Joseph Smith Biography

Twenty-Seven (1832)

LDS/Mormon people were not faithful, or they would have established the City of Zion,
gathered there, and the Lord would have dwelt in their midst.

Joseph’s Gentle Hints of Wisdom and Truth

As he was instructed, Joseph continually gave hints and opportunities for the people
to repent and see the gospel of Christ for what it really was. When the returned missionaries
mentioned above were gathered together in Kirtland in September of 1832, they wondered
what they were supposed to tell the converts to the Church about the “gathering of the
people unto Zion.”^31 At that time, Joseph gave them the desires of their hearts, but
interpolated wise hints of wisdom and truth in his words—hoping (as always) that the
people (the Gentiles) would finally understand and repent.
The men at the conference understood, erroneously, “Zion” as being an actual place
where the Saints would gather and prepare for the Second Coming of Christ, who would
come, first, to the Saints, and then from there send out his emissaries to fill the world with
his “everlasting gospel.”^32 They began to discuss what Joseph had written concerning Enoch
in his retranslation of the Bible. During the conference, the men asked that Joseph read
again to them, what he had written about Zion and the city of Enoch. Joseph did; but
immediately after reading what he had written, he began to explain what was written with
more clarity. He counseled the brethren at the conference:

Brethren, be cautious in making Zion to be more than what the Lord intended

for it. The Lord commanded Enoch to preach repentance from sin. Sin from

what? The sin in which all men are born into this world as infants, which sin

grows in their hearts as they grow from infants into men. All men are agents to

choose for themselves so that they may know the difference between the good

and the bitter.^33

My brethren, abiding in you is a record of heaven,^34 or the peaceable things of

immortal glory that we learned and experienced with our Father in the

Garden of Eden,^35 before the fall of Adam.^36 And the fall made it possible for

us to sin and act contrary to the things that abide in us, things that we know

are true. Is not wisdom, mercy, truth, justice, and judgment the things which

we seek? And we seek these things because of what abides in us, even the

Comforter,^37 that brings these things to our remembrance.

You were called by God, according to the desires of your heart, even those

things which abide in you, to do what Enoch did: preach repentance of sin

and to baptize the people. And Adam asked the Lord, “Why is it that men

must repent and be baptized in water?” Adam was commanded by the Lord

to “hearken unto my voice,” which meant that Adam would do what the

Lord would command him. This he understood, but the purpose for baptism

he did not. And the Lord explained the symbolic nature of baptism, that it is

a symbol of being born into this world, conceived in sin, that we might sin

against the record that abides in us, even a record of the peaceable things of

immortal glory, which our Father has. And after we have sinned, then we

must immerse ourselves into the “Living Water,” which are the words given