“Voices of the Restoration: Zion’s Camp,” Come, Follow Me—For Home and Church: Doctrine and Covenants 2025 (2025)
“Zion’s Camp,” Come, Follow Me—For Home and Church: 2025
Voices of the Restoration
Zion’s Camp
Because Zion’s Camp never restored the Saints to their lands in Jackson County, many people felt that their endeavor was a failure. However, many participants of Zion’s Camp looked back on their experience and saw how the Lord fulfilled a higher purpose in their lives and in His kingdom. Here are some of their testimonies.
Joseph Smith
Over 40 years after Zion’s Camp, Joseph Young, who had been a member of the camp, reported that Joseph Smith said the following:
“Brethren, some of you are angry with me, because you did not fight in Missouri; but let me tell you, God did not want you to fight. He could not organize his kingdom with twelve men to open the gospel door to the nations of the earth, and with seventy men under their direction to follow in their tracks, unless he took them from a body of men who had offered their lives, and who had made as great a sacrifice as did Abraham.
“Now, the Lord has got his Twelve and his Seventy, and there will be other quorums of Seventies called, who will make the sacrifice, and those who have not made their sacrifices and their offerings now, will make them hereafter.”1
Brigham Young
“When we arrived in Missouri the Lord spoke to his servant Joseph and said, ‘I have accepted your offering,’ and we had the privilege to return again. On my return many friends asked me what profit there was in calling men from their labor to go up to Missouri and then return, without apparently accomplishing anything. ‘Who has it benefited?’ asked they. ‘If the Lord did command it to be done, what object had he in view in doing so?’ … I told those brethren that I was well paid—paid with heavy interest—yea that my measure was filled to overflowing with the knowledge that I had received by traveling with the Prophet.”2
Wilford Woodruff
“I was in Zion’s Camp with the Prophet of God. I saw the dealings of God with him. I saw the power of God with him. I saw that he was a Prophet. What was manifest to him by the power of God upon that mission was of great value to me and to all who received his instructions.”3
“When the members of Zion’s Camp were called many of us had never beheld each others’ faces; we were strangers to each other and many had never seen the prophet. We had been scattered abroad, like corn sifted in a sieve, throughout the nation. We were young men, and were called upon in that early day to go up and redeem Zion, and what we had to do we had to do by faith. We assembled together from the various States at Kirtland and went up to redeem Zion, in fulfilment of the commandment of God unto us. God accepted our works as He did the works of Abraham. We accomplished a great deal, though apostates and unbelievers many times asked the question ‘what have you done?’ We gained an experience that we never could have gained [in] any other way. We had the privilege of beholding the face of the prophet, and we had the privilege of traveling a thousand miles with him, and seeing the workings of the spirit of God with him, and the revelations of Jesus Christ unto him and the fulfilment of those revelations. And he gathered some two hundred elders from throughout the nation in that early day and sent us broadcast into the world to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Had I not gone up with Zion’s Camp I should not have been here to-day [in Salt Lake City, serving in the Quorum of the Twelve]. … By going there we were thrust into the vineyard to preach the gospel, and the Lord accepted our labors. And in all our labors and persecutions, with our lives often at stake, we have had to work and live by faith.”4
“The experience [we] obtained in travelling in Zion’s Camp was of more worth than gold.”5