Has It Happened Yet?

The Literal Scattering of the Latter-day Saints In 1847, on the frozen Nebraska plain on the banks of the Missouri River, Brigham Young received the revelation now known to the Saints as Section 136 of the Doctrine & Covenants, but then it was called by its title “The Word and Will of the Lord.” Verse 10 reads: “Let every man use all his influence and property to remove this people to the place where the Lord shall locate a stake of Zion.” This command from on high ordered the Saints to continue the 19th century practice of literal gathering and Zion building. The stake of Zion prophesied by the Lord was Salt Lake City. Laid out upon the revealed principles given to the Prophet Joseph Smith to build the center-place in Jackson County, Missouri and later the cornerstone stake of Nauvoo, Illinois. When the plat of Zion was revealed to the Prophet, the History of the Church records him saying: “When this square [the city] is thus laid off and supplied, lay off another in the same way, and so fill up the world in these last days; and let every man live in the city, for this is the city of Zion.” Brigham Young knew that Zion was never intended to be a single city, and so the Saints under his direction continued to build stakes of Zion, or cities of Zion, all throughout the Intermountain West; places like Ogden and Provo, Logan, St. George, Manti, Tooele, Brigham City, Parowan, and the list goes on until the last Mormon settlement of Blanding, Utah was established in 1905. All told, there are more than five hundred settlements across the Intermountain West, mostly in Utah, but not all. The literal gathering of Israel and the cause of Zion was the primary moving factor in all of this. Brigham Young summed up the importance and centrality of gathering to Zion like this: “All Elders should understand that after baptism comes the gathering. And that everything which in the least impedes the gathering tends directly to hinder the great work in which we are engaged.” Indeed, building Zion was so critical to the early church that the Prophet Joseph even stated that without Zion, they would absolutely fall: “Without Zion, and a place of deliverance, we must fall; because the time is near when the sun will be darkened, and the moon turned to blood, and the stars fall from heaven, and the earth reel to and fro. Then, if this is the case, and if we are not sanctified and gathered to the places God has appointed, with all our former professions and our great love for the Bible, we must fall; we cannot stand; we cannot be saved; for God will gather out His Saints from the Gentiles, and then comes desolation and destruction, and none can escape except the pure in heart who are gathered.” Now that the Saints had found their land of Zion in the Great Basin, the Church institutionalized the doctrine of gathering into a corporation called the Perpetual Emigrating Fund: the financial instrument that funded foreign converts to come to Zion. In the decades that followed, the practice of gathering became a well-oiled machine, as tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints came to Utah to establish and build up these stakes. They came by wagon, handcart, ship, railroad, and any other means they could think of to get here. The literal gathering found its decline when the federal government waged a relentless campaign of persecution against the Saints, the combination of which was the legal disincorporation of the Church itself, and the Edmunds-Tucker Act also deleted the legal entity of the Perpetual Emigration Fund. It was the act of Congress that put this commandment into permanent decline and eventual death. The Saints did not stop coming to Utah, but the gathering slowed to a trickle, and the institutions that once managed the theological doctrine of gathering were reduced to ghost-like shells, trying to reconcile the doctrine of Zion with the brute reality of diminished capacity. It is no coincidence that the decline of gathering occurred alongside the federal campaign against humanitarian efforts and plural marriage, the central practices of 19th century Mormonism. Shortly after the Manifesto, President Woodruff and every subsequent Church President either downplayed the gathering, suggested it was paused, or advised that Utah had fallen and new converts should not come. But the pull of Zion could not be resisted by Saints living abroad. When David O. McKay was an apostle, he traveled the world visiting missions and heard the lament of Saints everywhere: they feared losing their best people to Utah, and even if they attained high positions, they knew the fullness of the blessings lay in the temple, which required gathering to Zion. This experience influenced him to build temples outside the stakes, making clear that the literal gathering to Zion was a practice of the past. The very concepts of gathering and Zion were reinterpreted and spiritualized. Gradually, less emphasis was placed on them in favor of a global institution, and the Saints who lived in Utah eventually forgot how special this place is and their roles as stewards of the Zion of God. Nevertheless, a century and a half of generations of Latter-day Saints made their homes and their lives in these valleys, making them among the safest, most affordable, and most beautiful places to live. But something has happened in the past couple of decades and has accelerated sharply under the administration of Spencer Cox. I see it almost daily, and the refrain is always the same. The descendants of the pioneers, whether they have retained the faith or not, lament that Utah is far more expensive than it used to be. They cannot afford to live here. They do not want to leave the place their families have lived in for nearly two centuries, but economic realities are forcing their departure. What happened? In the 21st century, the state of Utah has turned its power against its own people. It seems the ruling-class were dissatisfied with the economic and political power its residents provided, so sought to engineer a new population that could. The Utah Inland Port Authority seized the Northwest Quadrant of Salt Lake City, overriding local zoning and environmental protections. Working-class neighborhoods were industrialized, while tax increment and infrastructure benefits flowed directly to corporate landholders and developers. Families endured noise, pollution, and congestion, while municipalities could no longer shield their citizens from the consequences. The Point of the Mountain State Land Authority transformed the old prison site into a high-density innovation district, guided by a framework plan justified by the data and narrative of the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. Walkable high-tech office space and luxury housing were prioritized over affordable homes for families who had lived in the valleys for generations. Legislators and developers were deeply intertwined. House Bill 462 codified density requirements into law, forcing cities to select state-approved strategies or lose funding and face fines. Municipalities could not protect their streets. Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zones captured new tax revenues for private developers. Economic Development Tax Increment Financing recruited high-wage out-of-state tech workers, inflating home prices and making it impossible for heritage residents to compete. Private corporations such as Ivory Homes and the Larry H. Miller Company lobbied for these laws while simultaneously providing the products required by the mandates, shaping the market and displacing the old residents. Even ecclesiastical corporations contributed to Utah unaffordability. Land banking, high-end development, and investments in infrastructure pushed property values higher while capital that could have stabilized local housing flowed into global markets. The State of Utah has also extended incentives to draw international migrants and illegal aliens to its valleys. Students without lawful status are offered in-state college tuition. Driver’s Privilege Cards are issued to those without conventional lawful presence. Certain misdemeanors have been reclassified to avoid automatic deportation. Noncitizen residents can apply to practice law and join the Utah bar. Asylum seekers and other international migrants are granted in-state tuition benefits and residency privileges. Children of noncitizen parents receive government funded healthcare in certain circumstances. Employer verification laws have been revised, reducing enforcement and producing loopholes that weaken strict verification. Citizen initiatives to make English the official language have been resisted or neutered. The effect is tangible. KSL and data from the Migration Policy Institute put the number of unauthorized immigrants and liminal migrants in Utah at roughly 138,000. But any casual observer knows the real number is much higher. These are deliberate choices that change incentives and reshape the population. Every law, every authority, every incentive, every report, and every narrative were coordinated to favor incoming workers and investors over the descendants of pioneers. As a result, generations of heritage Utahns are forced to seek new homes far from the valleys their blood consecrated. This scattering has been institutionalized. Utah has been transformed from a land meant to gather the faithful into a place where the state shakes hands with Babylon to evict the Saints. Streets, hills, and valleys that once echoed with the labor and faith of generations now hum with commerce and profit. Families who should be the stewards of Zion are priced-out and leave, selling to a Californian millionaire or a subsidized migrant. The strategy is complete, systemic, and deliberate. The combination of state authority, corporate power, financial engineering, and intellectual framing ensures that the displacement will continue, and that the original inhabitants will not easily return. To lose one’s homeland is a biblical-level curse. And this one was wrought upon the citizens of Utah by their own government. Whether the perpetrators of this betrayal of the cause of Zion were motivated by greed, the lust for power, grotesque apostasy, or absurd naïveté, what’s happening now amounts to a perverse inversion of what God commanded to happen in these mountains. And Satan is the author of it.