The Lord foretold the challenges His followers would face. Challenges would come first from false Christs -meaning those who claimed they were anointed by God to lead others when God had not sent them. Next He warned of violence and wars. Nature would also fight against mankind with earthquakes, famines, and pestilences. Religious persecutions would be inevitable. But through it all the Lord advised patience: “In your patience, possess your souls.” (NC Luke 12:15) This advice to be patient in order to possess your souls was repeated in 1833. (See T&C 101:6)
Zion cannot be forced or demanded. The Lord explained that Zion will be gathered, but “not in haste, lest there should be confusion, which brings pestilence.” (T&C 50:6)
Recent revelations have given us a great advantage in the quest to see Zion. But right now it appears to me that we are all more focused on the results we hope to obtain, while ignoring the process. If I understand the Lord’s Answer to us (T&C 157), He is almost entirely focused on the process and wants us to forget about results. The results will only follow once we have figured out how to treat one another. Results are a by-product of getting the process right. Results are NOT something to be obtained using the wrong process.
Following Christ’s visit the Nephites attained a remarkable era of joy and peace because of how they behaved. “[B]ecause of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people; and there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness. And surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.” (4 Ne. 1:3)
When the idea of Zion was revealed in Joseph Smith’s day, the people wanted it, rushed to occupy it, but utterly failed to prepare to live in peace. Unlike the Nephites of 4th Nephi, those hasty saints failed and were violently chased from that land because “there were jarrings, and contentions, and envyings, and strifes, and lustful and covetous desires among them; therefore, by these things they polluted their inheritances.” (T&C 101:3) They were the opposite of the Nephites who lived in peace.
The process matters more than the results. If the process is wrong, results are impossible. But if the process is right, the results are inevitable.