D&C 94-97 - Building a Zion People

Unshaken Saints

Jared Halverson

Religion & Spirituality, Education

5 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2025

⏱️ 91 minutes

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Summary

Is Zion a geographical location or a state of being? Can you be "walking in darkness at noon-day"? And what does it mean to be chastened by a loving God? D&C 94-97 answers these questions and more, offering powerful lessons on building God's kingdom—and ourselves—according to His patterns. Summary: In this episode, we explore four short but impactful sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. We begin with D&C 94, focusing on the Lord's emphasis on following His "pattern" for our lives and the building of His kingdom. Next, we confront the "tough love" of D&C 95, where the Saints are chastened for their "very grievous sin" of neglecting the Kirtland Temple. We'll unpack the concept of "walking in darkness at noon-day" and how we can avoid sins of omission. We'll also discuss the promise of an endowment of "power from on high" and the need to remove the "incumbrances" or obstacles to God's work, as revealed in D&C 96. Finally, we turn to D&C 97, which addresses the Saints in Zion as they faced intense persecution. We'll learn about obedience that requires sacrifice and the powerful truth that "this is Zion—the pure in heart." We'll see that building Zion is about becoming a people worthy of the place, and that opposition often precedes God's greatest blessings. Call-to-Action: What "incumbrances" are in your way of doing God's work? Share your thoughts in the comments below! If you found this discussion insightful, please like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell to stay "Unshaken" in your faith. Chapter Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction 3:09 Patterns to Follow 13:49 Tough Love 24:25 Neglecting the Temple 40:45 Removing Roadblocks 50:59 Obedience at a Cost 1:00:58 The Bells of Hell 1:14:26 Zion Place of Zion People 1:27:41 One-Liners

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and Chicken Saints and welcome back for another week of Scripture study.
0:03.0	Together, I am honored and grateful to be able to spend this time with you.
0:07.0	Now, this week is an interesting moment in church history, or I should say Doctor in Covenants' history.
0:13.0	We're kind of at a launching point that we need to be ready for.
0:16.0	We're going to be heading in two different and yet related directions in the next couple of, well, the next month or so.
0:22.4	And so this week is going to help us move in both of those directions. Okay. Last week we studied
0:28.4	section 93, amazing revelation, deep, deep doctrine, right? And hopefully we are acting upon the
0:35.2	things that we've learned. We are going, receiving grace for grace,
0:39.1	and now we're ready to take it up a notch and progress from grace to grace as we search for that
0:44.2	fullness. Now, as we do that with section 94 through 97, here's the launch pad. We've got two
0:50.6	church headquarters, right? And we have two very different things going on in those two locations.
0:55.0	In Curtland, the main focus is the temple.
0:57.0	By the time we get to Section 109, oh, a month from now,
1:01.0	that's going to be the dedication of the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple.
1:06.0	Meanwhile, down in Zion, in Independence, Missouri, the challenge there is not just not building a temple,
1:11.8	it's building anything. It's trying to keep a foothold there, despite all these waves of persecution
1:18.0	that are threatening to wash them out to sea. There's some challenge there. We're going to see
1:24.0	in starting next week the challenge, well, I'll put it this way. Curtland, it's going to culminate in next week the challenge well i'll put it this way curtland it's going
1:29.5	to culminate in the kirtland temple Missouri it's going to culminate in zion's camp next week we'll
1:36.1	start hinting we'll start inching our way toward zion camp science camp which was meant to try to help
1:42.0	the saints in Zion stay there.
1:45.1	It was successful in some ways, unsuccessful in others.
	...

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