Zion — What It Is, Where It Will Be, and How to Build It

Not a metaphor — a specific people, a specific place, and a specific future reality

"Zion" is used loosely in Christian culture — in hymns, in political rhetoric, in casual speech about heaven or God's kingdom in general. For most Christians it is a poetic term for the ideal state of God's people, or simply a synonym for Jerusalem, or a metaphor for celestial peace. It floats in the language without sharp edges.

LDS doctrine is far more specific. Zion in LDS theology is three things simultaneously: a people (the pure in heart), an actual city to be built in America before the Millennium, and a society so righteous that God has already received one version of it into heaven — Enoch's city — and has promised to return it to the earth. None of these usages is metaphorical. All three are doctrinal and specific.

Understanding what Zion is reframes how LDS members understand their present life, their relationship with the law of consecration, and the destination of history. Zion is not a distant dream. It is the work of this dispensation.

What Zion Actually Means

The most precise definition of Zion in LDS scripture is also the most compact:

D&C 97:21

“Therefore, verily, thus saith the Lord, let Zion rejoice, for this is Zion — the pure in heart; let Zion rejoice.”

Zion is the pure in heart. Not the perfect in behavior — the pure in heart. The distinction matters. Purity of heart is a condition of motive, orientation, and love — not a condition of flawless performance. A pure heart seeks God first, desires the wellbeing of others, holds no hidden agenda, and is free from the corrosive self-interest that fractures every human community.

That definition makes Zion simultaneously a spiritual condition (the state of a pure heart) and a social reality (what happens when enough people with pure hearts live together). You cannot have Zion society without Zion people. The people are primary. The city, the economy, the governance — these are what emerges naturally from a community of the pure in heart.

Isaiah's call to Zion — "put on thy strength, O Zion" (Isaiah 52:1) — is a call to be what Zion actually is: a people who have put on the whole armor of God, whose community life is ordered by divine covenant, whose relationships are free of the divisions and deceits that characterize the world.

Enoch's Zion — It Already Happened

The most remarkable data point in the history of Zion is that one community actually built it — and God took the whole city to heaven. The account in Moses 7 (Pearl of Great Price) describes Enoch's city with specificity that has no parallel anywhere in scripture:

Moses 7:18–19, 21

“And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them... And it came to pass that Zion was built up, a city of holiness, even the city of Enoch... And the Lord blessed the land, and they were blessed upon the mountains, and upon the high places, and did flourish. And the Lord called his people Zion... and the Lord took his people to himself.”

Of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness, and there was no poor among them. These are the three social conditions of Zion: unity of heart, unity of mind, and economic equality born of consecration. When all three are present simultaneously in a community, Zion is not a goal to work toward — it exists. It is the thing itself.

The Genesis account mentions Enoch but gives almost no detail. LDS scripture restored through Joseph Smith fills in a sweeping narrative: Enoch was a prophet of extraordinary power who built a Zion community over hundreds of years, until the entire city was so righteous that God translated them — took them off the earth alive — rather than letting them be destroyed by the wickedness surrounding them.

Moses 7 also records Enoch weeping as he looks down at the earth after his city has been taken up — weeping over the suffering and wickedness of the people left behind. And God weeps with him. This passage — God weeping over His children — is one of the most theologically significant texts in LDS scripture. It reveals the nature of God: not detached, not vindictive, but personally pained by the suffering of His children who refused what Enoch's city had demonstrated was possible.

The New Jerusalem

The Doctrine and Covenants is specific about where the New Jerusalem will be built:

D&C 57:1–3

“Hearken, O ye elders of my church, saith the Lord your God, who have assembled yourselves together, according to my commandments, in this land, which is the land of Missouri, which is the land which I have appointed and consecrated for the gathering of the saints. Wherefore, this is the land of promise, and the place for the city of Zion. And thus saith the Lord your God, if you will receive wisdom here is wisdom. Behold, the place which is now called Independence is the center place.”

Independence, Missouri. That specificity has surprised, amused, and troubled observers since 1831. Joseph Smith was not metaphorical about this. He identified a specific location on the American continent as the site where the New Jerusalem will be built before the Millennium — the city to which Christ will come at His second coming, and where Enoch's city will descend and join with it.

John the Revelator saw this city: "And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (Revelation 21:2). LDS doctrine understands that coming-down as literal — the city Enoch took up will return, and the city the saints have built will receive it. Two Zions, separated by millennia, meeting in the land of America at the dawn of the Millennium.

The early Saints failed to build it in Missouri in the 1830s. The failure was not because the location was wrong — it was because the people were not ready. That failure does not cancel the promise. The work will resume. The New Jerusalem will be built. LDS prophecy is consistent and unambiguous on this point.

Zion as a People ("the Pure in Heart")

Because Zion is first a people and then a place, the work of building Zion begins not with construction projects but with character formation. The question is not primarily "where will Zion be?" but "who will Zion's people be?" And the answer is already given: the pure in heart.

What makes a heart pure? The same process that the gospel is always working in a person: repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, obedience to covenants, consecration of time and resources, genuine love of neighbor, and the transformation of character that comes from sustained, faithful discipleship over years and decades. It is not a single experience. It is a life's work.

D&C 82:14

“For Zion must increase in beauty, and in holiness; her borders must be enlarged; her stakes must be strengthened; yea, verily I say unto you, Zion must arise and put on her beautiful garments.”

Zion must increase in beauty and holiness. The directive is ongoing — not a one-time founding event but a continuous process of becoming. Every stake of the Church is a stake of Zion — a place where the pure in heart are gathering, where temples stand, where covenant communities are forming people who can live the higher law. The stakes are not the New Jerusalem. But they are the preparation for it, the proving ground where people become Zion before they are asked to build it.

Why Zion Failed in Missouri and What That Teaches

The early Saints were driven from Missouri in 1838–39 by mobs and illegal government action. But the Lord had been plain, even before the expulsion, about why Zion had not been built:

D&C 105:3–5

“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 impart of their substance, as becometh saints, to the poor and afflicted among them; and are not united according to the union required by the law of the celestial kingdom; and Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom; otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself.”

Three failures: disobedience, failure to care for the poor, and failure to unite. All three are matters of heart. Not of circumstance, not of enemies, not of bad luck — the Lord identifies internal failures of character as the reason Zion could not be built by those people at that time.

This is one of the most honest pieces of self-assessment in scripture: the people who were trying to build Zion failed because they were not yet Zion people. The external enemies were real, but they were secondary. Zion is not stopped by enemies — it was stopped by internal corruption. That teaching is uncomfortable, and it is also essential: Zion will not be built by good intentions, good organization, or sufficient numbers. It will be built by people whose hearts have actually been transformed.

Building Zion Today — In Our Hearts and Communities

The practical question for a member of the Church today is not "when will we go back to Missouri?" It is "am I becoming a Zion person?" That is the work that precedes everything else. You cannot build Zion from the outside in. You can only build it from the inside out — starting with the condition of your own heart, then the relationships in your family, then the community of your ward, then the culture of the stake.

President Russell M. Nelson has frequently spoken of a coming division between the kingdom of God and the world that will be increasingly stark. The preparation for that division is not political or geographic. It is the formation of Zion people — individuals who have become pure in heart through covenant living, who can stand in holy places and not be moved.

For the honest seeker: Zion is LDS theology's answer to the question every serious Christian eventually asks — "what is the gospel actually building toward?" Not individual escape to heaven. Not a spiritual holding pattern until the Rapture. A community of covenant people, purified by the gospel, gathered to a specific place, living God's social and economic laws, welcoming the return of Enoch's city, and meeting Christ at His coming.

That is not vague. That is not metaphorical. That is a destination with a name, a location, a people, and a timeline. And the work of getting there starts right now, in the heart of anyone willing to become pure in heart — which is to say, in anyone willing to become what Christ came to make us.