Joseph Young Sr. Witnesses the Transforming Power of Zion's Camp

Joseph Young Sr. (1797–1881), older brother of Brigham Young and later one of the seven presidents of the First Quorum of the Seventy, marched with Zion's Camp in 1834. He later wrote the foundational history of the organization of the Seventies, in which he preserved key testimonies of what God wrought through Zion's Camp.

Joseph Young recorded Joseph Smith's declaration to the assembled Zion's Camp veterans on the last Sunday in April 1834:

'The Prophet spoke to the brethren assembled and impressed upon them the necessity of being humble, exercising faith and patience, and living in obedience to the commands of the Almighty. He bore testimony of the truth of the work which God had revealed through him, and promised the brethren that if they all should live as they should before the Lord, keeping his commandments, they should all safely return.'

After Zion's Camp was disbanded, Joseph Smith gathered the veterans and said, according to Joseph Young Sr.'s record: 'Brethren, some of you are angry with me, because you did not fight in Missouri; but let me tell you, God did not want you to fight. He could not organize His kingdom with twelve men to open the gospel door to the nations of the earth, and with seventy men under whom the nations shall be brought to a knowledge of the truth, until He had first tried them as He tried Abraham, and as He tried the three witnesses.'

Joseph Young preserved this testimony as proof that Zion's Camp—though it did not fight—was a divinely designed crucible that prepared the brethren to become Apostles, Seventies, and leaders of the Church. Fourteen of the first twenty-five Apostles of this dispensation were members of Zion's Camp. The march was not a military failure—it was a spiritual triumph.