Author: Steven Harper

I’m an introvert with an advocate personality. So I was pretty reserved in grad school seminars until a fellow student went off about how people shouldn’t have kids, and I launched into a lecture about how I’m the seventh of ten children of really great parents. My parents made sure the scriptures were read early and often in their home, but it was up to me to decide whether I would love the scriptures. I learned that the Book of Mormon is true shortly before I served in the Canada Winnipeg Mission. But It took me awhile to learn to love the scriptures. Not until I was teaching Dora, a Lutheran woman in her sixties, did I really want to know what they said and meant. That desire didn’t leave when I returned to BYU, so I changed my major from engineering to ancient near eastern studies and started a series of courses in Biblical Hebrew. I learned that the Bible was way more complicated than I had thought, and I doubted I could master the complexity. When I took a course on early Church history I decided I had to master that, so I switched my major and set my sights on a PhD in early American history. Along the way I wrote an MA thesis about who joined the Church in the 1830s and why. I wrote my dissertation on a little-known 1737 fraud by which the sons of William Penn evicted the Lenape Indians from their homeland. I started teaching in the history and religion departments at BYU-Hawaii, then in 2002 got the chance to join the Religious Education faculty at BYU in Provo and become an editor of The Joseph Smith Papers. That combo was enticement enough to leave Hawaii, where I thought I would miss the land but ended up missing the people. A decade later I taught the Bible (go figure) to great students at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. Before that I had been serving on committees tasked by the Church Historian and Recorder with planning a new history of the Church. When I got home from Jerusalem I was invited to join the Church History Department in Salt Lake City to be the managing historian of that project. For the next six years it was my humbling privilege to work with devoted and talented people to produce Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days. More than one million people are reading it online and more than 400,000 print copies have been sold. In 2018 I got my other dream job back: professor of Church history and doctrine at BYU. I was also named the editor of BYU Studies, where I had formative experience as a student intern a long time ago. The best thing about me is my wife and children, but they forbade me to say much about them here. Hannah Salvesen is my daughter, and I’ll share lots of links to the great stuff she produces. Thanks to Hannah and Scott Salvesen for building this site and advising me patiently about all things related to the world wide web.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 64, 65, 66

Section 64

Various people who observe the same facts interpret the facts differently. The elders’ trip to Missouri in the summer of 1831 led to the dedication of the site for New Jerusalem and the dedication of a temple site. Some returned from the trip rejoicing and others disappointed. The main voice of discontent was Ezra Booth. He noted the outspoken disagreement between Joseph and Edward Partridge about the Missouri land the Lord designated for Zion. Ezra objected that he and Isaac Morley walked to Missouri while Joseph and his party traveled by stage coach. Joseph and Bishop Partridge reconciled. Isaac Morley got over it. Ezra Booth, by contrast, would not let his grievances go.[1] In that setting the Lord gave section 64.[2]

The Lord was angry with Ezra Booth and Isaac Morley. They did not obey section 42 or the commandment they received to preach the gospel en route to Missouri in the summer of 1831 (D&C 52:23).[3] They had unrighteous desires and therefore lost the Holy Ghost. Then, as so often happens, they projected their own evil onto others.The Lord forgave the repentant Isaac Morley while Ezra Booth was disciplined by the church as section 64 directed and withdrew from membership.[4]

The Lord was also upset with Bishop Partridge for arguing with Joseph about the location of Zion (see section 58). He repented in response to section 64. Sidney Gilbert returned to Missouri and established a storehouse there and prepared to buy land for Zion.

Isaac Morley sold his farm as a result of section 64 and thus avoided the overwhelming temptations that the Lord knew would keep him from consecrating otherwise (see section 63:38-40). Frederick Williams consecrated his Kirtland farm to the Church for the Lord to use as a secure headquarters for the church for five more years. Newel Whitney and Sidney Gilbert kept their Kirtland store and other properties for five years after this revelation.

Section 64 paints a vivid picture and makes an unlikely prophecy. It explains with crystal clarity that the saints must leave Babylon or perish, and that the only place other than Babylon is Zion and the only way to get there is by obeying the law of consecration. The Lord’s promise is that the willing and obedient will see Zion. It will come. They will get there. This is the promise which, according to Section 45, holy have been granted in ages past. They longed for Zion and never got there, “but obtained a promise that they should find it and see it in their [resurrected] flesh” (D&C 45:14). Section 64 guarantees Zion tomorrow for those who are willing and obedient to the law of consecration today.

Section 65

Joseph’s history says that section 65 came to him in early October 1831 as he was living with the Johnsons in Hiram, Ohio, and that he regarded it as a prayer.[1] An early copy of section 65 in the handwriting of William McLellin sheds more light on it. The revelation is linked to the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6, and particularly the meaning of verse 10: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”[2]

Section 65 teaches us to pray for the ideal government. We look for a literal, earthly fulfillment of Isaiah’s declaration: “The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us” (Isaiah 33:22). This short revelation also reminds us how thoroughly biblical Joseph became as he read that sacred text by the light of the Holy Ghost. In the 6 verses of Section 65 there are clear references to Isaiah, Daniel, Matthew, and the Revelation of John.

Section 65 elaborates a prophesy of Daniel, who saw “the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever”(Daniel 2:44). Daniel compared this kingdom to a rolling stone that would eventually fill the earth. Some of the early saints envisioned a snowball effect, but Joseph clarified Daniel’s meaning. The stone, Joseph said, “is stationary like a grind stone. It revolves.” He taught that it grew as “the Elders went abroad to preach the gospel and the people became believers in the Book of Mormon and were baptized.” In this way “they were added to the little stone. Thus they gathered around it so that it grew larger and larger.” Joseph prophesied that in this way the stone—the kingdom of God—would fill the earth.[3]

In 1838, Judge Austin King charged Joseph Smith with treason and confined him in jail at Liberty, Missouri for believing what he taught about Daniel’s prophecy. Parley Pratt wrote that judge King “inquired diligently into our belief of the seventh chapter of Daniel concerning the kingdom of God, which should subdue all other kingdoms and stand forever.” The saints testified that they believed the prophecy, and judge King instructed his clerk, “write that down; it is a strong point for treason.” The saints’ attorney objected. Is the Bible treason?[4] The next time he was charged with treason came a month after he set up “the kingdom of Daniel by the word of the Lord” and declaring his intent to “revolutionize the whole world.” Joseph life was ended abruptly by a lynch mob shortly after that.[5]

However, the work of God’s kingdom rolled on. It will continue to do so “till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear.”[6] That, at least, is the prayer of section 65. “May the kingdom of God go forth that the Kingdom of Heaven may come”(D&C 65:6), so that he who is entitled may reign as King of Kings (Rev 17:14).

Section 66

Section 66 teaches many lessons. One is to be careful what you ask for. Another is that knowing for certain that Joseph Smith was the Lord’s revelator is insufficient to motivate obedience to the Lord’s revelations through Joseph.

The Lord gave section 66 to William McLellin through Joseph on October 29, 1831. After copying the revelation in his entry for that day, William wrote that it, “gave great joy to my heart because some important questions were answered which had dwelt upon my mind with anxiety and yet with uncertainty.”[1] Previous to meeting Joseph, William secretly prayed that God would “reveal the answer to five questions through his prophet, and that too without his having any knowledge of my having made such request.” In 1848, ten years after bitterly parting ways with Joseph Smith, William wrote: “I now testify in the fear of God, that every question which I had thus lodged in the ears of the Lord of Sabbaoth, were answered to my full and entire satisfaction. I desired it for a testimony of Joseph’s inspiration. And I to this day consider it to me an evidence which I cannot refute.”[2]

William’s questions are unrecorded, but the revelation he wrote as Joseph dictated expresses the Lord’s will for him (66:4). The revelation therefore compelled William to act either in obedience or disobedience to the Lord’s will. His subsequent journal is an accountability report with the revelation in mind. It and related documents reveal his inconsistent effort to obey the revelation’s many specific commands.

The revelation blessed William for turning from his iniquities to truth and receiving the fulness of the gospel. Still, the Lord told William that he was not completely clean and needed to repent of sins the Lord would show him. The Lord specifically warned William to “commit not adultery—a temptation with which thou hast been troubled” (D&C 66:10). The Lord commanded William to serve a mission to the east with Samuel Smith until the Lord sent word for them to return. The Lord commanded William to bear testimony to everyone everywhere he went, and his journal testifies that he did. He went about “reasoning with the people” while Samuel Smith bore his simple, powerful testimony as a witness of the Book of Mormon plates. Commanded to “lay your hands upon the sick and they shall recover,” William did so and they were. He tried to “be patient in affliction,” but as rejections mounted and winter approached, William’s resolve to obey the revelation faltered (D&C 66:9). He forsook Samuel Smith and returned to Kirtland in late December 1831 of his own volition. The Lord rebuked William a few weeks later (D&C 75:6-7).

Humbled, William started on another mission but again forsook his companion and calling, attributing his disobedience to poor health and lack of faith. He took a job to accumulate cash and married Emiline Miller, perhaps in disobedience to the command “seek not to be cumbered” (D&C 66:10) with family obligations while called to fulltime missionary service. Then the newlyweds set out for Zion in Jackson County, Missouri, where William circumvented the law of consecration. Rather than meeting with Bishop Partridge to consecrate his property and receive an inheritance, William purchased two lots on Main Street, all in disobedience to specific commands that he “go not up to the land of Zion as yet; but inasmuch as you can send, send; otherwise think not of thy property” (66:6).

William’s disobedience to the revelation did not diminish his faith in it or its revelator. He wrote in August 1832 that “that Joseph Smith is a true Prophet or Seer of the Lord and that he has power and does receive revelations from God, and that these revelations when received are of divine Authority in the church of Christ.”[3] Upset by William’s hypocrisy, Joseph wrote that his “conduct merits the disapprobation of every true follower of Christ.“[4]

Section 66 left William’s future in his hands. If he chose to do the Lord’s will continually, he could “have a crown of eternal life” (66:12). Instead William chose to do his own will. On 11 May 1838, William confessed to Bishop Partridge that he had quit “praying and keeping the commandments of God and went his own way and indulged himself in his lustful desires.”[5] He spent the rest of his long life outside the Savior’s church, struggling to resolve the unbearable tension between his sure testimony of the revelation and his unwillingness to abide by all of its terms.

Section 64 notes

[1] See “Historical Introduction” to “Revelation, 11 September 1831 [D&C 64],” p. 108, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-11-september-1831-dc-64/1.

[2] “Revelation, 11 September 1831 [D&C 64],” p. 108, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-11-september-1831-dc-64/1.

[3] Ezra Booth, “Mormonism—No. V,” Ohio Star 10 November 1831, p. 3.

[4] “Minute Book 2,” p. 6, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minute-book-2/8.

Section 65 notes

[1] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 155, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/161.

[2] See The Journals of William E. McLellin, 243.

[3] Henry William Bigler (1815–1900), Journal, 1846 Feb.–1899 Oct., Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

[4] Parley P. Pratt, Jr., editor, The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt 4th edition (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1950), 211-12.

[5] Andrew F. Ehat, “‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph Smith and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God,” BYU Studies 20:3 (Spring 1980), 253-79.

[6] “History, 1838–1856, volume C-1 [2 November 1838–31 July 1842],” p. 1285, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-c-1-2-november-1838-31-july-1842/459.

Section 66 notes

[1] Jan Shipps and John W. Welch, editors, The Journals of William E. McLellin, 1831-1836 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 46-47.

[2] Jan Shipps and John W. Welch, editors, The Journals of William E. McLellin, 1831-1836 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 57.

[3] Jan Shipps and John W. Welch, editors, The Journals of William E. McLellin, 1831-1836 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 87.

[4] “Letter to Emma Smith, 6 June 1832,” p. [2], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-emma-smith-6-june-1832/2.

[5] “History, 1838–1856, volume B-1 [1 September 1834–2 November 1838],” p. 796, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-b-1-1-september-1834-2-november-1838/250.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 63

Section 63

“The land of Zion,” says Joseph’s history, “was now the most important temporal object in view.” Satan hates Zion and works to undermine it from every angle. When Joseph and his companions returned to Kirtland, Ohio from their trip to dedicate Independence, Missouri as the center of Zion, they found “the exertions of Satan” had led many saints into rebellion. Joseph and the faithful saints were extraordinarily anxious about how to establish Zion.[1]

When and how should they gather to Missouri? How should they fund Zion and the move there? What should we do with our property in Ohio, like Whitney’s store and the farms belonging to Isaac Morley and Frederick Williams? The revelations in Missouri commanded the saints to purchase land there. How should they raise the money? Sidney Rigdon had been commanded to write an inspired description of Zion and God’s will concerning it (D&C 58:50). What did the Lord think of his first draft? Isaac Morley had already moved to Missouri, and the several families living on his farm planned to follow as soon as the Lord said go. Since Joseph and Sidney Rigdon and their families lived on Morley’s farm, selling it would leave them homeless. Where should they live? Section 63 addresses the apostasy and these pressing questions related to literally building Zion.

This revelation motivated much action. Joseph began discerning by the spirit those who should move to Zion.[2] As commanded, Titus Billings and several other Kirtland saints moved to Missouri in the spring of 1832. Sidney Rigdon humbled himself and rewrote a description of the land of Zion based very much on this revelation and previous ones.[3]

Oliver Cowdery and Newel Whitney used it to obey the command to go “from place to place, and from Church to Church preaching and expounding the Scriptures and Commandments [that is, the recent revelations] and obtaining moneys of the disciples for the purpose of buying lands for the Saints according to commandments and the disciples truly opened their hearts.” Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer took the money to bishop Partridge and Sidney Gilbert in Missouri, “and thus there has been lands purchased, for the inheritance of the Saints.”[4]

As commanded, Newel Whitney and Frederick Williams kept their property in Kirtland and consecrated it to the church. As for Joseph, Sidney Rigdon and their families, they moved south to Hiram, Ohio in September 1831 where Elsa and John Johnson provided homes for them. Yes there was apostasy—adultery, lying, hypocrisy, rebellion—in Kirtland when the Lord gave section 63. There was also substantial Zion building in response to it.

Notes

[1] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 146, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/152.

[2] D&C 63:41. The Church History Library has an unpublished revelation in John Whitmer’s handwriting, dated August 31, 1831, which says: “Behold thus saith the Lord by the voice of the spirit it is wisdom in me that my servent John Burk David Eliot Erastus Babit should take their Journey this fall to the land of Zion.”

[3] Sidney Rigdon Papers, Church History Library. Published in Cook, Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 99-101.

[4] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 37, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/41.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 60, 61, 62

Section 60

Having dedicated western Missouri as Zion and a spot near the courthouse in Independence as the site for the temple centered in New Jerusalem, Joseph Smith and his companions sought to know what the Lord would have them do next. The Lord answered with section 60, which John Whitmer described as a “COMMANDMENT given in Missorie Jackson County Independence August 8th 1831 directions to some of the Elders to return to their ~~homes &~~ own land.”[1]

The Lord tells the elders planning to return to Ohio quickly that he is pleased with their trek to Missouri, with the exception of those whose fears kept them from preaching the gospel. He is upset with them and says they will lose what he has given them if they do not offer it freely to others.

About the return trip to Ohio, the Lord tells the elders to get a boat that seems to them best suited for the purpose of heading down the Missouri, River toward St. Louis. It doesn’t matter to him whether they make it or buy it, only that they do not waste time. Once in St. Louis, Joseph, Sidney Ridgon, and Oliver Cowdery are to head for Cincinnati to declare the gospel with faith, not anger.

Alluding to his Old Testament title, I Am, a variation on the name rendered in English as Jehovah, the Lord commands them to “lift up holy hands upon them. For I am able to make you holy, and your sins are forgiven you” (D&C 60:7, cross reference Exodus 3:14 and D&C 68:6).

The remaining elders should leave St. Louis in companionships and thoroughly preach the gospel to those who have not yet repented until the elders arrive in Ohio. This will benefit the branches of the church, which is why the Lord gave the command. Bishop Partridge should give them enough of the Lord’s money to fulfill their missions. Those who are able should pay the Lord back by giving the money to Sidney Gilbert, the bishop’s assistant.

The Lord also speaks about the elders who left Ohio for Missouri but have not arrived, due to the missionary work in which they engaged on the way. He commands them: “Thou shalt not idle away thy time, neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known” (D&C 60:13). Once they arrive in Missouri, now Zion, and preach there, they should return to Ohio quickly, preaching along the way to those who have not repented. They should preach thoroughly, kindly, and without provoking the people.

Rather than condemning openly those who chose not to receive the gospel, as Parley Pratt did to the Believers at North Union, Ohio (see section 49), the elders are to signify that they have freely offered the gospel by washing their feet privately as a testimony, on judgment day, that they did not hide the good news from anyone. This act signifies that knowledge and therefore accountability have been transferred from the missionaries to the people.

Joseph and his companions obeyed Section 60 and headed for home in Ohio as directed. On August 9, Joseph and ten other brethren headed down the Missouri River on canoes bound for St. Louis.[2]

Section 61

The interpretation history of section 61 is a good example of what happens when scripture is not read in context, and when it is too quickly applied universally instead of limited to the situation it was originally about. It does not say that Satan controls the water.

The Missouri River was well known to be dangerous, “ever-varying,” and full of submerged trees that could capsize or sink at steamboat, not to mention a canoe.[1] Joseph and the elders launched their canoes at the Missouri River landing just north of Independence, Missouri, and headed home to Ohio. They camped at Fort Osage and “had an excellent wild turkey for supper.” The good food did little to keep the men satisfied under the stressful conditions.

During their second day on the river “a spirit of animosity and discord” infected the group. “The conduct of the Elders became very displeasing to Oliver Cowdery.” He prophesied: “as the Lord God liveth, if you do not behave better, some accident will befall you.”[2] At some point William Phelps “saw the Destroyer, in his most horrible power, ride upon the face of the waters,” though what that means is uncertain, and ought not to be interpreted to mean that Satan controls the waters without more revelation.[3]

Contention continued the next day. Joseph got frustrated. Some of the elders refused to paddle, and at least one of the canoes hit a submerged tree and nearly capsized. Joseph urged the frightened group to get off the river. Some of the men called him a coward. They landed on the north side of the River at McIlwaine’s Bend (now Miami), set up camp as best they could, and convened a council to address the contention. Some of the elders were critical of Oliver’s rebuke. Some criticized Joseph for being “quite dictatorial.” Joseph got defensive and the council went on for some hours until, early in the morning, everyone reconciled.[4] Speaking of Section 61, Joseph’s history says “the next morning after prayer, I received the following.”[5] John Whitmer described the revelation as a “commandment given Aug 12th 1831 on the Bank of the River Distruction (or Missorie) unfolding some mysteries.”[6]

In section 61, the omnipotent Lord commands the elders gathered on the banks of the Missouri River to hear and obey him. He forgives their sins. He mercifully forgives the sins of all who humbly confess them. He says they don’t all need to travel quickly down the river while settlers on either side need to be taught the gospel.

The Lord explains that he let the elders experience the River’s terrors so they could testify of the danger to others. The Lord has angrily decreed that water will be a destructive element, especially the Missouri. But he holds mankind in his hands and will preserve the faithful among this group of elders from drowning. The Lord has kept the group together this long so they be corrected and purified from their sins and become unified and thus escape the punishment for their wickedness. Now it’s time to split up, and the Lord gives specific assignments and instructs Sidney Gilbert, the bishop’s assistant, to give them enough money to fulfill their assignments.

Close reading of section 61 shows that the Lord controls the waters, not Satan. That is true for dry land as well. God blessed the waters during the creation process. He later cursed them (see Revelation 8:8-11). The day will come when only the honest-hearted will be able to safely travel to Zion by water. The Lord explains that after the fall, he cursed the land for Adam’s sake, but in the latter days he blessed it to be fertile for the saints’ sake. The Lord commands the elders to warn the other saints not to travel on the dangerous Missouri without faith.

William Phelps carried out the commandment in this revelation to tell all the saints about the dangers of traveling to Zion in Missouri on the Missouri River. He published the revelation in the church’s newspaper, The Evening and the Morning Star, along with an editorial listing the most notable “risks and dangers.” First, there were frequent disasters on the river. Second, he warned, there was cholera, a devastating water-born illness “which the Lord has sent into the world, and which may, without repentance, ravage the large towns near the waters, many years, or, at least, till other judgments come.”[7]

Phelps also wrote a short history of his stay in Missouri, in which he told how Section 61 influenced his return to Ohio. “I, in company with Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery and others started by water for Ohio, but being cautioned in a Revelation given at, McElwains bend, that Missouri River was cursed, all the company save myself and brother Gilbert left the river and proceeded by land. I was assured by revelation, to be safe by land or water.”[8]

Section 62

Section 62 is one of many revelations in which the Lord tells us much about himself. He is our advocate. He knows our weakness. He knows just how to run to our relief when we are tempted. He keeps his promises. He cannot lie. Who wouldn’t gladly travel hundreds of miles to obey one of his revelations?

Leaving the Missouri River to travel by land, Joseph and the elders who had been to Missouri ran into a group of their brethren—Joseph’s brother Hyrum, David Whitmer, John Murdock, and Harvey Whitlock—still en route to Zion. They had been preaching the gospel with great success along their way. The joyful meeting would not have occurred had Joseph’s trip down the Missouri been tranquil, but it fulfilled the Lord’s promise that the brethren would meet in Missouri to rejoice in the land of Zion. Joseph sought and received a revelation concerning the elders who had not yet been to Independence.[1]

Hyrum Smith, David Whitmer, Harvey Whitlock, John Murdock, and others who joined them obeyed this revelation. They pursued their journey to Independence and held a solemn meeting with the members of the bishopric there. They sang hymns, prayed, read scriptural prophecies about Zion and the second coming, and then turned around and returned to Ohio.

The revelation, as with so many others, is full of conditional clauses. It thus empowers the elders to control their own destiny by choosing to do the things that will bring the Lord’s promised blessings.

Section 60 notes

[1] “Revelation, 8 August 1831 [D&C 60],” p. 100, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-8-august-1831-dc-60/1.

[2] Times and Seasons 5 (15 March 1844): 464. Reynolds Cahoon, Journal, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

Section 61 notes

[1] See “Historical Introduction” to “Revelation, 12 August 1831 [D&C 61],” p. 101, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-august-1831-dc-61/1.

[2] Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, Ohio, 1834), 204.

[3] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 142, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/148. Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 164.

[4] Ezra Booth to Edward Partridge, 20 September 1831, in the Ohio Star, 24 November 1831.

[5] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 142, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/148.

[6] “Revelation, 12 August 1831 [D&C 61],” p. 101, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-august-1831-dc-61/1.

[7] William Phelps, “The Way of Journeying for the Saints of the Church of Christ,” The Evening and the Morning Star (December 1832): 1:52-53.

[8] Short History of WW Phelps’ Stay in Missouri, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

Section 62 notes

[1] “Revelation, 13 August 1831 [D&C 62],” p. 104, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-13-august-1831-dc-62/1.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 58, 59

Section 58

Joseph Smith, Bishop Edward Partridge and others were disappointed when they arrived in Independence, Missouri. They anticipated a thriving branch but found few converts. They thought the village was “nearly a century behind the times.”[1] The Lord had said in section 57 that Independence was the site for New Jerusalem, but culturally speaking it was far from the promised land. The Lord had given Bishop Partridge the job of turning the place into Zion, and the Bishop despaired. It would require unconquerable optimism in the face of discouraging circumstances.

A few days after Joseph’s arrival to Independence, Sidney Rigdon, Isaac Morley, Ezra Booth, Sidney and Elizabeth Gilbert, and the saints from Colesville, New York arrived as well. Joseph received Section 58 as “a Revelation given to the Elders who were assembled on the land of Zion Directions what to do.”[2]

“The revelation implied that the enjoyment of Zion lay in the future.”[3] Three times in its first four verses the revelation prophesied “much tribulation” before the establishment of Zion. The revelation tempers the saints’ zeal even as it promises a fulfillment of the prophesies of a promised land.

The revelation launches into a grand vision of Zion’s preparing a feast to which all nations shall be invited. “First, the rich and the learned, the wise and the noble; And after that cometh the day of my power; then shall the poor, the lame, and the blind, and the deaf, come in unto the marriage of the Lamb, and partake of the supper of the Lord, prepared for the great day to come” (D&C 58:10-11). These first few called to Zion have the privilege of laying its foundation and testifying of its potential. Their calling is to pioneer, to say as Martin Luther King, Junior did, “I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”[4]

Section 58 functions like a map that shows how to get from where we are to Zion.

It is a seldom used map and some have wandered in the wilderness for years, not understanding the Lord’s directions or preferring their “own way” (D&C 1:16). Those to whom the Lord spoke specifically in section 58 understood it and acted it out as commanded.

Bishop Partridge repented of his unbelief and blindness. Ezra Booth, by contrast, left the church and criticized Edward Partridge for gullibly continuing to believe in Zion.[5] It is not remarkable that Edward despaired that Zion would be established. That was entirely reasonable given the evidence before his eyes. The Lord called those eyes blind and invited the bishop to see what Joseph could see. “I see it, and it will be so,” Joseph said of Zion.[6]

The remarkable fact is that the intelligent, capable, prosperous Edward Partridge was willingly reoriented by Section 58. He followed it precisely. He wrote home to Lydia that his great desire to return home was surpassed by his calling. He told her of section 57’s command that his family join him in Zion (D&C 57:14), and section 58’s instructions to rely on personal revelation to arrange for the move as best they could (D&C 58:24-26).[7] Edward prepared Lydia for what she could expect when she joined him in Missouri. “We have to suffer and shall for some time, many privations here which you and I have not been much used to for years.” He knew very well that his devotion to Zion would mean an eternal farewell to his extended family and friends “unless they should be willing to forsake all for the sake of Christ, and be gathered with the saints of the most high God.”[8]

Edward Partridge humbly acknowledged his important calling, his shortcomings, and his inadequacies.

“You know I stand in an important station,” he confided to Lydia, “and as I am occasionally chastened I sometimes fear my station is above what I can perform to the acceptance of my Heavenly Father. I hope you and I may conduct ourselves as at last to land our souls in the heave of eternal rest. Pray that I may not fall.”[9] Lydia did pray, and she packed up their five daughters and made the difficult trek to Missouri to join Edward as commanded.[10] Falteringly, perhaps, but none have given more to Zion than Lydia and Edward Partridge.

“Martin Harris was the first man that the Lord called by name to consecrate his money, and lay the same at the feet of the Bishop in Jackson County” (D&C 58:35-36). “He willingly did it; he knew the work to be true; he knew that the word of the Lord through the Prophet Joseph was just as sacred as any word that ever came from the mouth of any Prophet from the foundation of the world. He consecrated his money and his substance, according to the word of the Lord. What for? As the revelation states, as an example to the rest of the Church.[11]

Sidney Rigdon drafted the description of Zion section 58 commanded, but the Lord rejected it and commanded him to try again (D&C 58:50, 63:55-56). Sidney dedicated Zion on August 2 as commanded in verse 57. The saints held the conference called for in verse 58. Edward Partridge prayed, Sidney Rigdon charged the saints to obey the law of consecration, Ziba Peterson confessed his sins, and Joseph exhorted the saints to obey the commands they had received and reaffirmed the promised blessings for doing so. The elders who had not yet arrived were shown section 58 when they did and obeyed verses 61-63 precisely.

Meanwhile, verse 64 continues to motivate saints who still live in the anxious space section 58 creates between the time-consuming requirements to preach the gospel globally and build Zion in the face of the imminent coming of Christ. If Joseph’s question, “when will Zion be built up in her glory,” is not yet fully answered, at least the church’s history since section 58 reveals how the revelation has worked itself out. The elders have gone forth to gather the righteous, first the rich, whose consecrations have put the church on a firm financial footing Edward Partridge could only dream of. In the last century we began to see the gospel blessings extended to more impoverished populations. Perhaps we are beginning to witness what the Lord called “the day of my power,” the day when his resources are distributed evenly among his faithful, consecrated saints, and all come to Zion to “partake of the supper of the Lord, prepared for the great day to come” (D&C 58:11).

Section 58 puts Edward Partridge in charge of beginning to get the feast on the table and sends the elders to every nation under heaven to invite the Lord’s children to come for supper.

Section 59

The August 7, 1831 revelation “instructing the saints how to keep the Sabbath and how to fast and pray” begins with the Lord’s blessings on the Colesville, New York saints, the first group to gather to Zion at his command. Those who live shall inherit the earth while those who die receive a crown, as Polly Knight, the matriarch of the Colesville saints, did the day the revelation came to Joseph.[1]

The revelation then reiterates the law of consecration, which is simply the two great commandments, in which all and love are the key words. Then follows a review of the Decalogue–the ten commandments–to which the Lord adds commands to thank God in all things, and to offer him a broken heart. He gives a specific logic for observing the Sabbath day: “That thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day” (D&C 59:10). The Sabbath is for offering oblations—that is, time, talents, and material resources—for the establishment of Zion. It is a day of fasting and prayer, or in other words, rejoicing and prayer (D&C 59:14).

The Lord makes a covenant with the saints in Zion: if they will keep the commandments thankfully and cheerfully yet soberly, he will give them the fulness of the earth—its plants and animals “for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul” (D&C 59:19).

Obedience to Section 59 results in consecration: the free offering of all the saints have for all God has. It is a counter-cultural revelation because when Joseph arrived in Independence, Missouri it was settled by “the basest of men” who reveled in “Sabbath breaking, horseracing, and gambling.”[2] “The only indications of its being Sunday,” one observer reported, was “the unusual gambling and noise and assemblies around taverns.”[3]

Section 59 tells the saints to behave completely differently from the world in which they are now living in order to keep themselves unsoiled by it.

More recently, President Gordon B. Hinckley observed how Latter-day Saints are forsaking the command to be counter-cultural, to be Zion in the midst of Babylon, by observing the Sabbath and the other commandments. President Hinckley declared that “the Sabbath of the Lord is becoming the play day of the people.” He emphasized, “Our strength for the future, our resolution to grow the Church across the world, will be weakened if we violate the will of the Lord in this important matter. He has so very clearly spoken anciently and again in modern revelation. We cannot disregard with impunity that which He has said.”[4] More recently, President Russel M. Nelson evoked and applied section 59 on Sabbath observance asking, “What sign will you give to the Lord to show your love for Him?”[5]

Joseph’s first impression of Zion was negative but the revelation changed his mind. It revealed aesthetics. Verses 16-20 rejoice in the created world, the “good things which come of the earth,” freely given by a sharing God to “please the eye and gladden the heart . . . to strengthen the body and enliven the soul.” It pleases “that he hath given all these things unto man” to use, to share, to enjoy. What displeases him is when mere mortals ungratefully take his creation for granted, abuse rather than use his resources, and usurp the creation “to excess.”

Section 59 reveals the owner of the Created world and invites his heirs in Zion to see themselves as stewards into whose hands the creation has been trusted, and who will be accountable to the Creator for what they do with it. “The land became beautiful in Joseph’s eyes.”[6] He later wrote about it in terms—beautiful, rich and fertile, fruitful, delightful, one of the most blessed places on the globe—that reflect the Lord’s aesthetics revealed in Section 59.

Section 58 notes

[1] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 127, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/133.

[2] “Revelation, 1 August 1831 [D&C 58],” p. 94, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-1-august-1831-dc-58/1.

[3] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 164.

[4] Martin Luther King, Junior, 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee.

[5] Booth thought that Joseph was too prone to joking and then again too easily irritated and provoked, that his revelations were “something short of infallible,” the products of “his own weak mind.” Ezra Booth in Ohio Star (November 24, 1831).

[6] Ezra Booth in Ohio Star (November 24, 1831).

[7] Edward Partridge to Lydia Partridge, August 5, 1831, Emily Partridge Papers, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

[8] Quoted in Scott H. Partridge, “Edward Partridge in Painesville, Ohio,” BYU Studies 42:1 (2003): 64.

[9] Quoted in Scott H. Partridge, “Edward Partridge in Painesville, Ohio,” BYU Studies 42:1 (2003): 64.

[10] Scott H. Partridge, “Edward Partridge in Painesville, Ohio,” BYU Studies 42:1 (2003): 64-65.

[11] Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, 18:160-61.

Section 59 notes

[1] “Revelation Book 1,” p. 98, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-book-1/84. “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 139, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/145.

[2] “‘Church History,’ 1 March 1842,” p. 708, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 5, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/church-history-1-march-1842/3.

[3] Quoted in “Historical Introduction,” “Revelation Book 1,” p. 98, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-7-august-1831-dc-59/1#historical-intro.

[4] President Gordon B. Hinckley, September 1997 General Conference.

[5] Elder Russell M. Nelson, April 2015 General Conference, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2015/04/the-sabbath-is-a-delight?lang=eng.

[6] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 163.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 51-57

Section 51

In the spring of 1831, Bishop Edward Partridge had a problem. It was his job to organize and settle the saints who were gathering from New York to Ohio. Leman Copley was a member of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing when he converted to the restored gospel in Ohio. He offered to let the Colesville saints settle on some of his 759 acres in Thompson.[1] Bishop Partridge asked Joseph how to organize the immigrant saints. Joseph asked the Lord, who gave Section 51, “A revelation given to the Bishop at Thompson Ohio May 20th 1831 concerning the property of the Church.”[2]

This revelation begins to implement the law of consecration. Initially it instructed Bishop Partridge to obtain a deed from Leman Copley for his land “if he harden not his heart.” Copley returned to his former faith, however, and rescinded his offer for the gathering saints to settle on his land. He did not give consent to Bishop Partridge obtaining the title to it.[3] When Section 51 was first published in 1835, its instructions about Bishop Partridge obtaining a deed to Copley’s land were long since irrelevant, and were omitted from the published version.[4]

The saints who had gathered on Copley’s property were told by the Lord to gather to Missouri instead (section 54). Bishop Partridge implement section 51 in Missouri. He purchased hundreds of acres and established a storehouse to supply the needs of the saints. He was sued by a fellow named Bates who had donated fifty dollars to purchase land, then decided he wanted it back.[5] The suit was granted, apparently on the grounds that the bishop did exactly what Section 51 originally said. He purchased the land in his own name and then leased parts of it to individual stewards while he remained, on behalf of the Lord, the legal owner.

Bishop Partridge must have felt like the law of the land prohibited him from carrying out Section 51. Joseph wrote to Bishop Partridge in Missouri in May 1833 to counsel him what to do, explaining much of Section 51 in the process. Bates had expected something tangible in return for his fifty dollars.[6] Joseph assured the bishop that he remained bound by the law of the Lord to receive consecrated property to purchase inheritances for the poor. Joseph emphasized that such offerings were legal and in no way coerced. “Any man has a right . . . agreeable to the laws of our country, to donate, give or consecrate all the he feels disposed to give.” Joseph counseled the bishop to ensure that all offerings were legal by making sure that donors understood they were giving money freely for the poor, not in exchange for anything temporal. “This way no man can take advantage of you in law,” Joseph wrote.

He also counseled the bishop to apply Section 51 by deeding pieces of land to saints as their “individual property.” Joseph called this “private stewardship,” not ownership. Bishop Partridge issued several such deeds based on Section 51. (See Titus Billings example.) When Section 51 was first published in 1835, much of verse 5 was added to keep folks like Bates from suing the Lord’s bishop. Joseph wrote to Bishop Partridge that the revelation in D&C 51:5 was given so “that rich men cannot have power to disinherit the poor by obtaining again that which they have consecrated.”[7]

Section 52

Acting on Section 44’s commandment to convene a conference, Joseph promised the priesthood leaders a blessing if they would come humbly and faithfully. “Therefore,” John Whitmer wrote, “the elders assembled from the East, and the West, from the North and the South.”[1] Joseph presided over the series of priesthood meetings from June 3-5, 1831. He and others prophesied at the conference, rebuked the devil, and ordained the first high priests in the church. The next day he received Section 52, which he described as “Directions to the Elders of the Church of Christ.”[2]

Section 52 gives the saints knowledge and therefore power to discern devilish counterfeits from the Lord’s power. Satan tried mightily to deceive the saints from the time missionaries first arrived in Ohio through the priesthood meetings just prior to Section 52. He mimicked spiritual gifts and convinced many people they were under the influence of the Holy Ghost. Joseph taught that “some, by a long face and sanctimonious prayers, and very pious sermons, had power to lead the minds of the ignorant and unwary.”[3] The fact that someone speaks well or is overwhelmed with emotion is not evidence that their actions are acceptable to God. Section 52 adds important criteria for discerning. Do those overcome with emotion regain their composure and teach wise, restored truth? Do those who pray, whose attitude seems Christian, obey the ordinances Jesus has established his church and kingdom? Do they follow the revealed order of the Savior’s church? Do excellent speakers obey Christ’s ordinances? Christ does not accept the sanctimonious prayers or pious sermons of those who are unwilling to obey his ordinances, and neither should the saints. The knowledge in Section 52 empowers the saints to separate satanic imitations from the Lord’s power.

Section 52 is exciting. This is the first revelation to identify Missouri as the location of Zion, the saints’ inheritance. It calls twenty-eight men to travel to Missouri for a conference at which the Lord will reveal more specifically the location for New Jerusalem. The saints received Section 52 with great anticipation and many went to great lengths to obey its commands.

Joseph and others the Lord called to travel with him left Kirtland, Ohio in mid-June and arrived in Independence, Missouri about a month later. Most of the others who were called followed, taking different routes and making converts along the way, as Section 52 commanded. The Lord fulfilled his Section 52 promise to reveal more about Zion (See Section 57).

Section 52 draws the battle lines for a culture war. Missouri, it says, is the place the Lord chose for the saints’ inheritance. In 1831, however, Missouri was inhabited by people the Lord called “enemies” (verse 42). The Lord’s straightforwardness makes some readers squeamish. It doesn’t sound to them like their idea of Jesus Christ. If so, just keep reading the scriptures until the sentimental image of Jesus is replaced by the actual Christ whose voice dominates the Doctrine and Covenants. He sees things as they are and will be and speaks the truth. He knows who are his friends and who are his enemies. He demonstrates this knowledge in Section 52 and elsewhere in the Doctrine and Covenants. We come to know him by hearing his voice.

Section 53

Sidney was an entrepreneur a business partner of Newel Whitney in northern Ohio when the first missionaries to that area converted him in 1830. In the late spring of 1831, Sidney may have felt left out. He was not named in section 52 among the many missionaries called by the Lord to journey to Missouri that summer, and Joseph had prophesied that “the elders would soon have large congregations to speak to and they must soon take their departure into the regions west.” So Sidney asked Joseph what the Lord had in mind for him to do.[1]

The Lord had important work for Sidney and his family to do. He and his wife Elizabeth traveled to Missouri with Joseph Smith to obey section 53. There, at the Lord’s command (section 57), Sidney established a store to provide for the saints. He helped bishop Partridge purchase land for Zion. When the saints were driven from Jackson County in 1833, Sidney was among the church leaders who tried to pacify the mob and then obtain justice. The dreaded disease cholera slew Sidney in the summer of 1834. Until the end he was anxiously engaged in the cause of Zion.

Section 54

Newel Knight led the New York saints to Thompson, Ohio, where they settled on Leman Copley’s land and “commenced work in all good faith thinking to obtain a living by the sweat of the brow.”[1] Then Section 51 instructed Bishop Partridge to obtain a deed from Leman for the land “if he harden not his heart.”[2] But after obeying section 49’s command to preach the gospel to members of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, Leman forsook his faith in the restored gospel and returned to that Society.[3] Then he ordered the saints off his land.

Joseph Knight said they “had to leave his farm and pay sixty dollars damage for putting up his houses and planting his ground.”[4] Where should they go and what should they do to provide for themselves? Joseph’s history says that the saints in Thompson, “not knowing what to do, sent in their elders for me to inquire of the Lord for them.” He did, and the Lord answered with Section 54.[5]

The eternal Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified for the sins of mankind speaks to Newel Knight, presiding Elder of the saints in Thompson. “You must stand fast in the office whereunto I have appointed you,” the Savior says. The Lord makes repentance and humility the conditions on which the saints in Thompson will escape their enemies. Because Leman Copley broke his covenant to consecrate land, the covenant is null and void. The Lord blesses the saints who have kept the covenant. He commands them to flee from their enemies by traveling to Missouri as a group, appointing a treasurer to pay fares and tolls along the way.

Western Missouri which borders on the territory recently set apart by the U.S. government for Native Americans to settle. The Lord commands the saints to find ways to make a living after they arrive until Zion can be established and land provided for them to inhabit. He commands them to patiently endure hardships until the Lord’s coming. He will reward those who seek him. The souls of these early converts will rest with the Lord.

As a result of Section 54, the saints from Colesville, New York continued their group trek all the way to Missouri. Led ably by Newel Knight, they became the nucleus of the church in Jackson County and gave their lives to building Zion.

Section 55

William Phelps edited the Ontario Phoenix newspaper in Canandaigua, New York. He was all mixed up inside. He aspired to prestigious offices, could be strikingly arrogant and condescending, and within weeks of the publication of the Book of Mormon he gained a deep and abiding testimony of it. After several months he visited Joseph Smith and determined to “quit the folly of my way, and the fancy and fame of this world, and seek the Lord and his righteousness.”[1] Shortly after most of the saints in New York left to gather to Ohio, William gave up his newspaper and set out with his family to gather with the saints. He arrived in Kirtland in June 1831 and told Joseph he had come “to do the will of the Lord.” Joseph asked the Lord what that was and the Lord answered with section 55.[2]

In section 55, the Lord continues to recruit talent into his Church to lay the foundation of Zion. William was called to assist Oliver Cowdery as a printer, editor, and writer for the church, including producing books for the education of children. This calling requires William to go to Missouri with Joseph and Sidney to settle and work there. The Lord commands Joseph Coe to go with them also, and promises to reveal more later according to his will.

William Phelps obeyed section 55. He submitted to baptism and confirmation. He traveled with Joseph to Missouri and became the Lord’s printer there. He published the church’s first newspaper, hymnal, and Joseph’s revelations. Joseph Coe also responded to the Lord and traveled to Missouri to obey section 55.

Section 56

Think of section 56 as an emergency mission transfer. In section 52, Ezra Thayer had been called as Thomas Marsh’s companion on a mission to Missouri. Thomas got ready to go as called. Ezra balked. The same revelation called Newel Knight and Selah Griffin as companions to the same mission. When the saints from New York were not able to stay on the Copley farm and the Lord directed them to move on to Missouri in section 54, he called Newel Knight to remain as their leader. So Thomas Marsh and Selah Griffin needed new companions. The Lord assigns them to each other in section 56.

Some readers are disturbed by this section and others like it when the Lord changes course. How can that be, some wonder, if the Lord is always the same and knows everything? It seems inconsistent. Close reading of section 56 and revelations related to it shows it to be consistent with the Lord’s way, however. He locates agency in individuals and then responds, as needed, to the way those people choose to act. Leman Copley could have kept his covenant to let the New York saints settle on his land, freeing Newel Knight to go on the Missouri mission. Ezra Thayer could have accepted the call to go with Thomas Marsh on the Missouri mission.

If the Lord had simply used his foreknowledge to avoid calling them to the work, they could not be free to choose whether to obey his will or not. He would have predetermined their choices instead of empowering them to choose for themselves. The Lord knew well when he called Ezra that he would have to choose to “humble himself” and that he would join Thomas only “if he be obedient to my commandments.”[1] Moreover, the Lord revoked the commandment for Newel to be Selah’s companion “in consequences of the stiffneckedness of my people . . . and their rebellions.”[2]

Thomas Marsh and Selah Griffin obeyed Section 56. As Thomas put it, they “journeyed to Missouri preaching by the way.”[3] From the beginning of the restoration, the Lord has extended calls to people who will not accept them or who fail to fulfill them. The Lord revokes the refused callings and rearranges assignments and the work gets done without the help of the unwilling. That’s a vastly superior plan to never calling anyone who might fall short or refuse to serve. Revelations like section 56 honor our choices and prophesy their sometimes painful consequences.

Section 57

Section 57 is the first revelation Joseph received in Missouri. After receiving the commandment to travel there from Ohio in section 52, it took Joseph two weeks to prepare and a month to make the long trip. Mindful of prophecies of Isaiah, Joseph asked the Lord for details concerning their fulfillment: “when will the wilderness blossom as the rose; when will Zion be built up in her glory, and where will thy Temple stand unto which all nations shall come in the last days.”[1] Joseph described how the Lord answered with section 57.[2]

The Lord identified Independence, Missouri as the center of the place he appointed and consecrated for the gathering of the saints. It is the promised land, the site for New Jerusalem, the city of Zion. As if Joseph was a disoriented pedestrian, the Lord directs him to the spot where the temple should be built just a few blocks west of the courthouse. The Lord desires the saints to purchase that land and every tract they can in what is now Kansas City (all the way to the territory created in 1831 for Native Americans) and Independence. This land is ultimately to be inherited by faithful saints.

The Lord commands Bishop Partridge to carry out his duties outlined in sections 41, 42, and 51. The Lord appoints Sidney Gilbert as the Bishop’s real estate agent, with directions to establish a store to supply the saints’ needs and to use the revenue to buy the land. Gilbert is also to obtain a license from the Indian agents to permit him get involved in supplying the Native Americans. The point of that is to get access to give the restored gospel to Native Americans and employment and resources for the saints.

The Lord appoints William Phelps as the church’s printer and commands him to set up shop in Independence and use his skills to obtain as much money as he righteously can in order to build Zion. Oliver Cowdery is to assist him. The Lord commands these four men to become “planted” in Independence, along with their families, as soon as possible in order to begin the buying and building of Zion. They are to prepare for the gathering of other saints and to provide inheritances for them as they come. The Lord promises to provide further directions to that end.

Sidney Rigdon dedicated the Land of Zion on August 1 and Joseph dedicated its temple site the following day. Bishop Partridge bought the 63 acres that included this site and over 2,000 acres in the area. These he technically owned, but he deeded many of them as stewardships to Latter-day Saints for their inheritances as sections 51 and 57 instructed him to do. Sidney Gilbert established a store across the street from the courthouse the Lord mentioned, and William Phelps established a printing office nearby. These men and their families went to work to build New Jerusalem.

When the printing office was burned down two years later and Bishop Partridge was dragged from his home to be tarred and feathered on the courthouse square, it was not because a few loud-mouthed Latter-day Saints had created hard feelings among the Missourians. It was because the men named in section 57 and their families were doing what the revelation commanded them to do: printing the Lord’s revelations, legally buying the Lord’s land to provide inheritances for His people, and operating a store to facilitate the gathering of Israel. Having violently attacked the saints, a group of antagonistic citizens drafted a “Memorandum of agreement” between them. It stipulated that the saints stop doing exactly what section 57 commanded them to do.[3]

Antagonistic Missourians hated Zion. No wonder the Lord had called them “enemies” (D&C 52:42).

Section 51 notes

[1] Geauga County Tax Records 1832, 230. Dean C. Jessee, editor, The Papers of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1989), 1:480. Dean C. Jessee, editor, “Joseph Knight’s Recollection of Early Mormon History,” BYU Studies 17:1 (1976).

[2] “Revelation, 20 May 1831 [D&C 51],” p. 86, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-20-may-1831-dc-51/1.

[3] Newel and Joseph Knight sources.

[4] Compare “Revelation, 20 May 1831 [D&C 51],” p. 86, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-20-may-1831-dc-51/1, with “Doctrine and Covenants, 1835,” p. 150, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/doctrine-and-covenants-1835/158.

[5] “The Elders Stationed in Zion to the Churches Abroad,” The Evening and the Morning Star 2:14 (July 1822): 109.

[6] Painesville, Ohio Telegraph 26 April 1833, printed in Cook, 135.

[7] “Letter to Edward Partridge, 2 May 1833,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-edward-partridge-2-may-1833/1.

Section 52 notes

[1] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 27, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/31.

[2] “Revelation, 6 June 1831 [D&C 52],” p. 87, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-6-june-1831-dc-52/1.

[3] “History, 1838–1856, volume C-1 [2 November 1838–31 July 1842],” p. 872, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-c-1-2-november-1838-31-july-1842/51.

Section 53 notes

[1] Historical Introduction, Revelation, 8 June 1831 [D&C 53], The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-8-june-1831-dc-53/2#historical-intro. “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 121, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/127.

Section 54 notes

[1] Newel Knight Autobiography, 30.

[2] “Revelation, 20 May 1831 [D&C 51],” p. 86, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-20-may-1831-dc-51/1.

[3] Dean C. Jessee, editor, “Joseph Knight’s Recollection of Early Mormon History,” BYU Studies 17:1 (1976): 29-39.

[4] Joseph Knight, Jr., Incidents of History 1827-1844, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

[5] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 121, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/127. “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 29, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/33.

Section 55 notes

[1] William W. Phelps, “Letter No. 6,” LDS Messenger and Advocate, Apr. 1835, 1:97.

[2] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 124, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/130.

Section 56 notes

[1] “Revelation, 15 May 1831,” p. 85, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-15-may-1831/1.

[2] “Revelation, 15 June 1831 [D&C 56],” p. 92, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-15-june-1831-dc-56/2.

[3] “History of Thomas B. Marsh, Written by Himself,” Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

Section 57 notes

[2] “Revelation, 20 July 1831 [D&C 57],” p. 93, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-20-july-1831-dc-57/1.

[3] “Letterbook 2,” p. 54, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 2, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letterbook-2/59.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 49, 50

Section 49

Ann Lee and her family were early Shakers, or members of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, as they called themselves. At age 22, Ann believed she had a revelation that she was to be God’s messenger. She became the leader of the group in 1772 and led her few followers from England to America two years later, settling near Albany, New York. The Believers struggled during the Revolution but gradually gained momentum from the same series of spiritual awakenings that gave rise to the restoration. Having lost all four of her children to death as infants before being abandoned by her adulterous husband, Lee died in 1784. The Believers continued to thrive in America, however, leading to the establishment of several communities including North Union, Ohio, just a few miles from Joseph Smith in Kirtland.[1] The Saints and the Believers were neighborly and traded with each other.[2]

The Believers believed that Christ instituted God’s first church, which subsequently apostatized. They believed, therefore, that God would restore his church. Believers acknowledged the goodness of “real reformers,” but, asserting that both Catholic and Protestant Christianity were apostate from Christ’s church, they held that “a true Church could have originated only by a new revelation from God to some one person.” They believed that George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, prepared the world for God to establish his church again. Then “arose Ann Lee and her little company, to whom Christ appeared the second time.” They held that Ann Lee, “by strictly obeying the light revealed within her, became righteous even as Jesus was righteous. She acknowledged Jesus Christ as her Head and Lord, and formed the same character as a spiritual woman that he formed as a spiritual man.” She was, in a sense, “the second appearing of Christ.”

Believers held that marriage is a worldly, not divine, institution (citing Matthew 22:30) and that sexual relations were ungodly. The choice to leave the world and live celibately was, in Shaker terms, to “take up the cross.” They rejected resurrection and looked forward to shedding their flesh at death to live a wholly spiritual afterlife. They believed in individual moral agency, noting that only those who chose to obey the Lord will be saved, and that coercion is wrong. They believed in confessing sin but not in the need for redeeming ordinances such as baptism. Believers advocated temperance, including eating meat sparingly if at all. Shaker explanations for worshipping God by singing and dancing sound like D&C 136:28, where the Lord acknowledges that repentant, forgiven souls long to sing and dance as forms of prayer and thanksgiving. Believers taught consecration and stewardship of property. They rejected all forms of exploitation—especially men of women, capital owners of laborers, and mankind of the environment. They envisioned God as both Father and Mother. They spoke of “our Eternal Heavenly Mother,” citing Genesis 1:27—”Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. So God created man in his own image, male and female.“[3]

Oliver Cowdery spent a few days among the North Union Believers and left several copies of the Book of Mormon with them in 1830, promising to return. Ashbel Kitchell, their large, impressive leader, kept thinking about Oliver’s teachings. He decided that “if God had any hand in that work, he would inform me by some means, that I might know what to do, either by letting me have an interview with an angel, or by some other means give me knowledge of my duty.”[4]

A Believer named Leman Copley embraced the restored gospel. In May 1831, he came to Joseph “apparently honest hearted, but still retaining ideas that the Believers were right in some particulars of their faith; and, in order to have a more perfect understanding on the subject,” Joseph’s history says, “I inquired of the Lord and received the following revelation.”[5] The Lord revealed Section 49 because Joseph did not know exactly where Shaker beliefs and the restored gospel overlapped or diverged. Copley “was anxious that some of the elders should go to his former brethren and preach the gospel.”[6] Section 49 assigned Sidney Rigdon and Parley Pratt to go with Copley to deliver section 49 to the Believers.

Section 49 clarifies the truth and error in Shaker doctrine. Perhaps that is why we hear Heavenly Father’s first person voice in this revelation, a rare treat. Is he speaking to clarify the nature of the Godhead? Often in the Doctrine and Covenants we hear Christ speaking of himself as the Son of God. Section 49 ends that way, but most of the revelation is in Heavenly Father’s voice. This is one of only two places in the Doctrine and Covenants where we hear the Father speak of Christ as his Only Begotten Son.[7]

The revelation clarifies that Ann Lee was not Christ, nor is any man that comes along saying he is. Christ will come with power from heaven, having sent his angels in advance to sanctify the earth with fire. Section 49 clarifies that the Believers’ err in thinking marriage is a temporary, human institution. Because the Believers do not understand premortal life and God’s plan to embody his children on earth and make them immortal by resurrection and fully divine by exaltation, their opposition to marriage and procreation is counter to his plan. They are thwarting it and section 49 tells them so. Similarly, Believers erred in rejecting the ordinance of baptism and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Section 49 affirms Believers beliefs that are aligned with restored truths. They and the Lord see eye to eye on the evils of inequality and on exploiting the environment needlessly (D&C 49:20-21).

Sidney and Leman left the day the revelation was given, a Saturday, and were in North Union in time to witness the Believers’ evening meeting. They visited with Ashabel Kitchell that evening, discussing whether sex, even in marriage, was Christian. The elders spent the night among the Believers. Parley arrived in North Union early on the Sabbath and asked his companions how things were going. Sidney told him of the last evening’s discussion, and that Ashabel had invited them not to debate doctrines but join the Believers for worship. Parley refused to sit by silently. “They had come with the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he contended, “and the people must hear it.” The missionaries sat through the service respectfully. Afterwards Sidney rose and told them he had a message from the Lord Jesus Christ specifically for them. “Could he have the privilege of delivering it? He was told he might.” Sidney read Section 49 and asked the Believers to receive it.

Here was the answer to Ashabel Kitchell’s prayer that God would tell him whether the gospel Oliver Cowdery taught was true. Ashabel rejected it, saying: “The Christ that dictated that I was well acquainted with, and had been from a boy, that I had been much troubled to get rid of his influence, and I wished to have nothing more to do with him; and as for any gift he had authorized them to exercise among us, I would release them & their Christ from any further burden about us, and take all the responsibility on myself.”

“You cannot,” Sidney Rigdon protested. “I wish to hear the people speak.” Ashabel advised the Believers to make their feelings known. They echoed their leader and Sidney relented to their will. Parley Pratt rose, took off his coat, and shook it in front of them “as a testimony against us,” Ashabel said, “that we had rejected the word of the Lord Jesus.”
“You filthy beast,” he responded to Parley. “Dare you presume to come in here, and try to imitate a man of God by shaking your filthy tail; confess your sins and purge your soul from your lusts, and your other abominations before you ever presume to do the like again.”[8]

What a scene that must have been. By Ashabel’s account he cowed the missionaries with his forceful rebuke, but Parley Pratt was not easily intimidated. He got back on his horse and went straight home to Kirtland. Sidney stayed for supper with the Believers. Leman stayed overnight and decided to reunite with the Believers. Years later, Parley summed up the drama with a single line. “We fulfilled this mission, as we were commanded, in a settlement of strange people, near Cleveland, Ohio; but they utterly refused to hear or obey the gospel.”[9]

Section 50

What happens when young missionaries convert well over a hundred people in a short time, and then the missionaries and the most mature spiritual leaders among the converts leave town? According to John Whitmer, “the enemy of all righteous [gets] hold of some of those who profesed to be his followers, because they had not sufficent knowledge to detect him in all his devices.”[1] According to a local newspaper in northeastern Ohio, “Immediately after Mr. R[igdon] and the four pretended prophets left Kirtland, a scene of the wildest enthusiasm was exhibited, chiefly, however, among the young people; they would fall, as without strength, roll upon the floor, and, so mad were they that even the females were seen in a cold winter day, lying under the bare canopy of heaven, with no couch or pillow but the fleecy snow.”[2]

When one of the missionaries, Parley Pratt, returned from Missouri, he noticed that “some very strange spiritual operations were manifested, which were disgusting, rather than edifying. Some persons would seem to swoon away, and make unseemly gestures, and be drawn or disfigured in their countenances. Others would fall into ecstacies, and be drawn into contortions, cramp, fits, etc. Others would seem to have visions and revelations, which were not edifying, and which were not congenial to the doctrine and spirit of the gospel. In short, a false and lying spirit seemed to be creeping into the Church.”[3]

John Whitmer reported that after Joseph arrived on the scene, “these things grieved the servants of the Lord.” They counseled together at Joseph’s home. They did not know what to do, so Joseph sought and received section 50 “in consequence of their not being perfectly acquainted with the different operations of the Spirits which are abroad in the earth.”[4]

In section 50, Christ condescends to the elders’ intellectual level in order to be understood. He reaches them where they are and enlightens them. This kind of teaching has results beyond mastery of facts. As a result of it, the weak become strong, the deceived become discerning. Though Satan had power over the deceived elders, those who “attend to the words” of this revelation are promised power over him. “The spirits shall be subject unto you,” Christ assures them on the condition that they act out his instructions precisely. Does it work?

Before the revelation, Jared Carter had been confused by and powerless to act in the face of the strange things he witnessed. After the revelation he was neither confused or powerless. He was conducting a sacrament meeting in Amherst, Ohio with his companion when a young woman fell to the floor. Jared, doubting that the Holy Spirit would interrupt the sacrament, thought a false spirit was at work. He suggested to his companion that they “try that Spirit according to the revelation that God had given.” He explained how they followed verses 31-34 precisely: “We kneeled down and asked our Heavenly Father in the name of Christ, that if that spirit which the sister possessed was of him, he would give it to us. We prayed in faith, but we did not receive the Spirit.”

Jared’s companion made a weak statement “which was not proclaiming against the spirit” as verse 32 commands. “I arose and proclaimed against it with a loud voice,” Jared wrote, reflecting his intimate knowledge of the revelation. Most of the congregation objected, sure that the young woman was full of the Holy Ghost like the queen in Alma 19. But this was a counterfeit Jared discerned by the Holy Ghost and rebuked by the power of the priesthood. He lost much of his influence among that group of saints but, as he wrote, “I received assurance that I had the approbation of my Heavenly Father, which was better than the good will of many deceived brethren.”[5]

Section 50 puzzles some modern students, who sometimes jump too hastily to the conclusion that anyone who sees a vision or falls to the floor unconscious or speaks in an unknown tongue is clearly not experiencing the Holy Ghost. If those were the criteria for discerning, we would have to reject large parts of the Book of Mormon and several sections of the Doctrine and Covenants along with much of our history. It is not that simple. Satan is abroad deceiving. As Section 50 says, a knee-jerk reaction against false spirits can actually lead a person to be “seized” with a false spirit themselves. Ironically, a smug certainty that one would not be fool enough to fall for the kinds of things some early converts did may be an indication that one has already been deceived. Joseph taught, “it is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the Devil, by which he deceives the whole world.”[6]

Discerning spirits takes a sound mind, but it is a spiritual, not primarily an intellectual, process. To gain power over false spirits, one must obey the voice of Jesus Christ, have him cleanse and purify them, and learn the difference between light and darkness. For Joseph Smith, Jared Carter and many others, that lesson has been learned by experiencing both and learning to recognize the difference.

Like Jared Carter, several elders acted out the revelation and got the church back in order. Parley Pratt told how he obeyed the Lord’s command in verse 37. “Joseph Wakefield and myself visited several branches of the Church, rebuking the wrong spirits which had crept in among them, setting in order things that were wanting.”[7]

Section 49 notes

[1] F.W. Evans, Believers Compendium (1859), chapter XI.

[2] Lawrence R. Flake, “A Shaker View of a Mormon Mission,” BYU Studies 20:1 (1979), 94-99.

[3] F.W. Evans, Believers Compendium (1859), chapters III-X.

[4] Lawrence R. Flake, “A Shaker View of a Mormon Mission,” BYU Studiies 20:1 (1979), 94-99.

[5] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 112, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/118.

[6] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 26, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/30.

[7] “Revelation, 7 May 1831 [D&C 49],” p. 80, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-7-may-1831-dc-49/1.

[8] Lawrence R. Flake, “A Shaker View of a Mormon Mission,” BYU Studiies 20:1 (1979), 94-99.

[9] Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, revised and enhanced edition, edited by Scot Facer Proctor and Maurine Jensen Proctor (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2000), 69-70.

Section 50 notes

[1] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 10, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/14.

[2] [Matthew S. Clapp], “Mormonism,” Painesville (OH) Telegraph, 15 Feb. 1831, [1] –[2], italics in original.

[3] Parley P. Pratt, The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, Edited by Parley P. Pratt Jr. New York: Russell Brothers, 1874), 65.

[4] “Revelation, 9 May 1831 [D&C 50],” p. 82, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-9-may-1831-dc-50/1.

[5] Autobiography of Jared Carter, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

[6] Joseph Smith, Journal, 2 January 1843, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

[7] The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, revised and enhanced edition, edited by Scot Facer Proctor and Maurine Jensen Proctor (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2000), 79.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 46, 47, 48

Section 46

Like several other revelations Joseph received shortly after relocating to Kirtland, Ohio, section 46 fights deception. The revelation is known for its list of spiritual gifts, but the Lord presents them as part of a larger rationale that may not be easy to grasp. The Lord’s command for us to earnestly seek the gifts of the Spirit is so that we will not be deceived. If saints live in the light of the Holy Ghost, they will not be deceived. If they do not have the Spirit, they will be deceived. Joseph taught that someone “who has none of the gifts has not faith; and he deceives himself if he supposes he has.”[1]

The revelation arose from a conflict between missionaries. Some returned to Kirtland from Cleveland having had an awful experience. They were preaching when a deceiver came forward and knelt as if to pray, but then led an attack. His cohorts blew out the candles and threw inkstands and books at the speaker. Some missionaries understandably wanted to restrict attendance at their meetings as a result of this abuse. Others opposed this idea, citing 3 Nephi 18:22 where the Lord commands the church “not to forbid any man from coming unto you when ye shall meet together.” Both positions seemed justified. The saints needed further light. “Therefore,” wrote John Whitmer, “the Lord deigned to speak on this subject, that his people might come to understanding, and said, that he had always given to his Elders to conduct all meetings as they were led by the spirit.”[2]

The Lord knows very well what the Book of Mormon says in 3 Nephi 18:22-34 about allowing everyone who wants to worship with the saints to do so. However, it is always the case that the elders should conduct meetings by the Holy Ghost. There may be times when exceptions to what the Book of Mormon says are in order. How will those exceptional cases be known? By the Spirit.

The saints must prayerfully, gratefully seek the Holy Spirit in holiness, with honest motives, a clear conscience, and concern about eternal consequences. Otherwise they are likely to be seduced by evil spirits, doctrines of devils, or commandments of men. Section 46 commands saints to beware of these deceptions, and promises them they will not be deceived if they seek earnestly the gifts of the Holy Ghost and always remembering their intended purposes to benefit those who love the Lord and keep all his commandments, and those who seek to do so. The gifts of the Spirit are not given to satisfy selfish motives. They are to be shared, the Lord explains. Not all saints have every gift, but all have at least one gift. Some have one, some another, and thus by sharing everyone gains access to all the gifts.

When asked by one skeptic whether one could be saved simply by repenting and being baptized but not seeking the Holy Ghost, Joseph made an analogy. “Suppose I am traveling and am hungry, and meet with a man and tell him I am hungry; and he tells me to go yonder, there is a house for entertainment, go and knock and you must conform to all the rules of the house, or you cannot satisfy your hunger; knock, call for food, sit down and eat and I go and knock and ask for food and sit down to the table, but do not eat, shall I satisfy my hunger? No! I must eat: the gifts are the food.”[3]

Section 47

The day the Savior restored his Church, he commanded the saints to keep records (D&C 21:1). Oliver Cowdery assumed the responsibility to do so, then the Lord called him on a mission. John Whitmer, meanwhile, returned from a mission and “was appointed by the voice of the Elders to keep the Church record.” Joseph asked him to also write and preserve a history of the church. John didn’t want to. “I would rather not do it,” he explained, “but observed that the will of the Lord be done, and if he desires it, I desire that he would manifest it through Joseph the Seer.”[1]

That’s when Joseph asked and received section 47. It assigns John to preserve the Church’s history and also to copy Joseph’s revelations. John accepted his revealed assignments. He was sustained by the church at a special conference in April 1831, a month after the revelation, and began writing in June.[2] “I shall proceed to continue this record,” his first sentence says, “being commanded of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to write the things that transpire in this church.”[3] John was not near as good a historian as Oliver. His history is an important but sketchy source that became quite cynical when John apostatized in 1838. John was faithful to his calling as a transcriber, however. Many of the earliest revelation manuscripts that exist are copies in his handwriting.[4]

Joseph Smith had lived in John Whitmer’s home. John had scribed part of the Book of Mormon as Joseph translated. What does it tell us about Joseph Smith and the restoration that someone who knew him as well as John did would resist obeying Joseph’s personal counsel and then obey a revelation received through Joseph? The people who knew Joseph best “accepted the voice in the revelations as the voice of God, investing in the revelations the highest authority, even above Joseph Smith’s counsel. In the revelations, they believed, god himself spoke, not a man.”[5]

Section 48

The literal gathering of Israel and building of New Jerusalem raise questions. Section 48 was given to answer some of them. Sections 37 and 38 inspired saints in New York to move to Ohio in the fall and winter of 1830-1831. Section 41 called Edward Partridge to be their bishop. Section 42 gave them the law of consecration to live by and gave the bishop responsibility for “the properties of my church” and “the poor and the needy.” It also told Bishop Partridge to obtain places where the New York saints to settle.[1]

As spring of 1831 arrived in Ohio and saints from New York with it, the bishop became anxious for more specific instructions and answers.[2] It is premature, the Lord says, to try to build New Jerusalem yet. Rather, let the New York saints get settled as best they can first. Then the Lord will reveal more about New Jerusalem. Then he will appoint people to lay its foundation. “Then shall ye begin to be gathered with your families” (D&C 48:6).

Section 48 answered Bishop Partridge’s questions and mapped out and orderly, step-by-step process for building and inhabiting New Jerusalem based on previous and future revelation. It also answers common questions related to the law of consecration. Is saving contrary to consecration? What about “obtaining” money? Section 48 clarifies that one’s motives matter very much when it comes to saving and obtaining. It commands the saints, as prophets have since, to save all they can for righteous purposes. It commands them to earn all they can “in righteousness” so they can build Zion. It is a restatement of the Lord’s command to seek his Kingdom first and foremost. Earning and saving for that reason is not only justified. It is commanded.

Section 46 notes

[1] “History, 1838–1856, volume D-1 [1 August 1842–1 July 1843],” p. 1434, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-d-1-1-august-1842-1-july-1843/77.

[2] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 23, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/27.

[3] “Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 1, 21 December 1842–10 March 1843,” p. 46, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-december-1842-june-1844-book-1-21-december-1842-10-march-1843/52.

Section 47 notes

[1] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 24, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/28.

[2] “Minute Book 2,” p. 3, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minute-book-2/5.

[3] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 1, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/5.

[4] “Revelation Book 1,” The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-book-1/1.

[5] Richard L. Bushman, Believing History : Latter-day Saint Essays, edited by Reid L. Neilson and Jed Woodworth (New York : Columbia University Press, 2004), 258-59.

Section 48 notes

[1] “Revelation, 9 February 1831 [D&C 42:1–72],” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-9-february-1831-dc-421-72/1.

[2] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 23, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/27.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 45

Section 45

Joseph Smith bought a King James Version of the Bible at Egbert Grandin’s Palmyra, New York bookstore while the Book of Mormon was being printed upstairs. Shortly after the church was restored in 1830, Joseph’s main task became revising this Bible. He called the revision his new translation. He began with Genesis and received by revelation much restored scripture, including the Book of Moses that is now in the Pearl of Great Price.

The Book of Moses explains how Enoch led his people to unitedly eliminate poverty and live with one heart and one mind “in process of time” (Moses 7:21). One imagines that by March 1831 Joseph was slogging through less compelling parts of the Old Testament, trying to stay awake while reading about who begat whom and so on and so on.

Joseph’s history says, “false reports, lies, and fo[o]lish stories were published in the newspapers, and circulated in every direction, to prevent people from investigating the work, or embracing the faith. . . . But to the joy of the saints who had to struggle against every thing that prejudice and wickedness could invent, I received the following,” referring to section 45.[1]

Section 45 is an unusual revelation. It is a commentary on one of the most complicated and even contested passages of the Bible. That’s not remarkable. There is no shortage of interpreters of Jesus’ Olivet discourse. The remarkable thing is that the interpreter in section 45 is the Savior himself. This is the finest text in the world for understanding Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. One could go to any number of commentaries on Matthew 24 and find all kinds of analysis. These would be helpful, perhaps, but section 45 is the only source on earth in which the Savior of the world interprets and applies his own Olivet discourse.

Section 45 cements a connection between the Old Testament, New Testament, and the restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith. The Savior who reveals it is the “God of Enoch,” about whom Joseph has recently learned so much in his revision of Genesis and reception of the Book of Moses. The Savior gave the discourse to his disciples on the Mount of Olives, and here he is in Section 45 interpreting and applying it to the Latter-day Saints.

Section 45 laces together the dispensations of Enoch, the Savior and his apostles, and the fullness of times. Overwhelming wickedness and pending calamities are common themes in each. Always the outnumbered righteous seek safety, peace, and refuge. They seek Zion. Section 45 gives coherence to the past, present, and future. One sees in it the Lord’s plans and purposes being accomplished.

At the point of highest tension in the Savior’s discourse, just as he is explaining to the apostles about the extreme wickedness, violence, and calamities that are coming, he interjects to say that at that point the apostles “were troubled.” Then he restores part of the sermon missing from the Bible, a part that makes sense of all the rest: “I said unto them: Be not troubled, for, when all these things shall come to pass, ye may know that the promises which have been made unto you shall be fulfilled” (D&C 45:34-35). Without revelations like this one, the world might seem like a violent, purposeless mess. With it one need not be troubled, for one can see that Zion rises in contrast to the world and that calamities portend the fulfillment of Christ’s promises that Zion is about to be established.

Section 45 justifies optimism in the face of evil and tumult. Sister Patricia Holland told about her fears when anxiety became widespread and acute after a genocide in Kosovo, a school massacre in Colorado, murders in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, damage resulting from a terrible storm that hit her home, and the pending dawn of the year 2000. Over the howling wind she asked her apostle husband if these events were the ones prophesied to immediately precede the Savior’s second coming. “No,” he replied, “but wouldn’t it be wonderful if they were.”[2]

Notes

[1] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 104, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/110.

[2] Patricia T. Holland, “God’s Covenant of Peace,” in The Arms of His Love (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2000): 375-76.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 41-44

Section 41

License for Edward Partridge, circa 4 August 1831–circa 5 January 1832. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.

“Joseph the Prophet and Sidney arrived at Kirtland to the joy and satisfaction of the Saints,” John Whitmer wrote. They were homeless. Joseph and Emma had left their home in Pennsylvania. Sidney and Phebe Rigdon had, because of their conversions, lost the home their Reformed Baptist congregation built for them.

Joseph received section 41 the day they arrived. It answered the questions about housing and did something out of the blue: called a bishop named Edward Partridge.[1]

Edward had served apprenticed four years for a hat maker in New England before venturing west to Ohio to open his own factory with his bride, Lydia Clisbee. They succeeded economically but remained unsettled. They could see a great need for God to “again reveal himself to man and confer authority upon son one, or more, before his church could be built up in the last days.”[2] Oliver Cowdery was just such a man. When he and his companions brought the Book of Mormon to Painesville, Ohio, Edward initially reacted with disbelief. Knowingly, and perhaps with a smile, Oliver thanked God for honest-hearted souls and departed. Before long Edward sent one of his employees to fetch a Book of Mormon from Oliver and his fellow missionaries.[3] Hungering for truth, Edward set out for New York to interview Joseph Smith and returned to Ohio having been baptized by the Prophet himself.[4] Lydia, meanwhile, had been baptized by Parley Pratt. “I saw the Gospel in its plainness as it was in the New Testament,” she testified, “and I also knew that none of the sects of the day taught these things.”[5] Edward returned to New England to declare the good news to his parents and siblings. Joseph, meanwhile, received Sections 37 and 38, commanding the New York saints to move to Ohio and promising revelation of the Lord’s law and an endowment of power there. Joseph and Emma traveled to Ohio by sleigh with the returning Edward Partridge and Sidney Rigdon.

Section 41 is strikingly counter cultural.

It highlights the differences between the kingdom of God and the world in which Joseph Smith lived. The revelation is neither democratic nor republican. It assumes that the Lord, not the people, are sovereign. It does not separate legislative, judicial, and executive powers. The Lord exercises them all.

He assumes both the power and prerogative to bless and curse, to include and to cast out, to make and declare law, and to bring lawbreakers to judgment. He repeatedly refers to “my law,” and calls for an assembly not to debate and create law, but “to agree upon” law dictated by revelation. Moreover, he commands specific action, most notably for Edward Partridge, to “leave his merchandise” and spend his whole effort executing the divine law. Section 41 is a revelation from a King with instructions about how to build His kingdom.

As Section 38 declared, this King of Kings gives laws that make us free (D&C 38:21-22). He retains sovereignty, including the prerogative to make the laws, but grants agency—the power to decide whether or not to obey them.

“Bishop Partridge had been a member of the Church for less than two months when he was asked to sacrifice everything he had worked for in his life and devote his time completely to his new Church.” How did he choose to act on the revelation? He fed and clothed the saints, left hat-making and factory-owning to others, and faithfully if imperfectly acted out the commands in this revelation and others for the rest of his life. That was not the American way. It was the Lord’s way. Edward Partridge had been called to model and then implement the law of consecration (Section 42). His daughter remembered that he “was called to leave his business, which was in a most flourishing condition, and go to Missouri to attend to the business of the Church. He went.” Soon thereafter, when the Lord called for them in section 57, Lydia and their children went too. This revelation was the beginning of the Partridge family consecrating their lives to the kingdom of God on earth.[6]

Section 42

“We have received the laws of the Kingdom since we came here,” Joseph Smith wrote to Martin Harris in February 1831, “and the Disciples in these parts have received them gladly.”[1]

Joseph had been in Ohio less than a month when he wrote those words to Martin Harris, who was still in Palmyra, New York. Prior to Joseph’s own move from New York, the Lord commanded him to gather the Church in Ohio and promised: “There I will give unto you my law.”[2] Shortly after Joseph’s arrival in Kirtland, he received the promised revelation. Early manuscripts call it “The Laws of the Church of Christ” (now Doctrine and Covenants 42:1–73).

The need for the revelation at this time was acute. Joseph found the Saints in Ohio to be sincere but confused about the biblical teaching that early Christians “were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common” (Acts 4:32).

Many of the Ohio converts belonged to “the Family,” a communal group that shared the home and farm of Lucy and Isaac Morley in an effort to be true Christians. Their intentions were in keeping with the account Joseph himself had recently received of Enoch’s Zion, where the people had achieved the ideal “of one heart and one mind” and completely eliminated poverty (Moses 7:18). However, their practices undermined personal agency, stewardship, and accountability—though they were “striving to do the will of God, so far as they knew it.”[3] As a result, the converts were, in the words of Joseph Smith’s history, “going to destruction very fast as to temporal things: for they considered from reading the scripture that what belonged to a brother belonged to any of the brethren.”[4]

Very shortly after Joseph arrived in Ohio, the Lord revealed that “by the prayer of your faith ye shall receive my law that ye may know how to govern my Church.”[5] A few days later, Joseph gathered several elders and in “mighty prayer” asked the Lord to reveal His law as promised.[6]

The revelation Joseph received in response upheld the first great commandment, loving God wholeheartedly, as the motivation for keeping all the others, including the law of consecration, suggesting that love for God is the reason for the practice. To consecrate, the early Saints were taught, meant to make their property sacred by using it for the Lord’s work, including purchasing land on which to build New Jerusalem and crowning it with a temple. The law revealed that consecration was as much about receiving as it was about giving, since the Lord promised that each faithful Saint would receive “sufficient for him self and family” here and salvation hereafter.[7]

The law clarified that consecration did not necessarily mean communal ownership of property.

Rather, it required willing souls to acknowledge that the Lord was the owner of all and that each of the Saints was to be a hardworking “steward over his own property”[8] and thus accountable to the actual owner, the Lord, who required that the Saints freely offer their surplus to His storehouse to be used to relieve poverty and build Zion.[9]

The Ohio converts’ faith in Joseph’s revelations led them to align their practices with the Lord’s revealed plan. As Joseph’s history put it, “The plan of ‘common stock,’ which had existed in what was called ‘the family,’ whose members generally had embraced the ever lasting gospel, was readily abandoned for the more perfect law of the Lord.”[10]

As time went on, Bishop Edward Partridge implemented the law as best he could, and willing Saints signed deeds consecrating their property to the Church. But obeying the law was voluntary, and some Saints refused. Others were untaught, and many were scattered.[11] Some rebellious Saints even challenged the law in court, leading to refinements in its language and changes in practice.

Other early Saints understood that the eternal principles of the law—agency, stewardship, and accountability to God—could be applied in changing situations, as when Leman Copley decided not to consecrate his farm in Thompson, Ohio, sending the Saints gathered there on to Missouri to live the law, or again when a mob drove Church members from Jackson County in 1833, ending the bishop’s practice of giving and receiving consecration deeds, but not ending the law itself. Just as the law of consecration, though revealed in February 1831, did not begin then, it did not end when some refused to obey and others were thwarted in their attempts. 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.”[12]

In addition to expounding the law of consecration, section 42 answered many questions the saints had.

Joseph and the elders who gathered in February 1831 in pursuit of the revelation first asked if the Church should “come to gether into one place or continue in separate establishments.” The Lord answered with what are now essentially the first 10 verses of Doctrine and Covenants 42, calling on the elders to preach the gospel in pairs, declare the word like angels, invite all to repent, and baptize all who were willing. By gathering Saints into the Church from every region, the elders would prepare for the day when the Lord would reveal the New Jerusalem. Then, “ye may be gathered in one,” the Lord said.[13]

The Lord then answered a question that had troubled Christianity for centuries: was Christ’s Church an orderly, authoritative institution or an unfettered outpouring of the Spirit and its gifts? Some people made extreme claims to spiritual gifts, and others responded with an equal and opposite reaction, stripping away the spontaneity of the Spirit, completely in favor of rigid rules. This dilemma existed in the early Church in Ohio, and the Lord responded to it with several revelations, including His law. The law did not envision the Church as either well ordered or free to follow the Spirit; rather, it required that preachers be ordained by those known to have authority, that they teach the scriptures, and that they do it by the power of the Holy Ghost.[14]

Other portions of the law restated and commented on the commandments revealed to Moses and included conditional promises of more revelation depending on the Saints’ faithfulness to what they had received, including sharing the gospel.[15]

“How,” the elders wondered, should they care for “their families while they are proclaiming repentance or are otherwise engaged in the Service of the Church?”[16] The Lord answered with what has become verses 70–73, then elaborated further in later revelations, now found in Doctrine and Covenants 72:11–14 and 75:24–28.

Early versions of the law also include short answers to two additional questions: Should the Church have business dealings—especially get into debt—with people outside the Church, and what should the Saints do to accommodate those gathering from the East? The answers have been left out of later versions of the text, perhaps because Doctrine and Covenants 64:27–30 answers the first question, while the answer to the second is so specific to a past place and time that it may have been considered unimportant for future generations.[17]

Section 43

Section 43 is one of the loveliest, most poetic of Joseph’s revelations. It is an eschatological text, meaning that it addresses the end of the world and the events that lead up to the Savior’s return. But perhaps its most significant contribution is its solution to the old and perplexing problem of revelation. Avoiding the extremes of no revelation at all or a completely chaotic free-for-all, section 43 validates personal revelation and sets boundaries for what such revelations will contain. Only Joseph or his authorized successors will reveal the Lord’s will for the entire Church of Jesus Christ.

Oliver Cowdery and his companions converted well over one hundred people in northeastern Ohio in the fall of 1830, then left for the western frontier to fulfill their mission call. The natural leaders of the converts, Sidney Rigdon and Edward Partridge, went to New York to meet Joseph. So almost overnight there was a large group of new, leaderless converts. “The enemy of all righteous had . . . made them think that an angel of God appeard to them, and showed them writings on the outside cover of the Bible, and on parchment, which flew through the air, and on the back of their hands, and many such foolish and vain things, others lost their strength, and some slid on the floor, and such like maneuvers.”[1]

Into the chaos stepped a woman we only know by her surname, Hubble. She claimed to be a prophetess. She testified that the Book of Mormon was true, and she received revelations that included commandments and laws. The saints believed her.[2]

When Joseph arrived he had a problem.

Critics of revelation complain that God no longer reveals his will to women and men on earth. Believers in revelation, meanwhile, receive revelations themselves and many believe in counterfeits. Joseph did not want to make the false claim that God would not reveal himself to ordinary people, including women. Like Moses, he wished “that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:29). But how could he affirm that God continues to reveal his will while simultaneously maintaining the revealed order of the Lord’s church?

Hubble’s gender was not the issue. Hiram Page had created a similar problem by presuming to receive revelations (section 28). To Emma Smith, meanwhile, the Lord had promised the power to expound scripture and exhort the church by the spirit of revelation to her (section 25:7). The question was not whether women could receive revelation. They could, and did, and do. The question was to whom the Lord would reveal his will for the whole church. The confusion required clarification.

John Whitmer prefaced section 43 by saying that “the Lord gave Revelation that the saints might not be deceived which reads as follows.” He noted that “after this commandment was received the saints came to understanding on this subject, and unity and harmony prevailed throughout the church of God: and the Saints began to learn wisdom, and treasure up knowledge which they learned from the word of God, and by experience as they advanced in the way of eternal life.”

Section 43 makes an important distinction between revealed commandments and teachings about how to act on the revealed commandments and teachings.

They are not of the same importance even if they come from the same source. The revelations of the Lord through Joseph are more important and binding than the teachings of Joseph about those “how to act upon the points of my law and commandments.”[3]

In section 43, saints are commanded not to receive the teachings of anyone as if they were revelations or commandments (DC& 43:5). The Lord commands saints to instruct and edify each other—to produce teachings—about “how to act upon the points of my law and commandments, which I have given” (D&C 43:8). Inspired teachings about how to obey commandments are good, but they are not the same as the Lord’s actual commandments and revelations. A saint who feels guilty for seeking and receiving personal revelation that runs counter to the teachings of a church leader is actually obedient to the Lord’s command in section 43 to not equate anyone’s teachings with the Lord’s commandments and revelations. Section 43 was necessary, John Whitmer said, so saints could “learn to discern.”[4]

Section 44

Shortly after he relocated to Kirtland, Ohio, as commanded (D&C 37, 38), Joseph wrote an urgent letter to Martin Harris, still living in New York.“Inform the Elders which are there that all of them who can be spared will come here without delay if possable this by Commandment of the Lord,” the prophet said.[1]

Section 44 was Joseph’s motivation—the commandment he mentioned to Martin.[2] The rationale of the revelation goes like this. The Lord explains that it is expedient, or a means to a highly desired end. Often, as in section 44, the Lord says something is “expedient in me,” meaning that the thing is a vital means to accomplish his purposes. The means, in the case of section 44, is to gather all the elders of the Church who can possibly attend. At least that is the first premise of the means, or what is expedient.

Here is a paraphrase of the rest of the Lord’s rationale in section 44:

Gather all the elders
If they are faithful they will have the Lord’s Spirit poured out upon them when they assemble
That will make them powerful preachers of repentance
That will lead many people to convert
That will give the saints power to organize economically in ways that are legal (and so not vulnerable to suits by enemies)
That will give the saints power to organize economically in ways that are also legal in terms of the Lord’s law of consecration

Meanwhile, the Lord explains, “you must visit the poor and the needy and administer to their relief” (D&C 44:6).

That all makes more sense when you know that Ohio law demanded that twenty members of a church meet to elect officers and have their organization recorded by the county clerk in order for that church to have legal recognition and be able to own property.[3] The gathering of the Saints in Ohio led prominent and powerful men, including Eber Howe and Grandison Newell, to oppose the church economically, in the press, and in the courts. Foreseeing the need to organize and the antagonism the saints would experience, the Lord revealed section 44.

Joseph wrote to his brother Hyrum, “I think you had better come into the country immediately for the Lord has commanded us that we should call the elders of this Church together unto this place as soon as possible.”[4] There was a “special meeting of the Elder of the Church of Christ held at Kirtland” on April 9, 1831, but it seems like the meeting that best fulfills the command and prophesied blessings in section 44 was held in early June.[5]

Section 41 notes

[1] “Revelation, 4 February 1831 [D&C 41],” p. 61, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-4-february-1831-dc-41/1. B.H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 volumes (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1977-78), 1:244.

[2] Edward Partridge Papers, May 26, 1839, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[3] Richard L. Anderson, “Impact of the First Mormon Preaching in Ohio,” BYU Studies 11:4 (Summer 1971): 489.

[4] History of Edward Partridge, Jr., 5, quoted in Anderson, “Impact of the First Mormon Preaching in Ohio,” BYU Studies 11:4 (Summer 1971): 493. Lavina Fielding Anderson, Lucy’s Book : A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s Family Memoir (Salt Lake City: Signature, 2001), 504-05.

[5] Quoted in Scott H. Partridge, “Edward Partridge in Painesville, Ohio,” BYU Studies 42:1 (2003): 59.

[6] Scott H. Partridge, editor, Eliza Maria Partridge Journal (Provo: Grandin, 2003), 2-3.

Section 42 notes

[1] Joseph Smith letter to Martin Harris, Feb. 22, 1831, 1, josephsmithpapers.org.

[2] “Revelation, 2 January 1831 [D&C 38],” in Revelation Book 1, 52, josephsmithpapers.org; see also Doctrine and Covenants 38:32.

[3] Joseph Smith, “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” 93, josephsmithpapers.org.

[4] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” 11, josephsmithpapers.org.

[5] “Revelation, 4 February 1831 [D&C 41],” in Revelation Book 1, 61, josephsmithpapers.org; see also Doctrine and Covenants 41:3.

[6] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” 12.

[7] “Revelation, 9 February 1831 [D&C 42:1–72],” 3, josephsmithpapers.org; see also Doctrine and Covenants 42:32.

[8] “Revelation, 9 February 1831 [D&C 42:1–72],” 3.

[9] See “Revelation, 9 February 1831 [D&C 42:1–72],” 3, 4.

[10] Joseph Smith, “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” 93.

[11] See “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” 17.

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

[13] “Revelation, 9 February 1831 [D&C 42:1–72],” 1–2.

[14] See “Revelation, 9 February 1831 [D&C 42:1–72],” 2.

[15] See “Revelation, 9 February 1831 [D&C 42:1–72],” 2–5.

[16] See “Revelation, 9 February 1831 [D&C 42:1–72],” 1–5. This concept was further clarified in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.

[17] One question read, “How far it is the will of the Lord that we Should have dealings with the wo[r]ld & how we Should conduct our dealings with them?” The answer was, “Thou shalt contract no debts with them & again the Elders & Bishop shall Council together & they shall do by the directions of the spirit as it must be necessary.” The other question was, “What preperations we shall make for our Brethren from the East & when [another manuscript asks where] & how?” The Lord answered, “There shall be as many appointed as must needs be necessary to assist the Bishop in obtaining places that they may be together as much as can be & is directed by the holy Spirit” (“Revelation, 9 February 1831, [D&C 42:1–72],” 6).

Section 43 notes

[1] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 10, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/14.

[2] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 18, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/22. “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 101, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/107. Ezra Booth letter November 29, 1831, in Ohio Star (Ravenna, Ohio) December 8, 1831.

[3] Ezra Booth letter November 29, 1831, in Ohio Star (Ravenna, Ohio) December 8, 1831. Book of John Whitmer, chapter 3, Community of Christ Archives, Independence, Missouri. Manuscript History of the Church, Book A-1, pages 101-03; History of the Church, 1:154.

[4] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 10, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/14.

Section 44 notes

[1] “Letter to Martin Harris, 22 February 1831,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-martin-harris-22-february-1831/1.

[2] “Revelation, February 1831–B [D&C 44],” p. 70, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-february-1831-b-dc-44/1.

[3] “Act for the Incorporation of Religious Societies,” Acts Passed at the First Session of the Seventeenth General Assembly of the State of Ohio, Vol XII (Chillicothe, Ohio: Office of the Supporter, 1819), chapter LIV.

[4] “Letter to Hyrum Smith, 3–4 March 1831,” p. [2], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-hyrum-smith-3-4-march-1831/2.

[5] “Minute Book 2,” p. 3, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minute-book-2/5. “Minutes, circa 3–4 June 1831,” p. 3, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minutes-circa-3-4-june-1831/1.

Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 37-40

Section 37

By the end of 1830, an astonishing amount had happened since the spring, when a handful of members organized the Savior’s Church. There were now dozens of members in New York, and missionaries had converted many more than that in Ohio before trekking to the western frontier to convert others and scout a location for New Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Joseph and Sidney Rigdon were reading the Bible closely and seeking and receiving revelation that clarified and amplified it. Joseph received the Book of Moses by revelation, including the prophecy of Enoch, now Moses chapters 6-8 in the Pearl of Great Price. Church historian John Whitmer noted that “after they had written this prophecy, the Lord spoke to them again and gave further directions,” section 37.[1]

The Lord explained to Joseph that under these circumstances it was not useful for Joseph to continue revising the Bible until he goes to Ohio for the church’s sake, because of some unspecified enemy. The Lord commands Joseph to strengthen the saints in both western and eastern New York first. All saints in New York, the Lord says, are to move to Ohio quickly, before Oliver Cowdery returns from his mission to the west. This is the wise thing to do, but as free agents each of the saints must choose whether to do it. Soon the Lord will come and hold them accountable for their choice.

Joseph and Sidney did exactly what the Lord told them to do.

John Whitmer’s history says that “after the above directions were received, Joseph and Sidney went to the several churches preaching and prophesying wherever they went, and greatly strengthened the churches.” Specifically, as the revelation directed, “Joseph and Sidney went to Colesville to do the will of the Lord in that part of the land and to strengthen the disciples in that part of the vineyard.” Joseph sent John Whitmer to Ohio to preside and to take a copy of the revelations to teach the saints there. John reported what he found: “The enemy of all righteousness had got hold of some of those who professed to be his followers, because they had not sufficient knowledge to detect him in all of his devices.”

Back in New York the generally prosperous and long-settled saints struggled to come to terms with section 37. John blamed worldliness and false traditions for the saints’ hesitance to “believe the commandments that came forth in these last days for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God, and the salvation of those who believe.” They dragged their feet and waited for Section 38 to be revealed before doing what Section 37 commanded them to do, namely to choose to obey or disobey.[2]

Section 38

Early in 1831 Joseph Smith gathered the fledgling Church of Jesus Christ, not yet a year old, for general conference in Fayette, New York. Newel Knight remembered that “it was at this conference that we were instructed as a people, to begin the gathering of Israel, and a revelation was given to the prophet on this subject.”[1]

Joseph announced section 37’s command for them to move to Ohio right away. The saints wanted “somewhat more” explanation. Joseph asked the Lord during the meeting and received section 38.[2]

Unlike the terse command to move to Ohio in section 37, this time the Lord gives a detailed rationale for the commandment. The situation is bleak. All flesh is corrupted, the powers of darkness prevail, eternity is pained (D&C 38:11-12). The enemy, presumably Satan, plots the saints’ destruction. The Lord paints a vivid, apocalyptic picture of the different destinies awaiting those who believe and obey the revelation compared to those “who will not hear my voice but harden their hearts, and wo, wo, wo is their doom” (D&C 38:1-6).

The January 1831 revelation compelled the saints to decide whether to serve themselves or the Lord.

It provided them a way out of the world. It envisioned an alternative society. It came in the voice of the Lord who took “the Zion of Enoch into mine own bosom . . . by the virtue of the blood which I have spilt” (D&C 38:4). It foretold evil designs to destroy the saints “in process of time” (D&C 38:4, 13).

Those were the exact same words recently revealed to Joseph to describe how Enoch’s Zion made it safely out of this world (Moses 7:21). Their eerie similarity to the New York saints living in “Babylon” suggests that a creeping, cultural evil posed a great threat to the spiritual welfare of the New York saints, though, like the proverbially slow-boiled frog, they could hardly discern it themselves.

The revelation brought the crisis to the saints’ attention, compelling them to choose, for it described an either/or proposition, to begin the “process” of becoming like Enoch’s Zion or continue the “process” toward “destruction” (D&C 38:13). To be saved, the New York saints must move to Ohio (D&C 38:10-13).

The choice to escape was also a choice to acknowledge the Lord as the source of authority, the maker of worlds as well as laws, and Joseph Smith as his spokesman (D&C 21:1-8). “Hear my voice and follow me,” the Lord commanded unequivocally (D&C 38:22). The revelation required the saints to relieve poverty, esteem everyone equally, and to “be one” (D&C 38:27). To those at the conference, the revelation shouted objections to the cultural messages they received every day to be partisan, to be covetous, and to “possess that which is above another,” “like the Nephites of old” (D&C 49:20, 38:39). It seemed calculated to test the integrity of covenant-makers by compelling them to choose either the “the things of this world” or “the things of a better” (D&C 25:10, 38:17-20, 25-26, 39). The revelation was starkly indifferent to the saints’ carnal security. “They that have farms that cannot be sold, let them be left or rented as seemeth them good” (D&C 38:37). The irrelevance of property contrasts sharply with the revelation’s emphasis on the welfare of souls. There is a sense of urgency that the saints might make it safely out of a fallen world. “That you might escape the power of the enemy, and be gathered unto me a righteous people, without spot and blameless: wherefore for this cause I gave unto you the commandment that ye should go to the Ohio” (D&C 38:31-32).

The revelation caused an initial shock and division among the saints.

Some who were comfortable in New York did not want to obey it. Some projected their own selfishness onto the prophet, claiming he had invented the revelation to get gain himself. “This,” John Whitmer noted, “was because, their hearts were not right in the sight of the Lord.”[3]

That is not the most remarkable part. Given the individualistic attitude of the society in which these saints lived, the remarkable fact is not that “one or two” chafed at the “monumental sacrifice” of the command to gather in Ohio, but the stunning degree of obedience and sacrifice in response to section 38.[4] “The Lord had manifested his will to his people,” John noted, “Therefore they made preparations to Journey to the Ohio, with their wives, and children and all that they possessed, to obey the commandment of the Lord.“[5]

Newel Knight wrote, “as might be expected, we were obliged to make great sacrifices of our property.”[6] By keeping the command to pull up telestial roots and forsake telestial concerns, the New York saints were yielding up their selves to God.[7] They were making a bold, counter-cultural declaration.[8] By so doing they prepared themselves to receive the law of consecration the Lord promised to give them when they gathered to Ohio. They were self-selecting to be “endowed with power from on high” (D&C 38:32).

Sections 39-40

James Covel was a Methodist minister and president, in fact, of a Methodist Conference in western New York. Early in 1831 James came to Joseph and said he had covenanted with the Lord to obey any command the Lord gave him through Joseph. The Lord gave Joseph section 39 for James.[1]

The Lord reveals how well he knows James, and that his hearts is now right. The great sorrow of James’s past stems from his pride and worldly cares, which have led him to reject Christ many times, but the day of his deliverance has come. The Lord commands James to “arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins,” and receive the Holy Spirit.

If James will obey the law of the gospel, the Lord has greater work for him to do: preaching the fulness of the gospel, which Christ has sent forth as a covenant to recover the house of Israel. James will have power, great faith, and the Lord to go before him. The Lord has called him to build the church so that Zion may rejoice and flourish. James is called to go to west to Ohio.

James Covill broke his covenant.

Almost immediately he “rejected the word of the Lord” in Section 39 “and returned to his former principles and people.” Joseph and Sidney wondered why, and the Lord explained in section 40.[2]

The order of events in Section 40 is important. First, James Covill made a covenant with an honest heart. He sincerely received the gospel. Then Satan tempted him to fear the persecution that would result, to worry about giving up his paid ministry for a lay one. James chose to follow those fears and cares, resulting in a broken covenant.

This sequence highlights how revelation facilitates agency. A person has agency, or power to act independently, only when they know what God wants, Satan poses an alternative, and they are free to choose between the two (see section 29). Given section 39, James knew just what the Lord wanted him to do. Then Satan countered the commandments. James was free to choose between the two. He chose to break his covenant, making it null and void.

Some have cited sections 39 and 40 as evidence that Joseph Smith was a fraud.

They contend that these sections prove that Joseph’s God did not even know that James Covill would not obey. That conclusion depends on a particular conception of God that is not evident in Joseph’s revelations. The Lord who spoke through Joseph Smith does not function in that agency robbing way. Joseph’s revelations distinguished between the sovereignty of God and the agency of individuals (see Section 93). Joseph taught truly that “God sees the secret springs of human action, and knows the hearts of all living,” but it did not follow for Joseph that God caused bad behavior.[3] “I believe that God foreknew everything, but did not foreordain everything,” Joseph taught profoundly. “I deny that foreordain and foreknow is the same thing.”[4]

In other words, God did not make James Covill break his covenant. Rather, the Lord gave James power to make and keep his covenant and the agency to decide whether to make and keep it for himself. Revelation give us knowledge of God’s will. It makes us free to choose. Section 40 explains that James Covill made and broke his covenant of his own free will. It is a more significant revelation than one might assume based on its brevity.

Section 37 notes

[1] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 4, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/8.

[2] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 5, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/9.

Section 38 notes

[1] “Newel Knight Autobiography,” in Dan Vogel, editor, Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City: Signature, 2002): 4:64.

[2] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 6, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/10.

[3] “John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847,” p. 9, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/13.

[4] William G. Hartley, Stand by My Servant Joseph (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2003), 103.

[5] Book of John Whitmer, chapter 1, Community of Christ Archives, Independence, Missouri.

[6] “Newel Knight Autobiography,” 4:64.

[7] “We tend to think of consecration only as yielding up, when divinely directed, our material possessions. But ultimate consecration is the yielding up of oneself to God.” Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, November 2002, 36.

[8] Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught the same principle in our time: “Pay your tithing as a declaration that possession of material goods and the accumulation of worldly wealth are not the uppermost goals of your existence. As one young husband and father, living on a student budget, recently told me, “Perhaps our most pivotal moments as Latter-day Saints come when we have to swim directly against the current of the culture in which we live. Tithing provides just such a moment. Living in a world that emphasizes material acquisition and cultivates distrust for anyone or anything that has designs on our money, we shed that self-absorption to give freely, trustingly, and generously. By this act, we say—indeed—we are different, that we are God’s peculiar people. In a society that tells us money is our most important asset, we declare emphatically it is not.” Jeffrey R. Holland, “Like a Watered Garden,” Ensign, November 2001, 33.

Sections 39-40 notes

[1] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 91, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/97.

[2] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 92, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/98.

[3] “Letter to William W. Phelps, 11 January 1833,” p. 19, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-william-w-phelps-11-january-1833/2.

[4] “History, 1838–1856, volume C-1 [2 November 1838–31 July 1842],” p. 1014, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 25, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-c-1-2-november-1838-31-july-1842/186.