The political Kingdom of God, organized around the Council of Fifty, was meant to be a force of peace and order in the midst of this chaos.

This, latter-day saints believe, was described in the Book of Daniel 2:44–45 as the stone "cut out of the mountain without hands" that will roll forth to fill the whole earth.

Initially, the Council of Fifty organized to discuss potential plans for resettling Latter-day Saints somewhere further West if departing Nauvoo became necessary; they also coordinated Smith's presidential campaign.

[8] Unlike other purely religious organizations formed by Joseph Smith, members of the Council of Fifty were not necessarily Latter Day Saints.

[15] The council also sent emissaries to Washington, D.C. to meet with members of Congress in the hopes of passing a resolution to allow Joseph Smith to be appointed General and march 100,000 volunteers to Oregon Territory.

However, the Nauvoo Expositor incident, Smith's Presidential campaign, and even hyperbolic and inaccurate rumors about the Council of Fifty helped create the local unrest that led to his assassination.

[citation] After Smith's death, the Council anointed Brigham Young its leader, and as the "king and president" of the Kingdom of God.

The Council assisted in the Mormon Exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois and the eventual migration to the Great Basin area of what is now Utah.

Young relied upon the results of scouting missions by members of the Council in choosing the Great Basin as a destination for their exodus from Nauvoo, over several alternate possibilities including Texas, California, Oregon, and Vancouver Island.

After Utah became a territory, the American expectation for a separation between church and state sharply diminished the Council's official role in government.

The Council resurfaced during the administration of John Taylor, to combat federal involvement in overseeing Utah elections.

In 2013, the First Presidency of the LDS Church approved the publication of the minutes of the Council of Fifty as one of the upcoming volumes of the ongoing Joseph Smith Papers project.