Zion

Building Zion

Doctrine and Covenants 6:6, 11:6, 12:6, 14:6 urge us to “seek to bring forth and establish the cause of Zion.”

Joseph Smith advised that “we ought to have the building up of zion as our greatest object.”¹

Zion Must Be Built Before Jesus Can Return

Regarding Zion in the last days, the Prophet Joseph Smith taught:

brethren come ye yea come all of you who can come and go to with your mights and build up the cities of the Lord . . . now [it is] wisdom in God that we should enter into as compact a city as po[s]sible For Zion and Jerusalem and must both be built up before the coming of Christ . . .  when these cities are built then shall the coming of the son of man be²

Jerusalem must be built up Zion also [b]efore the Coming of Christ³

In his book, The Government of God, John Taylor also echoed this same sentiment:

“But if Zion is never built up, the Lord will never come, for he must have a people, and a place to come to.”⁴

“… it shall be, “The kingdom of God or nothing” with us. That is my text, I believe; and we will stick to it—we will maintain it; and, in the name of Israel’s God, the kingdom of God shall roll on, and all the powers of earth and hell cannot stop its progress. It is onward, ONWARD, ONWARD, from this time henceforth, to all eternity.”⁵

Wilford Woodruff also echoed this statement by saying,

“I can say this — the Lord will never come to visit an earth like this; he will never come to visit a generation of the inhabitants of the earth until they are prepared for his coming and are willing to receive him.”⁶

Latter-day Prophets Looked Earnestly Toward the Day When Zion Would Be Built

Joseph Smith taught:

The building up of Zion is a cause that has interested the people of God in every age; it is a theme upon which prophets, priests, and kings have dwelt with peculiar delight; they have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we lived; and fired with heavenly and joyful anticipations they have sung, and wrote, and prophesied of this our day;—but they died without the sight; we are the favored people that God has made choice of to bring about the Latter Day glory; it is left for us to see, participate in, and help to roll forward the Latter Day glory.⁷

Act as if the Success of Building Zion Depends on Your Efforts

Joseph Smith stated,

The advancement of the cause of God and the building up of Zion is as much one man’s business as another. The only differance is that one is called to fulfil one duty and another another duty; “but if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, and if one member is honored all the rest rejoice with it, and the eye cannot say to the ear I have no need of thee, nor the head to the foot I have no need of thee;” party feelings, separate interests, exclusive designs should be lost sight off in the one common cause, in the interest of the whole.⁸

Brethren and Sisters be faithful, be diligent, contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints—let every man, woman and child realize the importance of the work, and act as if its success depended on their individual exertion alone, let them feel an interest in it, and then consider they live in a day, the contemplation of which animated the bosom of Kings, Prophets and Righteous men, thousands of years ago the prospect of which inspired their sweetest notes and most exalted lays’ and caused them to break out in such rapturous strains as are recorded in the scriptures; and by and by, we shall have to exclaim in the language of Inspiration,

“The Lord has brought again Zion—

The Lord hath redeemed his people, Israel.”⁹

You may also be interested in:

• ZION (Teachings of Joseph Smith)
• ZION, RESPONSIBILITY TO BUILD (Teachings of Joseph Smith)
• 30) ZION: Should a Zion people have their own schools, with their own books and their own teachers? (Prophetic statements on education)
• Foundational Zion Standards Training Modules

1. Discourse, between circa 26 June and circa 4 August 1839-A, as Reported by Willard Richards, pp. 69-70, The Joseph Smith Papers.
2. Discourse, circa 19 July 1840, as Reported by Martha Jane Knowlton Coray–B, p. 14-15, The Joseph Smith Papers.
3. Discourse, circa 19 July 1840, as Reported by Martha Jane Knowlton Coray–A, p. 14, The Joseph Smith Papers.
4. John Taylor, The Government of God (1852), 100.
5. John Taylor, “The Kingdom of God or Nothing,” in Journal of Discourses, vol. 6 (Liverpool: F. D. and S. W. Richards, 1854), 26-27.
6. Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses 14:4.
7. Times and Seasons, 2 May 1842.
8. Times and Seasons, 2 May 1842.
9. Joseph Smith, Report of the First Presidency, 4 October 1840.