and encourage the Saints to seek redress through the courts.”

Unfortunately, that did not go well. The Saints did employ

a law firm in Liberty

under the auspices of David Rice Atchison, William Wood,

Amos Reese, and a very famous non-Latter-day Saint by the name of Alexander William Doniphan.

And working with these men, they recognized the

violation of the rights of the Mormons,

and they sought to help the Saints through the state and local authorities to try to come up with something that would

assist them in getting their lands back and reconciling this this situation.

In October of 1833, Joseph Smith wrote a letter encouraging the Saints to remain firm.

And that only those who signed the agreement to leave the county should do so,

the others should do everything they can to remain on their property and keep the rights of citizens.

This infuriated—Jackson County citizens saw this as a violation of the agreement they made in July, July 23rd,

that they would leave.

So with that, they recognize now that Mormons are not going to leave. And during the latter part of actually October 31st and continuing through the first week of November, this is when the Jackson County citizenry took the law into their own hands and began the forced expulsions of the Mormons.

Once the citizens of the county found out that the Mormons had appealed to the governor for assistance— Governor Daniel Dunklin—and

that they were not going to take this sitting down, so to speak,

they were going to, in fact, take it to the courts as the governor suggested they do,

that’s when the mobs began to attack the Mormons more violently. So from July to October, there was this period of adjusting and reviewing what they're going to do when the Mormons decided not to leave.

That’s when the Latter-day Saints were attacked

and their villages in a couple of places were were brutilized, their roofs were torn off, the houses were torn down, the men were beaten. The Latter-day Saints,

in their five villages or settlements throughout the county were then driven out of Jackson County. December 1833: Joseph Smith wrote the following in a letter.

“Now, there are two things of which I am ignorant, and the Lord will not show them unto me: why God has suffered so great calamity to come upon Zion and what the great moving cause of this great affliction is.

And again, by what means He will return her back to her inheritance.” In the meantime,

the Saints are scattered and driven, and it is winter.

Next week on the Joseph Smith Papers,

Zion’s Camp and the Redemption of Zion.

I’m Glenn Rawson. Thanks for joining us.