Today's Favorite Verse: Doctrine & Covenants 124:51-53, 83

Today's Favorite Verse: Doctrine & Covenants 124:51-53, 83
"Therefore, for this cause have I accepted the offerings of those whom I commanded to build up a city and a house unto my name, in Jackson county, Missouri, and were hindered by their enemies, saith the Lord your God.
And I will answer judgment, wrath, and indignation, wailing, and anguish, and gnashing of teeth upon their heads, unto the third and fourth generation, so long as they repent not, and hate me, saith the Lord your God.
And this I make an example unto you, for your consolation concerning all those who have been commanded to do a work and have been hindered by the hands of their enemies, and by oppression, saith the Lord your God.
If he will do my will let him not take his family unto the eastern lands, even unto Kirtland; nevertheless, I, the Lord, will build up Kirtland, but I, the Lord, have a scourge prepared for the inhabitants thereof."

This chapter was received January 19, 1841. The saints had been drive out by mobs from Kirtland and Missouri at this point. Including an extermination order issued by Lilburn W. Boggs, governor of Missouri. Twice when they were asked to build a temple the saints received opposition from those around them. The adversary did not want a House of the Lord where saints could receive power from on high. In this chapter the saints are now in Nauvoo and once again commanded to build a House of the Lord. They will build this temple and then be drive out soon after it is dedicated. The ordinances of the temple are established here. The ordinance of baptism for the dead is restored. First, they are given permission to perform these baptisms by proxy in the river. Once the temple is built the Lord would no longer accept this ordinance outside of the temple.

What I focused on was what happened in Missouri and Kirtland. Missouri suffered during the Civil War.
"Elder B. H. Roberts published a reported prophecy of Joseph Smith to Alexander Doniphan, his lawyer in Missouri. According to Doniphan’s brother-in-law, writing the incident over seventy years after it occurred, Joseph Smith warned Doniphan that “‘God’s wrath hangs over Jackson County … and you will live to see the day when it will be visited by fire and sword. The fields and farms and houses will be destroyed, and only the chimneys will be left to mark the desolation.’ 
“General Doniphan said to me,” his brother-in-law continued, “that the devastation of Jackson county [during the Civil War] forcibly reminded him of this remarkable prediction.” Elder Roberts cites additional descriptions of Jackson County’s role during the Civil War as fulfillment of this prophecy. (Comprehensive History of the Church, 1:538–59)

As for Kirtland I do not know all that it has passed through. However, I do remember that in 1979 when Ezra Taft Benson, then president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, during a groundbreaking dedication for a chapel there removed that curse.

"By October 1979, the last part of Karl’s plan to lift the curse was in place: they broke ground in Kirtland for a new LDS chapel that would become a stake center. Ezra Taft Benson attended the ceremony. “The curse that the Lord placed on Kirtland,” he told the congregation during his speech, “is being lifted today.” And during his prayer, he formally lifted the scourge that was on Kirtland. Latter-day Saints saw this as a redemptive process of remaking Kirtland."
(Dialogue Journal, "The Kirtland Temple as a Shared Space: A Conversation with David J. Howlett" by Hugo N. Olaiz, Volume 47, No. 1)

"President Hinckley called local resident Karl Andersen to the podium, thanking him for his decades of persistence in seeing the project through to completion. Andersen, a former LDS stake president in the area, said Ezra Taft Benson, later an LDS Church president, had come to Kirtland years ago as an LDS apostle and declared that the "curse" pronounced by one early church leader on the city had been lifted. He quoted Joseph Smith as saying, upon leaving the city, that "Kirtland will yet see great and glorious days.
"Andersen believes those days have finally arrived."
(Deseret News, "Pres. Hinckley lauds rebirth of Kirtland", 18 May 2003)

Day 3713