The early Saints had such high hopes of establishing Zion. They tried several times and in more than one place, but it was never successful. What happened?
Before I address the question above, I would like to look at an issue that is regularly referred to in the scriptures we are reading, but never really explained or discussed, that of punishing the wicked.
Punishing the wicked
This is a side step from the main topic of the article, but necessary information. The topic of punishing the wicked keeps coming up, but I think it needs a little explaining and discussion to see how it fits into the establishment of Zion. A little doctrinal and historical context is in order.
When we break a commandment are we punished immediately? No. God holds off punishing us with what we deserve as long as He possibly can. He does this so we have as long a time to repent as possible. But when we do good and are obedient, that is when He blesses us immediately (Mosiah 2:24). We can’t always put our finger on what the blessing is, or where it came from, but it is always there. Often our blessings come in forms we cannot measure or discern, such as an increase in our ability to resist temptation or our ability to exercise our faith a little more or a little longer. These types of blessings are invaluable, but are difficult to discern until our ability has increased a great deal and it becomes more obvious to us.
Now, back to the wicked. When we do evil in any form God may chastise us, and we may notice that the Spirit isn’t with us as much as He was before, but the Spirit still works behind the scenes to reclaim us so we don’t have to face the ultimate punishment that lies in store for us if we don’t repent. The Lord has two main terms He uses to describe His measurement of just how evil we can become. When we reach a certain threshold He determines that we are beyond the ability to repent. At this point God uses a cup to represent a specific amount it can hold or a fruit that a discerning eye can determine when it is fully ripe to describe the spiritual condition of a person or group of people.
The cup and the fruit
There is a spiritual cup that is used to measure suffering, punishment, and sin. The Lord talks about this measuring cup often through His prophets. The Book of Mormon more often uses the analogy of the fruit being fully ripe to discuss the condition of becoming completely wicked.
2 Nephi 8:22
22 Thus saith thy Lord, the Lord and thy God pleadeth the cause of his people; behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again.
The cup of trembling is a medicinal dose of punishment that is bitter to have to drink. The dregs are the bits of leaves at the bottom of the brew or tea. These remnants or remains are the most distasteful part of the drink and are usually thrown out as inedible. But when the Lord finally declares our cup of wickedness to be full, and we are made to drink the cup of His fury, we have to drink or experience the results of our disobedience, which includes all the most bitter and vile parts at the bottom of the cup. This is the cup God is telling the prophet He is taking out of the hand of the house of Israel, so they won’t have to partake of the dregs of His fury any longer. This is the Lord declaring that their punishment is at an end, and hereafter He will be their God and will care for them and cause them to prosper and find joy.
Mind you, Israel wasn’t made to drink from this cup of punishment until after centuries of disobedience and rebellion. It takes a while to fill God’s cup of wrath, but the punishment often lasts almost as long as it took to fill it. Just as it took generations for the cup of God’s wrath to become filled, so too might it take centuries for the Lord to reclaim the people from their disobedience.
Something that just occurred to me is that when I think of God referring to the cup of His wrath being full, the punishment is usually something that requires that generation to bear the brunt of His punishment. That often comes in the form of death through war or enslavement, but it usually doesn’t mean total destruction. But when the Lord refers to someone being ripe in iniquity, there is no coming back from that. Being ripe in one’s iniquity is a one way punishment that always ends in being called from mortality back into our life in eternity.
What do you think? Can you think of any instance where a people drinking the dregs of the cup of God’s wrath were completely destroyed? Or can you think of any example of someone being ripe in iniquity not being destroyed? I can’t. If you can think of an exception to this apparent rule, please make a comment with references in the comments below. We will all be better for your help.
Genesis 15:16
16 But in the generation they shall come again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet .
This verse tells us that Israel would serve in bondage to the Egyptians for roughly 400 years, at which time the Amorites would be ripe in their iniquity and would be ready for destruction. But at the moment the Amorites weren’t yet ready to be destroyed, because they had not yet become fully ripe in iniquity. The Lord had promised their land to Abraham, but He couldn’t give Israel their land until the Amorites were wicked enough to be destroyed. This is why the Israelites were commanded to kill all of them, every man, woman, and child. Such destruction only happens when the people become completely beyond the ability to repent. The Lord usually has another wicked nation destroy the nation that is ripe in its iniquity. If there is no other nation to do it then He destroys them like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. In this case He sent Israel to do the work of claiming the land for themselves by destroying its inhabitants.
The stated purpose of our time in mortality is to prove that we will obey God and keep His commandments. If we prove to God that we will absolutely fight Him at every turn then we lose the right to remain in mortality. This is Satan’s greatest desire. The test, so to speak, has been prematurely terminated by our own declaration. This is why those ripe in iniquity always die early.
The Lord’s timing
When someone tells me to be patient and to wait for something to happen, it may be frustrating, but I can usually be sure it will happen within a few days, months, or years. But the Lord is working on a timetable that spans the life of our planet and beyond. For example, in the Book of Mormon when Laman and Lemuel were rebellious and taught their children to hate the people of Nephi, God promised to redeem the posterity of Laman and Lemuel, because it wasn’t their children’s fault that their parents were so wicked. Here it is almost three thousand years later and the process of that redemption is still unfolding. It appears that very few things happen with the Lord quickly.
Over and over again the Lord tried to help the early Saints of this dispensation establish Zion, but over and over again those same Saints proved that they were not ready for living in a Zion society. For this reason the Lord told them that He would still lead them to a life in Zion, but that it wouldn’t happen in their generation. How can His promise to have us live in Zion be fulfilled when we don’t see any evidence that His promise is coming nearer to fruition?
We get a hint about the process of redeeming the Lord’s people in the Book of Mormon. Over and over again the prophets tried to teach the people how to live, think, and behave as a Zion people. And over and over again the people chose evil over good. When the great destruction happened at Christ’s death all those who were the most wicked were killed. The Lord told the people that only they who didn’t kill the prophets were allowed to live. These are the people who were converted and learned to live in a Zion-like society for three generations before people began to reject good and embrace evil once again.
Since the days of the early Saints the Lord has been moving us little by little towards being a Zion people. Over the decades the focus of the prophets have slowly taught the people to be more organized, more personally responsible for their own salvation, more spiritually minded, etc. The more wicked the world becomes, the more spiritual God’s people need to be in order to be safe from the evils of the world. Each generation that is born into mortality is more capable of being Zion-like than the last generation. So we are making progress, and the Lord’s promises of establishing Zion will come to pass, but we still need to make many changes in our personal lives before that can happen.
Part of the problem with becoming a Zion people is that we don’t know just what personal changes each of us needs to make in order to qualify ourselves. Some of us are clearly more giving, more attentive to the needs of the poor and downtrodden, etc. than others. Some of us have a long way to go in letting go of the teachings of the world so that being charitable comes more naturally to us. I see the goal here as all of us working to become as prepared to live a godly life as we possibly can, and teaching our family members to do the same to the best of our abilities. By all of us doing this, over time the prophets can help us better measure up to being ready to live with the Savior in Zion.
What is important here is that we need to be living a Zion-like life before we can live in a Zion society. Will we establish Zion? Yes, just as soon as we each are personally living a celestial lifestyle that is required of those who live in Zion. We need to remember that a Zion people must be already living a Zion lifestyle before the city of Zion can be successfully built.
We can’t blame the Lord that the Saints back in the day weren’t ready for Zion to be established successfully. They each were newly converted from generations of false teachings and damaging customs. They lived in a society that was often petty and judgmental. God always offers us the best He has to offer first. He only amends His offer when we prove that we are unable to measure up to our initial hopes of being all that He hoped we could be. This is what happened to the children of Israel when Moses led them out of Egypt. Moses received the fulness of the gospel on the mountain, but when he came back to the camp the people had reverted back to the idol worship of Egypt, proving that they were not willing or ready to receive the fulness of the gospel the Lord wanted them to have. This is why Moses went back up the mountain and was given the 10 commandments and the law of Moses, the lesser law. It was many, many generations before the Savior was born and brought the fulness of the gospel back to the people.
The Lord understands His children. He knows that if the parents reject or are unready for what He is offering to them that the children won’t be able to receive it just yet. So generation after generation He works with His people to raise their sites and raise their standards to match the promised blessings, until the day comes that the bulk of the people are ready to receive the promised blessings as originally promised. The question each of us should be asking ourself is, “What am I doing today to prepare myself to live with the Savior when he returns?”
Requirements of Zion
Doctrine and Covenants 105:1-6
1 Verily I say unto you who have assembled yourselves together that you may learn my will concerning the of mine afflicted people—
2 Behold, I say unto you, were it not for the of my people, speaking concerning the church and not individuals, they might have been redeemed even now.
3 But behold, they have not learned to be obedient to the things which I required at their hands, but are full of all manner of evil, and do not of their substance, as becometh saints, to the poor and afflicted among them;
4 And are not according to the union required by the law of the celestial kingdom;
5 And cannot be built up it is by the of the of the celestial kingdom; otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself.
6 And my people must needs be until they learn , if it must needs be, by the things which they .
When I first started studying this week’s lessons I was thinking that the people weren’t that bad, surely. But then I was shocked to read about the apostles drawing swords on each other and apostatizing from the church, even after having had heavenly vision with the prophet. Obviously there were those who were keeping all the commandments and were doing all in their power to live a celestial lifestyle, but there were enough members, even among the leaders of the church who were not living up to their potential that the Lord couldn’t justify giving them the land of their inheritance and the city of Zion. They, as a people, had too many lessons that needed to be learned and mastered before they would be ready for the blessings He has in mind for us. And according to the pattern in the scriptures, once the Lord withdraws blessings from His people, it is many generations before they are able to earn them back.
The six verses above show us that the conditions of those who are needy and struggling need to be far more important to us than we currently rate them in our personal lives. Our obedience is still not a proven part of our worthiness before the Lord. We are striving for celestial worthiness in these areas. Until we become sufficiently focused on caring for others, even over our own convenience, and we show by how we live our lives that we will obey the Lord under any circumstances, we won’t be ready to live in Zion. Our personal attitudes and behaviors must become celestial before we, as a people, are ready to establish Zion once again.
Our prophet has given us a “higher and holier” form of ministering to the needs of those we are assigned to serve. And yes, we do serve by assignment in the Lord’s church. Are we learning how to love a complete stranger and serve them and accept them as we would our own family? How much are we willing to sacrifice for the needs and welfare of those we still don’t even know well? How much inconvenience to our personal wants are we willing to bear? These types of sacrifices show us where we are in relation to being a Zion-like people.
The world is becoming increasingly self focused. We need to become increasingly other focused. The world promotes achieving for personal comfort, while the Lord wants us to achieve for the betterment of others. By bettering the lives of others the Lord blesses our life for us. Such blessings are built into the lifestyle of the inhabitants of Zion.
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Thank you for those article & scriptures to cause me to look in my on closets where we all need repentance & work on them..& ON the articles of complete destruction of a people or nation.. My 1st. thoughts were The Nephites & Sodom & Gomorrah, Tower of Babel Nosh, but then I realized that there were in everyone , people left behind even if just a handful…It helped me reflect again at my age.of 72,…What a merciful Father we really have.& my life areas of repentance & still fall far short of fulfilling my callings in family & church. ..I’m more grateful for a loving & merciful God the Father & our Savior Jesus Christ..They definitely have shown me mercy numberless times.THANK YOU..For this sight..I don’t know how long I’ve been a family..Thats what it feels like…I often use & pass the lessons to post On FB & TEXT MESSSGES TO MY F&F & Strangers. May Father keep blessing you & yours with health &.wisdom U need Christ name Amen. THANK YOU THANK YOU.