Episode 182: D&C 81 – Section 105, Part 1
First, a quick recap of Mormon history up until June 1835, then Joseph tells his weary band of followers that this entire walk from Ohio to Missouri has been for naught. Bonus points for victim blaming.
Drink Count – 6
Check out this list of Zion’s Camp participants
Patron Bonus: Marie responds to a Mormon Craiglist personals ad
Read along with us at CompareDandC.com
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My Book of Mormon 
November 13, 2017 at 1:46 am
Do Mormons believe Zion’s Camp was a failure? Church members soon learned to make sense of the event by understanding it to be a proving ground for future leaders, especially since the majority of the first Quorum of the Twelve and all of the original First Quorum of the Seventy were called from among the members of the camp.
“We can allow for the reality that God is more concerned with growth than with geography. Thus, those who marched in Zion’s Camp were not exploring the Missouri countryside but their own possibilities.” – Neal A. Maxwell, modern LDS Seventy (and future Mormon apostle) in October 1976 General Conference
“The journey of ‘Zion’s camp’ to Missouri, since it failed of its purpose to reinstate the saints in possession of their lands in Jackson county, was regarded by some as being an unprofitable, and an unmeaning episode. It was far from that. Undoubtedly the most important thing in life is experience, and every experience has a value. It was so with this expedition of Zion’s camp. A brother in Kirtland—one too weak in the faith to go with the camp—meeting Brigham Young on his return from Missouri, said to him: ‘Well, what did you gain on this useless journey to Missouri with Joseph Smith?’ ‘All we went for,’ promptly replied Brigham Young. ‘I would not exchange the experience I gained in that expedition for all the wealth of Geauga county.'” – B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, 1:370–71
“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.” – Joseph Smith, at a meeting following the organization of the Seventies, cited in History of the Church, 2:182.
The experience of one participant, Nathan Baldwin, is detailed in the new LDS manual, Revelations in Context, as a background to the revelations about Zion’s Camp: https://www.lds.org/manual/revelations-in-context/the-acceptable-offering-of-zions-camp?lang=eng