While his sectarian rivals were preaching spiritedly, but obscurely, about the coming millennium, he began to lay concrete plans for the building of the New Jerusalem. Less than five months after the official organization of his church he said in a revelation: . . no man knoweth where the city of Zion shall be built, but it shall be given hereafter. Behold, I say unto you that it shall be on the borders by the Lamanites.” And he ordered Oliver Cowdery, who had been trying without success to sell copies of the Book of Mormon in the East, to go west to preach among the Indians and
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