7. Zion.--The Book of Mormon prophecies predict the founding of a glorious city upon the American continent to be called New Jerusalem, or Zion. [See note 4, end of section.][58] It was but natural, therefore, that the first elders of the church should be anxious to learn where it was to be built and seek to find it. The Book of Mormon, while clearly predicting that the city will be established, fails to give its location. In March, 1831, however, the Saints were commanded to gather {321} up their riches that they might purchase an inheritance that the Lord promised to point out to them some time in the future, the New Jerusalem--"a city of refuge, a place of safety for the Saints of the Most High" [59]--Zion. In June, 1831, a conference convened at Kirtland, and the Lord called twenty-eight elders to go through the Western States by different routes, two by two, preaching by the way, baptizing by water and the laying on of hands by the water side.[60] They were to meet in western Missouri to hold a conference, and if faithful the Lord promised to reveal to them the place of the city of Zion. 8. About the middle of July the Prophet Joseph and a number of these brethren arrived at Independence, meeting with Oliver Cowdery and his associates--the mission to the Lamanites. A few days afterwards a revelation was received[61] declaring Missouri to be the land which God had appointed for the gathering of the Saints, the land of promise, the place of the city of Zion, Independence being the "center place." The site of the temple which the Lord has decreed shall be built in this generation, upon which his glory shall rest, and in which the sons of Moses and of Aaron shall offer an acceptable offering to the Lord--was declared to be a short distance west of the court house. On the morning of the 3rd of August, 1831, the Prophet Joseph with the other elders that had arrived at Independence, met at the temple site and dedicated it as the place for the building of a temple. [See notes 5 and 6, end of section]. Meantime a company of Saints known as the Colesville Branch--from their having lived at Colesville, Broome County, New York--had arrived in Missouri, and having received instructions to purchase the lands in the regions round about Zion, they secured a tract of land in a fertile prairie some ten or twelve miles west of Independence, in Kaw township, not {322} far from the present location of Kansas City. On the 2nd of August--the day preceding the dedication of the temple site--in the settlement of the Colesville Saints, the first log was laid for a house, as the foundation of Zion. The log was carried by twelve men in honor of the Twelve Tribes of Israel; and Elder Sidney Rigdon consecrated and dedicated the land of Zion for the gathering of the Saints. [See note 7, end of section].