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Show would consumate the express purpose of the Gathering, namely the integration of heaven and earth. 1138 Enoch's Zion, then, may be viewed as the prototype for the perfection of the temporal Kingdom. The relationship between the heavenly and earthly Zion is never explicitly stated in the scriptures, but Olsen reasons that, in Mormon cosmology, earth mirrors heaven and the city indentified in Smith's vision of Enoch "came to be the divine model for the Mormon's earthly undertakings. 1139 When the Saints talked of perfecting the earth and building Zion as the seed of the restoration, they were not speaking in uncertain terms. Zion was indeed a place, but more importantly, it was a place with a specific structure, a structure based upon the Order of Enoch. Zion was a world, urban in its physical nature, with a definite economic and social order, where religion, not politics, ruled. As the Saints worked to build up Zion in the Rocky Mountains, it not surprisingly took on the character of Enoch's City. Mormon polity was organized around, at least in its idealized form, a prescriptive set of principles grounded firmly in theology. Enoch's Zion was politically a theocracy, a society governed by divine order channeled through the Church president as "prophet, seer, and revelator. 114O During the nineteenth-century, there was little ~ifference between civil and religious government, for both were bound as one into the fabric of Mormon society. Divine intervention, interpreted officially as the doctrine of continuing revelation but existing at the folk level as the understanding that God could and would act directly in the lives of men, became a cornerstone of Mormon faith. 41 Since Mormons believed that they represented the restoration of the organization of the Primitive Church, an apostolic governing 44 |
