This post was inspired by a Regional Conference I attended while working in the Central Valley in California.
For decades now I have had the thoughts of building Zion on my mind. Since I first taught Gospel Doctrine when I was about 22-26 (I taught the whole 4 year cycle without a partner to take every other week – like wimpy people these days 🙂 ) I love the concept of trying to be one with God, building Zion in your own heart, then creating Zion in your family. Raising a family up to the Lord. I didn’t want them to “quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin,” I wanted to teach them to love the Lord, and hopefully they will create their own Zion in their own home when they move out.
From there, you help build Zion in your own community, through your neighborhood, church or whatever groups, then your town, state, country, etc.
We need to build our own area as a Stake of Zion.
One of the things that some people don’t understand about Zion is the idea that there will be no poor among them. How is that going to happen? Jesus said the poor will always be among us (John 12:8). The answer is through self-reliance. A Zion people will live as a self-reliant people, they will teach it among their people. A Zion people are of one heart, and they think and feel the same way. That doesn’t mean people will never fall on hard times, but as a self-reliant people they will do what needs to be done to take care of their family, and when they need help their neighbors will help them out. Just as you willingly want to help your neighbor, they willingly want to help you. In Zion, caring for those in need isn’t a compulsion forced upon us by the State, it’s a voluntary act of charity. There is no blessing in your life when you are forced to do the right thing, you are blessed by your voluntary acts of goodness, charity and love for one another.
A State stealing your money to redistribute it plays no part in charity.
A Zion people know that dependence on others weakens your Spirit. Help from others is a blessing to be cherished in a time of need, but will utilized only as truly needed. It can not become a crutch.
We all commit to live a life consecrated to Christ and the building of Zion. We will all do our part as committed brothers and sisters in Christ, and we will do it without coercion. We can start building Zion in our own families, neighborhoods and towns. We can be mentors to others who need help. We can teach self-reliance, but as Elder Hales said (See above), we have to be self-reliant if we are going to help others, and we need to be in the right situation to really be able to service.
So, get your years supply! 🙂
Once we as a people (and hopefully as a church) commit to build Zion, we will do it. I will look up more quotes on this later, because there have been some very important teachings along these lines.