We don’t need another church. We don’t need and shouldn’t want another hierarchy. The very idea is repulsing. Zion won’t be a project managed by a control group.
Zion is to have “one heart” and “one mind.” It is the idea itself that creates it.
If you create an organization, it can be compromised. It can be regulated. It can be overtaken by ambitious and cunning men; or by stupid, well-meaning, but misguided men. Organizations are a threat to Zion. Zion is an idea. Only an idea. It cannot be overtaken or controlled.
Conformance to the laws of man will ensnare you. Threats of litigation, loss of tax benefits or coercive power will work against you. You cannot sue an idea. You cannot tax an idea.
Zion will be free from the control of this world because, despite all man can do, threaten, oppose it, when it assumes the existence of merely an idea even dictators cannot touch it, cannot defeat it, cannot overcome it.
Zion will gather people around an idea. There will be no leader and no one greater than another.
How then are the people of Zion able to be of “one heart” and “one mind?” It will be because they agree on an idea which brings them together, and then they act in conformity with that idea.
Zion may have its ordinances and covenants, but they are between the individual who believes and God who ordains it.
Organizations fiddle with the notion of Zion and believe they have some “power” or “control” or “dominion” that allows them to compel others to be uniform (D&C 121: 37). They use “compulsory means” to achieve this end. But this is not and can never be Zion (D&C 121: 46).
Be patient. Over the next year the idea of Zion will become more clear than it has since the restoration ended. There are only two opposing forces at work. One creates, the other destroys. One causes life, the other controls and ends life. Birth and death. Restoration and apostasy. Growth and decay. We are either in one phase or the other. There are no moments when things are motionless .
Zion, as an idea whose time will only come when her ideas are understood, must be plainly taught again. The time wherein this is possible has arrived. Our time here comes and goes, generation after generation, and the Lord can regard it all as “one generation” because He reckons from a different time frame than we do.
And so the idea needs to begin unfranchised, uncontrolled, unfettered by the laws of man, and unpolluted by the ambitions of men. It is an idea which will make, without fear and compulsory means, all mankind equal.
This next year I will be trying to discuss as much of this idea as can be tolerated. It is up to you what you decide to make of it. It is ironic that the trigger for the church discipline and the condition for avoiding discipline involves this very speaking tour on this very subject. It is a small thing to be cast aside when the only thing that matters now is – can we accept the idea and then live to be of one heart and one mind. I have no ambition to lead. No desire to control or preside. But I have an obligation to teach, which I am willing to do.