10/06/2026
WHAT IF THE FINAL PREPARATION IS US?
When I began looking at the pattern of teachings surrounding the Second Coming, I thought I was looking for events.
Missionary work.
The gathering of Israel.
Temples spreading throughout the earth.
Ordinances for the living and the dead.
Zion.
Preparation for the return of Christ.
But somewhere in that investigation, the question changed.
Because eventually I came across a deceptively simple definition:
“This is Zion—the pure in heart.”
Doctrine and Covenants ninety-seven, verse twenty-one.
And I stopped.
What does that actually mean?
Because if Zion is ultimately “the pure in heart,” then building Zion cannot simply mean constructing something.
It means becoming something.
And suddenly the entire map began looking different.
THE FIRST ZION
The story of Enoch gives us perhaps the clearest starting point.
Moses seven does not describe Zion primarily by its buildings, government, population, wealth, or geographical boundaries.
It says:
“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.”
Moses seven, verse eighteen.
Look carefully at those conditions.
One heart.
One mind.
Righteousness.
No poor among them.
And then something extraordinary happens.
Zion is taken into God’s presence.
The people didn’t become Zion because God took them.
They became Zion first.
Then God acted.
That distinction stayed with me.
THE SAME PATTERN APPEARS AGAIN
After the resurrected Christ appears to the people in the Book of Mormon, Fourth Nephi records one of the most remarkable societies anywhere in scripture.
There is no contention.
They deal justly with one another.
They have things in common.
There are no rich and poor divisions.
Eventually even the old identities separating Nephite from Lamanite disappear.
And scripture tells us why:
There was no contention “because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.”
Fourth Nephi, verse fifteen.
Again:
The heart changes.
Behavior changes.
Relationships change.
Social divisions weaken.
Unity follows.
But Fourth Nephi gives us something Enoch’s account doesn’t give us quite as clearly.
It lets us watch Zion fall apart.
And the collapse doesn’t begin with some enormous act of evil.
It begins with pride.
People become concerned with possessions and distinctions.
Then common economic life disappears.
Classes develop.
Religious divisions grow.
Factions return.
Persecution appears.
Eventually even the old tribal identities return.
The people relearn how to separate themselves from one another.
The Church itself has published teaching material describing Fourth Nephi as a lesson in how pride leads to division, dissension, and apostasy.
That made me wonder:
Maybe the opposite of Zion isn’t simply wickedness.
Maybe one of the opposites of Zion is division born from pride.
THEN JESUS TAKES US INTO THE HEART
That sent me back to the Sermon on the Mount.
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
Matthew five, verse eight.
Christ repeats the same promise among the Nephites in Third Nephi twelve.
But Jesus doesn’t stop by telling us to become pure.
He begins showing us what happens inside such a person.
Don’t merely refrain from murder.
Examine anger.
Don’t merely perform worship.
Reconcile with your brother.
Don’t perform righteousness so other people will admire you.
Examine your motive.
Don’t simply love people who love you.
“Love your enemies.”
Pray for those who persecute you.
Become a peacemaker.
Forgive.
Be merciful.
Examine the beam in your own eye before becoming consumed with the mote in somebody else’s.
Suddenly purity of heart looks much larger than a private worthiness checklist.
It concerns what happens inside me toward another human being.
And perhaps one of the hardest tests of my heart isn’t how I treat somebody who agrees with me.
It’s what happens inside me toward somebody I believe is profoundly wrong.
Can I disagree without contempt?
Can I oppose wrongdoing without enjoying the destruction of the person doing it?
Can I discover that I’m wrong without experiencing correction as humiliation?
Can I forgive without pretending the injury never happened?
Can somebody hate me without teaching me how to hate them back?
That last question has stayed with me.
Maybe a pure heart is increasingly difficult for an enemy to corrupt.
MISSOURI GIVES US THE FAILED EXPERIMENT
Then I went back to the early Saints in Missouri.
This may be one of the most important parts of the story.
They had the geography.
They had gathered.
They had priesthood authority.
They had a prophet.
They had revelations.
They believed they were establishing Zion.
And yet Zion failed to materialize.
Doctrine and Covenants one hundred one gives a remarkable internal diagnosis:
“There were jarrings, and contentions, and envyings, and strifes, and lustful and covetous desires among them.”
Later, Doctrine and Covenants one hundred five becomes even more explicit.
The Saints had not sufficiently learned obedience.
They had not adequately shared their substance with the poor and afflicted.
And they were:
“not united according to the union required by the law of the celestial kingdom.”
Then comes the sentence that changes the whole story:
“Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom.”
Doctrine and Covenants one hundred five, verse five.
They were standing in the designated place for Zion.
But they had not yet become Zion.
They had the place.
They weren’t yet the people.
THE CHURCH CAN BUILD THE STRUCTURE
And this is where something from my earlier article began making more sense to me.
The Church can construct a temple.
It cannot construct a pure heart.
It can organize a stake.
It cannot administratively make its members “one heart and one mind.”
It can send missionaries.
It cannot force conversion.
It can provide ordinances.
It cannot make someone keep a covenant.
It can produce manuals, conferences, apps and curriculum.
It cannot have a relationship with Christ on somebody else’s behalf.
The institution can create extraordinary conditions for transformation.
But eventually the work moves inside the individual.
Spencer W. Kimball taught precisely this connection in his nineteen seventy-eight address “Becoming the Pure in Heart.” He warned that Zion cannot be built by people governed by covetousness and greed. He described Zion instead as a “pure and selfless people” and connected it with seeking the welfare of one’s neighbor.
And Doctrine and Covenants ninety-seven makes the definition unmistakable: Zion is not only a geographical location. Zion is also a people—the pure in heart.
WHAT ABOUT THE TEMPLES AND ORDINANCES?
That raised another question.
If transformation ultimately happens in the heart, what are all the ordinances for?
Baptism.
The gift of the Holy Ghost.
The sacrament.
Temple covenants.
Consecration.
Perhaps we’ve sometimes treated these as accomplishments when scripture treats them more like instruments of transformation.
King Benjamin’s people provide a striking example.
After hearing the gospel of Christ, they describe experiencing a “mighty change” in their hearts.
Not merely a change in membership.
Not merely a change in behavior.
Their desires themselves begin changing.
And that’s what sanctification ultimately points toward—not simply doing different things, but becoming a different kind of person.
So perhaps the increasing number of temples throughout the world isn’t the endpoint of preparation.
It dramatically expands access to a covenant process intended to produce a covenant people.
The building matters.
But what the building is supposed to produce in the people matters even more.
AND THEN THERE ARE THE POOR
One detail kept appearing in these Zion accounts that I initially treated almost as secondary.
“There was no poor among them.”
Why would that belong in the definition of Zion?
Why doesn’t Moses simply say Enoch’s people were righteous and unified?
King Benjamin helps answer that.
After teaching repentance, forgiveness and Christ, he immediately turns outward.
Feed the hungry.
Clothe the naked.
Visit the sick.
Relieve suffering according to your ability.
The condition of my neighbor becomes evidence of the condition of my heart.
Because if I say that you and I are “one heart,” while your suffering means nothing to me, in what meaningful sense are we one?
This isn’t necessarily an argument for any particular modern economic system.
Scripture isn’t handing us a twenty-first-century tax policy.
It’s asking a much more uncomfortable question:
What does another person’s need awaken in me?
Kimball explicitly connected Zion with overcoming selfishness, greed and materialism and becoming a people characterized by love, harmony and peace.
Interestingly, the New Testament church after Pentecost gives us another echo of the pattern. Acts records believers sharing their possessions and caring for one another’s needs. LDS teaching explicitly connects Acts two and four with becoming unified, pure in heart, and caring for the poor.
Different dispensation.
Same pattern.
WHAT DOES “ONE MIND” MEAN?
This also forced me to confront another assumption.
Does becoming “one heart and one mind” mean everybody must think exactly alike?
I don’t think the scriptural pattern requires that.
Unity isn’t necessarily uniformity.
Two people can disagree profoundly and still refuse to hate one another.
And two people can profess identical doctrine while being filled with pride, resentment and contempt.
That distinction matters.
Because conformity can be imposed.
Unity cannot.
You can pressure someone into silence.
You cannot pressure them into charity.
You can require outward obedience.
You cannot command a heart into humility.
You can stop an argument.
You cannot administratively create reconciliation.
So perhaps “one mind” isn’t the destruction of individuality.
Perhaps it is different minds becoming oriented toward the same Christ strongly enough that disagreement no longer requires enmity.
THAT MAKES CONTENTION DIFFERENT FROM DISAGREEMENT
Christ says in Third Nephi eleven that the spirit of contention is not of him.
But scripture is filled with people who disagreed.
Abinadi disagreed.
Samuel the Lamanite disagreed.
Alma confronted people.
Moroni confronted people.
Jesus himself confronted people.
So disagreement cannot itself be the problem.
Perhaps the revealing question is what disagreement produces inside us.
“I think you’re wrong” is not the same thing as:
“Because you’re wrong, you’re my enemy.”
And that isn’t the same thing as:
“Because you’re my enemy, your suffering no longer matters to me.”
That progression is exactly what a Zion people would have to interrupt.
LOVE YOUR ENEMIES
Now Christ’s seemingly impossible command begins making more sense.
“Love your enemies.”
Why would that be so central?
Perhaps because there can never be Zion if somebody else’s hostility is allowed to determine the condition of my heart.
Someone can insult me without making me insulting.
Someone can lie about me without making me dishonest.
Someone can hate me without requiring me to hate them.
Someone can put me into an opposing category without requiring me to stop seeing them as my neighbor.
Enemy-love doesn’t require surrendering truth.
It doesn’t require tolerating abuse.
It doesn’t mean refusing to confront wrongdoing.
It means another person’s wrongdoing doesn’t get to decide what I become.
And suddenly that looks very much like preparation for Zion.
WHAT ABOUT THE SECOND COMING?
This is where I had to be careful.
It would be tempting to conclude:
Once enough people become pure in heart, Christ returns.
But I cannot find scripture giving us that formula.
There is no revealed number.
Not one.
Not a thousand.
Not one hundred forty-four thousand.
Not some percentage of Church membership.
And the scriptures explicitly tell us that the day and hour are unknown.
But then I found something D. Todd Christofferson taught in General Conference in two thousand nineteen.
Speaking specifically about preparing for the Lord’s return, he said that several things must occur “in some substantial measure” before Christ returns.
And he identified something he called crucial:
The presence on earth of “a people prepared to receive Him.”
He immediately connected those people with Zion—the pure in heart, one heart and one mind, dwelling in righteousness, with no poor among them.
That is much more precise than saying purity somehow triggers the Second Coming.
It doesn’t tell us when Christ comes.
It tells us what kind of people are supposed to be here to receive him.
And suddenly Enoch becomes relevant again.
The world surrounding Enoch’s Zion wasn’t peaceful.
Scripture describes wars and bloodshed.
Zion didn’t emerge because everybody outside Zion finally stopped fighting.
A people became different while living within a world that wasn’t.
That changes the question.
Perhaps we’re not waiting for the entire world to become ready for Christ.
Perhaps Christ is preparing a people capable of receiving him even when the world isn’t.
AND THAT BRINGS US TO TODAY
Look around.
We divide ourselves constantly.
Political identities.
Religious identities.
Racial identities.
Economic identities.
National identities.
Believer and unbeliever.
Member and nonmember.
Conservative and liberal.
Straight and gay.
Rich and poor.
Insider and outsider.
Having identities isn’t inherently the problem.
Fourth Nephi suggests the danger begins when difference becomes hierarchy, pride, contempt, faction and eventually hostility.
So perhaps the useful question isn’t whether some particular political party, movement, technology, church, ideology or media organization is “causing” the division.
The simpler test is its fruit in me.
Does what I’m consuming make me more capable of loving someone unlike me?
Or less?
Does it make me curious?
Or contemptuous?
Does it make another person’s suffering matter more?
Or does it teach me why they deserve it?
Does it help me disagree honestly?
Or does it make winning more important than reconciliation?
Does my religion make me more compassionate toward the person outside my religion?
Does my politics make me incapable of recognizing goodness in someone with different politics?
Does my certainty leave room for humility?
Those questions don’t require us to identify Satan behind every disagreement.
They simply require us to examine what the disagreement is producing in our hearts.
SO WHERE ARE WE?
This investigation began with signs of the Second Coming.
Missionaries.
Gathering.
Temples.
Ordinances.
Israel.
Zion.
But perhaps those things aren’t merely boxes on a prophetic checklist.
Maybe they are infrastructure for preparing people.
Missionary work gathers.
Baptism begins covenant relationship.
The Holy Ghost sanctifies.
The sacrament renews.
Temples deepen covenant.
Consecration turns the disciple outward.
Service teaches us to carry another person’s burden.
Forgiveness loosens resentment.
Enemy-love attacks division at its deepest root.
And Zion is what begins appearing when those things actually transform human beings.
That would explain why the early Saints could possess the geography of Zion without yet becoming Zion.
It would explain why Fourth Nephi could lose Zion without anybody physically going anywhere.
And it would explain why Enoch’s people could become Zion while the surrounding world remained violent.
Maybe the greatest preparation for the Second Coming isn’t something we are waiting to see happen somewhere else.
Maybe part of it is happening—or failing to happen—inside us.
The Church can construct the temple.
It cannot construct the pure heart.
The Church can prepare the way.
Eventually, the disciple has to walk it.
And perhaps that leaves each of us with a much more difficult question than:
“When is Christ coming?”
Maybe the question is:
If Christ came, what kind of person would he find me becoming?
Would my heart be filled with contempt for the people I had decided were destroying the world?
Or would I have learned to love without surrendering truth?
Would I be protecting what was mine while someone beside me suffered?
Or would their suffering have become partly mine?
Would I need everybody else to think like me before I could call them brother or sister?
Or could I become one with people who remained different from me?
Would I be watching the signs?
Or becoming the sign?
Perhaps the greatest sign of preparation for the Second Coming isn’t something happening in the sky.
Perhaps it’s something happening in the human heart.
And maybe that is why scripture gives us no number for how many pure hearts are required.
Because I don’t need to know how many others are ready before I begin.
I only need to ask:
Am I becoming Zion?
FINAL THOUGHT
Perhaps Christ never asked us to become experts at recognizing the end.
Perhaps He asked us to become the kind of people who would recognize Him when He came.
We may never know how many hearts must become pure.
We may never know how close the world is to that day.
But maybe we were never supposed to know.
Because if Zion is the pure in heart, then the question was never really whether enough other people are ready.
The question has always been much closer to home:
If Christ came tomorrow, would I be waiting for the world to become Zion—
or would He find Zion already beginning in me?
— G. Lynn Sharp
