[Joseph Smith Diary] Saturday, September 1st 1838 The First Presidency [with] Judge Higbee (as surveyor) Started this morning for the halfway house (as it is called) kept [by] Br[other] Littlefield, some 14 or 15 miles from Far West directly north, For the purpose of appointing a City of Zion for the gathering of the Saints in that place for safety and from the Storm which will soon come upon this genneration. That the bretheren may be together in the hour of the coming of the Son of Man and that they may receive instructions to prepare them for that great day which will come upon this generation as a thief in the knight.
There is great ex[c]itement at present among the Mis[s]ourians seeking, if possible, an occasion against us. They are continually chafing us, and provoking us to anger if possible, one sine [sign] of threatening after another but we do not fear them For the Lord God the Eternal Father is our God and Jesus the mediator is our Saviour, and in the great I Am is our strength and confidence.
We have been driven time after time and that without cause and smitten again and again, and that without provocation untill we have pre[a]ched the [word?] with kindness, and the world proved us that we have no designs against any man or set of men, That we injure no man, That we are peasible [peaceable] with all men, minding our own buisness and our buisness only.
We have Suffered our rights and our liberties to be taken from us. We have not avenged ourselves of those wrongs. We have appealed to magistrates, to Sheriffs, to Judges, to Govonours, and to the President of the United States, all in vain. Yet we have yealded peacibly to all these things. We have not complained at the Great God, we murmured not, but peacibly left all and retired into the back Country, in the broad and wild prairie, in the barren and desolate plains, and there commenced anew. We made the desolate places to bud and blos[s]om as the rose, and now the fiend-like rose [and] are disposed to give us no rest.
Their Father (the Devil) is hourly calling upon them to be up and doing, and they like willing and obedient Children need not the second admonition. But in the name of Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God we will endure it no longer, if the Great God will arm us with courage, with strength and with power, to resist them in their persecutions. We will not act on the offensive but always on the defensive.
Our rights and our liberties shall not be taken from us, and we peacibly submit to it as we have done heretofore, but we will avenge ourselves of our enemies, inasmuch as they will not let us alone.
But to return again to our subject. We found the place for the city and the bretheren were instructed to gather immediately into it and soon they should be organised according to the Laws of God.* ...
[Source: Faulring, Scott (ed.), An American Prophet's Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith: Joseph Smith Diary, 1838, http://amzn.to/jsdiaries]
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