Gospel topic
Jackson County
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We are richer now for moving to the south than we should have been if we had not moved. What did we save by it? It saved that difficulty that would have brought you into sorrow, probably, all the days of your life, if you had withstood that army and shed blood. But by that move you saved your blood and the blood of your enemies, and in this you did a good deed. It cost considerable, but Father booked it against them, and he will make them pay the debt. We might have to do such a thing again. I do not know anything about it, but I am pretty sure of one thing—we shall go to Jackson County, Missouri; that is, those who do right and honor their calling, doing what they have been told to do. You will be blessed, and you will see the day when Presidents Young, Kimball, and Wells, and the Twelve Apostles will be in Jackson County, Missouri, laying out your inheritances. In the flesh? Of course. We should look well without being in the flesh! We shall be there in the flesh, and all our enemies cannot prevent it. Brother Wells, you may write that. You will be there, and Willard will be there, and also Jedediah, and Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and David, and Parley; and the day will be when I will see those men in the general assembly of the Church of the Firstborn, in the great council of God in Jerusalem, too. Will we want you to be along? I heard Joseph say twice that brother Brigham and I should be in that council in Jerusalem, when there should be a uniting of the two divisions of God's government. Now, you have got to live for it. What would you not do to attain to those blessings? You would give all you have in the world. You may give all you have got, and then keep it; and if you keep the commandments of God and live faithful, you shall everyone see it, and that is what will bring you to it.
President Heber C. Kimball
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The time was, in the infancy of this Church, when our minds were so narrow compared to what they are now, that we looked for the speedy coming of our Lord, and the accomplishment of His great work before this time. But as our minds grew, and our ideas enlarged, we began to perceive that we were only children in our views and feelings, our ideas and expectations. We had the views, ideas and expectations of children; and we see how the Lord has enlarged Israel and expanded His work; and now we behold so much more to be accomplished than what has been accomplished, that we are apt in our minds to put off the day of the Lord a great way. The time was that we looked for one temple. The early revelations given to the Latter-day Saints predicted a temple in Zion, and Zion in our minds at that time was a little place on the Missouri River in Jackson County, Western Missouri—a town and a few surrounding villages, or a country, peradventure it may be as large as a county. When we first heard the fullness of the Gospel preached by the first Elders, and read the revelations given through the Prophet Joseph Smith, our ideas of Zion were very limited. But as our minds began to grow and expand, why we began to look upon Zion as a great people, and the Stakes of Zion as numerous, and the area of the country to be inhabited by the people of Zion as this great American continent, or at least such portions of it as the Lord should consecrate for the gathering of His people. We ceased to set bounds to Zion and her Stakes. We began also to cease to think about a single temple in one certain place. Seeing the different Stakes of Zion that were being organized we perceived the idea, possibly, of as many temples. Having had one spot pointed out in the revelations for the temple in Jackson County, our minds expanded so that in a short time we were building another temple in a Stake of Zion in Kirtland, Ohio. A little while afterwards we were laying the foundation of a temple in Far West, Missouri, and driven before our enemies; from that place we next laid the foundation and built up a temple unto the Lord in Nauvoo. When we located in the mountains and laid the foundation of a temple in Salt Lake City, who of us had an idea that before it should be completed we would be administering in a temple in St. George, and another in Logan, and another in Manti, and who conceives the idea today, that by the time these are completed and the Saints have officiated in them, we will be scattered over the American continent, building temples in a hundred other places? All this comes within the range of possibility, nay, probability, almost amounting to certainty. One of my brethren behind me here, who understands these things, and who can speak knowingly in regard to them, says, that we may put it down as a certainty, that by and by, there will be hundreds of these temples throughout the land. Our minds are beginning to comprehend the object and purpose of the temples of our God. We realize that they are places where the Lord bestows the keys of life and salvation pertaining to the everlasting Priesthood, and opens the door of redemption and salvation unto our dead.
Elder Erastus Snow
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Teach them to pay their tithing while they are young. You mothers, teach your children that when they get any money they should pay one-tenth of it to the Lord, however little it may be. Educate them to pay their tithing in full. Then we will have a people prepared to go to Jackson County. President Smith was talking yesterday about the land of Zion, and the time will come when there will be Temples established over every portion of the land, and we will go into these Temples and work for our kindred dead night and day, that the work of the Lord may be speedily accomplished, that Jesus may come and present the kingdom to His Father. He is coming soon, too. But we will not hear His voice until we build up Jackson County. Now we should make the preparation for this. We are not only going to have Zion throughout this continent, but we will have it over the whole earth. The whole earth is the Lord's. The time will come when it will be translated and be filled with the spirit and power of God. The atmosphere around it will be the spirit of the Almighty. We will breath that Spirit instead of the atmosphere that we now breath. But now it is for us to make the preparation, that we may be worthy to be called into the house of the Lord and receive our second blessings. I do not want the presidents of Stakes to send any person to our Temples to receive the highest blessings that have ever been bestowed upon man since the world began, until it can be said of him, "He pays his full tithing." When you find an honest, faithful Latter-day Saint who is worthy of receiving His blessings, send him along. I do not care how fast they come. The time is now at hand when the Latter-day Saints can be greatly and abundantly blessed, so that they can make the preparation in its fulness. Now, if I say anything more, I am afraid you may forget what I have said—I will take that back; I said it without thought. You will not forget, you cannot forget what I have said to you here. I do not know how soon we may be called to build up Jackson County; but I feel it is nearer at hand than Latter-day Saints generally believe. When you look upon Jackson County and its surroundings at the present time, it looks like an impossibility. There are perhaps thirty thousand people settled there, adjacent to the Temple location, and they are doing business very extensively Looking at it naturally, it would seem as if a favorable arrangement for us to go back there could never arise. But when the Lord sets about to accomplish His purposes, He finds it easy to make it effectual. It will be so in this. I can imagine several ways in which the road would be perfectly clear, and the people be very glad for the Latter-day Saints to go back to Jackson county. As I said yesterday, establish the principles of Zion in your hearts, and then you will be worthy to receive Zion outside, with beautiful houses and castles, and lovely surroundings, and by and by go into a city the streets of which will be made of pure gold, where everything will be just as good and grand as the experience of millions of years has given to those who have to do with such buildings. Just read the last chapter in the Bible and see what a glorious city Latter-day Saints will have the privilege of living in, if they are faithful. And we will be able to build cities of our own after a time. It may be thought that I am going away into the future; but I do not say any more to you than I can find in the revelations of the Lord in the Doctrines and Covenants and in the Bible. It is all there; but only those can understand it who have the Spirit of the Lord.
President Lorenzo Snow
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The site for the city of Zion was pointed out by the Prophet Joseph Smith as Jackson county, Missouri, and there some of our people settled in 1831, but were subsequently driven from their homes. This event, while it delayed the building of the city, did not change the place of its location. The Latter-daySaints fully expect to return to Jackson county and "build up Zion." Their exodus to the Rocky Mountains, and their sojourn in "the Stakes of Zion"—as the places are called which they now inhabit—they regard as preparatory to that return, and as events that had to be in order to fulfil Scripture, notably these words of Isaiah: "O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain." "And it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it." Millennial Star, Jan. 2, 1902, 2. TISH
President Lorenzo Snow
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