Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 125-128

Section 125

From the confines of a jail cell in Liberty, Missouri, Joseph wrote to Bishop Partridge in Illinois that the saints could buy land in Iowa Territory for $2 per acre over twenty years with no money down, and the saints made a deal for the land.

Joseph escaped from Missouri and joined the saints in Illinois a few weeks later. He purchased land on a peninsula pushing into the Mississippi River across from the saints’ Iowa land, and named it Nauvoo. The Illinois land was comparatively expensive. Joseph hoped that the Church could buy it with consecrated funds and offer lots to the poor at prices they could afford, but the offerings were insufficient. It became clear that the Church would have to sell lots in order to pay its mortgage. So Joseph urged saints in outlying areas to gather to Nauvoo and help pay for the land. Saints across the river wondered if that applied to them. Joseph sought and received section 125 to answer their question. 

The Lord’s will, declared in Section 125, is for the saints to build a city in Iowa across from Nauvoo, and to call it Zarahemla. The saints were to gather from everywhere else and settle there, in nearby Nashville, Iowa Territory; or across the river in Nauvoo. As usual, there is an explicit rationale in this revelation. The Lord gives a reason why the saints should do His will: “That they may be prepared for that which is in store for a time to come” (D&C 135:2).   

Saints moved as a result of Section 125. It was read to the saints at General Conference on April 6, 1841. “Many of the brethren immediately made preparations for moving,” and came as soon as their planting was done.[1] Alanson Ripley reported that “Joseph said it was the will of the Lord the brethren in general . . . should move in and about the city Zerehemla with all convenient speed which the saints are willing to do because it is the will of the Lord.”[2]

Section 126

Section 126 put Brigham Young in position to lead when Joseph’s mission was finished. Brigham answered the Lord’s call to serve in England (see section 118). Both he and his family were sick and homeless when Brigham left Nauvoo in the fall of 1839. While Brigham was in England, section 124 formalized his call as president of the quorum of the twelve apostles (D&C 124:127). Then, having converted hundreds, he returned to Nauvoo in July 1841 and found his family living in a small, unfinished cabin. A week later the Lord gave section 126 to Joseph.[1]

Joseph communicated the revelation to Brigham with his own affectionate introduction to his “Dear and well-beloved brother.” The Lord, having accepted Brigham’s offering in laborious missions away from home, no longer requires him to leave his family. Instead the Lord commands Brigham to send the Lord’s word abroad and look to the care of his family “henceforth and forever” (3).

Brigham set to work to care for his family. He chinked the cracks in the cabin, planted an orchard, built a cellar, and got up a garden to meet their needs. Joseph gave Brigham a few weeks and then assigned him to lead the apostles in taking care “of the business of the church in Nauvoo,” including overseeing missionary work (in obedience to section 126’s command to “send my word abroad”), the gathering of converts, and consecration.[2] This represented a shift in the apostles’ responsibility. Joseph had often kept them at arm’s length since their calling in 1835, testing them with tough assignments. Some of Brigham’s fellow apostles apostatized under that pressure. Brigham did everything the Lord asked of him. He had marched into hostile Missouri to obey a revelation. Then, sick and impoverished, he forsook everything else dear to preach the gospel in England. 

As a result of section 126, Brigham remained near Joseph for the Prophet’s few remaining years, learning and receiving the temple ordinances and ultimately also the keys angels had conferred on Joseph.      

Section 127

In May 1838 in the Church’s Elders’ Journal, Joseph published questions he was frequently asked, including some provocative ones like: “Do Mormons baptize in the name of Jo Smith?”[1] In July he published the answers, including some snarky ones like, “No, but if they did, it would be as valid as the baptism administered by the sectarian priests.”[2]

Maybe the most important Q&A was this one: “If the Mormon doctrine is true what has become of all those who had died since the days of the apostles. Answer: All those who have not had an opportunity of hearing the gospel, and being administered to by an inspired man in the flesh, must have it hereafter, before they can finally be judged.”

Two years later, on a Nauvoo summer day in 1840, at the funeral of Seymour Brunson, Joseph Smith had more to say about that. He read most of 1 Corinthians 15, in which Paul refers to the early Christian practice of being baptized for the dead in anticipation of the resurrection “and remarked that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brought glad tidings of great joy.” Noticing Jane Neyman in the congregation, whose teenage son Cyrus had died without baptism, Joseph gave her the good news “that people could now act for their friends who had departed this life, and that the plan of salvation was calculated to save all who were willing to obey the requirements of the law of God.” It was “a very beautiful discourse.”[3]

Joseph taught baptism for the dead again at October conference in 1840 as the saints eagerly performed the sacred ordinance in the Mississippi River in lieu of a temple baptismal font.[4] One witness wrote that “during the conference there were some times from eight to ten elders in the river at a time baptizing.”[5] But in their understandable zeal they were without knowledge. No one recorded the ordinances. A year later Joseph taught the doctrine in conference again and announced, as section 124 had declared in the meantime, that the Lord would no longer accept baptisms for the dead performed outside the temple (D&C 124:29-35).[6] The Saints thus pushed the temple toward completion, and just over a year later in November 1841 they performed the first baptisms for the dead in the unfinished but rising Nauvoo Temple. 

In the midst of teaching the temple ordinances to the Saints, Joseph was charged with masterminding an attempted murder of former Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs. There was no evidence for the charge, and Joseph regarded it as another attempt by his enemies to get him to Missouri and lynch him. He hid instead of subjecting himself to that. Joseph was finally arrested in August 1842 but then released and the charges were finally dismissed a few months later. 

Meanwhile, as Joseph moved from house to house in and around Nauvoo, protected by friends, he pondered the newly restored doctrines of the temple. There was something missing.  He sought revelation while he was hiding and learned more about the nature of the ordinances. He looked for the first safe opportunity to teach the Saints. In August he taught the Relief Society that “all persons baptiz’d for the dead must have a Recorder present, that he may be an eye-witness to testify of it. It will be necessary in the grand Council, that these things be testified.”[7] The next day Joseph dictated a letter to the Saints, section 127, in which he shared some of what he had recently learned. 

Joseph was nostalgic and melancholy as he hid from extradition officers bent on delivering him to a state in which there was no due process of law for Latter-day Saints. In section 127 he rehearses his eventful life, alternating between frustration at his enemies, the hostility that oppressed him, evidences of God’s deliverance, and hope for a final triumph. Mixed in are two revelations, the first in verse 4 and the second in verses 6-9, before Joseph closes with a lament that he is unable to teach the saints in person and a prayer for their salvation.

In the first revelation the Lord urges the Saints to finish the temple despite persecution. In the second He links recording the ordinances to their being sealed. That is, baptisms for the dead are not valid in heaven unless properly recorded by an eye-witness on earth. It is imperative that the saints learn the conditions on which ordinances performed on earth are validated in heaven, for, as the Lord declares in verses 8-9, he is about to restore more that pertains to the priesthood ordinances of the temple and the records of all such ordinances are to be in order and preserved in the temple.

Section 128

Revelation, 8 July 1838–C [D&C 119]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.
Wilford Woodruff wrote that “Joseph has been deprived of the privilege of appearing openly & deprived of the society of his own family Because Sheriffs are hunting him to destroy him without cause Yet the Lord is with him. . . . Joseph has presented the Church of late with some glorious principles from the Lord concerning Baptism for the dead & other interesting subjects, he has appeared occasionally in the midst of the Saints which has been a great comfort.”[1]

Baptism for the dead “seems to occupy my mind,” Joseph wrote. Less than a week after dictating section 127, Joseph dictated a much longer, more detailed explanation of the order of sacred ordinances: section 128. It adds practical instructions to 127’s revelation that baptisms for the dead, to be valid, must be recorded by an eye-witness. Joseph proposes a recorder for each of Nauvoo’s four wards, each of whom will account to a general church recorder who will be responsible to collect, certify, and keep the records. 

Verse 5 uses three related words, order, ordinance, and ordained. Boyd K. Packer cited the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of order as “arrangement in sequence or proper relative position,” and noted how often the scriptures emphasize the importance of order. Ordinance, wrote President Packer, derives from order. He defined an ordinance as “the ceremony by which things are put in proper order.” Ordain, “a close relative of the other two words,” is the process of putting in order, including appropriately appointing someone to the ministry. “From all this dictionary work,” Elder Packer said, “there comes the impression that an ordinance, to be valid, must be done in proper order.”[2] That is precisely Joseph’s point in section 128. To be valid, an ordinance must be ordained of God, or, in other words, done according to the order or procedure he dictates.  

Beginning in verse 6, Joseph traces the doctrine of recording earthly ordinances full circle through the Bible to make his point and substantiate what he had previously taught. He begins with the Biblical book of Revelation, in which John saw that the dead would be judged by what is recorded on earth, which is mirrored in the book of life kept in heaven (6-8). “It may seem to some to be a very bold doctrine that we talk of,” Joseph says, speaking of the priesthood’s power to seal earthly ordinances in heaven. But in defense he evokes Matthew 16’s description of Jesus’ promise to give Peter sealing keys to bind on earth and in heaven (9-10). Joseph then turns to the symbolic significance of baptism and cites Paul’s teaching at 1 Corinthians 15 and Hebrews 11:40. Joseph adds Malachi’s prophecy of the mission of Elijah to unite generations before the Savior’s second coming, and elaborates on its meaning. 

With the teaching of temple ordinances, Joseph remarks that the dispensation of fulness “is now beginning to usher in, that a whole and complete and perfect union, and welding together” of generations, dispensations, and, indeed, of the human family can be accomplished (11-18). Joseph turns exultant at this prospect. Beginning at verse 19 he launches into a celebration of the restoration. Recounting the sources of his knowledge and priesthood power, Joseph lists a who’s-who of heavenly messengers he has seen—Moroni, Michael, Peter, James, John, Gabriel, Raphael, “all declaring their dispensation, their rights, their keys, their honors, their majesty and glory, and the power of their priesthood; giving line upon line, precept upon precept; here a little, and there a little; giving us consolation by holding forth that which is to come, confirming our hope” (D&C 128:19-22). At least one of the events to which Joseph refers—Michael teaching him how to detect false messengers (20)—must have taken place before Joseph moved from the Susquehanna River to Ohio in 1831, yet this is his first known mention of it. These verses are at least a partial answer to the questions when and by whom was Joseph endowed with priesthood power, becoming able to give the temple ordinances to the Saints? 

In sum, Joseph had revelatory experiences and learned glorious truths that he did not readily share except in the right places at the right times to prepared people. That is exciting, and in a final burst of rhapsody, Joseph celebrated the profundity of the revealed solution to the terrible theological problem that has perplexed every thoughtful Christian: “What about those who never heard?”[3] The answer? “The King Immanuel . . . ordained, before the world was, that which would enable us to redeem them out of their prison; for the prisoners shall go free” (D&C 128:22). 

Joseph had spent the winter of 1838-39 in a cold, tiny cell in Liberty, Missouri, and when he dictated section 128 he was hiding from unlawful extradition efforts to get him back to Missouri. He had some sense of how it felt to be liberated from prison. Joseph closed section 128 excited about these “glad tidings of great joy” (19) and tells the Saints what to do with them. It’s the same thing the Lord’s current prophets and apostles are urging us to do: “Let us, therefore, as a church and a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness; and let us present in his holy temple, when it is finished, a book” or, more recently, electronic files or cards “containing the records of our dead, which shall be worthy of all acceptation” (23). In other words, let us organize families in the order God ordained. Let’s take disordered families and put them in order via the performance of holy ordinances in the House of the Lord. 

Having shown that baptism for the dead was practiced by the earliest Christians but not since, Professor Hugh Nibley asked, “where did Joseph Smith get his knowledge? Few if any of the sources cited in this discussion were available to him; the best of these have been discovered only in recent years, while the citations from the others are only to be found scattered at wide intervals through works so voluminous that even had they been available to the Prophet, he would, lacking modern aids, have had to spend a lifetime running them down. And even had he found such passages, how could they have meant more to him than they did to the most celebrated divines of a thousand years, who could make nothing of them? This is a region in which great theologians are lost and bemused; to have established a rational and satisfying doctrine and practice on grounds so dubious is indeed a tremendous achievement.”[4]

It is impossible to estimate the results of these revelations, these glad tidings. Because of them innumerable spirit prisoners have gone free. “Shall we not go on in so great a cause?” (D&C 128:22).

Section 125 notes

[1] George D. Smith, editor, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1995), 86.

[2] Alanson Ripley, in John Smith, Journal, 6 March 1841, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Section 126 notes

[1] “Revelation, 9 July 1841 [D&C 126],” p. 26, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-9july-1841-dc-126/1. Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Knopf, 1985), 98.

[2] Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Knopf, 1985), 99-100.

Section 127 notes

[1] “Questions and Answers, 8 May 1838,” p. 43, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 7, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/questions-and-answers-8-may-1838/2.

[2] “Elders’ Journal, July 1838,” p. 43, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 7, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/elders-journal-july-1838/11.

[3] Simon Baker, in Journal History of the Church, August 15, 1840, CHL.

[4] John Smith, Journal, October 15, 1840, CHL.

[5] Vilate Kimball to Heber C. Kimball, October 11, 1840, CHL.

[6] Minutes of the General Conference of the Church Held at Nauvoo, Elias Smith and Gustavus Hills, Rough Draft Notes of History of the Church, 1841, 17, CHL. History of the Church, 4:423-429.

[7] Joseph Smith, Discourse, August 31, 1842, Nauvoo Illinois, “A Record of the Organization and Proceedings of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo,” 80-83, CHL, in Andrew Ehat and Lyndon Cook, editors, Words of Joseph Smith, 129-31.

Section 128 notes

[1] Wilford Woodruff, Journal, September 19,1842, CHL.

[2] Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 144-45.

[3] John Sanders, editor, What About Those Who Never Heard?: Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1995). 

[4] Hugh Nibley, “Baptism for the Dead in Ancient Times,” Mormonism and Early Christianity, 148-49.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 124

Section 124

Joseph emerged from the depressing jail in Liberty, Missouri with an undaunted spirit. He had known since January 1838 that he could only count on living for five more years and that his work was far from finished. So Joseph was laser focused on preparing the saints for the covenants and ordinances of the holy temple. 

He led the saints in purchasing land along the Mississippi River in the state of Illinois, including a townsite called Commerce. Joseph renamed it Nauvoo, the Hebrew word translated as beautiful in Isaiah 52:7. In October 1839 Joseph called for all Saints to gather there and build a holy city. Then Joseph prayed for and received a momentous revelation, the longest in the Doctrine and Covenants, section 124. 

Coming shortly after a presidential election and just days before Nauvoo’s first city election, section 124 begins by expressing the Lord’s approval of Joseph’s efforts. Then, “that I might show forth my wisdom through the weak things of the earth,” the Lord commands Joseph to immediately write a proclamation “to all the kings of the world . . . to the honorable president-elect,” William Harrison, “and the high-minded governors of the nation in which you live.” Joseph was to write “in the spirit of meekness and by the power of the Holy Ghost” and declare the will of Christ to the world’s political authorities. The Lord says nothing of the will of the people but declares his will to “my people” (10, 11, 21, 29, 40, 45, 84, 92, 104). In the United States, the voice of the people was the voice of God. In Nauvoo, the Lord spoke directly through Joseph Smith. 

The command for all the saints to consecrate to the building of the temple begins with verse 25. The rationale for doing so follows, beginning in verse 28: “For there is not a place found on earth that he may come to and restore again that which was lost unto you, or which he hath taken away, even the fulness of the priesthood.” The Lord grants the Saints sufficient time to consecrate and build the temple as a sacred location for baptisms and the other sacred ordinances, after which he will not accept their ordinances, “for therein,” meaning the temple, “are the keys of holy priesthood ordained, that you may receive honor and glory” (34, cross reference Section 128). 

The Lord continues his rationale for building the temple through verse 41, which is a restatement of the promise to reveal fulness in the temple. Some have misread verse 31-34 in self-serving ways. President Joseph Fielding Smith explained verse 32’s condition, “and if ye do not these things at the end of the appointment,” that is, the period for building the temple. It “does not mean ‘if ye do not build a temple at the end of the appointment,’ as our critics infer it does, but it refers to the ordinances that were to be performed in the temple.” President Smith clarified that if the Saints failed to perform the temple ordinances for the dead, then they would be rejected by the Lord per section 124:32.[1]

President Boyd K. Packer explained the revelation’s references to washing and anointing ordinances in verses 37-39. “The ordinances of washing and anointing are referred to often in the temple as initiatory ordinances. It will be sufficient for our purposes to say only the following: Associated with the endowment are washings and anointings–mostly symbolic in nature, but promising definite, immediate blessings as well as future blessings. . . . In connection with these ordinances, in the temple you will be officially clothed in the garment and promised marvelous blessings in connection with it.”[2]

Covenants and specific instructions follow the verses on temple ordinances, including the spot on which to build and the terms and conditions on which the Lord will make it holy and on which the Saints will be able to remain in Nauvoo to see it finished. These covenants hinge on the inseparable doctrines of individual agency and accountability, and culminate in verses 47-48, “If you build a house to my name, and do not the things that I say, I will not perform the oath which I make unto you, neither fulfill the promises which ye expect at my hand, saith the Lord. For instead of blessings, ye, by your own works, bring cursings, wrath, indignation, and judgments upon your own yeads.” In verses 49-54 the Lord explains accountability in terms of agency. That is, he holds accountable those who have power to determine the outcomes he commands. Following that principle, verse 55 is another statement of rationale for building the temple in Nauvoo. 

Nauvoo rose like a fortress on a hill, up from a swampy lowland along the Mississippi. Believers streamed into Illinois from Canada, the British Isles, and the Atlantic Seaboard. The population of Nauvoo rose quickly to twelve thousand because of this revelation and Joseph’s counsel to gather and build Zion. Joseph began keeping the Book of the Law of the Lord with section 124, where he recorded it. The revelation oriented his life and the Church’s. It gave Joseph the rest of his life’s work, and he entered the names of those who consecrated to the temple in the Book as well. At April conference in 1841 the revelation was read and then Joseph rose and urged the Saints to obey it by building the temple and the Nauvoo House.[3]

Section 124 reorganized the Church, setting in order its presiding priesthood quorums, replacing apostates and filling the vacancies left by brethren who had passed away. The Saints acted on the Lord’s commands to sustain those called to the priesthood quorums, which they did at April conference in 1841, as well as building offices for them in the temple. 

Section 124 reoriented the Church by giving it specific work to do, most importantly in building the Nauvoo Temple as a means to the end of receiving the ultimate blessings, the fulness of priesthood ordinances. Knowing that his days were numbered, Joseph began giving the ordinances in May 1842 to a select few, fifty-seven brothers and sisters in all, even before the temple was finished. He sealed couples and confirmed the fulness of priesthood ordinances on a few according to section 132. Joseph was killed in June 1844 before the temple was ready for ordinances, but in March of that year he had commissioned the apostles to carry on the work and given them all the necessary priesthood keys to do so. Beginning in December 1845, the apostles and others who had been endowed by Joseph officiated in the temple ordinances for 5,600 Saints. 

The temple blessings thus resulting from section 124 are inestimable. Speaking of temples, President Gordon B. Hinckley declared, “these unique and wonderful buildings, and the ordinances administered therein, represent the ultimate in our worship. These ordinances become the most profound expressions of our theology.”[4]

   Notes

[1] Joseph Fielding Smith, quoted in Roy W. Doxey, Latter-day Prophets and the Doctrine and Covenants, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1978): 4:265-66.

[2] Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 154-55.

[3] Ehat and Cook, comps. and eds., Words of Joseph Smith, 69.

[4] Ensign (November 1995), 53.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 121, 122, 123

Section 121

Section 121 puts a counterintuitive twist on the age-old problem of suffering and power. If God is benevolent and powerful, why do people suffer? 

The problem becomes acute for those who assume that God should exercise his benevolence and power by preventing all suffering. That is apparently incongruous with his plan, in which the most innocent and loving being suffered more than anyone–and everyone–else. Joseph internalized these lessons in a tiny, squalid, freezing cell near the Missouri River. It happened like this.

The governor issued an order for the militia to expel Latter-day Saints, who were abused, raped, and compelled give up their property as citizen soldiers shot their livestock and pillaged their homes. General Lucas arrested Joseph. Emma and her children clung to Joseph as a guard cursed at six-year-old Joseph III and threatened to kill him if he didn’t back off.[1] Joseph was carted off to Richmond, Missouri, where he wrote to Emma as positively as he could that he was shackled to his brethren “in chains as well as in the cords of everlasting love.”[2]

On December 1, 1838, Joseph Smith and five of his brethren were committed to jail in Liberty, Missouri, having been charged with treason against the state in a preliminary hearing. A committee of the Missouri legislature later concluded that one-sided hearing was “not of the character which should be desired for the basis of a fair and candid investigation.”[3] Joseph’s brother Hyrum called it a “pretended court” after the judge said “there was no law for us, nor for the ‘Mormons’ in the state of Missouri.”[4]

Four winter months and five days later, Joseph and his brethren still languished in jail at Liberty, Missouri, a cramped dungeon without beds or a bathroom, awaiting trial on a capital charge without hope for due process. Meanwhile the saints had been driven mid-winter by a mob under the guise of official orders from the governor, aided and abetted by a host of apostates. 

Indeed many of Joseph’s most trusted and stalwart friends had forsaken him. Most of the Book of Mormon witnesses, still certain of their testimony, turned against him. Some of the apostles were antagonistic, including Thomas Marsh and Orson Hyde, who had said it was treasonous for Joseph to prophecy the coming kingdom of God (see section 65). William Phelps turned his powerful pen against Joseph. Former apostle William McLellin, who had no doubts that Joseph was a prophet (see section 66), plundered the saints and expressed his desire to beat Joseph.[5]

Some of the Saints lost all faith “that God has been our leader.” They had hoped for deliverance but none came.[6] Even Sidney Rigdon, counselor in the First Presidency and fellow sufferer in jail, resented God for not using his power to spare the saints from suffering. “If ever there was a moment to give up the cause, this was it,” Richard Bushman wrote. “Joseph puzzled over the Saints’ suffering and God’s power. Why had they been defeated? He never questioned his own revelations, never doubted the validity of the commandments. He did not wonder if he had been mistaken in sending the Saints to Missouri or requiring them to gather. He questioned God’s disappearance. Where was he when the Saints needed him?”[7]

Joseph put these questions to the Lord in a March 1839 letter to the Saints. Sections 121, 122, and 123 all come from this one profound letter.[8] Section 121:1-6 follows Joseph’s description of the jail as “hell surrounded with demons.” Even more concerning to him were the widows and orphans of the men murdered at Haun’s Mill, and “the unrelenting hand” of oppression. It is about the duration of these injustices that Joseph inquired “how long . . . yea, O Lord, how long?” (D&C 121:1-3).  

Joseph reviewed the actions of apostates, judges, lawyers, the governor, “and the one sided rascally proceedings of the Legislature” before saying how letters from Emma, his brother, and Bishop Partridge had warmed his heart. “And when the hart is sufficiently contrite,” his letter says, “then the voice of inspiration steals along and whispers,” followed by the answer to his prayer, verses 7-25.  

The Lord’s answer to “how long” was “a small moment,” accompanied by a curse on Joseph’s enemies and the identification of their real motive–personal sinfulness (verse 17). The Lord severs them “from the ordinances of mine house” and promises just punishments for their sins (20). Verses 26-33 are the promised blessings of a covenant, the terms and conditions of which precede the promises but were not included in the canonized part of Joseph’s letter: “Let honesty and sobriety, and cander and solemnity, and virtue, and pureness, and meekness, and simplicity, Crown our heads in every place, and in fine becum as little Children without malice guile or Hypocrisy: and now Bretheren after your tribulations if you do these things, and exercise fervent prayer, and faith in the sight of God,” then God will grant the exalting blessings promised in verses 26-33.       

Verses 34-46 make the most sense in the context of consecration. The portion of the letter preceding those verses cautions against “any among you who aspire after their own aggrandizement and seek their own oppulance while their brethren are groning in poverty and are under sore trials.” Then Joseph explains why many are called but few are chosen: “Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world and aspire to the honors of men that they do not learn this one lesson,” that a person who hides their sins, gratifies pride, has vain ambition, or exploit the weak and poor cannot have priesthood.

Sadly, most mortals choose not to submit to the Savior’s power to change the nature and disposition. Most mortals oppress their neighbors as soon as they can. This is forbidden by the gospel generally and by section 121 specirically. It prescribes the antidote of God-like qualities: persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, pure love and knowledge. Reproof should come at precisely the right time, which is “when moved upon by the Holy Ghost,” and removing the problem should be done with sharpness like a surgeon’s scalpel, leaving as little scar tissue and collateral damage as possible and “showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved” (43).  

That is God’s way of governing—righteous dominion. Verses 45-46 sum how it works. Those who choose charity over covetousness and virtue over self-interest inherit “an everlasting dominion” (46). Those who choose to share and not coerce when they have a little power are the only ones God trusts with more power. The maxim is wrong: absolute power does not corrupt absolutely. Rather, a little power, when misused, leads to the loss of priesthood, while faithfulness to priesthood accumulates more power—gently, like dew from heaven (45). 

What an ironic place was the jail at Liberty. Joseph was powerless, except profoundly not. He was the only person on earth at the time in full possession of the priesthood keys restored by ministering angels. The powerful people who oppressed him—former friends and arch foes—were about to become powerless. Perhaps because it was a place of suffering, Liberty (a microcosm of mortality) was an ideal environment in which to internalize the truth that mortals who overcome their nature and choose to wield power in the service of others as God does, with sacrifice and suffering, won’t have to compel anyone or anything, and yet their kingdom will grow forever.

Section 122

Section 122 immediately follows the last part of section 121 in Joseph’s March 20, 1839 letter from Liberty Jail.[1] Several of the statements in it refer to his personal experiences. Verses 6-7, for example, evoke the awful events in Far West, Missouri the preceding fall as Joseph was wrenched from his family, sentenced to execution, later charged with treason, and confined in the “pit”—the underground cell in Liberty, Missouri.   

The revelation compounds Joseph’s suffering in heavy if statements that build to an unbearable cresdenco, as if they were rocks piling on his body or lashes across his bare back. The Lord does all that to make two profound points, communicated in what must have been, especially juxtaposed with what proceeded it, a reassuring voice of a loving Father. “Know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.” 

The revelation made the second point to Joseph by posing the profound question of verse 8. “The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?” The “therefore what?” follows as Joseph is encouraged to hold on, fear not, promised the priesthood forever and life until his work on earth is finished.

Joseph wanted Emma to be first to read his long letter, and he pled with her in a letter the following day to have it copied immediately and circulated to the leaders of the Church and his parents. Though the letter from which sections 121-23 derives exhibited the limits of Joseph’s schooling, he regarded it as the vessel of some of the most profound revelation he received and some of the best counsel he ever gave. The parts that became sections 121 and 122 reoriented and motivated Joseph, many have had a similar effect on many others, and continue to be a primary source of Latter-day Saint resolve to this day to keep the faith in the face of adversity.

In a dark, confined space he was powerless to escape, Joseph pled “how long” with an implied “why?” From His timeless and infinite vantage, the Lord answered “a small moment” and because “all these things shall give thee experience” (D&C 121:7, 122:7). These words “turned the raw Missouri experience into a theology of suffering” that made sense from God’s perspective. Liberty Jail, in effect, served Joseph as a microcosm of life in a telestial world, a dog-eat-dog sphere of power-seeking, aspiration, materialism, and unrighteous dominion. There, in that hell, Joseph was powerless. Or was he? 

B.H. Roberts called the jail “more temple than prison, so long as the Prophet was there. It was a place of meditation and prayer. A temple, first of all, is a place of prayer; and prayer is communion with God. It is the ‘infinite in man seeking the infinite in God.’ Where they find each other, there is holy sanctuary—a temple.  Joseph Smith sought God in this rude prison, and found him.”[2]

As a result, Sections 121-122 endowed Joseph with power. While the bounds of his enemies were set, Joseph would always have the priesthood (D&C 122:9). His oppressors, those who used their supposed power and influence to hurt, take, abuse, insult, misrepresent, and compel, would be cursed, lose their posterity, and be severed from the temple, and, thus, confidence in the presence of God. It was they who were powerless to “hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints” (D&C 121:33). The powerful on earth would, in a small moment, be impotent while Joseph and the faithful would reign with gentleness, meekness, and by love unfeigned forever and ever (D&C 121:41, 46).    

These divine explanations helped Joseph see as if from God’s eyes that things were not as they seemed. Section 122 made sense of suffering. Mankind was on earth to gain “experience.”  “The word ‘experience’ suggested that life was a passage. The enduring human personality was being tested. Experience instructed. Life was not just a place to shed one’s sins but a place to deepen comprehension by descending below them all.” In sum, sections 121-22 taught Joseph that “the Missouri tribulations were a training ground” for godhood.[3] Hell, it turned out, could serve as a temple, a place to be endowed with God’s heart and mind in anticipation of assuming His “everlasting dominion” (121:46). 

Joseph came to understand this because of his “experience” in Liberty.  He wrote from that stinking but sacred space, “It seems to me that my heart will always be more tender after this than ever it was before.” He recognized that trials “give us that knowledge to understand the minds of the Ancients” like Abraham, who typified the Savior’s unequaled unjust suffering.  “For my part,” Joseph wrote, “I think I never could have felt as I now do if I had not suffered the wrongs that I have suffered.”[4]

Renewed certainty resulted from these revelations. The day after he dictated them Joseph still did not know how long he would be in jail, but he wrote to Emma that since he knew “for a certainty of eternal things, if the heavens linger it is nothing to me.”[5] After he finally escaped from Missouri a few weeks later, Joseph seemed the most determined soul on earth. He knew what he had to do and nothing could stop him. His days were not only known but numbered, and with them he pursued a course to mentor the apostles and give them the priesthood keys he had received from ministering angels, build a temple and begin offering the ordinances of exaltation to the faithful.  

As a result of these revelations, Joseph emerged from his darkest unbroken, undaunted, and with his eyes fixed on eternity. So long as he saw the world through section 122 he could press forward, coping with any experience, come what may.

Section 123

Section 123 is in Joseph’s voice, not the Lord’s. It comes from a long letter composed in jail at Liberty, Missouri. It does not claim to be revelation, but it was nevertheless valuable counsel from the Prophet for the Saints to document the injustices and atrocities they endured in Missouri in order to assert their first amendment rights to petition the government to redress grievances. 

In section 123, Joseph repeatedly says that documenting what happened to the Saints in Missouri is “an imperative duty” they owed to God, angels, each other, those who were murdered, to the rising generation, “and to all the pure in heart” (7, 9, 11). In powerful, metaphor-rich language, Joseph and his brethren urge the Saints to attend to this important matter. Joseph was not certain that the government would respond to the petitions, but he knew the Lord required the Saint to do all in their power, including this “last effort” to obtain justice, before He would “send forth the power of his mighty arm” (6).  

In response to Joseph’s suggestion, 678 Latter-day Saints wrote or dictated sworn statements documenting the abuses they suffered and property they lost in Missouri.  In the fall of 1839, having escaped from Missouri, Joseph took the documents to the president of the United States. He literally knocked on the door of the White House and asked to see Martin Van Buren, whom Joseph had supported. Joseph presented the petitions and Van Buren, facing an election year, responded, “What can I do?  I can do nothing for you!  If I do anything, I shall come in contact with the whole state of Missouri.” Joseph turned to the Illinois congressional delegation for help in appealing to Congress. President Martin Van Buren pled impotence on the federalist doctrine of limited powers. He could not constitutionally intervene in a state matter, he said. The Senate referred the case to the Judiciary Committee, which, with pressure from Missouri, arrived at the same conclusion knowing that the Saints had been driven for their religion. There would be no justice, no redress of grievances or guarantees of the free exercise of religious conscience. 

The documentation of abuses “did have a long term effect on Mormonism’s public image. . . .  The accounts of the persecutions turned the expulsion from Missouri into an asset in the battle for popular support.” The redress petitions were turned over to the Library of Congress, where they remain to this day as a testimony of “diabolical rascality and nefarious and murderous impositions that have been practiced upon this people” (D&C 123:5).[1]

Section 121 notes

[1] “Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 1, 21 December 1842–10 March 1843,” p. 15, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-december-1842-june-1844-book-1-21-december-1842-10-march-1843/21.

[2] “Letter to Emma Smith, 12 November 1838,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-emma-smith-12-november-1838/1.

[3] Correspondence, Orders &c. in Relation to the Disturbances with the Mormons; and the Evidence (Fayette, Missouri: Missouri General Assembly, 1841), 2. 

[4] Hyrum Smith, Affidavit before Nauvoo Municipal Court, July 1, 1843, in Joseph Smith, et al., History of the Church, 7 volumes, edited by B.H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1980), 3:402-23, also in Clark V. Johnson, editor, Mormon Redress Petitions: Documents of the 1833-1838 Missouri Conflict (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1992), 619-39, quote drawn from pages 632-35. Gordon A. Madsen, “Joseph Smith and the Missouri Court of Inquiry: Austin A. King’s Quest for Hostages,” BYU Studies 43:4 (2004): 93-136.

[5] Joseph Smith, et al., History of the Church, 7 volumes, edited by B.H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1980), 3:215.

[6] John Corrill, A Brief History of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints (St. Louis: Printed for the Author, 1839), 48.

[7] Bushman, Joseph Smith, 380.

[8] “Letter to the Church and Edward Partridge, 20 March 1839,” The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-the-church-and-edward-partridge-20-march-1839/1. The entire letter was published in Dean C. Jessee and John W. Welch, editors, “Revelations in Context: Joseph Smith’s Letter from Liberty Jail, March 20, 1839,” BYU Studies 39:3 (2000): 125-45.

Section 122 notes

[1] “Letter to the Church and Edward Partridge, 20 March 1839,” The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-the-church-and-edward-partridge-20-march-1839/1.

[2] B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), 1:526.

[3] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 380.

[4] “Letter to Presendia Huntington Buell, 15 March 1839,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-presendia-huntington-buell-15-march-1839/1.

[5] Joseph Smith to Emma Smith, March 21, 1839, Liberty, Missouri, in Dean C. Jessee, editor, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, 408–409.

Section 123 notes

[1] Clark V. Johnson, Mormon Redress Petitions: Documents of the 1833-1838 Missouri Conflict (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1992).

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 115-120

Section 115

Revelation, 26 April 1838 [D&C 115]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.
In December 1836, the Missouri state legislature created Caldwell County for Latter-day Saints to settle, and named Far West as its seat. Some 2,000 saints gathered to Far West with a few thousand more in the surrounding area. On April 6, 1837, the Church’s seventh anniversary, they made plans to build a temple like the one in Kirtland, Ohio. They chose a site in the center of town and came together to break ground. Then the work stopped. When Joseph visited Far West in November a council decided to postpone temple building until the Lord revealed otherwise.[1] A few weeks after Joseph moved to Far West in March 1838, the Lord revealed his will concerning the temple, the name of His Church, and the gathering of the saints. 

At its organization in on 6 April 1830, The Church was called the “Church of Christ” (see D&C 20:1). Then, beginning on 3 May 1834, Church leaders officially adopted the title, “The Church of the Latter Day Saints.” Section 115 commands that it be called “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” a designation Joseph had already begun using.[2]

Shortly after the Lord revealed Section 115, Thomas Marsh, president of the quorum of twelve apostles, wrote of its content to Wilford Woodruff. “Since Br. Joseph came to this place, we have been favored with a lengthy revelation in which many important items are shown forth. First, that the Church, shall hereafter be called. ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.’ Second, it saith ‘Let the City Farwest be a holy and a consecrated land unto me, and it shall be called most holy, for the ground upon which thou standest is holy: Therefore, I command you to build a house unto me, for the gathering together of my Saints, that they may worship me.’ 3d. It also teaches, that the foundation stone must be laid on the 4th of July next, and that a commencement must be made in this following season; and in one year from that time, to continue the work until it is finished. Thus we see that the Lord is more wise than men, for [some] thought to commence it long before this, but it was not the Lords time, therefore, he over threw it, and has appointed his own time. The plan is yet to be shown to the first presidency, and all the Saints, in all the world, are commanded to assist in building the house [of the Lord].”[3]

Section 115 is an optimistic declaration. In the face of overwhelming opposition including indebtedness, persecution, and poverty, the Lord is building Zion. The temple is all important. Having recently received the priesthood keys to authorize temple ordinances (see section 110), Joseph is the Lord’s choice to carry Zion forward, establish its stakes, oversee its temples, and gather the faithful of all nations to be endowed with power. 

The Saints gathered on July 4, 1838 to obey Section 115’s command to begin work on the temple. George Robinson, Joseph’s secretary, reported, “We therefore met on this day in Far West Mo. To make our decleration of independence, and to Lay the corrnerstones of the house of the Lord agreeably to the commandment of the Lord unto us given April 26th 1838.”[4] The Saints then gathered building materials so that construction could proceed on 26 April 1839, as the revelation specified. Meanwhile, according to one Missouri historian, the walls inched upwards to nearly three feet before the Saints were driven from the state by the governor’s executive order in the fall.[5]

In obedience to verse 18, Joseph led three expeditions in the spring of 1838 to search out locations for “stakes in the regions round about” (18). Additional explorations were conducted throughout the summer and land surveys conducted in anticipation of more saints arriving in the fall. On June 28, 1838, at a small grove near the home of Lyman Wight near Spring Hill in Daviess County, Joseph Smith organized the Adam-ondi-Ahman stake, the third stake organized in the Church. 

Recently the Lord impressed on President Russell M. Nelson’s mind “the importance of the name He decreed for His Church.” President Nelson taught that because of section 115, “the name of the Church is not negotiable. When the Savior clearly states what the name of His Church should be even precedes His declaration with, ‘Thus shall my church be called,’ he is serious.” Using any substitute for the revealed name minimizes or removes the Savior, and “when we discard the Savior’s name, we are subtly disregarding all that Jesus Christ did for us—even His Atonement.” That would not be wise.[6]

Section 116

Shortly after Joseph moved to Far West, Missouri in March 1838, the Lord commanded him that “other places should be appointed for stakes in the regions round about” (see section 115).  Anticipating that large numbers of Saints would gather to the area from Ohio, Canada, and elsewhere, Joseph and other leaders set off to explore Daviess County “for the purpose of . . . making Locations & laying claims for the gathering of the Saints for the benefit of the poor.”[1] Near Lyman Wight’s home, Joseph revealed section 116. 

Orson Pratt inserted the words “Spring Hill is named by the Lord Adam-ondi-Ahman” when he included this statement in the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. The original entry in Joseph’s journal, made by his secretary George Robinson, reads: “Spring Hill a name appropriated by the bretheren present, But afterwards named by the mouth of [the] Lord and was called Adam Ondi Awmen, because said he it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of days shall sit as spoken of by Daniel the Prophet.”[2]

Section116 links the past with the future, sacred history with prophesy. Adam-Ondi-Ahman is a place Adam and Eve went after being expelled from Eden’s Garden. They offered sacrifices and blessed their posterity there. Joseph learned by revelation in 1831 that Adam, prior to his death, gathered his posterity in a valley called Adam-Ondi-Ahman and blessed them and they blessed him. The Lord appeared to them and promised Adam that he would preside over a multitude of nations. Adam rose and, though aged, prophesied what would happen to his posterity (D&C 78:15-16 and 107:53-56). 

Section 116 identifies the specific site of that impressive occasion and says that the site will host a future meeting. Adam, or the Ancient of Days, as Daniel called him, will again gather his righteous posterity there, possibly for the sacrament and stewardship meeting prophesied in section 27.  

Approximately 1,500 Latter-day Saints settled at Adam-Ondi-Ahman in 1838. They planned a temple. They laid out a stake in obedience to section 115. They obeyed the law of consecration in obedience to section 119.[3] They were driven from the land later that year when Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued an executive “extermination” order that effectively enabled Missourians to steal the land by preventing the saints from asserting their preemption rights. Even so, because of section 116, the Church has quietly acquired and preserved the sacred site.

Section 117

To understand section 117, you need to know about a revelation to Joseph that is not in the Doctrine and Covenants. It came to him on January 12, 1838. That year began grimly as dissent from within and opposition from outside the Church pressured Joseph Smith. The saints’ banking project had failed, Joseph was mired in debt because of his efforts to turn Kirtland, Ohio into a stake of Zion, including crowning it with a priceless but nevertheless expensive temple. Creditors, some of whom were Joseph’s avowed enemies, hounded him. Some filed suits against him. Some of his associates and friends rejected his leadership. Dissenters started their own Church.

In that context, Joseph sought direction and received the revelation mentioned above, telling him, his family, and faithful saints emphatically to flee Ohio or Missouri.[1] Joseph left immediately. His family and remaining members of the First Presidency followed him. The question remained whether his “faithful friends” would also. Would they “arise with their families also and get out of this place and gather themselves together unto Zion”?  

Joseph moved to Far West, Missouri and received a series of revelations that relocated, reorganized, and reoriented the Church, whose headquarters had been in Kirtland, Ohio since 1831. One of the new revelations, section 115, declared Far West to be the new center of gathering for the Saints. 

The First Presidency expected that William Marks, a bookseller who remained in Kirtland to preside over the saints there, and Newel Whitney, the bishop in Kirtland, would obey the revelations to leave Kirtland and come to Far West. These men dragged their feet. Whitney was Kirtland’s most prosperous merchant. He owned a store and a profitably ashery situated ideally near the main intersection through town. He was torn between material prosperity and the revelations.  

Almost all the faithful Kirtland saints left for Missouri in May. When neither Whitney nor Marks had arrived in Missouri by July, Joseph received section 117 about their situations and about what to do regarding his indebtedness and the bankruptcy of the First Presidency. 

In direct and certain terms, the Lord commanded Newel Whitney and William Marks to relocate to Missouri before winter to continue serving in their respective callings, Marks to preside over the Saints in Far West and Whitney to serve as a bishop, which in the 1830s meant to manage the Church’s material assets to build Zion and relieve poverty.

There is a fascinating dynamic to section 117. No other revelation, no other scriptures in fact, use the words “saith the Lord” as often. Some Old Testament prophets use the phrase nearly as often, and sections 124 and 132 use it frequently too. But its high frequency in section 117 may tell us something about Joseph’s awkward position. 

Newel Whitney was his friend and benefactor. Newel and Elizabeth Ann Whitney welcomed the homeless Joseph and Emma to their own hearth when they first moved to Ohio. The Whitneys repeatedly housed Joseph and Emma as well as Sidney Rigdon’s family. Emma gave birth to Joseph III in the Whitney home. Emma and Elizabeth Ann Whitney were dear, close friends. Newel served ably as a bishop and tried to implement the law of consecration. He largely financed the United Firm as one of its charter members (See sections 72, 78, 82, 104). He used his own connections and resources to set Joseph up as a rival storekeeper in Kirtland.[2] Joseph loved and admired Bishop Whitney but acknowledged “the narrow mindedness of his heart and all his covetous desires that so easily besetteth him.”[3]

The Lord speaks directly to those desires in section 117. He speaks as the Creator and Owner of the earth with whom Newel had covenanted to consecrate and serve as a bishop. He commands Newel and William to “repent of all their sins, and of all their covetous desires, before me” (4). He points a series of penetrating questions at the two men who are still deciding whether to serve God or what section 98:20 called “all their detestable things.” The Lord paints a comparative picture, juxtaposing what Joseph called Newel’s “narrow mindedness,” his acquisition of a tiny telestial empire in Kirtland, Ohio, with the Lord’s expansiveness as the creator. He evokes terms from the “pure language” to describe northern Missouri, where Newel is commanded to relocate and serve the saints (117:8, see Section 116 and Abraham 3:13).  

In verse 11 the Lord associates Newel Whitney with a Nicolatane band, by which He means to accuse him of aiding and abetting the enemy. Nicolatans were followers of Nicholas of Antioch, an early Christian called and ordained to look after the “business” of ministering to widows (Acts 6:1-8). Nicholas apostatized, however, and led a faction that tried to justify their covetous and lustful impulses.[4] Verse 11 is the Lord’s potent way of conveying to Newel how evil the Lord finds the Kirtland apostates and how near Newel is himself to committing their sins. 

Consider the possibility that Joseph may have been discomforted by the Lord’s straightforwardness to Bishop Whitney, who had been so generous with him. There is no way to know for sure, but it may be that Joseph wanted Newel to be sure that the rebuke came from Jesus, not Joseph. That could account for the striking repetition of “saith the Lord” in section 117.   

Beginning in verse 12, the Lord commends and commissions Oliver Granger with the job of redeeming the credit of the First Presidency back in Ohio before returning to Missouri as a merchant for Zion. The Lord does not promise Oliver success in this labor, only that his repeated efforts and sacrifice will be sanctifying for him and that his name will be sacredly remembered (13).

Oliver Granger returned from Missouri to Kirtland to obey his part of section 117 by representing the First Presidency in selling some property and settling some debts. One saint on the scene noted Oliver’s “strict integrity” and testified that his “management in the arrangement of the unfinished business of people that have moved to the Far West, in redeeming their pledges and thereby sustaining their integrity, has been truly praiseworthy, and has entitled him to my highest esteem and ever grateful recollection.”[5] Still, “there was not much chance that he could succeed,” Elder Boyd K. Packer taught. He emphasized that section 117 does not praise Oliver for his success but for his efforts, for earnestly contending at personal sacrifice. Thus, for efforts with which Oliver himself may not have been entirely satisfied, his name and example have been remembered.[6]

When Oliver returned from Ohio ready to fulfill the instructions in 117:14, the First Presidency wrote him a letter of commendation.[7] Meanwhile, Oliver delivered section 117 together with a letter from the First Presidency to Newel Whitney and William Marks. The revelation and the related letter put Newel and William in the position of the rich ruler of Luke 18 who kept all of the commandments except the full measure of consecration required to enter the kingdom of God. As Jesus counseled the rich man, so He counsels Newel and William in section 117 to sell what they have; distribute unto the poor; come, in their case literally to Missouri; and choose “treasure in heaven” instead of the comparatively tiny though highly coveted “drop” (117:8, Luke 18:18-25). 

The First Presidency’s letter to Newel and William said, “you will understand the will of the Lord concerning you.”[8] Knowing the revelation compelled the brethren to act—either in obedience or disobedience. They could not remain indecisive about obeying Jesus Christ. The First Presidency was confident that they would “doubtless act accordingly,” and they did. Newel Whitney and his family left Kirtland in the fall of 1838, too late to join with the Saints in Missouri (being driven from the state), but soon enough to continue serving as a bishop in Nauvoo, Illinois. William Marks obeyed also and became the Nauvoo stake president. 

Section 117 powerfully motivated Newel Whitney, William Marks, and Oliver Granger. Each of them believed it was indeed a revelation from the Lord and sacrificed selfish interests in order to obey it. 

Section 118

Revelation, 8 July 1838–A [D&C 118]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.
Imagine that one-third of the members of the quorum of twelve apostles have just been released or excommunicated for dissent. That’s what happened in 1838, along with a host of other problems. A council including Joseph, his counselors, secretary, the bishopric in Missouri, and Thomas Marsh, president of the quorum of twelve apostles, met to seek revelation. “Show unto us thy will O Lord concerning the Twelve,” Joseph prayed, and section 118 followed.[1]

The Lord calls for a conference to immediately fill the vacancies in the quorum of twelve apostles. Thomas Marsh, who besides presiding over the quorum was the Church’s publisher in Missouri, is to continue in that role. The other apostles are to continue preaching. The Lord covenants with them that if they endure in their ministries meekly and humbly, he will provide for their families and give them success. 

In verse 4 the Lord elaborates on a call He mentioned in section 114 for the apostles cross the Atlantic Ocean early in 1839 for a mission to Great Britain. This time the call is very specific. “Let them take leave of my saints in the city of Far West, on the twenty-sixth day of April next, on the building spot of my house, saith the Lord” (5). The Lord then names the men He chose to replace the fallen apostles and commands that they be officially notified.

The next day, the apostles who were in Far West met with the First Presidency and acted on section 118’s command to officially notify the new apostles. Sidney Ridgon wrote to Willard Richards, who was already serving in England. Willard was later ordained there by Brigham Young in 1840. Wilford Woodruff was serving in the Islands off the New England coast when, according to his journal, “I received a letter from Thomas B. Marsh, informing me of my appointment to fill the place, in the Quorum of the Twelve, of one who had fallen, and I was requested to come to Far West as soon as possible, to prepare for a mission to England in the spring.”[2]
Obeying the rest of the revelation proved to be more problematic. In October 1838 the governor of Missouri issued an executive order to the state militia to drive the Saints from the state.  The Saints lost their property and retreated east to the relative safety of Illinois. There, as April 1839 approached, the apostles and others counseled about section 118’s specific instructions to leave for England from the Far West, Missouri temple site on April 26. Quorum president Thomas Marsh had since been excommunicated for rebellion and apostle David Patten had been killed in the Missouri violence, leaving Brigham Young as the senior apostle.  

Wilford Woodruff reported that “as the time drew nigh for the accomplishment of this work, the question arose, ‘What is to be done?’ Here is a revelation commanding the Twelve to be in Far West on the 26th day of April, to lay the cornerstone of the Temple there; it had to be fulfilled. The Missourians had sworn by all the gods of eternity that if every other revelation given through Joseph Smith should be fulfilled, that should not be, for the day and date being given they declared it would fail. The general feeling in the Church, so far as I know, was that, under the circumstances, it was impossible to accomplish the work; and the Lord would accept the will for the deed.”[3] But Brigham Young was presiding over the apostles, and the Lord had commanded them to leave from the Far West temple site on April 16, 1838. Anyone who wonders whether the apostles would do so is probably not familiar with Brigham’s iron resolve.  

Wilford joined Brigham Young and others on a journey west over the Mississippi River and into hostile Missouri. Wilford noted that the roads were full of Saints heading east, “fleeing from Missouri to Illinois for they were driven from their houses & lands by the State.” Brigham, Wilford, and their party arrived at Far West on April 25.  

In his journal entry for April 16, 1839, Wilford wrote about all the obstacles between the apostles and their revealed instructions to leave for their mission to England from the Far West temple site that day. Then Wilford wrote, “we moved forward to the building spot of the house of the Lord in the City of far west & held a Council & fulfilled the revelation & Commandment.”

Wilford noted that they also fulfilled section 115’s command to begin to lay the foundation for the temple on that day. They rolled a large stone to the southeast corner of the temple site (D&C 115:11). Wilford sat on that stone as the apostles led by Brigham Young ordained him an apostle. George A. Smith was also ordained to replace Thomas Marsh. Each of the apostles prayed and Alpheus Cutler placed the corner stone before, as Wilford put it, “in consequence of the peculiar situation of the Saints he thought it wisdom to adjourn until some future time when the Lord should open the way expressing his determination then to proceed with the building.”[4]

A few days later, William Phelps, who had apostatized and remained in Missouri, reported the event to his wife in a mocking, critical tone. “One of the least of all the forcible tricks of the Mormons, was performed in the morning of the 26th April, in secret darkness about three o clock in the Morning.” He said they “assembled at the big house cellar, and laid one huge stone, in addition to those already there, to fulfill the revelation given the 26th of April one year ago.  I think they strained at a camel and swallowed a gnat. . . .  I have also learned that, at the sham meeting at the big house cellar, there not being a quorum of the old ‘Twelve’ present, they had recourse to ‘shift,’ and ordained Wilford Woodruff, and Geo. Smith as apostles, which with HC Kimball Orson Pratt, Brigham Young (old ones) and John E Page and John Taylor (new ones), made seven. They prayed (in vain) sung Adam ondi Ahmah, and closed. There were others there. This looks a little like choosing or loving darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.”  Phelps continued with profound irony, “You know I think as much of pure religion as ever, but this foolish mocking disgusts me and all decent people. Force the fulfillment of Jo’s revelation! You might as well damn the waters of Missouri River with a lime riddle. It was undoubtedly done to strengthen the faith of weak members, and for effect abroad: as I understand the Twelve are a going to try their luck again among the nations: It’s really a pity they cannot get a Looking Glass large enough to see the saw log in their own eyes while they are endeavoring to pull the slab out of the neighboring nations. All I can say is ‘Physician save thyself’!  Whether you laugh or cry, I have one thing to confess, and that is: I never was so lonesome before.”[5]

While William Phelps pitied himself and mocked the apostles, they turned east and continued to obey section 118. They returned to Illinois to make final preparations for their mission to Great Britain. They left their families sick and destitute and, some suffering from malaria, struggled to make their way to England. There they experienced an unprecedented harvest, converting thousands of souls.

Section 119

Revelation, 8 July 1838–C [D&C 119]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.
Though it is clearly worded and consistent with Joseph’s earlier revelations, section 119 may be his most misunderstood revelation. That is because everyone reads the scriptures through a figurative pair of glasses. The glasses are made of presuppositions. The glasses can’t be seen or felt but they distort what is seen and understood. The 1981 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants included a heading for section 119. The heading represents the glasses through which many saints see section 119. It is largely accurate but it includes two sentences that aren’t. While many similar errors were corrected in 2013, that one wasn’t. 

 To see how this works, read the revelation in section 119 without looking at the heading. Forget everything you think you know about tithing and just read the revelation. Note that it begins with a direct restatement of the law of consecration (D&C 42:33, 54). Then verse 2 states the reasons for the revelation, and they are the same reasons for the law of consecration and related revelations given in sections 51, 70, 72, 78, 82, 104, and 105. “This,” section 119 says, “is the beginning of the tithing of my people.” 

That is the first of the revelation’s three uses of tithing or tithed. All of them refer to the voluntary offering of surplus property. “And after that, those who have thus been tithed,” says verse 4, “shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually.” Clearly tithing is not a lesser or lower law to be replaced someday but “a standing law unto them forever” and applicable to all saints everywhere (4, 7). The revelation ends with a covenant. “If my people observe not this law, to keep it holy, and by this law sanctify the land of Zion unto me, that my statutes and judgments may be kept thereon, that it may be most holy, behold, verily I say unto you, it shall not be a land of Zion unto you” (6).  

So why do saints tell each other the story that the law of consecration is a higher law and tithing is a lower law? The Doctrine and Covenants doesn’t say that. There’s not enough space here to explain this misunderstanding completely but the heading plays a role in it. There are erroneous sentences in the heading that conflict with the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants: The Lord had previously given to the Church the law of consecration and stewardship of property, which members (chiefly the leading elders) entered into by a covenant that was to be everlasting. Because of failure on the part of many to abide by the covenant, the Lord withdrew it for a time, and gave instead the law of tithing to the whole Church. These sentences conflate two separate, distinct covenants into one, then mistakenly assert that section 119 is instead of that covenant.  

The first covenant is the one all saints are to make and keep to live the law of consecration in section 42. Saints were expected, not coerced, to live this law. All could.  Some would and some would not. (See sections 51, 66, 85 and 90).  

The covenant for all Latter-day Saints to keep the law of consecration is different from the covenant made by the leading elders to own, administer, and share the Church’s assets according to the law of consecration. That second covenant led to the United Firm, better known as the United Order, which existed from 1832 to 1834 and involved a few church leaders, never the general membership of the Church (See sections 78, 82, 104). The Lord declared the United Firm’s covenant broken and therefore void in section 104:4-9. He then dismantled the United Firm in section 104 but never repealed the law of consecration. 

President Gordon B. Hinckley taught that that law of consecration was not rescinded and is “still in effect.”[1] So how could section 119 be instead of the law of consecration? The revelation doesn’t say tithing is instead of consecration. It simply restates the law and adds clarification and perhaps even a level of greater obligation. It is best understood as part of, not instead of, the law of consecration. Section 119 is God’s law and covenant to be kept or rejected by each individual’s own free will. 

Reading the revelation through broken glasses causes us to distort it to mean that tithing is a lower law that that is going away someday. Seeing the revelation through the lenses of its original context shows us how it fits in the law of consecration, “a standing law unto them forever,” and that obedience to it is prerequisite to Zion (D&C 119).  

Section 120

Section 119 created a need to account for the tithes that would be paid as a result of the revelation. Section 120 was revealed to solved that problem. It says that the time has come for the Lord to appoint the First Presidency, bishopric, and high council as a standing council to dispose of the tithes “by mine own voice unto them, saith the Lord.”[1]

Less than a month passed before this newly revealed council met in Far West, Missouri to obey the revelation, that is to “take into concideration the disposing of the publick properties in the hands of the Bishop, in Zion, for the people of Zion have commenced liberally to consecrate agreeably to the revelations, and commandments of the Great I Am of their surplus properties.” The council agreed that the First Presidency should keep all the property they needed “and the remainder be put into the hands of the Bishop or Bishops, agreeably to the commandments, and revelations.”[2]

Section 120 created the council that continues to guide the Church’s financial and property management, and declared the principle of revelation by which they do so. The council has a different composition today, however. When section 120 was revealed, Far West was church headquarters and its bishop and high council served with the First Presidency on the council. Over the years the quorum of twelve apostles grew into a governing body of the Church and a presiding bishopric was formed. Today, in other words, the council is composed of the First Presidency, Quorum of Twelve Apostles, and the Presiding Bishopric.[3]

There have been critics of this council for a long time. Their perspective is always from the outside. Speaking from the inside, with nearly two decades as a member of this council, Elder Robert D. Hales said, “It is remarkable to witness this council heed the Lord’s voice. Each member is aware of and participates in all the council’s decisions. No decision is made until the council is unanimous. All tithing funds are spent for the purposes of the Church.” Elder Hales continued, “I bear my testimony of the Council on the Disposition of the Tithes. . . .  Without exception, the tithing funds of this Church have been used for His purposes.”[4]

Section 115 notes

[1] “Minutes, 6 November 1837,” p. 81, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minutes-6-november-1837/2.

[2] K. Shane Goodwin, “The History of the Name of the Savior’s Church: A Collaborative and Revelatory Process,” BYU Studies Quarterly 58:3 (2019): 5-41.

[3] Thomas B. Marsh to Wilford Woodruff, April 30, 1838, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. 

[4] “Journal, March–September 1838,” p. 46, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-march-september-1838/32.

[5] William A. Wood, “An Old Mormon City in Missouri,” American Magazine of History 16 (1886): 98-99; as cited in Gentry, “A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri,” 64, note 77.

[6] Russell M. Nelson, “The Correct Name of the Church,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2018/10/the-correct-name-of-the-church?lang=eng.

Section 116 notes

[1] “Journal, March–September 1838,” p. 42, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-march-september-1838/28.

[2] See Daniel chapter 7. 

[3] Robert J. Matthews, Adam-ondi-Ahman,” BYU Studies 13:1 (1972): 27-35; Leland H. Gentry, “Adam-ondi-Ahman: A Brief Historical Survey,” BYU Studies 13:4 (1973): 553-76.

Section 117 notes

[1] “Revelation, 12 January 1838–C,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-january-1838-c/1.

[2] Mark L. Staker, “‘Thou Art the Man’: Newel K. Whitney in Ohio,” BYU Studies 42:1 (2003), 75-138, especially page 113.

[3] “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 6, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-1835-1836/7.

[4] Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans, 1887), 439. 

[5] Horace Kingsbury to all persons that are or may be interested, Painesville, Ohio, October 26, 1838, Joseph Smith, Letterbook 2, p. 40, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. 

[6] Boyd K. Packer, “The Least of These,” Ensign (November 2004), 86.  Howard W. Hunter, “No Less Serviceable,” Ensign (April 1992), 64.

[7] “Authorization for Oliver Granger, 13 May 1839,” p. 45, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/authorization-for-oliver-granger-13-may-1839/1.

[8] “Letter to William Marks and Newel K. Whitney, 8 July 1838,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-william-marks-and-newel-k-whitney-8-july-1838/1.

Section 118 notes

[1] “Revelation, 8 July 1838–A [D&C 118],” p. 105, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-8-july-1838-a-dc-118/1.

[2] Wilford Woodruff, Journal, August 9, 1838, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.  Thomas B. Marsh to Wilford Woodruff, July 14, 1838, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[3] Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses, 13:159.

[4] Wilford Woodruff, Journal, April 16, 1839, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[5] William W. Phelps to Sally Phelps, May 1, 1839, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Section 119 notes

[1] Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997), 639. 

Section 120 notes

[1] “Revelation, 8 July 1838–D [D&C 120],” p. 57, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-8-july-1838-d-dc-120/1.

[2] “Journal, March–September 1838,” p. 59, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed December 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-march-september-1838/45.

[3] David W. Smith, “The Development of the Council on the Disposition of the Tithes,” BYU Studies Quarterly 57:2 (2018): 131-155.

[4] Elder Robert Hales, “Tithing,” October 2002 General Conference, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2002/10/tithing-a-test-of-faith-with-eternal-blessings?lang=eng.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 111-114

Section 111

The revelation of section 111 on August 6, 1836 reoriented Joseph and his companions. They had been preoccupied with paying their debts to the point of pursuing an unwise strategy. The revelation taught them to think of treasure in terms of human lives, “people  . . . whom I will gather,” and to not be overly concerned about their debts (D&C 111). It is a comforting revelation. 

Just as the Saints in Missouri were being asked to leave another county there, Joseph and the Saints in Ohio finished the House of the Lord in Kirtland at great expense. The resulting blessings far surpassed the value of every penny, but the process left Joseph indebted around $13,000 with more expenses looming. Under these circumstances Joseph took a risk. A man named Jonathan Burgess had told him that there was a lot of money buried in the cellar of a house in Salem, Massachusetts. He said he knew where it was, and that he was the only living person who did. Joseph, his brother Hyrum, Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon set out for Salem in July, planning to meet Burgess, locate the house, and hopefully find the treasure. They eventually found the house, but it was not for sale or rent, and they left Salem without getting access to it.[1]

Church historian B.H. Roberts wrote that “while in Salem the Prophet received a revelation in which the folly of this journey is sharply reproved.”[2] Elder Roberts may have been overly sensitive to the emphasis antagonistic writers placed on Joseph’s youthful treasure seeking (see Joseph Smith—History 1:55-57).[3] The Lord does not sharply reprove Joseph in Section 111. He says, in fact, that he is not displeased with the prophet despite his follies, by which he meant “a weak or absurd act not highly criminal; an act which is inconsistent with the dictates of reason, or with the ordinary rules of prudence.”[4]

In this and other revelations that respond to Joseph or other saints being in anxious, high-pressure situations, the Lord’s response is cool and in control. Joseph is overwhelmed with debt to the point of taking unsound risks. The Lord replies that he will gather Salem’s treasures and souls for Zion in due time. Joseph and his companions responded by seeking out the place the Lord wanted them to stay, a house on Union Street not far from where Nathaniel Hawthorne was writing tales of buried treasure in Salem and the local newspaper was reporting similar rumors.[5] They visited from house to house and did some preaching. On August 19 they visited the East India Marine Society Museum, comparatively relaxed in their efforts to obey the revelation and stop being too concerned with their debts and with things they could not control in Zion, and focus instead on souls both past and present. 

These efforts led to some of the “treasures” the Lord mentioned in verse 10. Returning from another trip to Salem in 1841, Hyrum Smith met with Erastus Snow, gave him a copy of Section 111 and urged him to go there and harvest the “many people” the Lord promised to gather in due time (1). At great sacrifice to himself and his family, Elder Snow went. He and Benjamin Winchester started the harvest and others followed. In 1841 the Salem Gazette announced that “a very worthy and respectable laboring man, and his wife, were baptized by immersion in the Mormon Faith.” Six months later the Salem Register noted that “Mormonism is advancing with a perfect rush in this city.”[6] The church has inquired into Salem’s early inhabitants too. The early records of Salem and surrounding areas have been preserved and are accessible for genealogical research leading to the sacred ordinances of the House of the Lord.

With Section 111, the Lord transformed folly into treasures in his own due time. 

Section 112

Do you know someone who only hears the parts of a conversation that validate their thoughts or actions? Are you that person? 

Apostasy swept through the Saints in Ohio in 1837, including the apostles. Thomas Marsh, president of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, tried to reconcile the struggling members of his quorum and prepare the apostles for a mission to Great Britain under his leadership. Thomas had scheduled a July 24, 1837 meeting of the apostles in Kirtland. When he arrived he discovered that Joseph had already called and sent apostles Heber Kimball and Orson Hyde to England.[1] After consulting with quorum member Brigham Young, Thomas went to Joseph for counsel and reconciliation.[2] In that meeting, Thomas wrote Section 112 as Joseph dictated. Aspiring and full of potential, Thomas and some of the apostles found themselves divided, unfulfilled, and undervalued.  The revelation acknowledges the apostles’ receipt of priesthood keys, and the greatness of their calling, but it also implies pride, even blasphemy and apostasy among some, and the need for Thomas and his quorum to repent and then to preach repentance and baptism (23-26).

Though he wrote the Lord’s words as Joseph spoke them, Thomas Marsh heard section 112 selectively. He took the revelation to Heber Kimball’s wife Vilate and told her that Joseph had assured him that her husband’s missionary work in England would not be effective until Thomas said so.[3] Meanwhile, Heber and his companions sent letters back across the Atlantic reporting their successful labors. As Heber put it, “it was all right to prepare the way for brother Marsh.”[4]

Thomas Marsh had an arrogance problem. He heard and self-servingly interpreted the passages of the revelation that reminded him of his high position, the greatness of his calling, his possession of powerful priesthood keys, and his impressive role in spreading the gospel to the nations. He did not hear the revelation’s command to be humble (10), to “exalt not yourselves,” or “rebel not against my servant Joseph” (15).   

Thomas returned to his home in Missouri as commanded in verse 5 and continued to serve as the church’s publisher there. In the autumn of 1838 he exalted himself and rebelled against Joseph. He famously repudiated the decisions of church councils to defend his wife in a domestic dispute with another sister.[5] Then he signed an affidavit charging Joseph Smith with treason, leading to his incarceration. Thomas was subsequently excommunicated in March 1839 and remained estranged from the church for nearly two decades.   

In May 1857 he wrote a humble letter to, of all people, Heber Kimball, then serving in the First Presidency. “I deserve no place among you in the church as the lowest member,” Thomas confessed, “but I cannot live without a reconciliation with the 12 and the Church whom I have injured.” In the same letter Marsh referred back to his apostolic commission affirmed in section 112. “A mission was laid upon me & I have never filled it and now I fear it is too late but it is filled by another I see, the Lord could get along very well without me and He has lost nothing by my falling out of the ranks; But O what have I lost?”[6]

Don’t be that person. Be humble, don’t exalt yourself, and don’t rebel against the Lord’s servants, and the Lord will lead you by the hand and answer your prayers (D&C 112:10)

Section 113

Section 113 answers questions about passages of Isaiah, chapters 11 and 52. It was recorded in Joseph’s scriptory book in 1838 after Joseph moved to Missouri, but Joseph had been thinking about the meaning of Isaiah 11 since 1823, when Moroni began teaching him.[1]

Imagine being an obscure, poorly educated “boy of no consequence” as Joseph described his teenage self (Joseph Smith—History, 22). Seventeen-year-old Joseph prayed for forgiveness and an angel appeared. He started quoting and paraphrasing scripture: Malachi, Joel, Acts, and all of Isaiah 11, among others. He returned again and again that night and then again the next day, repeating Isaiah 11 each time, saying it was just about to be fulfilled. 

That chapter invites readers to imagine think of a man named Jesse as a tree. Jesse is the father of the Israelite King David in the Old Testament. God promised David that the Messaiah would occupy his throne forever (2 Samuel 7:13, Luke 1:32). Isaiah 11 is about the genealogy (families are often represented as trees) of the rightful king of Israel. It also says that someone related to Jesse and Ephraim will raise an ensign (a signal, a standard, a rally point) for the gathering of the Lord’s people in the latter days.

Now imagine that you are Joseph six years later, age 24, translating what’s now 2 Nephi 21, the entire text of Isaiah 11. How much of it do you understand by now? Flash forward to age 32. It has been 15 years since Moroni first quoted Isaiah 11 to you. You know what it means by now. It has been the story of your life. You have since seen the prophecies fulfilled, received the priesthood and its keys to gather the scattered remnants of Israel “to return them to the Lord from whence they have fallen,” to be their revelator, and to bring again Zion (D&C 113:8-10).

It’s not clear whether Joseph or someone else posed the question in D&C 113:1, who is the stem of Jesse, the tree trunk, spoken of in Isaiah 11? The clear answer, however, is Jesus Christ. Scholars generally interpret that entire passage to refer to the same Messianic figure, but Joseph did not. Joseph had learned to see himself as the rod or branch that would grow out from the trunk, Jesus Christ. He said so cryptically rather than explicitly. But by age 32 if not at 17, Joseph knew what Moroni knew: Joseph was “a servant in the hands of Christ . . . on whom there is laid much power. . . the priesthood, and the keys of the kingdom, for an ensign, and for the gathering” of the Lord’s people in the latter days (D&C 113). Section 113 also answers Elias Higbee’s questions about Isaiah 52, interpreting some of the symbolism in terms of D&C Section 86 and what Joseph had learned by revelation about priesthood, Zion, and the gathering of Israel.  

The Book of Mormon identified Joseph as a descendant of Joseph of Egypt (2 Nephi 3:6-16). When Joseph’s father gave him a patriarchal blessing in 1834, it said: 

I bless thee with the blessings of thy fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and even the blessings of thy father Joseph, the son of Jacob. Behold, he looked after his posterity in the last days, when they should be scattered and driven by the Gentiles, and wept before the Lord: he sought diligently to know from whence the son should come who should bring forth the word of the Lord, by which they might be enlightened, and brought back to the true fold, and his eyes beheld thee, my son: his heart rejoiced and his soul was satisfied.[2]

It is not clear exactly when Joseph understood himself to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies of a servant of Christ who would establish a gathering place for Israel and bring again Zion. The recording of Section 113 in early 1838 testifies that these ideas were on his mind then. The Church was in upheaval. Joseph was trying to exercise the priesthood keys he had recently received to loose the scattered Israelites from the bands around their necks and bring them to Zion (D&C 110 and 113:8-10).

Section 114

What would happen if one-third of the apostles apostatized or were killed? Section 114 is an answer. Elder David W. Patten was second in seniority in the quorum of twelve apostles when he and his wife Ann moved from Kirtland, Ohio to Far West, Missouri, in late 1836 or early 1837. With his quorum president Thomas Marsh, David led the Saints in Missouri as several church leaders apostatized in the early months of 1838. After Joseph arrived in Missouri that spring, David asked Joseph to seek a revelation for him. Section 114 was recorded in Joseph’s Scriptory Book, his journal for 1838.[1] That book is full of records of counsels in which several of the apostles as well as Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer were disciplined or excommunicated from the Church.   

The brief revelation instructed David and other apostles to prepare for a mission the following spring (1839). Although the revelation does not mention where the apostles would serve, apostles Heber Kimball, Orson Hyde and their companions had sent reports of their success in Great Britain. Section 114 implies a call to the entire quorum to serve a follow-up mission to the British Isles the next year. David Patten did not live to serve that mission. He was killed on 25 October 1838 after being wounded in a conflict between saints and Missouri militiamen. The apostles did go to Britain, however. On 8 July, just over two months following the receipt of this revelation, Joseph received another with more details of their call (see section 118).

The vacancies left by David Patten’s death and the apostasy of Oliver Cowdery, the entire presidency of the Church in Missouri, and a third of the apostles, did not remain. Rather nonchalantly, the revelation says their “bishopric” or office can be filled by others. The Lord seems unconcerned. Section 114 shows how the Lord grants individual agency, including the potential for apostasy, without compromising the Kingdom. Sad as the casualties are, the work rolls forward when someone opts out. Replacements are ready. In this case men named John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff, among others, were called and filled in nicely (see section 118).

Section 111 notes

[1] “Letter to Emma Smith, 19 August 1836,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-emma-smith-19-august-1836/1.

[2] B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1: 410-11.

[3] Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 328-29.

[4] Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, s.v. “follies.”

[5] David R. Proper, “Joseph Smith and Salem,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 100 (April 1964): 93. On the day Section 111 was revealed, the Salem Observer reprinted a Long Island Star article on rumors of treasure buried by Captain Kidd and unsuccessful efforts to find it.

[6] Salem Gazette, December 7, 1841. Salem Register, June 2, 1842.

Section 112 notes

[1] Ronald K. Esplin, “The Emergence of Brigham Young,” 287-92.

[2] Wilford Woodruff, Journal, June 25, 1857, Church History Library. 

[3] Vilate Kimball to Heber C. Kimball, September 6, 1837, photocopy of original in private possession, Church History Library. 

[4] Heber C. Kimball to Vilate Kimball, November 12, 1837, Church History Library. 

[5] Journal of Discourses, 3:283-84.

[6] Thomas B. Marsh to Heber C. Kimball, May 5, 1857, Church History Library.

Section 113 notes

[1] “Questions and Answers, between circa 16 and circa 29 March 1838–A [D&C 113:1–6],” p. 17, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/questions-and-answers-between-circa-16-and-circa-29-march-1838-a-dc-1131-6/1.

[2] “Blessing from Joseph Smith Sr., 9 December 1834,” p. 3, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/blessing-from-joseph-smith-sr-9-december-1834/1.

Section 114 notes

[1] “Revelation, 11 April 1838 [D&C 114],” p. 32, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-11-april-1838-dc-114/1.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 109, 110

Section 109

Prayer of Dedication, 27 March 1836. Joseph’s cousin George A. Smith reported that “When the dedication prayer was read by Joseph, it was read from a printed copy.”[1]
What does one pray for when dedicating the first House of the Lord in the last dispensation, having never done anything like it before? Joseph thought about that question on March 26, 1836, the day before he dedicated the Kirtland temple. He met with his counselors and secretaries “to make arrangements for the solemn assembly.”[2] Oliver Cowdery’s sketch book adds the detail that he assisted Joseph “in writing a prayer for the dedication of the house.”[3]

The next morning the House of the Lord filled to capacity with nearly a thousand Saints. An overflow meeting convened next door. The solemn assembly began at 9 AM with scripture readings, choir singing, prayer, a sermon, and the sustaining of Joseph Smith as Prophet and Seer. In the afternoon session the sustaining continued, with each quorum and the general body of the Church sustaining, in turn, the leaders of the Church.[4] Another hymn followed, “after which,” Joseph’s journal says, “I offered to God the following dedication prayer.”[5]

Joseph read section 109 from a printed copy. It is an inspired, temple prayer. It begins with thanks to God, then makes requests of him in the name of Jesus Christ. It is based heavily on Section 88’s temple instructions as well as other temple-related scriptural texts. It “sums up the Church’s concerns in 1836, bringing before the Lord each major project.”[6]

Joseph began by asking God to accept the temple on the terms he had given in Section 88, which the Saints had tried to fulfill in order to obtain the promised blessing of entering the Lord’s presence (D&C 88:68, 109:4-12).  Joseph prayed that all the temple worshippers would be endowed with God’s power and “that they may grow up in thee, and receive a fulness of the Holy Ghost, and be organized according to thy laws, and be prepared to obtain every needful thing” (15). Joseph prayed, in other words, a temple prayer that the Saints would become like their Heavenly Father by degrees of glory as they obeyed His laws and prepared to enter His presence. He prayed for what Section 88 had taught him to pray for.

Joseph prayed that the Saints, “armed” or endowed with priesthood power from the temple, could go to “the ends of the earth” with the “exceedingly great and glorious tidings” of the gospel to fulfill prophecies declaring that they would (22-23). He asked Heavenly Father to protect the Saints from their enemies (24-33). He asked Jehovah to have mercy upon the Saints, and to seal the anointing ordinances that many of the priesthood brethren had received in the weeks leading up to the solemn assembly. He asked for the gifts of the Spirit to be poured out as on the biblical day of Pentecost (Acts 2:2-3).  He asked the Lord to protect and empower the missionaries and postpone judgment until they had gathered the righteous.  He prayed that God’s will be done “and not ours” (44).  

Joseph prayed that the Saints would be delivered from the prophesied calamities.  He asked Heavenly Father to remember the Saints oppressed and driven from Jackson County, Missouri and prayed for their deliverance.  He asked how long their afflictions would continue until avenged (49).  He asked for mercy “upon the wicked mob, who have driven thy people, that they may cease to spoil, that they may repent of their sins if repentance is to be found” (50).  He prayed for Zion.  

Joseph prayed for mercy on all nations and political leaders, so that the principles of individual agency captured in the United States Constitution would be established forever.  He prayed for “all the poor, the needy, and afflicted ones of the earth” (55).  He prayed for an end to prejudices so that the missionaries “may gather out the righteous to build a holy city to thy name, as thou hast commanded them” (58).  He asked for more stakes to facilitate the gathering and growth of Zion.  He asked for mercy for the Native Americans and for the Jews, indeed he prayed for “all the scattered remnants of Israel, who have been driven to the ends of the earth, [to] come to a knowledge of the truth, believe in the Messiah, and be redeemed from oppression” (67).  

Joseph prayed for himself, reminding the Lord of his sincere effort to keep his covenants. He asked for mercy upon his family, praying that Emma and the children “may be exalted in thy presence” (69). This is the first usage of exalted in the Doctrine and Covenants to refer to the fulness of salvation through temple blessings.[7] Joseph prayed for his in-laws to be converted. He prayed for the other presidents of the Church and their families. He prayed for all the Saints and their families and their sick and afflicted.  He prayed, again, for “all the poor and meek of the earth,” and for the glorious Kingdom of God to fill the earth as prophesied (68-74).

Joseph prayed that the Saints would rise in the first resurrection with pure garments, “robes of righteousness,” and “crowns of glory upon our heads” to reap “eternal joy” (76).  Thrice repeating his petition, Joseph asks the Lord to “hear us” and accept the prayers and petitions and offerings of the Saints in building the house to His name. He prays for grace to enable the Saints to join the choirs surrounding God’s throne in the heavenly temple “singing Hosanna to God and the Lamb” (79).  “And let these, thine anointed, be clothed with salvation, and thy saints shout aloud for joy.  Amen, and Amen” (80).

Section 109 dedicated the first House of the Lord in the last dispensation and set the pattern for all subsequent solemn assemblies met for the same holy purpose. It teaches the Saints how to pray, including what to pray for and to ask according to the will of God.  It teaches the doctrine and evokes the imagery of the temple, perhaps most poignantly in the idea that temple worshippers can “grow up” by degrees of glory until they become like their Heavenly Father (cross reference Section 93). That is the meaning of being exalted in God’s presence. Joseph’s temple revelations call this fulness, including fulness of joy. Section 109 continues the expansive work of the temple revelations in Sections 76, 84, 88, 93 and points us forward to the culminating revelation on exaltation, Section 132:1-20. Section 109 invites mortals who occupy a polluted telestial planet where they cannot think of more than one thing at a time, and generally only in finite terms, to be endowed with power that will enable them to journey to the real world where God lives “enthroned with glory, honor, power, majesty, might, dominion, truth, justice, judgment, mercy, and an infinity of fulness, from everlasting to everlasting” (77).[8]

Section 110

Joseph Smith Journal, April 3, 1836, handwriting of scribe Warren Parrish. Though Section 110 was not widely publicized when it was received and not published until 1852, it was written in Joseph’s journal soon after the visions occurred.[1]
April 3, 1836 was the second greatest Easter Sunday in history. Joseph attended an afternoon sacrament meeting in the temple at Kirtland. When it ended, he and Oliver Cowdery retreated behind the heavy curtains used to divide the room. They bowed in what Joseph’s journal describes as “solemn, but silent prayer to the Most High.” Then they beheld a series of visions.[2]

First they saw and heard the Lord standing before them. Four times, in a voice like rushing water, he declared, “I am,” evoking Old Testament revelations in which he repeatedly identified himself saying, “I am the Lord your God” (see Exodus 20 and Leviticus 19). It seems like he meant to evoke the related words of the Hebrew verb for to be and the name transliterated into English as Jehovah. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ was declaring that he is the God who told Moses to tell the Israelites that “I AM hath sent me unto you” (Exodus 3:14). Jesus Christ was affirming that he is the God of Israel, the promised Messiah.  

In a powerful but understated juxtaposition of present and past verb tenses, Christ declares himself the crucified Christ who conquered death. “I am he who liveth. I am he who was slain; I am your advocate with the Father” (4). Who else can say that: They killed me, but here I am, in Kirtland, Ohio, forgiving your sins, accepting my temple and promising to visit my people here and pour out an endowment of power from here

Section 110 fulfills the Lord’s conditional promise to the saints that if they would move to Ohio and build him a holy house, he would endow them with power in it (see Sections 38, 88, 95).  It fulfills Section 88’s great and last promise that the sanctified would come into the presence of the Lord.  Indeed, Joseph promised the saints that “on conditions of our obedience,” the Savior had promised “a visit from the heavens to honor us with his own presence.”[3]

After the vision of the Savior ended, Moses appeared to Joseph and Oliver and gave them the priesthood keys needed to gather Israel. Next Elias appeared and dispensed keys for the gospel of Abraham, “saying that in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed” (12). Then Elijah appeared and said that it was time to fulfill a multi-layered prophecy.  

Through Malachi, the Lord prophesied, “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Malachi 4:5). Moroni paraphrased and personalized that prophecy for Joseph Smith in 1823 (see section 2). Elijah fulfilled it nearly thirteen years later, as recorded in section 110. Jews had long awaited Elijah’s prophesied return and welcomed him during the Passover Seder. On the very day Elijah appeared in the temple, some Jews were celebrating the sacred meal with the hope that Elijah would return.   

Moses showing up was pretty impressive too. “His appearance in company with Elijah offers another striking parallel between Mormon teachings and Jewish tradition, according to which Moses and Elijah would arrive together at the ‘end of time.'”[4]

Section 110 reenacts the endowment received in the Biblical account of the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-9). Joseph received priesthood keys from the heavenly messengers. He had received all the priesthood when he was ordained by Peter, James, and John years earlier (see D&C 27:12) But he did not have all the keys they had and he needed until after section 110. In other words, Joseph had power but not permission to send missionaries globally or to perform temple ordinances until Moses, Elias, and Elijah brought him the keys–the permission to exercise the priesthood in those ways.  

Section 10 welds dispensations together. Given on Easter and during the Passover season, the revelation links Israel’s Old Testament deliverance with Christ’s New Testament resurrection and affirms that Joseph Smith and the temple-building Latter-day Saints are the heirs of God’s promises to the Israelite patriarchs. Christ is the Passover lamb who “was slain” and then resurrected and now appears to Joseph in Kirtland, Ohio to approve of the Latter-day work and to commission Joseph to fulfill the work of Moses (the gathering of Israel), Elias (the gospel of Abraham), and Elijah (the sealing of families).     

Joseph went to work putting the keys to use against great opposition. Not long after receiving the keys to gather Israel from Moses, Joseph whispered in Heber Kimball’s ear a mission call to Great Britain.  Joseph had previously sent missionaries on short, local or regional missions. Heber’s and his companions began the ongoing process of gathering Israel from the ends of the earth. Though oppressed by what seems like a concerted opposition that included financial collapse, widespread apostasy, an executive order driving the saints from Missouri, and then unjust imprisonment in Liberty, Missouri, Joseph began to teach and administer the ordinances of the temple. In sum, the endowment of priesthood keys he received on the second greatest Easter in history authorized him to begin performing temple ordinances.  

Section 110 communicated temple knowledge and power. It came in the temple, behind a veil, was recorded but not preached, and acted on but not publicly explained.[5] After the revelation, Joseph used the keys to gather, endow, and seal in anticipation of the Savior’s second coming. Section 110 marks the restoration of temple-related power and knowledge that Moses possessed and “plainly taught,” but which had been forfeited by the children of Israel (D&C 84:19-25).  

Section 109 notes

[1] Journal of Discourses, 11:9.

[2] “History, 1838–1856, volume B-1 [1 September 1834–2 November 1838],” p. 713, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 24, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-b-1-1-september-1834-2-november-1838/167.   

[3] Oliver Cowdery, Sketch Book, March 26, 1836, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. 

[4] Steven C. Harper, “‘A Pentecost and Endowment Indeed’: Six Eyewitness Accounts of the Kirtland Temple Experience,” in John W. Welch, editor, Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820-1844 (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2005), 327-71.

[5] Jessee, Papers of Joseph Smith, 2:195.

[6] Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 317.

[7] See Section 49:10, 23 for earlier usages in a different context. 

[8] Emphasis added.  See Hugh Nibley, “A House of Glory,” (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1993).

Section 110 notes

[1] “Visions, 3 April 1836 [D&C 110],” p. 192, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 24, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/visions-3-april-1836-dc-110/1.

[2] “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 192, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 24, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-1835-1836/195.

[3] “Letter to William W. Phelps, 11 January 1833,” The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 24, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-william-w-phelps-11-january-1833/1.

[4] Stephen D. Ricks, “The Appearance of Elijah and Moses in The Kirtland Temple and the Jewish Passover,” BYU Studies 23:4 (1903): 484.

[5] Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 320-321. 

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 106, 107, 108

Section 106

Warren Cowdery, Oliver’s older brother, ledged and fed Joseph and his companions when the were recruiting for the Camp of Israel in the spring of 1834. Warren was sympathetic to the saints’ suffering in Missouri, and that summer he joined the Church. There were a few dozen other converts in the area, all converted by missionaries who passed through. Warren wrote to Oliver that they could really use a permanent preacher.[1] He wrote again a few weeks later saying he “had thoughts of requesting you to enquire what is the will of the Lord concerning me.”[2] Joseph asked, and the Lord answered with section 106. 

The revelation says the Lord wants Warren to devote all of his time to the high and holy calling of presiding over the Saints in and around Freedom, New York and preaching the gospel in the area. In verse 3 the Lord promises Warren a living if he obeys the revelation and in verses 4-5 explains that he should serve in order to prepare himself and his neighbors for the Lord’s coming. Beginning in verse 6, the Lord reveals the joy he experienced when Warren joined the Church, and blesses him for it. The language of this verse suggests that what pleased the Lord was Warren’s willing submission to his divine authority, his kingly scepter. The Lord exposes Warren’s vanity and promises to preserve him at the Second Coming on the condition that Warren will choose to be humble. The last verse, too, is a conditional promise, a covenant between the Lord and Warren in which the Lord promises him his own kingly crown in heavenly mansions “if he continue to be a faithful witness and a light unto the church” (8). 

Warren presided over his fellow Saints in New York until he and his family moved to Kirtland early in 1836. There he served the Church as a scribe and recorder but by 1838 he became one of many in that era who did not “continue” to be “a faithful witness and a light unto the church” (D&C 106:8).[3]

Section 107

Instruction on Priesthood, between circa 1 March and circa 4 May 1835 [D&C 107]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org
The members of the first quorum of twelve apostles in the last dispensation were called and ordained between February and April 1835. The met frequently to receive instructions from Joseph. In their March 12 council meeting, Joseph proposed that the apostles spend the coming summer traveling “through the Eastern States, to the Atlantic Ocean, and hold conferences in the vicinity of the several branches of the Church for the purpose of regulating all things necessary for their welfare.”[1]

The apostles were all young men, the oldest being in their mid-thirties. They began to realize “that we have not realized the importance of our calling to that degree that we ought, we have been light minded and vain and in many things done wrong.” They repented, and as their mission approached, they united in prayer and asked God to “grant unto us through his Seer, a revelation of his mind and will concerning our duty the coming season even a great revelation that will enlarge our hearts, comfort us in adversity and brighten our hopes amidst the powers of Darkness.” Section 107 answered that prayer.[2]

According to Heber Kimball, one of the apostles, the revelation “was given to Brother Joseph as he was instructing us, and we praised the Lord.”[3] In its current form, section 107 includes not only what Joseph received on that occasion, but the text of a revelation he dictated in November 1831 and other information on the duties of bishops and on the newly called Seventy. The amalgamated revelation was composed in time to be included in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, and it highlights the priesthood precepts that Joseph had received to that point.[4]

Section 107 begins with a clear description of the two divisions of priesthood and the names given to them—Aaronic and Melchizedek. In 1841 Joseph taught that “All Priesthod is Melchizedek; but there are different portions or degrees of it.”[5] Verses 18-19 declare the exalting power of the Melchizedek priesthood, and verse 20 the preparatory power of the Aaronic. 

Several offices are described within these divisions of priesthood, and several quorums and councils composed of priesthood holders. Most notably the revelation describes a first presidency as a quorum of three presiding high priests who preside over all priesthood holders (21-22). Twelve apostles, “or special witnesses of the name of Christ in all the world,” form a quorum whose authority is equal to the first presidency. Seventy missionaries to the Gentiles form a quorum whose authority is equal to the quorum of apostles. These quorums are to arrive at their decisions by consensus and finally unanimity, in order to be binding. And the decision making process is to be characterized by the Christ-like attributes listed in verse 30 because they are the condition on which the Lord will endow the presiding quorums with His “knowledge” (31). Verse 32 provides an appellate process in case decisions are made “in unrighteousness.”

Beginning in verse 33, Section 107 describes the order and relationship of the quorums of twelve apostles, Seventy, and stake high councils. The apostles preside under the First Presidency and travel the globe to build and regulate the church because they hold the keys to open doors through which the gospel is proclaimed (35, cross reference D&C 112:16-19). The Seventy also travel the world to build and regulate the Church, but under the direction of the apostles, who call on the Seventy for assistance. Verses 35-36 explain that the presidencies of the Church in Zion (Missouri) and the stake in Kirtland, Ohio, as well as future stakes with the twelve high priests in each location that served as councilors to these presidencies, functioned with the same authority in their local jurisdictions as the General Authorities did worldwide.

Patriarchs, or what verse 39 calls “evangelical ministers,” are to be identified by revelation to the apostles, who have the duty of ordaining them in any area where there are a large number of Saints, which, today, generally means a stake. Before Section 107 describes the next duty of the apostles in verse 58, verses 40-57 explain the rich history and provenance of the patriarchal priesthood, as recorded in the Book of Enoch, as it was handed down from Adam to his posterity. They tell how Adam gathered his righteous posterity prior to his death for a patriarchal blessing. Adam, “though bowed down with age, being full of the Holy Ghost, predicted whatsoever should befall his posterity unto the latest generation” (56).                  

Verse 58 transitions between the two major segments of Section 107 and gives the apostles responsibility for implementing the November 1831 revelation (generally verses 59-100) by ordaining priesthood holders and setting the Church in order under their direction. Much of the subsequent verses restate, or, more accurately, were restated by, the first part of Section 107 as well as Section 68, including the nature of being a bishop, a provision for a “common council of the church” headed by the a presiding bishop in case the president of the Church is tried for transgression (76-84). 

Verses 85-88 describe the duties of presiding in Aaronic priesthood quorums, and beginning in verse 89 the Lord sets forth the duties of presiding in Melchizedek priesthood quorums both generally and locally. Having declared the duties of priesthood holders, quorums, and presidents clearly, the Lord finishes Section 107 with a statement of accountability, a terse restatement of the oath and covenant of the priesthood that emphasizes learning and acting diligently in one’s appointed office or else being judged unworthy of that office in the holy priesthood (99-100).      

Section 107 came at a time when American culture was beginning to erode fatherhood. Noting how Section 107’s exalting priesthood principles seemed to have a powerful redeeming influence on Joseph’s own father, historian Richard Bushman went so far as to say that “in restoring priesthood, Joseph restored fatherhood.”[6] Section 107 continues to do that work. 

It has evoked a response from countless men to quit being “slothful” and instead learn their duty and act accordingly. It inspires many men to “stand” (107:99-100). It’s a divine version of Lehi’s admonition, “arise from the dust, my sons, and be men” (2 Nephi 1:21).

Section 108

Joseph Smith was studying his Hebrew lesson on 26 December 1835 when Lyman Sherman, who was serving in the new quorum of the seventy, came to his home. “I have been wrought upon to make known to you my feelings and desires,” Lyman told Joseph, “and was promised that I should have a revelation which should make known my duty.” Joseph received Section 108 for Lyman that day.[1]

When Lyman said he was “wrought upon,” he meant that he was unsettled, even disturbed.  “Let your soul be at rest” the Lord counsels him, and “wait patiently until the solemn assembly . . . of my servants.” Lyman waited patiently for the meetings in the House of the Lord. There he and others received sacred ordinances and blessings in 1836 (D&C 108:2,4).

Joseph Smith taught that revelations were universally available to mankind directly, but also that there was order to revelation. Both principles are evident in section 108. The Lord revealed to Lyman personally that he should seek revelation through Joseph, presumably because Lyman’s role as a general authority and his invitation to the upcoming solemn assembly were matters to be revealed through Joseph Smith. In verse 1, the Lord forgave Lyman because he submissively acknowledged and followed the revealed order. He was a loyal, devoted saint. In January 1839, the First Presidency called Lyman as an apostle, but he died before being ordained.[2]

Section 106 notes

[1] Warren Cowdery, Freedom, NY, to Oliver Cowdery, Kirtland, OH, 1 Sept. 1834, in The Evening and the Morning Star, Sept. 1834, 189.

[2] Warren Cowdery, Freedom, NY, to Oliver Cowdery, [Kirtland, OH], 28 Oct. 1834, in LDS Messenger and Advocate, Nov. 1834, 1:22.

[3] Elders’ Journal, August 1838, 59.

Section 107 notes

[1] “Record of the Twelve, 14 February–28 August 1835,” p. 4, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 24, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/record-of-the-twelve-14-february-28-august-1835/10.

[2] “Minute Book 1,” p. 198, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 24, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minute-book-1/202.

[3] Times and Seasons 6 (15 April 1845): 869.

[4] See Doctrine and Covenants 107:1-58; 1835 and 1844 editions, 3:1-30. Before its 1835 publication, this revelation was redacted by Joseph, who added information about the priesthood offices of priest, bishop, elder, and seventy. Much of the new revelation draws on Section 68:15-22. The redactions to Section 107 include much or all of what is now verses 61, 69-71, 73, 76-77, 88, 90, and 93-98.

[5] Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds. and comps., Words of Joseph Smith (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center Brigham Young University, 1980), 59-60.

[6] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 263.

Section 108 notes

[1] “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 89, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 24, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-1835-1836/90.

[2] Lyndon W. Cook, “Lyman Sherman: Man of God, Would-be Apostle,” BYU Studies 19:1 (1979): 121-24.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 102-105

Section 102

Joseph Smith convened councils to arbitrate and adjudicate church decisions, especially disciplinary decisions. These councils were called as needed, according to the law of the church revealed in February 1831 (D&C 42). By 1834, experience and church growth revealed the need for standing councils to deal with complex issues. On 17 February 1834, Joseph told a group of priesthood leaders that he “would show the order of councils in ancient days as shown to him by vision.”  

Joseph explained that “Jerusalem was the seat of the Church Council in ancient days.” He said that “the apostle, Peter, was the president of the Council and held the keys of the Kingdom of God on the earth [and] was appointed to this office by the voice of the Savior and acknowledged in it by the voice of the Church. He had two men appointed as Counsellors with him, and in case Peter was absent, his counsellors could also transact business alone.” Joseph explained that church councils operated on different principles of jurisprudence than secular courts. “It was not the order of heaven in ancient councils to plead for and against the guilty as in our judicial courts (so called) but that every councilor when he arose to speak, should speak precisely according to evidence and according to the teaching of the Spirit of the Lord.”  

Clerks kept minutes of Joseph’s teachings on how the council should be organized. They record that “many questions have been asked during the time of the organization of the Council and doubtless some errors have been committed, it was, therefore, voted by all present that Bro. Joseph should make all necessary corrections by the Spirit of inspiration hereafter.” Joseph began that job the next day, February 18, and the following day an even larger gathering of priesthood holders and general members met to review and consent to the new “constitution of the high council of the Church of Christ.” The minutes Joseph refined were subsequently canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants and are currently found in Section 102.  

At the February 19 meeting, Joseph then laid hands on his two counselors and blessed them with “wisdom to magnify their office, and power over all the power of the adversary.” He then laid hands on the twelve men called as high counselors and set them apart. He blessed them with “wisdom and power to counsel in righteousness upon all subjects that might be laid before them.” He also prayed that they might be delivered from those evils to which they were most exposed and that their lives might be prolonged on the earth. Then, in the name of Jesus Christ, Joseph gave his counselors and the high council a charge to “do their duty in righteousness and in the fear of God.” They signified their acceptance of Joseph’s charge by raising their right hands. Joseph pronounced the council organized “according to the ancient order, and also according to the mind of the Lord.”[1]

Section 102 restores the ancient order of church councils. The organization of the high council also went far toward establishing a stake of Zion in Kirtland, an ecclesiastical jurisdiction drawn on imagery from Isaiah 33:20 and 54:2 and applied to the church in a May 1833 revelation (D&C 94:1, 96:1). Moreover, these minutes provided for other standing high councils to be established as well as temporary councils to be organized beyond Zion and her stakes. 

The church’s first high council went to work immediately.  As specified in the minutes, the counselors drew numbers 1-12, with even numbers responsible to prevent insult and injustice against the accused person and the odd numbered counselors responsible to ensure the interests of the church. Ezra Thayer charged Curtis Hodges, an elder, with preaching too loudly and unclearly, and demanding that he was justified in doing so when corrected. Curtis said he was not guilty. Witnesses confirmed “that bro. Hodges was guilty of hollowing so loud that he, in a measure, lost his voice.” Oliver Cowdery, who had drawn number 1, summarized the church’s case against Curtis. Joseph Coe, who had drawn number 2, summarized the case for Brother Hodge “but could say but few words.” Ezra restated his accusations and Curtis restated his pleas.  

In other words, the case, which was not considered complicated, was conducted exactly as Section 102 specifies, including the ruling of Joseph Smith, president of the council.  He announced “that the charges in the declaration had been fairly sustained by good witnesses, also, that bro. H[odges]. ought to have confessed when rebuked by bro Thayer also that if he had the spirit of the Lord at the meetings when he hollowed, he must have abused it, and grieved it away. All the council agreed with the decision.” Brother Hodges then confessed, acknowledging that he could now see his error and would repent.[2]

Not all high council hearings are this straightforward but, remarkably, the specific instructions set forth in Section 102 continue to guide the standing high councils of the church in each stake of Zion.

Section 103

As 1834 dawned, the Saints in Missouri were “exiles in a land of liberty.”[1] They sent Parley Pratt and Lyman Wight to seek Joseph’s counsel in Kirtland, Ohio. The messengers probably carried a letter from William Phelps informing Joseph that Missouri governor Daniel Dunklin was willing to help the Saints get their Jackson County lands back, but he would not maintain a militia to defend them indefinitely.[2]

Would eastern saints come to the aid of Zion? Joseph counseled with his brethren, resolved that “he was going to Missouri, to assist in redeeming it,” and asked for volunteers to go with him. Sometime in this sequence of events, the Lord revealed section 103 to Joseph. It is not clear whether the revelation motivated Joseph’s actions or affirmed them after the fact.[3]

Zion depended on the Latter-day Saints. They had been driven by wicked people acting on their own free will. In section 103, the Lord promises to punish them “in mine own time” (2-3).  But the saints were driven “because they did not hearken altogether unto the precepts and commandments which I gave unto them” (5). The Lord offers another chance at Zion by revealing the conditions on which the saints can prevail against their enemies. First he states these positively (what will happen if they do, 5-7), then restates them negatively (what will happen if they do not, 8-10). Section 103 reaffirms the section 58’s promise Zion will come “after much tribulation” (12). Even that promise, the Lord qualifies, is conditional.  “If they pollute their inheritances,” he says of the saints again, “they shall be thrown down” (14, cross reference D&C 84:59). 

Beginning in verse 15, the Lord maps out the way Zion will be reclaimed “by power.” Then the Lord evokes section 101, reminding the Saints of his promise to raise up a Moses to lead the modern Israelites. He calls on Joseph to gather an army of Israel.  It could get violent, the Lord suggests, perhaps to as a test to see who is willing “to lay down his life for my sake” (27).

The Lord appoints calls eight recruiters, including Joseph, to gather five hundred more men to march to Zion, though he acknowledges that, because they are free agents, “men do not always do my will,” and that relatively few may respond to the call. He forbids the undertaking unless at least one hundred men are willing to consecrate their lives to Zion. The Lord leaves the outcome in the hands of the free agents. “All victory and glory is brought to pass unto you through your diligence, faithfulness, and prayers of faith” (36).       

Heber Kimball described the action motivated by Section 103.  “Brother Joseph . . . . sent Messengers to the East and to the North, to the West and to the South to gather up the Elders and, He gathered together as many of the brethren as he conveniently could, with what means they could spare to go up to Zion and render all the assistance that we could to our afflicted brethren. We gathered clothing and other necessaries to carry up to our brethren and sisters who had been plundered; and putting our horses to the wagons and taking our firelocks and ammunition, we started on our journey.”[4]

They were a faltering band, to be sure, but willing to give their lives for Zion. Section 103’s most significant result is the way it tested that resolve. A local newspaper reported on section 103, “in obedience to a revelation communicated to their great Prophet, Joseph Smith, three hundred young men are to ‘to well armed and equipped to defend the promised land in Missouri.”[5] The revelation seems purposefully ambiguous, leaving Joseph and his followers uncertain how Zion would be redeemed. “By power,” they knew, but what kind of power? Were they to take the promised land by the force of arms? Would the God of Israel lead them with “a stretched-out arm” (17). Would they lay down their lives? The revelation raised these questions but did not answer them, making it a suitable test of faith and sacrifice (D&C 101:4-5). 

The Camp of Israel, as it came to be known, literally walked in faith, the considerable faith required to kiss one’s family goodbye and march with a small, poorly-equipped band to an unknown encounter for the cause of Zion. As a result of Section 103, the Lord let many, though not as many as he asked for, pledge their allegiance to him and his cause. Their lives were his. He let them march all the way there before explaining that the power to redeem Zion would come not from a confrontation in Missouri, but from an endowment in the House of the Lord back in Kirtland. (See Section 105).

Section 104

Revelation, 23 April 1834 [D&C 104]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.
The Savior told a story in Luke 16:19-31 about a rich man who “fared sumptuously” in life while a “beggar named Lazarus” waited in vain for some of his table scraps. When the two men died, angels carried Lazarus into Abraham’s bosom while the rich man went to hell. “And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments,” begging for Lazarus to relieve his suffering. Section 104 evokes that story and applies it to Latter-day Saints, but it is hard to recognize that now.[1]

Early manuscripts of the revelation refer to Dives, a proper name: “he shall with Dives lift up his eyes <in hell> being in torment.”[2] The intertextual relationship of this passage and the story in Luke is obvious, but who is Dives? Dives is Latin for rich, opulent, wealthy, and is the word in the Latin Vulgate Bible translated into English as rich in Luke 16:19, “there was a certain rich man.” In the middle ages, the word dives adopted as the name of the rich man, and that’s how it’s used in D&C 104:18. 

The revelation came when the problems of the United Firm had become acute. The Firm was composed of Church leaders, including the two bishops, and was responsible to manage the Church’s two mercantile firms and its printing office. The printing office had been destroyed in Independence, Missouri and the mercantile there had also been shut down by the mob’s ultimatum. The United Firm still owed debts on these unprofitable losses, and its members were growing more indebted to Bishop Whitney’s remaining mercantile in Ohio, which in turn was owing its creditors. Section 103’s expensive command to lead a large group of men to Missouri to aid the saints there added to the pressure. 

Joseph counseled with the other members of the United Firm. He sought and received the revelation in section 104 to address the complex financial reality. It is no overstatement to say that Joseph was pretty frustrated with saints who could and should have relieved the Church’s financial obstacles, but chose not to.[3]

The Lord was pretty frustrated too, including with some members of the United Firm whose covetousness was complicating the problem. Joseph and the members of the United Firm who were in Kirtland met on April 10, 1834 and reluctantly decided to dissolve the Firm and make its members individual stewards over its various properties. Section 104 affirmed those decisions.

All that helps explain why the revelation emphatically sets forth the law of consecration. The Lord declares the first principle of consecration—“the earth is the Lord’s” (Exodus 9:29) —repeatedly and clearly: “I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine” (14). 

The Lord’s logic is potent: He made the earth. It is therefore His. He endowed mankind with agency to act on the ample, abundant earth as stewards. He decreed that the rich must share with the poor (16). “Therefore,” the next premise follows, “if any man take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment” (18). 

Section 104 begins with a curse upon the members of the United Firm who had broken the covenant of Section 82. “I the Lord am not to be mocked in these things,” He says, referring to making covenants with “feigned words” (4-6). Covenants are serious, and section 104 announces that those who break the covenant to consecrate cannot escape the Lord’s wrath and the buffetings of Satan, as prophesied in Section 82:21. So the Lord offers the members of the United Firm an opportunity to repent and consecrate in verse 10, after which he reviews the law of consecration in verses 11-18, before getting very specific in verses 19-46 about the stewardships for which He will hold each members of the Firm accountable. 

Beginning in verse 47, the Lord dissolves the United Firm into two firms, one in Kirtland, Ohio and the other in Missouri. Again He emphasizes that this Firm, which was supposed to last and would have according to the terms of the covenant in Section 82:20-21, has been undermined by the broken covenants of free agents, “the covenants being broken through transgression, by covetousness and feigned words” (52).   

Beginning in verse 54, the Lord reviews the principle of stewardship with emphasis on how it relates to the specific stewardships he gave to the Literary Firm in Section 70 (and the United Firm’s responsibility to support the Literary Firm as revealed in Sections 78 and 82). Verses 55-56 reaffirm the first premise of consecration—“the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (Psalm 24:1)–with an inescapable logic that brings covenant-breaking Saints face to face with hypocrisy: If the Lord is not Creator and Owner of the earth, why worship Him? If He is, why pretend to be “owners” of anything or to resent or resist his prerogative to distribute his resources in what he calls “mine own way” (16)? In other words, to acknowledge the Lord at all is to accept one’s role as an accountable steward, not an unaccountable owner determined to “play-act just a little longer—risking righteousness and true happiness merely in order to be reassured about our independence.”[4]

The revelation ends by reminding the brethren that the Lord is the sovereign master who has given them agency to act and stewardships to be acted upon, and that he will continue to hold them accountable. He concludes with what must have been a reassuring guarantee that His house will not be broken up (86). 

After the Lord revealed section 104, Joseph and his brethren in the United Firm at Kirtland acted on properties the Lord had assigned each of them as stewardships. They also forgave each other all debts they owed to the Firm. This relieved Joseph of paying more $1,151.31, and the six men combined forgave debts to each other totaling $3,635.35.[5] That did not satisfy the debts they owed other creditors, however. 

Mindful of those obligations, Joseph and his brethren acted on this revelation. They did the specific things the Lord set forth as terms on which He promised to “soften the hearts of those to whom you are in debt, until I shall send forth means unto you for your deliverance” (104:80-82). Joseph’s journal records humility, diligent effort, and faithful prayers for this deliverance, and documents that it came as prophesied. On the day the revelation came, Joseph and other members of the Firm “united in asking the Lord” to bless Zebedee Coltrin and Jacob Myers in their efforts “to borrow for us.” Meanwhile, donations began to pour in from consecrating Saints. Joseph and Oliver Cowdery “united in prayer” for such blessings to continue, and covenanted as the Lord was enabling them to pay their debts, they would return one-tenth of what they received “to be bestowed upon the poor of his Church, or as he shall command, and that we will be faithful over that which he has entrusted to our care.”[6] They prayed and prayed, asking the Lord “to lift the mortgage on the farm upon which the temple was being built.”[7]

One evening they received an impression “that in a short time the Lord would arrange his providences in a merciful manner and send us assistance to deliver us from debt and bondage.”[8] Two months later as creditors were about to foreclose on the temple site, a converted hotel owner from New York, John Tanner, arrived in Kirtland with $2000 “with which amount the farm was redeemed.”[9] Good for His word, the Lord had delivered the “means” as promised (104:80). In the meantime, Joseph and his brethren learned to trust in the Lord, pray in faith, to be humble and diligent. The Saints in general also rose to the occasion and, though belatedly, consecrated to the building of Kirtland and its crowning temple. As a result of their offerings, the Lord poured out blessings in that temple that no amount of money could buy (see sections 109-110).

Section 105

As the Camp of Israel journeyed to Missouri in the summer of 1834, Governor Daniel Dunklin backed away from his promise to provide a militia force to assist the saints’ return to their Jackson County land.[1] Meanwhile, Joseph knew very well that the camp was “altogether too small for the accomplishment of such a great enterprise.” He repeatedly urged the eastern Saints to provide men and means to reclaim Zion, but they offered too little, too late.[2]

 The camp was preceded by exaggerated rumors of its size and intentions. When it arrived, local citizens were already alarmed. Several hundred of them gathered, threatening attack. Joseph assured the sheriff and militia officers that the camp had come to defend, not to attack. “We are anxious for a settlement of the difficulties existing between us,” Joseph assured them, “upon honorable and constitutional principles.”[3]

Wondering when and how, not if, Zion would be reclaimed, Joseph sought revelation to know what the Lord wanted the camp to do next. While encamped near Fishing River, he received the landmark revelation in section 105.[4]

“I do not require at their hands to fight the battles of Zion,” the revelation said of the camp. It assured them that their prayers were heard, their offering accepted, and that they had been “brought thus far for a trial of their faith” (D&C 105:19). Because too few saints had chosen to live the law of consecration and respond to the Lord’s will and Joseph’s repeated invitations to send men and means to redeem Zion, the Lord postponed Zion (1-10). He said it had to wait until the elders could be endowed with the necessary power. The power, it turned out, would come through a priesthood endowment in the House of the Lord being constructed back in Kirtland (D&C 105:11, 33). 

The revelation is a document of détente. It calls for proclamation of peace now and foreshadows a future role for the army of Israel in redeeming Zion. It postpones Zion in Jackson County for an ambiguous “little season” (9). It commands saints in the meantime to receive the anticipated endowment of power to help them gain experience, learn their duty and doctrine better, and to increase in number and in holiness. In the little season the saints are to continue to purchase all the land in western Missouri but to avoid gathering in quantities perceived as threatening by neighbors. 

Section 105 gives Joseph and his army orders to retreat. They were instructed to seek redress lawfully, but the war was far from over. These tactics would buy time “until the army of Israel becomes very great” while more and more land in Jackson and adjoining counties could be legally purchased. Once it was, the revelation said, “I will hold the armies of Israel guiltless in taking possession of their own lands, which they have previously purchased with their moneys, and of throwing down the towers of mine enemies that may be upon them.” Meanwhile, Latter-day Saints are to “sue for peace, not only to the people that have smitten you, but also to all people; and lift un an ensign of peace, and make a proclamation of peace unto the ends of the earth” (D&C 105).

Section 105 led Joseph to disband the camp and direct its members to return to their families or, if they had none, to remain in Missouri to assist the exiled Saints. The revelation reoriented Joseph Smith and the Church. Zion remained the ultimate goal, but the revelation declared that Zion would not be redeemed until the saints were endowed with power. Now, having submitted to the trial of their faith, the brethren could understand section 103’s promise that Zion would be redeemed by power. They were to return to the House of the Lord in Kirtland, there be endowed with power on conditions of humility and faithfulness (12), and then spread out over the globe to gather Israel. Then, when the army became very great both numerically and by obedience to the law of consecration, they would regain Zion.  

Joseph organized the saints in Missouri and appointed many of them to return to Ohio to participate in the solemn assembly. Back in Kirtland, Joseph and the saints finished the temple and received an endowment of priesthood power (see section 110). These were means to the end of Zion, and Joseph turned his attention back to regaining the promised land. He anticipated that the “little season” (D&C 105:9) leading up to Zion would end within a few months, and it could have if the saints had done the specific things listed in verse 10.  

We remain in the little season, perhaps in part because we have not acted on section 105’s specific instructions to learn obedience to the law of consecration and gain experience obeying it. Some commentators have suggested that D&C 105:34 rescinds, postpones, or suspends the law of consecration, but that is not what it says. It says that the specific commands for the bishop to give the saints inheritances of the land in Zion, and to establish a storehouse and print the scriptures there, will necessarily need to wait until after the saints reclaim the land on which to keep those commandments (see section 57). 

Section 105 charts the way to Zion by obedience to the law of consecration. It declares that “Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom; otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself” (105:5). So Zion will be postponed as long as Latter-day Saints postpone fidelity to the law. Verse 34 cannot be to blame for that. President Gordon B. Hinckley taught that “the law of sacrifice and the law of consecration have not been done away with and are still in effect.”[5] Just as when Section 105 was given, however, “there are many who will say: Where is their God? Behold, he will deliver them in a time of trouble, otherwise we will not go up to Zion, and will keep our moneys” (8-9).

Section 102 notes

[1] “Minutes, 17-18 February 1834,” pages 29-31, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 11, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minutes-17-february-1834/1.

[2] “Minutes, 19 February 1834,” p. 38, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 11, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minutes-19-february-1834/3.

Section 103 notes

[1] Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989)

[2] William W. Phelps to Dear Brethren, December 15, 1833, in The Evening and the Morning Star 2:16 (January 1834): 127.

[3] Historical Introduction to Revelation, 24 February 1834 [D&C 103], p. [7], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 12, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-24-february-1834-dc-103/1.

[4] “Extract from the Journal of Heber C. Kimball,” http://www.boap.org/LDS/Early-Saints/HCKimball.html.

[5] “Mormonism,” Huron Reflector (Norwalk, OH), 20 May 1834, [2], italics in original.

Section 104 notes

[1] Steven C. Harper, “The Rich Man, Lazarus, and Doctrine & Covenants 104:18,” BYU Studies 47:4 (2008): 51-54.

[2] “Revelation Book 1,” p. 193, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-book-1/181. “Revelation Book 2,” p. 102, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-book-2/116.

[3] “Letter to Orson Hyde, 7 April 1834,” p. 82, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-orson-hyde-7-april-1834/1.

[4] Neal A. Maxwell, All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1979), 2.

[5] Frederick G. Williams Papers, CHL. Amt. of Balances due as of April 23, 1834, Newel K. Whitney Collection, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Max Parkin painstakingly documented each of these in “Joseph Smith and the United Firm,” BYU Studies 46:3 (2007): 5-66.

[6] “Covenant, 29 November 1834,” p. 88, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/covenant-29-november-1834/2.

[7] John Tanner, “Sketch of an Elder’s Life,” Scraps of Biography (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor’s Office, 12.

[8] “Journal, 1832–1834,” p. 92, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-1832-1834/93.

[9] John Tanner, “Sketch of an Elder’s Life,” Scraps of Biography (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor’s Office, 12.

Section 105 notes

[1] Peter Crawley and Richard L. Anderson, “The Political and Social Realities of Zion’s Camp,” BYU Studies 14:4 (1974): 406-20. History of George Albert Smith, Church History Library. Parley P. Pratt, Jr., editor, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1950), 115.

[2] “Letter to Emma Smith, 4 June 1834,” p. 56, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-emma-smith-4-june-1834/1.

[3] Letter From Cornelius Gilliam, Clay County, Missouri, 21 June 1834, and a statement of reconciliation, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

[4] Autobiography of Joseph Holbrook, typescript, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Autobiography of Harrison Burgess in Kenneth Glyn Hales, ed. and comp., Windows: A Mormon Family (Tucson, Arizona: Skyline Printing, 1985).

[5] Gordon B. Hinckley, Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1997), 639.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 98-101

Section 98
Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson County, Missouri, 18 August 1833. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org

In the summer of 1833, Oliver Cowdery wrote from Independence, Missouri to church leaders in Kirtland, Ohio, informing them that opposition from the saints’ Missouri neighbors was rising. By the time the letter arrived in Ohio, Bishop Partridge had been tarred and feathered in Missouri, the church’s press there had been destroyed, and the saints given an ultimatum to leave Jackson county or face escalating violence.

In Kirtland, Doctor Philastus Hurlbut had been excommunicated twice from the Church in a short period, and he thereafter “sought the destruction of the saints,” Joseph wrote, “and more particularly myself and family.”[1] Section 98 is the Lord’s prescription for peace and diplomacy amidst the strife and violence.[2]

Foreseeing the saints emotional reactions to hostility and violence, the Lord prescribes “be comforted,” “rejoice,” “give thanks,” and wait “patiently” for him, the Lord of Hosts, the defender of his people, to answer their prayers, for he has covenanted to do so. He promises that “all things wherewith you have been afflicted shall work together for your good, and to my name’s glory” (3).  

The revelation then upholds the rule of constitutional law applied without bias. Freedom comes from God and “belongs to all mankind” (5, 8). The saints should therefore do all that lies in their power to preserve freedom for themselves and everyone else.  

Section 98 reiterates the law of sacrifice described in Section 97. The saints are being tried and proven to see “whether you will abide in my covenant,” the Lord says, “even unto death” (14, cross reference Mosiah 18:8-10). Saints are commanded to “renounce war and proclaim peace” (16).  

At verse 19 the Lord expresses his displeasure with materialistic saints in Kirtland, condemning pride, covetousness, and “all their detestable things,” he repeats the terms and conditions on which he will save or damn them.       

Beginning in verse 23 the Lord reveals his law of forbearance and justified retaliation. It is the same law Nephi and Israelite patriarchs knew and obeyed. It applies to all people (32, 38). Simply put, the law requires saints to bear attacks “patiently and revile not . . . neither seek revenge” (23). After three offenses, patiently endured, the saints are to warn their attackers in the name of the Lord to stop. If they do not, the Lord says, “I have delivered thine enemy into thine hands” (29). At that point the saints can opt to spare the transgressor or deliver justice. “If he has sought thy life, and thy life is endangered by him, thine enemy is in thine hands and thou are justified” (31).  

The Lord’s law includes the commandment that his people should “not go out to battle against any nation, kindred, tongue, or people, save I, the Lord, commanded them” (33).  When an enemy declares war, the saints “should first lift a standard of peace” (34).  If that gesture is rejected three times, the saints should testify to the Lord of their good faith efforts. “Then I, the Lord, would give unto them a commandment, and justify them in going out to battle against that nation,” and then the Lord would be on the saints’ side (36-37).  

Beginning in verse 39, the Lord adds another dimension to the law. It is that enemies are to be forgiven as often as they repent, truly repent. The Lord’s vengeance is just and sure but it evaporates just as soon as there is real repentance (46-48).  

Three days after section 98 was revealed, Oliver Cowdery arrived in Kirtland with the latest news from Missouri about the violent persecution and the saints’ pending expulsion from Jackson County. Joseph was passionate about Zion and responded to the crisis with a long letter in his own hand, written to the leaders in Missouri. Joseph’s letter begins with a broken-hearted prayer that the Lord would comfort the saints and curse their enemies before concluding, “O Lord glorify thyself thy will be done and not mine.”  

Joseph’s first reaction was to curse the Saints’ enemies but he believed section 98’s promises and bowed to its moderating instructions in response to the crisis. For example, he urged the Saints to “wait patiently until the Lord come[s] and resto[res] unto us all things and build the waist places again for he will do it in his time.”  He wrote to Zion, “th[ere] is no saifty only in the a[r]m of Jehovah none else can deliver and he will not deliver unless we do prove ourselves faithful to him in the severeest trouble for he that will have his robes washed in the blood of the Lamb must come up throught great tribulation even the greatest of all affliction but know this when men thus deal with you and speak all maner of evil of you falsly for the sake of Christ that he is your friend and I verily know that he will spedily deliver Zion for I have his immutible covenant that this shall be the case but god is pleased to keep it hid from mine eyes the means how exactly the thing will be done.” Joseph concluded his letter “by telling you that we wait the Comand of God to do whatever he plese and if <he> shall say go up to Zion and defend thy Brotheren by <the sword> we fly and we count not dear our live[s] dear to us.”[3]

Section 99

Section 99 fits chronologically between sections 83 and 84. Generically it is like sections 32-34 and 66. It is a mission call for John Murdock, but his is unique. No other missionaries were given the option to inherit Zion or serve as missionaries for the rest of their lives.[1]

John was among the early converts in Ohio, and from the time of his baptism in November 1830, he had hardly stopped preaching the gospel. His wife Julia had died after giving birth to twins, giving John five children under age seven to care for.   

Then section 52 called John to preach and travel to Missouri in the summer of 1831.  John shouldered and balanced his family and missionary calling as best he could. He made a selfless decision to accept an invitation an invitation from Emma and Joseph Smith, whose twins had just died, to adopt John and Julia’s. John left his other children in the care of relatives and fellow saints and endured a long, sickly, and extremely successful mission to Missouri and back. He found his children well with the exception of little Joseph, who had succumbed to measles in March 1832.

John nurtured his children, regained his health, and served in the church at headquarters until August 1832, when section 99 called him back to the mission field. The revelation shows the Lord’s familiarity with John’s family situation and tells him how to both provide for his motherless children and perform his mission. John, meanwhile, is given the unusual choice to inherit Zion in a few years or continue his missionary labors for the rest of his life.

John wrote that having received Section 99, “I immediately commenced to arrange my business and provide for my children and send them up to the Bishop in Zion,” Edward Partridge. Then John set out to preach the gospel. Some received him as section 99 predicted.  Others, including his in-laws, rejected his message. When John “met with a Dr. Matthews, a very wicked man” who rejected his offering, John and his companion followed the revelation’s instruction: “We bore testimony according to the commandment and the Lord helped us in tending to the ordinance” of cleansing their feet “in the secret places by the way for a testimony against them” (99:4).[2]

Section 100

 

The adulterous apostate Doctor Philastus Hurlbut threatened to wash his hands in Joseph Smith’s blood.[1] Besides that, the saints in Missouri were in the midst of being forced from the promised land. On the bright side, missionary work around the Great Lakes was thriving. In the midst of the chaos, Joseph and Sidney accepted the invitations from prospective converts and referrals from friends and relatives, and went on a mission through Pennsylvania to upstate New York and Ontario, Canada.   

Journal, 1832–1834. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org

On October 12, 1833, Joseph did something he rarely did. He wrote his own journal entry, or at least part of it. “I feel very well in my mind,” it says in his handwriting, “the Lord is with us but have been much anxiety about my family.”[2] The Lord was with them, and gave Joseph section 100 that day. It addresses Joseph’s mission with Sidney Rigdon and the two concerns that occupied his anxious mind: Zion and the safety of his family and other Saints.[3] The revelation begins with the Lord’s omnipotent assurance that Joseph and Sidney’s families are well.  “They are in mine hands, and I will do with them as seemeth me good” (1).  

About the mission, the Lord gives Joseph and Sidney specific, omniscient counsel to ensure success that could guarantee their success, depending on how they decide to act on the counsel. If Joseph and Sidney speak the thoughts the Lord puts into their hearts, he says, they will not be confounded. If they solemnly, meekly declare the gospel in the Lord’s name, He promises that the Holy Ghost will testify of their words. He promises Joseph a powerful testimony and Sidney the ability to expound scripture. He makes Joseph a revelator for Sidney and Sidney a spokesman for Joseph.  

Beginning in verse 13 the Lord offers “a word concerning Zion.” He promises protection and salvation to the brethren Joseph sent to Missouri with messages. “Zion shall be redeemed,” the Lord promises, after she is chastened and becomes pure and willing to serve the Lord.  

Joseph Smith possessed a dogged tenacity. He did not want to give up on Zion, on New Jerusalem being built around a holy temple in Jackson County, Missouri. Oliver Cowdery had recently suggested that the Saints could start over somewhere else. Joseph resisted that thought. He told the Saints in Missouri that the Lord wanted them to hold on to their land, not sell it, not give up on Zion. He promised them that Zion would flourish in spite of Hell, though he did not pretend to know how or when.  

Joseph described himself as praying fervently and often in the past weeks after Zion had been beaten. He could not understand why. He even said that he murmured about it. Section 100 comforted Joseph. It reinforced his faith in Zion, though it did not answer his questions about how or when the Lord would put the Saints back in the promised land. Joseph wrote that based on Section 100, “I know that Zion, in the own due time of the Lord will be redeemed, but how many will be the days of her purification, tribulation and affliction, the Lord has kept hid from my eyes; and when I enquire concerning this subject the voice of the Lord is, Be still, and know that I am God! all those who suffer for my name shall reign with me, and he that layeth down his life for my sake shall find it again.”[4]

Section 100 eased Joseph’s anxieties about his family’s safety in the hostile environment of Kirtland, Ohio.  On returning from his month-long mission, he dictated the following journal entry: “Found my family all well according to the promise of the Lord for which blessings I feel to thank his holy name.”[5]

Section 101

On December 10, 1833, the morning mail brought Joseph Smith “the melancholy intelligence” that the Saints in Missouri were being exiled from the promised land.[1] He had already learned that leading citizens had mobbed the saints, destroyed their press, and forced on them an ultimatum to leave the county. Joseph hoped, however, that the rule of law would prevail, that the saints could get redress for the illegal acts against them, and that they would not have to leave the land they had legally purchased and occupied. The letter disappointed that hope.  

The news depressed and bewildered Joseph. Why had the Lord let the saints be driven from the promised land. Would they return? If so, how? It was the Lord who had told Joseph to consecrate Independence, Missouri as Zion, a refuge and gathering place for the saints. “Therefore I ask thee,” Joseph prayed, “in the name of Jesus Christ, to return thy people unto their homes . . . [and] that all the enemies of thy people, who will not repent and return unto thee be destroyed from off the face of that Land.”[2] Section 101 came a week later to answer these questions and Joseph’s prayer, though not as he had hoped.

The Lord explains that he will let the saints be tried and chastened even as much as Abraham was if it will lead to their sanctification. They must choose to stop being contentious, jealous, covetous, and lustful or there will be no Zion even if he rescues them. Then he promises emphatically that he will rescue them. “Notwithstanding their sins, my bowels are filled with compassion towards them. I will not utterly cast them off; and in the day of wrath I will remember mercy” (9). 

Just a week earlier, Joseph felt like murmuring because “those who are innocent are compelled to suffer for the iniquities of the guilty; and I cannot account for this.”[3]  The Lord acknowledges the injustice in Section 101:41 and has his own “wisdom” in allowing it. From the Lord’s perspective, a potent does of “trouble” can be useful. For when the Saints were well and good they treated lightly the revelations to gather, to consecrate, to buy land and to build a temple. Now all of a sudden they “of necessity feel after me,” the Lord says (8).  

Section 101 reaffirms that Zion will be established despite the Saints being driven. It prophesies the millennial day when the pure in heart will inherit Zion, enmity will cease, Satan will be rendered powerless, the Lord will reveal all things, and death, like sorrow, will depart. With that perspective, the faithful, persecuted saints can afford to “fear not even unto death; for in this world your joy is not full, but in my your joy is full” (36).    

Beginning in verse 43, the Lord relates a parable to explain his will concerning how to get Zion back. It implies that the unfaithful Saints in Zion were bad stewards.  Rather than building the temple as commanded, they second-guessed the Lord, used his money selfishly, and opened themselves to attacks that could have been prevented by obedience. “Ought ye not to have done even as I commanded you,” the nobleman of the parable asks the disobedient servants? (53).  

The nobleman’s plans for reclaiming his vineyard from enemies includes gathering an army of his servants, “the strength of mine house” to go to battle (55-58).  The nobleman promises to redeem his overrun vineyard and the servants ask when.  “When I will” comes the answer, “go ye straightway, and do all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (60). The servants go and do as the nobleman commanded, “and after many days all things were fulfilled” (62).  

Immediately following the parable the Lord resumes, as if he were the nobleman commanding his servants what to do, or, in the words of verse 43, “my will concerning the redemption of Zion.”  He commands the Saints to obey Sections 57, 63, and 86—that is, to continue the work of gathering by preaching the gospel, gaining converts, and gathering together to pool resources so they can systematically (not hastily or haphazardly) purchase land and build Zion legally. The Lord calls for wise men to be sent to purchase the lands, to buy out the settlers of Jackson County, satisfy them for their land and resolve the controversies between them (73). There is no shortage of money among the saints in the eastern branches, the Lord says. They have enough to buy the land if they are willing to consecrate it for Zion (75).  

In verse 76 the Lord calls for the Saints to continue to appeal to government for redress of their civil and property rights like the biblical parable of the unjust judge who finally relented to an insistent woman’s pleas for justice. Similarly, the saints are to petition for justice at the feet of every government official including the president. “And if the president heed them not, then will the Lord arise and come forth out of his hiding place; and in his fury vex the nation” (89). The Saints are to pray for their government officials to be responsive and therefore escape the Lord’s vengeance.  

The revelation closes with a command that the saints not sell the storehouse nor any of the land they legally own. Though driven unjustly, they must not relent to their oppressors. They must not sell the promised land.      

Section 101 explains why Zion was postponed. God could stop every mobbing and prevent every Saint from being lustful, covetous, and contentious. He chooses instead to put agency in his individual children. He gives them power to act and commandments to act upon. When they or some of them act disobediently to His commands, the blessings promised for obedience are not forthcoming. That’s how some of the Saints, and their enemies, postponed Zion. It is our fault, not God’s, that there is still no holy city in Jackson County, Missouri.    

Section 101 promises an ultimate redemption of Zion, though its timing is dependent on the Saints’ decisions. In several places the Lord guarantees that Zion will come. In just as many he speaks ambiguously about when. When depends on what the Saints decide to do with the Lord’s commandments.

Section 98 notes

[1] “Journal, 1832–1834,” p. 48, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-1832-1834/49.

[2] “Revelation, 6 August 1833 [D&C 98],” p. 66, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-6-august-1833-dc-98/1.

[3] “Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson County, Missouri, 18 August 1833,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-church-leaders-in-jackson-county-missouri-18-august-1833/1.

Section 99 notes

[1] “Revelation, 29 August 1832 [D&C 99],” p. 19, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-29-august-1832-dc-99/1.

[2] John Murdock, “An Abridged Record of the Life of John Murdock, Taken from His Journal by Himself,” typescript, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

Section 100 notes

[1] “Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson County, Missouri, 18 August 1833,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-church-leaders-in-jackson-county-missouri-18-august-1833/1.

[2] “Journal, 1832–1834,” p. 7, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-1832-1834/8.

[3] “Revelation, 12 October 1833 [D&C 100],” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-october-1833-dc-100/1.

[4] “Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson County, Missouri, 18 August 1833,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-church-leaders-in-jackson-county-missouri-18-august-1833/1. 

[5] “Journal, 1832–1834,” p. 18, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-1832-1834/19.

Section 101 notes

[1] “Letterbook 1,” p. 70, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 11, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letterbook-1/82.

[2] Joseph Smith, Kirtland, Ohio, to Edward Partridge, William W. Phelps, John Whitmer, Algernon Sidney Gilbert, John Corrill, Isaac Morley and all Saints, Independence, Missouri, 10 December1833, in Joseph Smith Letterbook 1, pp. 70-75, in hand of Frederick G. Williams, CHL.

[3] “Letterbook 1,” p. 72, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed November 11, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letterbook-1/84.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 94-97

Section 94

Section 94 may make more sense after you have studied sections 95 and 96 and 97, because it was actually revealed right after section 97, though for many years it was misdated and thus misplaced. It makes the most sense when it is read as an extension of section 97.[1] It addresses similar concerns as section 97, and says that the Lord had already revealed the pattern for the House of the Lord in Kirtland, which he did in section 95.

In Section 97, the Lord required the saints in Missouri to build a temple. In Section 94 he commands the saints in Ohio to build a stake to Zion, beginning with another temple in Ohio, as commanded in section 88 and again in section 95. The Lord calls for the construction of an office for the First Presidency next to the temple in Kirtland, Ohio. He specifies its design and the conditions on which he will abide there. On the next lot south the Lord wants a printing office, perhaps to replace the church’s press destroyed by a mob just a few days earlier in Missouri (unbeknownst to Joseph). The members of the church’s building committee, Hyrum Smith, Reynolds Cahoon, and Jared Carter, are appointed lots or “inheritances” near the building sites. Verse 16 is not in the early manuscripts.  Probably Joseph added it as clarification before the revelation was published in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.       

In the letter to Missouri church leaders that included section 94, the First Presidency explained that the saints in Zion should build similar buildings for meetings and printing the scriptures.[2] But the saints in Zion were already being forced from their land and homes and saints in Kirtland struggled to muster enough resources to build the temple. They eventually scaled down the instructions in section 94, built one building instead of two, and used it as a printing office, a school, and office space for the First Presidency.

Section 95

Six months after the Lord told the Saints in Kirtland, Ohio to build a house of the Lord where they could learn his law, be endowed with his power, and come into his presence (see section 88), the saints had not begun to build the Lord’s house. Joseph wrote to tell the saints in Missouri. “The Lord commanded us in Kirtland to build an house of God,” he said “and we must—yea the Lord helping us we will obey, as on conditions of our obedience, he has promised us great things, yea even a visit from the heavens to honor us with his presence.”[1]

Joseph seemed to be the only one who sensed any urgency in the command. It was the dead of winter, 1833. In the spring the saints got around to having a meeting about building the Lord’s house, and appointed a Jared Carter, Reynolds Cahoon, and Hyrum Smith to a committee to raise money for construction and oversee it.[2] The meeting ended after that and nothing more happened for a month. Then the Lord gave section 95.[3]

It is a revelation of God’s love, his conditional love. “Thus saith the Lord unto you whom I love, and whom I love I also chasten that their sins may be forgiven, for with the chastisement I prepare a way for their deliverance in all things out of temptation, and I have loved you” (1). Given the premises that God loves the saints and chastens those he loves as a means to their forgiveness, the revelation’s next passage is a predictable rebuke for what the Lord calls the “very grevious sin” of not building the temple.  

Then the Lord reemphasizes the importance of the temple. It is the school for prophets, the way to “pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,” the way out of darkness, the venue for receiving an endowment of heavenly power. The Lord wanted the elders to remain in Kirtland to receive this endowment, but they were contentious and he sent them into the field to be chastened–because he loved them. 

Beginning in verse 11, the Lord promises the saints power to build the temple if they keep his commandments.  “If you keep not my commandments,” he emphasizes, “the love of the Father shall not continue with you, therefore you shall walk in darkness” (12).  The revelation does not say that the Love of God will not continue, only that it will not continue with those who choose to reject it, who “love darkness rather than light” (D&C 29:45). By juxtaposing his love with darkness, the Lord equates his love with light and the synonyms for it described in sections 88 and 93, including truth, glory, intelligence, power, and life. Why, the Lord seems to lament in Section 95, would saints choose to walk in darkness at noon when God’s loving light shines for all who choose to obey the conditions on which he offers it?    

So what would be the wise course?  “Let the house be built,” the Lord says, and gives the dimensions and a promise to reveal it to “three” (13). The building committee sent a letter to all the saints the same day the revelation came, urging them to “make very possible exertion to aid temporally as well as spiritually in this great work,” and “it is as important as our salvation is that we obey this . . . command.”[4]

The saints got the point. They went to work at enormous cost. The Lord revealed the building to the First Presidency (14).[5] Hyrum Smith broke ground on June 5, 1833 in a wheat field on the bluffs above the Chagrin River. Everyone helped. Saints consecrated funds, labor, expertise but “the project was far out of proportion to the Church’s pitiful resources.” They had to rely on the Lord’s promise of power to build it if they kept his commandments. Joseph borrowed money to finance the construction “but the economic realities gave Joseph no pause.” He understood the Savior’s “great and last promise” to be worth any cost, any sacrifice (D&C 88:68-69).  

After receiving section 95, the saints no longer walked in darkness at noon.  “Beginning in Kirtland,” wrote historian Richard Bushman, “temples became an obsession. For the rest of his life, no matter the cost of the temple to himself and his people, [Joseph] made plans, raised money, mobilized workers, and required sacrifice” (see section 97).[6]

Section 96

Reading section 96 is like walking in on an interesting conversation that is already underway. You try hard to catch on, to understand what’s being said, but you realize there’s so much you’ve missed that you just can’t make sense of what you’re hearing. It would be nice, in such cases, if there was a way to catch up on the earlier parts of the conversation. Those parts are sections 42, 72, 78, and 82. Those sections reveal the law of consecration, establish an organization (of church leaders) called the United Firm, to be trustees of church properties, manage storehouses, and relieve poverty.

Members of the Firm and others strategized in the spring of 1833 to acquire several farms in the Kirtland, Ohio area, especially a farm and brick tavern owned by an early settler named Peter French. The saints hoped to build a stake of Zion surrounding the House of the Lord, which they intended to build on French’s farm. They sent a committee to ask the farm owners the terms on which they would be willing to sell. The committee returned with news that the farms were available, and the council decided to buy, appointed agents to negotiate the sale, and called the elders out of their school to go raise funds among the saints.[1] The funds were raised and the farms purchased, leading to another council on June 4, which disagreed about who should manage the French farm, “but all agreed to inquire of the Lord.”[2]

The Lord answered that Newel Whitney, the bishop in Kirtland, was to “take charge of the place” as a good steward. The Lord, however, is the owner of “the place . . . upon which I design to build my holy house” (2). He begins the revelation by stating the rationale for buying the farm: “It is expedient in me that this stake that I have set for the strength of Zion should be made strong” (1). The Lord instructs the bishop and others how to act relative to the land, by dividing it among the saints and using the proceeds to fund the United Firm, called the “order” in verses 4 and 8 but “the Firm” in early manuscripts (see eections 70, 78, 82, 92). The Lord says John Johnson “should become a member of the order” and use his financial resources and skills to pay the church’s debts (D&C 96:8).[3]

Bishop Whitney became steward of the farm and acted on the revelation’s instructions to divide it and to finance the church’s publications with proceeds. John Johnson moved from Hiram to Kirtland, joined the United Firm, became steward of the tavern, and tried to obey the revelation by paying the firm’s debts.[4]

Section 97

Parley Pratt described Zion during the summer of 1833 as the opposition escalated.  “Immigration had poured into the County of Jackson in great numbers; and the Church in that county now numbered upwards of one thousand souls.” He described how they industriously improved their situations by building homes and cultivating farms. He said that they observed the Sabbath according to Section 59, but made no mention of building the temple described in section 84. “I devoted almost my entire time in ministering among the churches,” Parley wrote, “holding meetings; visiting the sick; comforting the afflicted, and giving counsel. A school of Elders was also organized, over which I was called to preside. This class, to the number of about sixty, met for instruction once a week. The place of meeting was in the open air, under some tall trees, in a retired place in the wilderness, where we prayed, preached and prophesied, and exercised ourselves in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Here great blessings were poured out and many great and marvelous things were manifested and taught. . . .  To attend this school I had to travel on foot, and sometimes with bare feet at that, about six miles.  This I did once a week, besides visiting and preaching in five or six branches a week.”  

Parley and his brethren wrote to Joseph, seeking the Lord’s will concerning their school. While “thus engaged,” Parley wrote, “and in answer to our correspondence with the Prophet, Joseph Smith, at Kirtland, Ohio, the following revelation was sent to us by him, dated August, 1833.”[1]

Joseph Smith did not know when he received section 97 that the Saints in Zion had received an ultimatum from their antagonistic neighbors—stop obeying the revelations or we will force you to. In section 97, the Lord issues a counter ultimatum.  “The ax is laid at the root of the tree,” he says, “and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire. I, the Lord, have spoken it” (D&C 97:8).[2]

Section 97 highlights the Lord’s priorities for Zion. “I, the Lord, am well pleased that there should be a school in Zion, and also with my servant Parley P. Pratt, for he abideth in me” (D&C 97:3). Right away, however, the Lord notices that there is no temple in Zion yet.  He requires one to “be built speedily, by the tithing of my people,” by obedience to the law of sacrifice set forth in section 97 (D&C 97:8-12). The temple—or, rather, the keeping of covenants required to build and worship in the temple—will be the salvation of Zion. 

Section 97 is conspicuously full of if/then statements. It prophesies conditionally that if the saints obey the commandment to sacrifice to build a temple in Independence, then Zion will prosper and become great and immovable. She will escape her enemies if she observe to do all things whatsoever I have commanded her. If not, Zion will be visited with sore afflictions. The future of Zion is in the hands of the Latter-day Saints.   If the saints want Zion as their first priority, they will sacrifice to build it and keep it holy.  In verse 27, the Lord gives Zion a second chance. If Zion has since been, at least temporarily, “moved out of her place,” it is because too few Latter-day Saints share the Lord’s priorities set forth in Section 97 (D&C 97:19).  

Parley Pratt testified that the Lord poured forth the promised blessings of section 97 when he did as the revelation commanded regarding the school for the elders. “The Lord gave me great wisdom,” Parley wrote, “and enabled me to teach and edify the Elders, and comfort and encourage them in their preparations for the great work which lay before us.  I was also much edified and strengthened.” 

Parley also noted that “this revelation was not complied with by the leaders and Church in Missouri, as a whole.” As Section 97 shows, the saints in Zion were not unified, not all committed to keeping their covenants. Thus, “notwithstanding many were humble and faithful,” Parley noted, “the threatened judgment was poured out to the uttermost.”[3]

Section 94 notes

[1] “Revelation, 2 August 1833–B [D&C 94],” p. 64, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-2-august-1833-b-dc-94/1.

[2] “Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson County, Missouri, 6 August 1833,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-church-leaders-in-jackson-county-missouri-6-august-1833/1.

Section 95 notes

[1] “Letter to William W. Phelps, 11 January 1833,” p. 18, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-william-w-phelps-11-january-1833/1.

[2] “Minute Book 1,” p. 20, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minute-book-1/24.

[3] “Revelation, 1 June 1833 [D&C 95],” p. 59, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-1-june-1833-dc-95/1.

[4] “Letterbook 1,” p. 37, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letterbook-1/49.

[5] “Minute Book 1,” p. 12, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minute-book-1/16. Truman Angell, Journal, typescript, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Truman Angell to John Taylor, 11 March 1885, Church History Library. 

[6] Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 217-18.

Section 96 notes

[1] Zebedee Coltrin, Journal, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

[2] “Minute Book 1,” p. 13, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minute-book-1/17.

[3] “Revelation, 4 June 1833 [D&C 96],” p. 60, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-4-june-1833-dc-96/1.

[4] “Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson County, Missouri, 25 June 1833,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-church-leaders-in-jackson-county-missouri-25-june-1833/1.

Section 97 notes

[1] Scot Facer Procter and Maurine Jensen Proctor, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt: Revised and Enhanced Edition (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2000), 113-14. For the First Presidency’s response, see “Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson County, Missouri, 6 August 1833,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-church-leaders-in-jackson-county-missouri-6-august-1833/1.

[2] “Revelation, 2 August 1833–A [D&C 97],” p. 61, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-2-august-1833-a-dc-97/1.

[3] Scot Facer Procter and Maurine Jensen Proctor, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt: Revised and Enhanced Edition (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2000), 115-16.