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Laying the Foundations of Zion 1820-1839

In 1990 forty thousand full-time Mormon missionaries were actively proselyting in nearly ninety nations, attempting to acquaint their brothers and sisters around the world with the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. These missionaries included young men and women as well as mature couples of every race and nationality. Their common testimony was that in the modern world of strife and turmoil, God continued to give guidance, as he had in ages past, through living prophets. They told the story of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the rise of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, affirming that Joseph was the instrument in the hands of God for restoring to the earth the ancient church of Christ, with all the knowledge and authority necessary to bring about the salvation of mankind. Like the tiny stone that the prophet Daniel saw cut out of a mountain without hands, the restored church began as a small American body with a destiny to fill the world. Its universal gospel message was that Jesus Christ was the Savior of the world and that his gospel, restored through Joseph Smith, was the only road to world peace as well as to individual eternal salvation.

This was the same message the missionaries had taught for 160 years. They also taught that the United States was carefully prepared for its role in the restoration of the gospel, and that the times in which Joseph Smith lived were especially suited to receive that message. In the years immediately preceding 1820, the revivalistic fervor of western New York helped prepare young Joseph for his earliest spiritual experiences. Many seekers of true religion in the 1820s and 1830s believed in the necessity of restoring original Christianity as well as in temperance, miracles, spiritual manifestations, and the nearness of the Millennium. All this helped prepare prospective converts for the message of Mormonism, as it was soon called. The Book of Mormon proclaimed America to be a land of promise, "choice above all other lands," and the site of a New Jerusalem to be established in preparation for Christ's millennial reign. A revelation to Joseph Smith proclaimed the Constitution of the United States divinely inspired. With its protection of religious freedom, it was this, in part, that helped prepare America for the Restoration.

Within ten years after the Church's organization in 1830, scores of missionaries had covered many parts of the United States and gathered thousands of converts to Ohio and Missouri. The Saints made a valiant effort to establish ideal Christian communities in these two gathering places, but internal problems as well as conflict with non-Mormon neighbors resulted in their expulsion from both states. They never lost faith, however, that one day there would be a return to Missouri, where Zion, the New Jerusalem, would be built.

In 1839 about fifteen hundred members lived outside the United States, but the overwhelming majority of Saints were native-born Americans whose habits, values, and hopes were intimately connected with the land of their birth and whose faith in the gospel intensified their expectations of America's destiny. Because they were so intensely American, it may seem strange that the Latter-day Saints were unable to live peacefully with their American neighbors. Religious persecution, however, was not uncommon in that early period. Many Americans feared close-knit groups, suspecting subversive plots to overthrow their free and pluralistic society. Some even detected foreign influences in religion, particularly Catholicism, and often connected those influences with disloyalty. Others simply ridiculed the revivalists or other groups that claimed special spiritual manifestations. In short, America was a fluid, diverse society-some people accepted new ideas, others ignored them, and still others became actively involved in opposing new, hard-to-understand movements.