In my article Refuting James Walker on Joseph Smith's Prophecies I discussed how D&C 84:3-5, with respect to the temple in Missouri, was not a prophecy but a promise contingent upon factors such as the free-will actions of those involved, something explicated in D&C 124:49-51. That early Latter-day Saint leaders understood that this was contingent upon the free-will actions of Latter-day Saints and others can be seen in the following from LDS historian Richard Cowan (I have added this material to the response to James Walker):
The Saints in Utah
were naturally interested in the prospects of returning to Jackson County, many
assuming that the time of the return was not distant. In 1862, Brigham Young
declared that he wanted to push construction of the Salt Lake Temple as far as
possible before returning to Jackson County. “The way things are going,” he
believed, “the way will soon be clear.” In fact, President Young hoped that it
would be his privilege to see the temple in Jackson County finished before any
other temple (Wilford Woodruff, Historian’s
Private Journal, 22 August 1862). Other events, however, would alter the
Saints’ timetable.
During the Civil War,
the Mormons felt secure in the relative isolation of their Rocky Mountain
stronghold. They viewed the destruction which the North and South were heaping
on one another as just recompense for the nation’s earlier mistreatment of the
Latter-day Saints and supposed that this desolation would open the way for
their return to Jackson County. When this failed to materialize, the Saints
looked to a more distant return.
Orson Pratt, for
example, exhibited this shift in feeling. In 1872, he quoted Joseph Smith’s
1832 revelation that the “temple shall be reared in this generation” (D&C
84:4). Noting that most who were living when that revelation was given had
passed away, Elder Pratt concluded that “the time must be pretty near when we
shall begin that work” (JD 17:111).
Just three years later he referred to the same prophecy, but this time
emphasized that he believed God was not “limited to any definite period” (JD 19:215).
During the 1870s a
number of Latter-day Saints in Utah engaged in a variety of cooperative
ventures known as “united orders.” They recalled the 1834 revelation given at
Fishing River, Missouri, which specified that the people must be united and impart
to the poor according to a celestial law before Zion could be established
(D&C 105:3-5). In this setting, Church leaders emphasized the need
to live this higher law before the New Jerusalem and its temple could be built.
“We are not yet prepared to go and establish the Center Stake of Zion,”
President Young emphasized. The Lord gathered the Saints to the place where the
New Jerusalem would be built and gave them laws concerning the establishment of
Zion, “but the people could not abide them, and the Church was scattered” (JD 11:324).
Speaking in 1874,
Orson Pratt recalled the Fielding River revelation given 40 years before and
declared that if the Saints in their prevailing way of life were to attempt to
build the temple on the consecrated spot, “we should be cast out again,”
because “the Lord would not acknowledge us as his people.” Elder Pratt
continue: “If we would go back then, we must comply with the celestial law, the
law of consecration, the law of oneness” (JD
17:113). “When we go back to Jackson County, we are to go back with power,”
he declared on another occasion. “Do you suppose that God will reveal his power
among an unsanctified people who have no regard nor respect for his laws?” (JD 15:362)
Brigham Young
likewise cautioned, “If we are not very careful, the earth will be cleansed
from wickedness before we are prepared to take possession of it. We must be
pure and to be prepared to build up Zion” (JD
9:137). George Q. Cannon insisted that before Jesus will come to his latter-day
temple, “the organization of society that exists in the heavens must exist on
the earth; the same condition of society, so far as it is applicable to mortal
beings, must exist here” (JD 13:99).
Likewise, Wilford
Woodruff reminded the people of Enoch’s example and stressed that the New
Jerusalem will have to be built “by the United Order of Zion and according to
the celestial law” (JD 17:250). A
portion of the property consecrated to the Lord’s storehouse, explained Elder
Orson Pratt, “will be used for the building of temples” (JD 21:153). (Richard O. Owen, “The Great Temple of the New
Jerusalem” in Arnold K. Garr and Clark V. Johnson, eds. Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: Missouri [Provo,
Utah: Department of Church History and Doctrine, Brigham Young University,
1994], 137-54, here, pp. 145-46)
