The revelation of section 111 on August 6, 1836 reoriented Joseph and his companions. They had been preoccupied with paying their debts to the point of pursuing an unwise strategy. The revelation taught them to think of treasure in terms of human lives, “people . . . whom I will gather,” and to not be overly concerned about their debts (D&C 111). It is a comforting revelation.
Just as the Saints in Missouri were being asked to leave another county there, Joseph and the Saints in Ohio finished the House of the Lord in Kirtland at great expense. The resulting blessings far surpassed the value of every penny, but the process left Joseph indebted around $13,000 with more expenses looming. Under these circumstances Joseph took a risk. A man named Jonathan Burgess had told him that there was a lot of money buried in the cellar of a house in Salem, Massachusetts. He said he knew where it was, and that he was the only living person who did. Joseph, his brother Hyrum, Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon set out for Salem in July, planning to meet Burgess, locate the house, and hopefully find the treasure. They eventually found the house, but it was not for sale or rent, and they left Salem without getting access to it.[1]
Church historian B.H. Roberts wrote that “while in Salem the Prophet received a revelation in which the folly of this journey is sharply reproved.”[2] Elder Roberts may have been overly sensitive to the emphasis antagonistic writers placed on Joseph’s youthful treasure seeking (see Joseph Smith—History 1:55-57).[3] The Lord does not sharply reprove Joseph in Section 111. He says, in fact, that he is not displeased with the prophet despite his follies, by which he meant “a weak or absurd act not highly criminal; an act which is inconsistent with the dictates of reason, or with the ordinary rules of prudence.”[4]
In this and other revelations that respond to Joseph or other saints being in anxious, high-pressure situations, the Lord’s response is cool and in control. Joseph is overwhelmed with debt to the point of taking unsound risks. The Lord replies that he will gather Salem’s treasures and souls for Zion in due time. Joseph and his companions responded by seeking out the place the Lord wanted them to stay, a house on Union Street not far from where Nathaniel Hawthorne was writing tales of buried treasure in Salem and the local newspaper was reporting similar rumors.[5] They visited from house to house and did some preaching. On August 19 they visited the East India Marine Society Museum, comparatively relaxed in their efforts to obey the revelation and stop being too concerned with their debts and with things they could not control in Zion, and focus instead on souls both past and present.
These efforts led to some of the “treasures” the Lord mentioned in verse 10. Returning from another trip to Salem in 1841, Hyrum Smith met with Erastus Snow, gave him a copy of Section 111 and urged him to go there and harvest the “many people” the Lord promised to gather in due time (1). At great sacrifice to himself and his family, Elder Snow went. He and Benjamin Winchester started the harvest and others followed. In 1841 the Salem Gazette announced that “a very worthy and respectable laboring man, and his wife, were baptized by immersion in the Mormon Faith.” Six months later the Salem Register noted that “Mormonism is advancing with a perfect rush in this city.”[6] The church has inquired into Salem’s early inhabitants too. The early records of Salem and surrounding areas have been preserved and are accessible for genealogical research leading to the sacred ordinances of the House of the Lord.
With Section 111, the Lord transformed folly into treasures in his own due time.
Section 112
Do you know someone who only hears the parts of a conversation that validate their thoughts or actions? Are you that person?
Apostasy swept through the Saints in Ohio in 1837, including the apostles. Thomas Marsh, president of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, tried to reconcile the struggling members of his quorum and prepare the apostles for a mission to Great Britain under his leadership. Thomas had scheduled a July 24, 1837 meeting of the apostles in Kirtland. When he arrived he discovered that Joseph had already called and sent apostles Heber Kimball and Orson Hyde to England.[1] After consulting with quorum member Brigham Young, Thomas went to Joseph for counsel and reconciliation.[2] In that meeting, Thomas wrote Section 112 as Joseph dictated.Aspiring and full of potential, Thomas and some of the apostles found themselves divided, unfulfilled, and undervalued. The revelation acknowledges the apostles’ receipt of priesthood keys, and the greatness of their calling, but it also implies pride, even blasphemy and apostasy among some, and the need for Thomas and his quorum to repent and then to preach repentance and baptism (23-26).
Though he wrote the Lord’s words as Joseph spoke them, Thomas Marsh heard section 112 selectively. He took the revelation to Heber Kimball’s wife Vilate and told her that Joseph had assured him that her husband’s missionary work in England would not be effective until Thomas said so.[3] Meanwhile, Heber and his companions sent letters back across the Atlantic reporting their successful labors. As Heber put it, “it was all right to prepare the way for brother Marsh.”[4]
Thomas Marsh had an arrogance problem. He heard and self-servingly interpreted the passages of the revelation that reminded him of his high position, the greatness of his calling, his possession of powerful priesthood keys, and his impressive role in spreading the gospel to the nations. He did not hear the revelation’s command to be humble (10), to “exalt not yourselves,” or “rebel not against my servant Joseph” (15).
Thomas returned to his home in Missouri as commanded in verse 5 and continued to serve as the church’s publisher there. In the autumn of 1838 he exalted himself and rebelled against Joseph. He famously repudiated the decisions of church councils to defend his wife in a domestic dispute with another sister.[5] Then he signed an affidavit charging Joseph Smith with treason, leading to his incarceration. Thomas was subsequently excommunicated in March 1839 and remained estranged from the church for nearly two decades.
In May 1857 he wrote a humble letter to, of all people, Heber Kimball, then serving in the First Presidency. “I deserve no place among you in the church as the lowest member,” Thomas confessed, “but I cannot live without a reconciliation with the 12 and the Church whom I have injured.” In the same letter Marsh referred back to his apostolic commission affirmed in section 112. “A mission was laid upon me & I have never filled it and now I fear it is too late but it is filled by another I see, the Lord could get along very well without me and He has lost nothing by my falling out of the ranks; But O what have I lost?”[6]
Don’t be that person. Be humble, don’t exalt yourself, and don’t rebel against the Lord’s servants, and the Lord will lead you by the hand and answer your prayers (D&C 112:10)
Section 113
Section 113 answers questions about passages of Isaiah, chapters 11 and 52. It was recorded in Joseph’s scriptory book in 1838 after Joseph moved to Missouri, but Joseph had been thinking about the meaning of Isaiah 11 since 1823, when Moroni began teaching him.[1]
Imagine being an obscure, poorly educated “boy of no consequence” as Joseph described his teenage self (Joseph Smith—History, 22). Seventeen-year-old Joseph prayed for forgiveness and an angel appeared. He started quoting and paraphrasing scripture: Malachi, Joel, Acts, and all of Isaiah 11, among others. He returned again and again that night and then again the next day, repeating Isaiah 11 each time, saying it was just about to be fulfilled.
That chapter invites readers to imagine think of a man named Jesse as a tree. Jesse is the father of the Israelite King David in the Old Testament. God promised David that the Messaiah would occupy his throne forever (2 Samuel 7:13, Luke 1:32). Isaiah 11 is about the genealogy (families are often represented as trees) of the rightful king of Israel. It also says that someone related to Jesse and Ephraim will raise an ensign (a signal, a standard, a rally point) for the gathering of the Lord’s people in the latter days.
Now imagine that you are Joseph six years later, age 24, translating what’s now 2 Nephi 21, the entire text of Isaiah 11. How much of it do you understand by now? Flash forward to age 32. It has been 15 years since Moroni first quoted Isaiah 11 to you. You know what it means by now. It has been the story of your life. You have since seen the prophecies fulfilled, received the priesthood and its keys to gather the scattered remnants of Israel “to return them to the Lord from whence they have fallen,” to be their revelator, and to bring again Zion (D&C 113:8-10).
It’s not clear whether Joseph or someone else posed the question in D&C 113:1, who is the stem of Jesse, the tree trunk, spoken of in Isaiah 11? The clear answer, however, is Jesus Christ. Scholars generally interpret that entire passage to refer to the same Messianic figure, but Joseph did not. Joseph had learned to see himself as the rod or branch that would grow out from the trunk, Jesus Christ. He said so cryptically rather than explicitly. But by age 32 if not at 17, Joseph knew what Moroni knew: Joseph was “a servant in the hands of Christ . . . on whom there is laid much power. . . the priesthood, and the keys of the kingdom, for an ensign, and for the gathering” of the Lord’s people in the latter days (D&C 113). Section 113 also answers Elias Higbee’s questions about Isaiah 52, interpreting some of the symbolism in terms of D&C Section 86 and what Joseph had learned by revelation about priesthood, Zion, and the gathering of Israel.
The Book of Mormon identified Joseph as a descendant of Joseph of Egypt (2 Nephi 3:6-16). When Joseph’s father gave him a patriarchal blessing in 1834, it said:
I bless thee with the blessings of thy fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and even the blessings of thy father Joseph, the son of Jacob. Behold, he looked after his posterity in the last days, when they should be scattered and driven by the Gentiles, and wept before the Lord: he sought diligently to know from whence the son should come who should bring forth the word of the Lord, by which they might be enlightened, and brought back to the true fold, and his eyes beheld thee, my son: his heart rejoiced and his soul was satisfied.[2]
It is not clear exactly when Joseph understood himself to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies of a servant of Christ who would establish a gathering place for Israel and bring again Zion. The recording of Section 113 in early 1838 testifies that these ideas were on his mind then. The Church was in upheaval. Joseph was trying to exercise the priesthood keys he had recently received to loose the scattered Israelites from the bands around their necks and bring them to Zion (D&C 110 and 113:8-10).
Section 114
What would happen if one-third of the apostles apostatized or were killed? Section 114 is an answer. Elder David W. Patten was second in seniority in the quorum of twelve apostles when he and his wife Ann moved from Kirtland, Ohio to Far West, Missouri, in late 1836 or early 1837. With his quorum president Thomas Marsh, David led the Saints in Missouri as several church leaders apostatized in the early months of 1838. After Joseph arrived in Missouri that spring, David asked Joseph to seek a revelation for him. Section 114 was recorded in Joseph’s Scriptory Book, his journal for 1838.[1] That book is full of records of counsels in which several of the apostles as well as Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer were disciplined or excommunicated from the Church.
The brief revelation instructed David and other apostles to prepare for a mission the following spring (1839). Although the revelation does not mention where the apostles would serve, apostles Heber Kimball, Orson Hyde and their companions had sent reports of their success in Great Britain. Section 114 implies a call to the entire quorum to serve a follow-up mission to the British Isles the next year. David Patten did not live to serve that mission. He was killed on 25 October 1838 after being wounded in a conflict between saints and Missouri militiamen. The apostles did go to Britain, however. On 8 July, just over two months following the receipt of this revelation, Joseph received another with more details of their call (see section 118).
The vacancies left by David Patten’s death and the apostasy of Oliver Cowdery, the entire presidency of the Church in Missouri, and a third of the apostles, did not remain. Rather nonchalantly, the revelation says their “bishopric” or office can be filled by others. The Lord seems unconcerned. Section 114 shows how the Lord grants individual agency, including the potential for apostasy, without compromising the Kingdom. Sad as the casualties are, the work rolls forward when someone opts out. Replacements are ready. In this case men named John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff, among others, were called and filled in nicely (see section 118).
[5] David R. Proper, “Joseph Smith and Salem,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 100 (April 1964): 93. On the day Section 111 was revealed, the Salem Observer reprinted a Long Island Star article on rumors of treasure buried by Captain Kidd and unsuccessful efforts to find it.
[6]Salem Gazette, December 7, 1841. Salem Register, June 2, 1842.
Section 112 notes
[1] Ronald K. Esplin, “The Emergence of Brigham Young,” 287-92.
[2] Wilford Woodruff, Journal, June 25, 1857, Church History Library.
[3] Vilate Kimball to Heber C. Kimball, September 6, 1837, photocopy of original in private possession, Church History Library.
[4] Heber C. Kimball to Vilate Kimball, November 12, 1837, Church History Library.
Revelation, 26 April 1838 [D&C 115]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.In December 1836, the Missouri state legislature created Caldwell County for Latter-day Saints to settle, and named Far West as its seat. Some 2,000 saints gathered to Far West with a few thousand more in the surrounding area. On April 6, 1837, the Church’s seventh anniversary, they made plans to build a temple like the one in Kirtland, Ohio. They chose a site in the center of town and came together to break ground. Then the work stopped. When Joseph visited Far West in November a council decided to postpone temple building until the Lord revealed otherwise.[1] A few weeks after Joseph moved to Far West in March 1838, the Lord revealed his will concerning the temple, the name of His Church, and the gathering of the saints.
At its organization in on 6 April 1830, The Church was called the “Church of Christ” (see D&C 20:1). Then, beginning on 3 May 1834, Church leaders officially adopted the title, “The Church of the Latter Day Saints.” Section 115 commands that it be called “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” a designation Joseph had already begun using.[2]
Shortly after the Lord revealed Section 115, Thomas Marsh, president of the quorum of twelve apostles, wrote of its content to Wilford Woodruff. “Since Br. Joseph came to this place, we have been favored with a lengthy revelation in which many important items are shown forth. First, that the Church, shall hereafter be called. ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.’ Second, it saith ‘Let the City Farwest be a holy and a consecrated land unto me, and it shall be called most holy, for the ground upon which thou standest is holy: Therefore, I command you to build a house unto me, for the gathering together of my Saints, that they may worship me.’ 3d. It also teaches, that the foundation stone must be laid on the 4th of July next, and that a commencement must be made in this following season; and in one year from that time, to continue the work until it is finished. Thus we see that the Lord is more wise than men, for [some] thought to commence it long before this, but it was not the Lords time, therefore, he over threw it, and has appointed his own time. The plan is yet to be shown to the first presidency, and all the Saints, in all the world, are commanded to assist in building the house [of the Lord].”[3]
Section 115 is an optimistic declaration. In the face of overwhelming opposition including indebtedness, persecution, and poverty, the Lord is building Zion. The temple is all important. Having recently received the priesthood keys to authorize temple ordinances (see section 110), Joseph is the Lord’s choice to carry Zion forward, establish its stakes, oversee its temples, and gather the faithful of all nations to be endowed with power.
The Saints gathered on July 4, 1838 to obey Section 115’s command to begin work on the temple. George Robinson, Joseph’s secretary, reported, “We therefore met on this day in Far West Mo. To make our decleration of independence, and to Lay the corrnerstones of the house of the Lord agreeably to the commandment of the Lord unto us given April 26th 1838.”[4] The Saints then gathered building materials so that construction could proceed on 26 April 1839, as the revelation specified. Meanwhile, according to one Missouri historian, the walls inched upwards to nearly three feet before the Saints were driven from the state by the governor’s executive order in the fall.[5]
In obedience to verse 18, Joseph led three expeditions in the spring of 1838 to search out locations for “stakes in the regions round about” (18). Additional explorations were conducted throughout the summer and land surveys conducted in anticipation of more saints arriving in the fall. On June 28, 1838, at a small grove near the home of Lyman Wight near Spring Hill in Daviess County, Joseph Smith organized the Adam-ondi-Ahman stake, the third stake organized in the Church.
Recently the Lord impressed on President Russell M. Nelson’s mind “the importance of the name He decreed for His Church.” President Nelson taught that because of section 115, “the name of the Church is not negotiable. When the Savior clearly states what the name of His Church should be even precedes His declaration with, ‘Thus shall my church be called,’ he is serious.” Using any substitute for the revealed name minimizes or removes the Savior, and “when we discard the Savior’s name, we are subtly disregarding all that Jesus Christ did for us—even His Atonement.” That would not be wise.[6]
Section 116
Shortly after Joseph moved to Far West, Missouri in March 1838, the Lord commanded him that “other places should be appointed for stakes in the regions round about” (see section 115). Anticipating that large numbers of Saints would gather to the area from Ohio, Canada, and elsewhere, Joseph and other leaders set off to explore Daviess County “for the purpose of . . . making Locations & laying claims for the gathering of the Saints for the benefit of the poor.”[1] Near Lyman Wight’s home, Joseph revealed section 116.
Orson Pratt inserted the words “Spring Hill is named by the Lord Adam-ondi-Ahman” when he included this statement in the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. The original entry in Joseph’s journal, made by his secretary George Robinson, reads: “Spring Hill a name appropriated by the bretheren present, But afterwards named by the mouth of [the] Lord and was called Adam Ondi Awmen, because said he it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of days shall sit as spoken of by Daniel the Prophet.”[2]
Section116 links the past with the future, sacred history with prophesy. Adam-Ondi-Ahman is a place Adam and Eve went after being expelled from Eden’s Garden. They offered sacrifices and blessed their posterity there. Joseph learned by revelation in 1831 that Adam, prior to his death, gathered his posterity in a valley called Adam-Ondi-Ahman and blessed them and they blessed him. The Lord appeared to them and promised Adam that he would preside over a multitude of nations. Adam rose and, though aged, prophesied what would happen to his posterity (D&C 78:15-16 and 107:53-56).
Section 116 identifies the specific site of that impressive occasion and says that the site will host a future meeting. Adam, or the Ancient of Days, as Daniel called him, will again gather his righteous posterity there, possibly for the sacrament and stewardship meeting prophesied in section 27.
Approximately 1,500 Latter-day Saints settled at Adam-Ondi-Ahman in 1838. They planned a temple. They laid out a stake in obedience to section 115. They obeyed the law of consecration in obedience to section 119.[3] They were driven from the land later that year when Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued an executive “extermination” order that effectively enabled Missourians to steal the land by preventing the saints from asserting their preemption rights. Even so, because of section 116, the Church has quietly acquired and preserved the sacred site.
Section 117
To understand section 117, you need to know about a revelation to Joseph that is not in the Doctrine and Covenants. It came to him on January 12, 1838. That year began grimly as dissent from within and opposition from outside the Church pressured Joseph Smith. The saints’ banking project had failed, Joseph was mired in debt because of his efforts to turn Kirtland, Ohio into a stake of Zion, including crowning it with a priceless but nevertheless expensive temple. Creditors, some of whom were Joseph’s avowed enemies, hounded him. Some filed suits against him. Some of his associates and friends rejected his leadership. Dissenters started their own Church.
In that context, Joseph sought direction and received the revelation mentioned above, telling him, his family, and faithful saints emphatically to flee Ohio or Missouri.[1]Joseph left immediately. His family and remaining members of the First Presidency followed him. The question remained whether his “faithful friends” would also. Would they “arise with their families also and get out of this place and gather themselves together unto Zion”?
Joseph moved to Far West, Missouri and received a series of revelations that relocated, reorganized, and reoriented the Church, whose headquarters had been in Kirtland, Ohio since 1831. One of the new revelations, section 115, declared Far West to be the new center of gathering for the Saints.
The First Presidency expected that William Marks, a bookseller who remained in Kirtland to preside over the saints there, and Newel Whitney, the bishop in Kirtland, would obey the revelations to leave Kirtland and come to Far West. These men dragged their feet. Whitney was Kirtland’s most prosperous merchant. He owned a store and a profitably ashery situated ideally near the main intersection through town. He was torn between material prosperity and the revelations.
Almost all the faithful Kirtland saints left for Missouri in May. When neither Whitney nor Marks had arrived in Missouri by July, Joseph received section 117 about their situations and about what to do regarding his indebtedness and the bankruptcy of the First Presidency.
In direct and certain terms, the Lord commanded Newel Whitney and William Marks to relocate to Missouri before winter to continue serving in their respective callings, Marks to preside over the Saints in Far West and Whitney to serve as a bishop, which in the 1830s meant to manage the Church’s material assets to build Zion and relieve poverty.
There is a fascinating dynamic to section 117. No other revelation, no other scriptures in fact, use the words “saith the Lord” as often. Some Old Testament prophets use the phrase nearly as often, and sections 124 and 132 use it frequently too. But its high frequency in section 117 may tell us something about Joseph’s awkward position.
Newel Whitney was his friend and benefactor. Newel and Elizabeth Ann Whitney welcomed the homeless Joseph and Emma to their own hearth when they first moved to Ohio. The Whitneys repeatedly housed Joseph and Emma as well as Sidney Rigdon’s family. Emma gave birth to Joseph III in the Whitney home. Emma and Elizabeth Ann Whitney were dear, close friends. Newel served ably as a bishop and tried to implement the law of consecration. He largely financed the United Firm as one of its charter members (See sections 72, 78, 82, 104). He used his own connections and resources to set Joseph up as a rival storekeeper in Kirtland.[2] Joseph loved and admired Bishop Whitney but acknowledged “the narrow mindedness of his heart and all his covetous desires that so easily besetteth him.”[3]
The Lord speaks directly to those desires in section 117. He speaks as the Creator and Owner of the earth with whom Newel had covenanted to consecrate and serve as a bishop. He commands Newel and William to “repent of all their sins, and of all their covetous desires, before me” (4). He points a series of penetrating questions at the two men who are still deciding whether to serve God or what section 98:20 called “all their detestable things.” The Lord paints a comparative picture, juxtaposing what Joseph called Newel’s “narrow mindedness,” his acquisition of a tiny telestial empire in Kirtland, Ohio, with the Lord’s expansiveness as the creator. He evokes terms from the “pure language” to describe northern Missouri, where Newel is commanded to relocate and serve the saints (117:8, see Section 116 and Abraham 3:13).
In verse 11 the Lord associates Newel Whitney with a Nicolatane band, by which He means to accuse him of aiding and abetting the enemy. Nicolatans were followers of Nicholas of Antioch, an early Christian called and ordained to look after the “business” of ministering to widows (Acts 6:1-8). Nicholas apostatized, however, and led a faction that tried to justify their covetous and lustful impulses.[4] Verse 11 is the Lord’s potent way of conveying to Newel how evil the Lord finds the Kirtland apostates and how near Newel is himself to committing their sins.
Consider the possibility that Joseph may have been discomforted by the Lord’s straightforwardness to Bishop Whitney, who had been so generous with him. There is no way to know for sure, but it may be that Joseph wanted Newel to be sure that the rebuke came from Jesus, not Joseph. That could account for the striking repetition of “saith the Lord” in section 117.
Beginning in verse 12, the Lord commends and commissions Oliver Granger with the job of redeeming the credit of the First Presidency back in Ohio before returning to Missouri as a merchant for Zion. The Lord does not promise Oliver success in this labor, only that his repeated efforts and sacrifice will be sanctifying for him and that his name will be sacredly remembered (13).
Oliver Granger returned from Missouri to Kirtland to obey his part of section 117 by representing the First Presidency in selling some property and settling some debts. One saint on the scene noted Oliver’s “strict integrity” and testified that his “management in the arrangement of the unfinished business of people that have moved to the Far West, in redeeming their pledges and thereby sustaining their integrity, has been truly praiseworthy, and has entitled him to my highest esteem and ever grateful recollection.”[5] Still, “there was not much chance that he could succeed,” Elder Boyd K. Packer taught. He emphasized that section 117 does not praise Oliver for his success but for his efforts, for earnestly contending at personal sacrifice. Thus, for efforts with which Oliver himself may not have been entirely satisfied, his name and example have been remembered.[6]
When Oliver returned from Ohio ready to fulfill the instructions in 117:14, the First Presidency wrote him a letter of commendation.[7] Meanwhile, Oliver delivered section 117 together with a letter from the First Presidency to Newel Whitney and William Marks. The revelation and the related letter put Newel and William in the position of the rich ruler of Luke 18 who kept all of the commandments except the full measure of consecration required to enter the kingdom of God. As Jesus counseled the rich man, so He counsels Newel and William in section 117 to sell what they have; distribute unto the poor; come, in their case literally to Missouri; and choose “treasure in heaven” instead of the comparatively tiny though highly coveted “drop” (117:8, Luke 18:18-25).
The First Presidency’s letter to Newel and William said, “you will understand the will of the Lord concerning you.”[8] Knowing the revelation compelled the brethren to act—either in obedience or disobedience. They could not remain indecisive about obeying Jesus Christ. The First Presidency was confident that they would “doubtless act accordingly,” and they did. Newel Whitney and his family left Kirtland in the fall of 1838, too late to join with the Saints in Missouri (being driven from the state), but soon enough to continue serving as a bishop in Nauvoo, Illinois. William Marks obeyed also and became the Nauvoo stake president.
Section 117 powerfully motivated Newel Whitney, William Marks, and Oliver Granger. Each of them believed it was indeed a revelation from the Lord and sacrificed selfish interests in order to obey it.
Section 118
Revelation, 8 July 1838–A [D&C 118]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.Imagine that one-third of the members of the quorum of twelve apostles have just been released or excommunicated for dissent. That’s what happened in 1838, along with a host of other problems. A council including Joseph, his counselors, secretary, the bishopric in Missouri, and Thomas Marsh, president of the quorum of twelve apostles, met to seek revelation. “Show unto us thy will O Lord concerning the Twelve,” Joseph prayed, and section 118 followed.[1]
The Lord calls for a conference to immediately fill the vacancies in the quorum of twelve apostles. Thomas Marsh, who besides presiding over the quorum was the Church’s publisher in Missouri, is to continue in that role. The other apostles are to continue preaching. The Lord covenants with them that if they endure in their ministries meekly and humbly, he will provide for their families and give them success.
In verse 4 the Lord elaborates on a call He mentioned in section 114 for the apostles cross the Atlantic Ocean early in 1839 for a mission to Great Britain. This time the call is very specific. “Let them take leave of my saints in the city of Far West, on the twenty-sixth day of April next, on the building spot of my house, saith the Lord” (5). The Lord then names the men He chose to replace the fallen apostles and commands that they be officially notified.
The next day, the apostles who were in Far West met with the First Presidency and acted on section 118’s command to officially notify the new apostles. Sidney Ridgon wrote to Willard Richards, who was already serving in England. Willard was later ordained there by Brigham Young in 1840. Wilford Woodruff was serving in the Islands off the New England coast when, according to his journal, “I received a letter from Thomas B. Marsh, informing me of my appointment to fill the place, in the Quorum of the Twelve, of one who had fallen, and I was requested to come to Far West as soon as possible, to prepare for a mission to England in the spring.”[2] Obeying the rest of the revelation proved to be more problematic. In October 1838 the governor of Missouri issued an executive order to the state militia to drive the Saints from the state. The Saints lost their property and retreated east to the relative safety of Illinois. There, as April 1839 approached, the apostles and others counseled about section 118’s specific instructions to leave for England from the Far West, Missouri temple site on April 26. Quorum president Thomas Marsh had since been excommunicated for rebellion and apostle David Patten had been killed in the Missouri violence, leaving Brigham Young as the senior apostle.
Wilford Woodruff reported that “as the time drew nigh for the accomplishment of this work, the question arose, ‘What is to be done?’ Here is a revelation commanding the Twelve to be in Far West on the 26th day of April, to lay the cornerstone of the Temple there; it had to be fulfilled. The Missourians had sworn by all the gods of eternity that if every other revelation given through Joseph Smith should be fulfilled, that should not be, for the day and date being given they declared it would fail. The general feeling in the Church, so far as I know, was that, under the circumstances, it was impossible to accomplish the work; and the Lord would accept the will for the deed.”[3] But Brigham Young was presiding over the apostles, and the Lord had commanded them to leave from the Far West temple site on April 16, 1838. Anyone who wonders whether the apostles would do so is probably not familiar with Brigham’s iron resolve.
Wilford joined Brigham Young and others on a journey west over the Mississippi River and into hostile Missouri. Wilford noted that the roads were full of Saints heading east, “fleeing from Missouri to Illinois for they were driven from their houses & lands by the State.” Brigham, Wilford, and their party arrived at Far West on April 25.
In his journal entry for April 16, 1839, Wilford wrote about all the obstacles between the apostles and their revealed instructions to leave for their mission to England from the Far West temple site that day. Then Wilford wrote, “we moved forward to the building spot of the house of the Lord in the City of far west & held a Council & fulfilled the revelation & Commandment.”
Wilford noted that they also fulfilled section 115’s command to begin to lay the foundation for the temple on that day. They rolled a large stone to the southeast corner of the temple site (D&C 115:11). Wilford sat on that stone as the apostles led by Brigham Young ordained him an apostle. George A. Smith was also ordained to replace Thomas Marsh. Each of the apostles prayed and Alpheus Cutler placed the corner stone before, as Wilford put it, “in consequence of the peculiar situation of the Saints he thought it wisdom to adjourn until some future time when the Lord should open the way expressing his determination then to proceed with the building.”[4]
A few days later, William Phelps, who had apostatized and remained in Missouri, reported the event to his wife in a mocking, critical tone. “One of the least of all the forcible tricks of the Mormons, was performed in the morning of the 26th April, in secret darkness about three o clock in the Morning.” He said they “assembled at the big house cellar, and laid one huge stone, in addition to those already there, to fulfill the revelation given the 26th of April one year ago. I think they strained at a camel and swallowed a gnat. . . . I have also learned that, at the sham meeting at the big house cellar, there not being a quorum of the old ‘Twelve’ present, they had recourse to ‘shift,’ and ordained Wilford Woodruff, and Geo. Smith as apostles, which with HC Kimball Orson Pratt, Brigham Young (old ones) and John E Page and John Taylor (new ones), made seven. They prayed (in vain) sung Adam ondi Ahmah, and closed. There were others there. This looks a little like choosing or loving darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.” Phelps continued with profound irony, “You know I think as much of pure religion as ever, but this foolish mocking disgusts me and all decent people. Force the fulfillment of Jo’s revelation! You might as well damn the waters of Missouri River with a lime riddle. It was undoubtedly done to strengthen the faith of weak members, and for effect abroad: as I understand the Twelve are a going to try their luck again among the nations: It’s really a pity they cannot get a Looking Glass large enough to see the saw log in their own eyes while they are endeavoring to pull the slab out of the neighboring nations. All I can say is ‘Physician save thyself’! Whether you laugh or cry, I have one thing to confess, and that is: I never was so lonesome before.”[5]
While William Phelps pitied himself and mocked the apostles, they turned east and continued to obey section 118. They returned to Illinois to make final preparations for their mission to Great Britain. They left their families sick and destitute and, some suffering from malaria, struggled to make their way to England. There they experienced an unprecedented harvest, converting thousands of souls.
Section 119
Revelation, 8 July 1838–C [D&C 119]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.Though it is clearly worded and consistent with Joseph’s earlier revelations, section 119 may be his most misunderstood revelation. That is because everyone reads the scriptures through a figurative pair of glasses. The glasses are made of presuppositions. The glasses can’t be seen or felt but they distort what is seen and understood. The 1981 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants included a heading for section 119. The heading represents the glasses through which many saints see section 119. It is largely accurate but it includes two sentences that aren’t. While many similar errors were corrected in 2013, that one wasn’t.
To see how this works, read the revelation in section 119 without looking at the heading. Forget everything you think you know about tithing and just read the revelation. Note that it begins with a direct restatement of the law of consecration (D&C 42:33, 54). Then verse 2 states the reasons for the revelation, and they are the same reasons for the law of consecration and related revelations given in sections 51, 70, 72, 78, 82, 104, and 105. “This,” section 119 says, “is the beginning of the tithing of my people.”
That is the first of the revelation’s three uses of tithing or tithed. All of them refer to the voluntary offering of surplus property. “And after that, those who have thus been tithed,” says verse 4, “shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually.” Clearly tithing is not a lesser or lower law to be replaced someday but “a standing law unto them forever” and applicable to all saints everywhere (4, 7). The revelation ends with a covenant. “If my people observe not this law, to keep it holy, and by this law sanctify the land of Zion unto me, that my statutes and judgments may be kept thereon, that it may be most holy, behold, verily I say unto you, it shall not be a land of Zion unto you” (6).
So why do saints tell each other the story that the law of consecration is a higher law and tithing is a lower law? The Doctrine and Covenants doesn’t say that. There’s not enough space here to explain this misunderstanding completely but the heading plays a role in it. There are erroneous sentences in the heading that conflict with the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants: The Lord had previously given to the Church the law of consecration and stewardship of property, which members (chiefly the leading elders) entered into by a covenant that was to be everlasting. Because of failure on the part of many to abide by the covenant, the Lord withdrew it for a time, and gave instead the law of tithing to the whole Church. These sentences conflate two separate, distinct covenants into one, then mistakenly assert that section 119 is instead of that covenant.
The first covenant is the one all saints are to make and keep to live the law of consecration in section 42. Saints were expected, not coerced, to live this law. All could. Some would and some would not. (See sections 51, 66, 85 and 90).
The covenant for all Latter-day Saints to keep the law of consecration is different from the covenant made by the leading elders to own, administer, and share the Church’s assets according to the law of consecration. That second covenant led to the United Firm, better known as the United Order, which existed from 1832 to 1834 and involved a few church leaders, never the general membership of the Church (See sections 78, 82, 104). The Lord declared the United Firm’s covenant broken and therefore void in section 104:4-9. He then dismantled the United Firm in section 104 but never repealed the law of consecration.
President Gordon B. Hinckley taught that that law of consecration was not rescinded and is “still in effect.”[1] So how could section 119 be instead of the law of consecration? The revelation doesn’t say tithing is instead of consecration. It simply restates the law and adds clarification and perhaps even a level of greater obligation. It is best understood as part of, not instead of, the law of consecration. Section 119 is God’s law and covenant to be kept or rejected by each individual’s own free will.
Reading the revelation through broken glasses causes us to distort it to mean that tithing is a lower law that that is going away someday. Seeing the revelation through the lenses of its original context shows us how it fits in the law of consecration, “a standing law unto them forever,” and that obedience to it is prerequisite to Zion (D&C 119).
Section 120
Section 119 created a need to account for the tithes that would be paid as a result of the revelation. Section 120 was revealed to solved that problem. It says that the time has come for the Lord to appoint the First Presidency, bishopric, and high council as a standing council to dispose of the tithes “by mine own voice unto them, saith the Lord.”[1]
Less than a month passed before this newly revealed council met in Far West, Missouri to obey the revelation, that is to “take into concideration the disposing of the publick properties in the hands of the Bishop, in Zion, for the people of Zion have commenced liberally to consecrate agreeably to the revelations, and commandments of the Great I Am of their surplus properties.” The council agreed that the First Presidency should keep all the property they needed “and the remainder be put into the hands of the Bishop or Bishops, agreeably to the commandments, and revelations.”[2]
Section 120 created the council that continues to guide the Church’s financial and property management, and declared the principle of revelation by which they do so. The council has a different composition today, however. When section 120 was revealed, Far West was church headquarters and its bishop and high council served with the First Presidency on the council. Over the years the quorum of twelve apostles grew into a governing body of the Church and a presiding bishopric was formed. Today, in other words, the council is composed of the First Presidency, Quorum of Twelve Apostles, and the Presiding Bishopric.[3]
There have been critics of this council for a long time. Their perspective is always from the outside. Speaking from the inside, with nearly two decades as a member of this council, Elder Robert D. Hales said, “It is remarkable to witness this council heed the Lord’s voice. Each member is aware of and participates in all the council’s decisions. No decision is made until the council is unanimous. All tithing funds are spent for the purposes of the Church.” Elder Hales continued, “I bear my testimony of the Council on the Disposition of the Tithes. . . . Without exception, the tithing funds of this Church have been used for His purposes.”[4]
[2] K. Shane Goodwin, “The History of the Name of the Savior’s Church: A Collaborative and Revelatory Process,” BYU Studies Quarterly 58:3 (2019): 5-41.
[3] Thomas B. Marsh to Wilford Woodruff, April 30, 1838, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[5] William A. Wood, “An Old Mormon City in Missouri,” American Magazine of History 16 (1886): 98-99; as cited in Gentry, “A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri,” 64, note 77.
[4] Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans, 1887), 439.
[5] Horace Kingsbury to all persons that are or may be interested, Painesville, Ohio, October 26, 1838, Joseph Smith, Letterbook 2, p. 40, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[6] Boyd K. Packer, “The Least of These,” Ensign (November 2004), 86. Howard W. Hunter, “No Less Serviceable,” Ensign (April 1992), 64.
[2] Wilford Woodruff, Journal, August 9, 1838, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. Thomas B. Marsh to Wilford Woodruff, July 14, 1838, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[3] Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses, 13:159.
[4] Wilford Woodruff, Journal, April 16, 1839, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[5] William W. Phelps to Sally Phelps, May 1, 1839, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Section 119 notes
[1]Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997), 639.
Section 121 puts a counterintuitive twist on the age-old problem of suffering and power. If God is benevolent and powerful, why do people suffer?
The problem becomes acute for those who assume that God should exercise his benevolence and power by preventing all suffering. That is apparently incongruous with his plan, in which the most innocent and loving being suffered more than anyone–and everyone–else. Joseph internalized these lessons in a tiny, squalid, freezing cell near the Missouri River. It happened like this.
The governor issued an order for the militia to expel Latter-day Saints, who were abused, raped, and compelled give up their property as citizen soldiers shot their livestock and pillaged their homes. General Lucas arrested Joseph. Emma and her children clung to Joseph as a guard cursed at six-year-old Joseph III and threatened to kill him if he didn’t back off.[1] Joseph was carted off to Richmond, Missouri, where he wrote to Emma as positively as he could that he was shackled to his brethren “in chains as well as in the cords of everlasting love.”[2]
On December 1, 1838, Joseph Smith and five of his brethren were committed to jail in Liberty, Missouri, having been charged with treason against the state in a preliminary hearing. A committee of the Missouri legislature later concluded that one-sided hearing was “not of the character which should be desired for the basis of a fair and candid investigation.”[3] Joseph’s brother Hyrum called it a “pretended court” after the judge said “there was no law for us, nor for the ‘Mormons’ in the state of Missouri.”[4]
Four winter months and five days later, Joseph and his brethren still languished in jail at Liberty, Missouri, a cramped dungeon without beds or a bathroom, awaiting trial on a capital charge without hope for due process. Meanwhile the saints had been driven mid-winter by a mob under the guise of official orders from the governor, aided and abetted by a host of apostates.
Indeed many of Joseph’s most trusted and stalwart friends had forsaken him. Most of the Book of Mormon witnesses, still certain of their testimony, turned against him. Some of the apostles were antagonistic, including Thomas Marsh and Orson Hyde, who had said it was treasonous for Joseph to prophecy the coming kingdom of God (see section 65). William Phelps turned his powerful pen against Joseph. Former apostle William McLellin, who had no doubts that Joseph was a prophet (see section 66), plundered the saints and expressed his desire to beat Joseph.[5]
Some of the Saints lost all faith “that God has been our leader.” They had hoped for deliverance but none came.[6] Even Sidney Rigdon, counselor in the First Presidency and fellow sufferer in jail, resented God for not using his power to spare the saints from suffering. “If ever there was a moment to give up the cause, this was it,” Richard Bushman wrote. “Joseph puzzled over the Saints’ suffering and God’s power. Why had they been defeated? He never questioned his own revelations, never doubted the validity of the commandments. He did not wonder if he had been mistaken in sending the Saints to Missouri or requiring them to gather. He questioned God’s disappearance. Where was he when the Saints needed him?”[7]
Joseph put these questions to the Lord in a March 1839 letter to the Saints. Sections 121, 122, and 123 all come from this one profound letter.[8] Section 121:1-6 follows Joseph’s description of the jail as “hell surrounded with demons.” Even more concerning to him were the widows and orphans of the men murdered at Haun’s Mill, and “the unrelenting hand” of oppression. It is about the duration of these injustices that Joseph inquired “how long . . . yea, O Lord, how long?” (D&C 121:1-3).
Joseph reviewed the actions of apostates, judges, lawyers, the governor, “and the one sided rascally proceedings of the Legislature” before saying how letters from Emma, his brother, and Bishop Partridge had warmed his heart. “And when the hart is sufficiently contrite,” his letter says, “then the voice of inspiration steals along and whispers,” followed by the answer to his prayer, verses 7-25.
The Lord’s answer to “how long” was “a small moment,” accompanied by a curse on Joseph’s enemies and the identification of their real motive–personal sinfulness (verse 17). The Lord severs them “from the ordinances of mine house” and promises just punishments for their sins (20). Verses 26-33 are the promised blessings of a covenant, the terms and conditions of which precede the promises but were not included in the canonized part of Joseph’s letter: “Let honesty and sobriety, and cander and solemnity, and virtue, and pureness, and meekness, and simplicity, Crown our heads in every place, and in fine becum as little Children without malice guile or Hypocrisy: and now Bretheren after your tribulations if you do these things, and exercise fervent prayer, and faith in the sight of God,” then God will grant the exalting blessings promised in verses 26-33.
Verses 34-46 make the most sense in the context of consecration. The portion of the letter preceding those verses cautions against “any among you who aspire after their own aggrandizement and seek their own oppulance while their brethren are groning in poverty and are under sore trials.” Then Joseph explains why many are called but few are chosen: “Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world and aspire to the honors of men that they do not learn this one lesson,” that a person who hides their sins, gratifies pride, has vain ambition, or exploit the weak and poor cannot have priesthood.
Sadly, most mortals choose not to submit to the Savior’s power to change the nature and disposition. Most mortals oppress their neighbors as soon as they can. This is forbidden by the gospel generally and by section 121 specirically. It prescribes the antidote of God-like qualities: persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, pure love and knowledge. Reproof should come at precisely the right time, which is “when moved upon by the Holy Ghost,” and removing the problem should be done with sharpness like a surgeon’s scalpel, leaving as little scar tissue and collateral damage as possible and “showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved” (43).
That is God’s way of governing—righteous dominion. Verses 45-46 sum how it works. Those who choose charity over covetousness and virtue over self-interest inherit “an everlasting dominion” (46). Those who choose to share and not coerce when they have a little power are the only ones God trusts with more power. The maxim is wrong: absolute power does not corrupt absolutely. Rather, a little power, when misused, leads to the loss of priesthood, while faithfulness to priesthood accumulates more power—gently, like dew from heaven (45).
What an ironic place was the jail at Liberty. Joseph was powerless, except profoundly not. He was the only person on earth at the time in full possession of the priesthood keys restored by ministering angels. The powerful people who oppressed him—former friends and arch foes—were about to become powerless. Perhaps because it was a place of suffering, Liberty (a microcosm of mortality) was an ideal environment in which to internalize the truth that mortals who overcome their nature and choose to wield power in the service of others as God does, with sacrifice and suffering, won’t have to compel anyone or anything, and yet their kingdom will grow forever.
Section 122
Section 122 immediately follows the last part of section 121 in Joseph’s March 20, 1839 letter from Liberty Jail.[1] Several of the statements in it refer to his personal experiences. Verses 6-7, for example, evoke the awful events in Far West, Missouri the preceding fall as Joseph was wrenched from his family, sentenced to execution, later charged with treason, and confined in the “pit”—the underground cell in Liberty, Missouri.
The revelation compounds Joseph’s suffering in heavy if statements that build to an unbearable cresdenco, as if they were rocks piling on his body or lashes across his bare back. The Lord does all that to make two profound points, communicated in what must have been, especially juxtaposed with what proceeded it, a reassuring voice of a loving Father. “Know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.”
The revelation made the second point to Joseph by posing the profound question of verse 8. “The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?” The “therefore what?” follows as Joseph is encouraged to hold on, fear not, promised the priesthood forever and life until his work on earth is finished.
Joseph wanted Emma to be first to read his long letter, and he pled with her in a letter the following day to have it copied immediately and circulated to the leaders of the Church and his parents. Though the letter from which sections 121-23 derives exhibited the limits of Joseph’s schooling, he regarded it as the vessel of some of the most profound revelation he received and some of the best counsel he ever gave. The parts that became sections 121 and 122 reoriented and motivated Joseph, many have had a similar effect on many others, and continue to be a primary source of Latter-day Saint resolve to this day to keep the faith in the face of adversity.
In a dark, confined space he was powerless to escape, Joseph pled “how long” with an implied “why?” From His timeless and infinite vantage, the Lord answered “a small moment” and because “all these things shall give thee experience” (D&C 121:7, 122:7). These words “turned the raw Missouri experience into a theology of suffering” that made sense from God’s perspective. Liberty Jail, in effect, served Joseph as a microcosm of life in a telestial world, a dog-eat-dog sphere of power-seeking, aspiration, materialism, and unrighteous dominion. There, in that hell, Joseph was powerless. Or was he?
B.H. Roberts called the jail “more temple than prison, so long as the Prophet was there. It was a place of meditation and prayer. A temple, first of all, is a place of prayer; and prayer is communion with God. It is the ‘infinite in man seeking the infinite in God.’ Where they find each other, there is holy sanctuary—a temple. Joseph Smith sought God in this rude prison, and found him.”[2]
As a result, Sections 121-122 endowed Joseph with power. While the bounds of his enemies were set, Joseph would always have the priesthood (D&C 122:9). His oppressors, those who used their supposed power and influence to hurt, take, abuse, insult, misrepresent, and compel, would be cursed, lose their posterity, and be severed from the temple, and, thus, confidence in the presence of God. It was they who were powerless to “hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints” (D&C 121:33). The powerful on earth would, in a small moment, be impotent while Joseph and the faithful would reign with gentleness, meekness, and by love unfeigned forever and ever (D&C 121:41, 46).
These divine explanations helped Joseph see as if from God’s eyes that things were not as they seemed. Section 122 made sense of suffering. Mankind was on earth to gain “experience.” “The word ‘experience’ suggested that life was a passage. The enduring human personality was being tested. Experience instructed. Life was not just a place to shed one’s sins but a place to deepen comprehension by descending below them all.” In sum, sections 121-22 taught Joseph that “the Missouri tribulations were a training ground” for godhood.[3] Hell, it turned out, could serve as a temple, a place to be endowed with God’s heart and mind in anticipation of assuming His “everlasting dominion” (121:46).
Joseph came to understand this because of his “experience” in Liberty. He wrote from that stinking but sacred space, “It seems to me that my heart will always be more tender after this than ever it was before.” He recognized that trials “give us that knowledge to understand the minds of the Ancients” like Abraham, who typified the Savior’s unequaled unjust suffering. “For my part,” Joseph wrote, “I think I never could have felt as I now do if I had not suffered the wrongs that I have suffered.”[4]
Renewed certainty resulted from these revelations. The day after he dictated them Joseph still did not know how long he would be in jail, but he wrote to Emma that since he knew “for a certainty of eternal things, if the heavens linger it is nothing to me.”[5] After he finally escaped from Missouri a few weeks later, Joseph seemed the most determined soul on earth. He knew what he had to do and nothing could stop him. His days were not only known but numbered, and with them he pursued a course to mentor the apostles and give them the priesthood keys he had received from ministering angels, build a temple and begin offering the ordinances of exaltation to the faithful.
As a result of these revelations, Joseph emerged from his darkest unbroken, undaunted, and with his eyes fixed on eternity. So long as he saw the world through section 122 he could press forward, coping with any experience, come what may.
Section 123
Section 123 is in Joseph’s voice, not the Lord’s. It comes from a long letter composed in jail at Liberty, Missouri. It does not claim to be revelation, but it was nevertheless valuable counsel from the Prophet for the Saints to document the injustices and atrocities they endured in Missouri in order to assert their first amendment rights to petition the government to redress grievances.
In section 123, Joseph repeatedly says that documenting what happened to the Saints in Missouri is “an imperative duty” they owed to God, angels, each other, those who were murdered, to the rising generation, “and to all the pure in heart” (7, 9, 11). In powerful, metaphor-rich language, Joseph and his brethren urge the Saints to attend to this important matter. Joseph was not certain that the government would respond to the petitions, but he knew the Lord required the Saint to do all in their power, including this “last effort” to obtain justice, before He would “send forth the power of his mighty arm” (6).
In response to Joseph’s suggestion, 678 Latter-day Saints wrote or dictated sworn statements documenting the abuses they suffered and property they lost in Missouri. In the fall of 1839, having escaped from Missouri, Joseph took the documents to the president of the United States. He literally knocked on the door of the White House and asked to see Martin Van Buren, whom Joseph had supported. Joseph presented the petitions and Van Buren, facing an election year, responded, “What can I do? I can do nothing for you! If I do anything, I shall come in contact with the whole state of Missouri.” Joseph turned to the Illinois congressional delegation for help in appealing to Congress. President Martin Van Buren pled impotence on the federalist doctrine of limited powers. He could not constitutionally intervene in a state matter, he said. The Senate referred the case to the Judiciary Committee, which, with pressure from Missouri, arrived at the same conclusion knowing that the Saints had been driven for their religion. There would be no justice, no redress of grievances or guarantees of the free exercise of religious conscience.
The documentation of abuses “did have a long term effect on Mormonism’s public image. . . . The accounts of the persecutions turned the expulsion from Missouri into an asset in the battle for popular support.” The redress petitions were turned over to the Library of Congress, where they remain to this day as a testimony of “diabolical rascality and nefarious and murderous impositions that have been practiced upon this people” (D&C 123:5).[1]
[3]Correspondence, Orders &c. in Relation to the Disturbances with the Mormons; and the Evidence (Fayette, Missouri: Missouri General Assembly, 1841), 2.
[4] Hyrum Smith, Affidavit before Nauvoo Municipal Court, July 1, 1843, in Joseph Smith, et al., History of the Church, 7 volumes, edited by B.H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1980), 3:402-23, also in Clark V. Johnson, editor, Mormon Redress Petitions: Documents of the 1833-1838 Missouri Conflict (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1992), 619-39, quote drawn from pages 632-35. Gordon A. Madsen, “Joseph Smith and the Missouri Court of Inquiry: Austin A. King’s Quest for Hostages,” BYU Studies 43:4 (2004): 93-136.
[5] Joseph Smith, et al., History of the Church, 7 volumes, edited by B.H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1980), 3:215.
[6] John Corrill, A Brief History of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints (St. Louis: Printed for the Author, 1839), 48.
Joseph emerged from the depressing jail in Liberty, Missouri with an undaunted spirit. He had known since January 1838 that he could only count on living for five more years and that his work was far from finished. So Joseph was laser focused on preparing the saints for the covenants and ordinances of the holy temple.
He led the saints in purchasing land along the Mississippi River in the state of Illinois, including a townsite called Commerce. Joseph renamed it Nauvoo, the Hebrew word translated as beautiful in Isaiah 52:7. In October 1839 Joseph called for all Saints to gather there and build a holy city. Then Joseph prayed for and received a momentous revelation, the longest in the Doctrine and Covenants, section 124.
Coming shortly after a presidential election and just days before Nauvoo’s first city election, section 124 begins by expressing the Lord’s approval of Joseph’s efforts. Then, “that I might show forth my wisdom through the weak things of the earth,” the Lord commands Joseph to immediately write a proclamation “to all the kings of the world . . . to the honorable president-elect,” William Harrison, “and the high-minded governors of the nation in which you live.” Joseph was to write “in the spirit of meekness and by the power of the Holy Ghost” and declare the will of Christ to the world’s political authorities. The Lord says nothing of the will of the people but declares his will to “my people” (10, 11, 21, 29, 40, 45, 84, 92, 104). In the United States, the voice of the people was the voice of God. In Nauvoo, the Lord spoke directly through Joseph Smith.
The command for all the saints to consecrate to the building of the temple begins with verse 25. The rationale for doing so follows, beginning in verse 28: “For there is not a place found on earth that he may come to and restore again that which was lost unto you, or which he hath taken away, even the fulness of the priesthood.” The Lord grants the Saints sufficient time to consecrate and build the temple as a sacred location for baptisms and the other sacred ordinances, after which he will not accept their ordinances, “for therein,” meaning the temple, “are the keys of holy priesthood ordained, that you may receive honor and glory” (34, cross reference Section 128).
The Lord continues his rationale for building the temple through verse 41, which is a restatement of the promise to reveal fulness in the temple. Some have misread verse 31-34 in self-serving ways. President Joseph Fielding Smith explained verse 32’s condition, “and if ye do not these things at the end of the appointment,” that is, the period for building the temple. It “does not mean ‘if ye do not build a temple at the end of the appointment,’ as our critics infer it does, but it refers to the ordinances that were to be performed in the temple.” President Smith clarified that if the Saints failed to perform the temple ordinances for the dead, then they would be rejected by the Lord per section 124:32.[1]
President Boyd K. Packer explained the revelation’s references to washing and anointing ordinances in verses 37-39. “The ordinances of washing and anointing are referred to often in the temple as initiatory ordinances. It will be sufficient for our purposes to say only the following: Associated with the endowment are washings and anointings–mostly symbolic in nature, but promising definite, immediate blessings as well as future blessings. . . . In connection with these ordinances, in the temple you will be officially clothed in the garment and promised marvelous blessings in connection with it.”[2]
Covenants and specific instructions follow the verses on temple ordinances, including the spot on which to build and the terms and conditions on which the Lord will make it holy and on which the Saints will be able to remain in Nauvoo to see it finished. These covenants hinge on the inseparable doctrines of individual agency and accountability, and culminate in verses 47-48, “If you build a house to my name, and do not the things that I say, I will not perform the oath which I make unto you, neither fulfill the promises which ye expect at my hand, saith the Lord. For instead of blessings, ye, by your own works, bring cursings, wrath, indignation, and judgments upon your own yeads.” In verses 49-54 the Lord explains accountability in terms of agency. That is, he holds accountable those who have power to determine the outcomes he commands. Following that principle, verse 55 is another statement of rationale for building the temple in Nauvoo.
Nauvoo rose like a fortress on a hill, up from a swampy lowland along the Mississippi. Believers streamed into Illinois from Canada, the British Isles, and the Atlantic Seaboard. The population of Nauvoo rose quickly to twelve thousand because of this revelation and Joseph’s counsel to gather and build Zion. Joseph began keeping the Book of the Law of the Lord with section 124, where he recorded it. The revelation oriented his life and the Church’s. It gave Joseph the rest of his life’s work, and he entered the names of those who consecrated to the temple in the Book as well. At April conference in 1841 the revelation was read and then Joseph rose and urged the Saints to obey it by building the temple and the Nauvoo House.[3]
Section 124 reorganized the Church, setting in order its presiding priesthood quorums, replacing apostates and filling the vacancies left by brethren who had passed away. The Saints acted on the Lord’s commands to sustain those called to the priesthood quorums, which they did at April conference in 1841, as well as building offices for them in the temple.
Section 124 reoriented the Church by giving it specific work to do, most importantly in building the Nauvoo Temple as a means to the end of receiving the ultimate blessings, the fulness of priesthood ordinances. Knowing that his days were numbered, Joseph began giving the ordinances in May 1842 to a select few, fifty-seven brothers and sisters in all, even before the temple was finished. He sealed couples and confirmed the fulness of priesthood ordinances on a few according to section 132. Joseph was killed in June 1844 before the temple was ready for ordinances, but in March of that year he had commissioned the apostles to carry on the work and given them all the necessary priesthood keys to do so. Beginning in December 1845, the apostles and others who had been endowed by Joseph officiated in the temple ordinances for 5,600 Saints.
The temple blessings thus resulting from section 124 are inestimable. Speaking of temples, President Gordon B. Hinckley declared, “these unique and wonderful buildings, and the ordinances administered therein, represent the ultimate in our worship. These ordinances become the most profound expressions of our theology.”[4]
Notes
[1] Joseph Fielding Smith, quoted in Roy W. Doxey, Latter-day Prophets and the Doctrine and Covenants, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1978): 4:265-66.
[2] Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 154-55.
[3] Ehat and Cook, comps. and eds., Words of Joseph Smith, 69.
From the confines of a jail cell in Liberty, Missouri, Joseph wrote to Bishop Partridge in Illinois that the saints could buy land in Iowa Territory for $2 per acre over twenty years with no money down, and the saints made a deal for the land.
Joseph escaped from Missouri and joined the saints in Illinois a few weeks later. He purchased land on a peninsula pushing into the Mississippi River across from the saints’ Iowa land, and named it Nauvoo. The Illinois land was comparatively expensive. Joseph hoped that the Church could buy it with consecrated funds and offer lots to the poor at prices they could afford, but the offerings were insufficient. It became clear that the Church would have to sell lots in order to pay its mortgage. So Joseph urged saints in outlying areas to gather to Nauvoo and help pay for the land. Saints across the river wondered if that applied to them. Joseph sought and received section 125 to answer their question.
The Lord’s will, declared in Section 125, is for the saints to build a city in Iowa across from Nauvoo, and to call it Zarahemla. The saints were to gather from everywhere else and settle there, in nearby Nashville, Iowa Territory; or across the river in Nauvoo. As usual, there is an explicit rationale in this revelation. The Lord gives a reason why the saints should do His will: “That they may be prepared for that which is in store for a time to come” (D&C 135:2).
Saints moved as a result of Section 125. It was read to the saints at General Conference on April 6, 1841. “Many of the brethren immediately made preparations for moving,” and came as soon as their planting was done.[1] Alanson Ripley reported that “Joseph said it was the will of the Lord the brethren in general . . . should move in and about the city Zerehemla with all convenient speed which the saints are willing to do because it is the will of the Lord.”[2]
Section 126
Section 126 put Brigham Young in position to lead when Joseph’s mission was finished. Brigham answered the Lord’s call to serve in England (see section 118). Both he and his family were sick and homeless when Brigham left Nauvoo in the fall of 1839. While Brigham was in England, section 124 formalized his call as president of the quorum of the twelve apostles (D&C 124:127). Then, having converted hundreds, he returned to Nauvoo in July 1841 and found his family living in a small, unfinished cabin. A week later the Lord gave section 126 to Joseph.[1]
Joseph communicated the revelation to Brigham with his own affectionate introduction to his “Dear and well-beloved brother.” The Lord, having accepted Brigham’s offering in laborious missions away from home, no longer requires him to leave his family. Instead the Lord commands Brigham to send the Lord’s word abroad and look to the care of his family “henceforth and forever” (3).
Brigham set to work to care for his family. He chinked the cracks in the cabin, planted an orchard, built a cellar, and got up a garden to meet their needs. Joseph gave Brigham a few weeks and then assigned him to lead the apostles in taking care “of the business of the church in Nauvoo,” including overseeing missionary work (in obedience to section 126’s command to “send my word abroad”), the gathering of converts, and consecration.[2] This represented a shift in the apostles’ responsibility. Joseph had often kept them at arm’s length since their calling in 1835, testing them with tough assignments. Some of Brigham’s fellow apostles apostatized under that pressure. Brigham did everything the Lord asked of him. He had marched into hostile Missouri to obey a revelation. Then, sick and impoverished, he forsook everything else dear to preach the gospel in England.
As a result of section 126, Brigham remained near Joseph for the Prophet’s few remaining years, learning and receiving the temple ordinances and ultimately also the keys angels had conferred on Joseph.
Section 127
In May 1838 in the Church’s Elders’ Journal, Joseph published questions he was frequently asked, including some provocative ones like: “Do Mormons baptize in the name of Jo Smith?”[1] In July he published the answers, including some snarky ones like, “No, but if they did, it would be as valid as the baptism administered by the sectarian priests.”[2]
Maybe the most important Q&A was this one: “If the Mormon doctrine is true what has become of all those who had died since the days of the apostles. Answer: All those who have not had an opportunity of hearing the gospel, and being administered to by an inspired man in the flesh, must have it hereafter, before they can finally be judged.”
Two years later, on a Nauvoo summer day in 1840, at the funeral of Seymour Brunson, Joseph Smith had more to say about that. He read most of 1 Corinthians 15, in which Paul refers to the early Christian practice of being baptized for the dead in anticipation of the resurrection “and remarked that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brought glad tidings of great joy.” Noticing Jane Neyman in the congregation, whose teenage son Cyrus had died without baptism, Joseph gave her the good news “that people could now act for their friends who had departed this life, and that the plan of salvation was calculated to save all who were willing to obey the requirements of the law of God.” It was “a very beautiful discourse.”[3]
Joseph taught baptism for the dead again at October conference in 1840 as the saints eagerly performed the sacred ordinance in the Mississippi River in lieu of a temple baptismal font.[4] One witness wrote that “during the conference there were some times from eight to ten elders in the river at a time baptizing.”[5] But in their understandable zeal they were without knowledge. No one recorded the ordinances. A year later Joseph taught the doctrine in conference again and announced, as section 124 had declared in the meantime, that the Lord would no longer accept baptisms for the dead performed outside the temple (D&C 124:29-35).[6] The Saints thus pushed the temple toward completion, and just over a year later in November 1841 they performed the first baptisms for the dead in the unfinished but rising Nauvoo Temple.
In the midst of teaching the temple ordinances to the Saints, Joseph was charged with masterminding an attempted murder of former Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs. There was no evidence for the charge, and Joseph regarded it as another attempt by his enemies to get him to Missouri and lynch him. He hid instead of subjecting himself to that. Joseph was finally arrested in August 1842 but then released and the charges were finally dismissed a few months later.
Meanwhile, as Joseph moved from house to house in and around Nauvoo, protected by friends, he pondered the newly restored doctrines of the temple. There was something missing. He sought revelation while he was hiding and learned more about the nature of the ordinances. He looked for the first safe opportunity to teach the Saints. In August he taught the Relief Society that “all persons baptiz’d for the dead must have a Recorder present, that he may be an eye-witness to testify of it. It will be necessary in the grand Council, that these things be testified.”[7] The next day Joseph dictated a letter to the Saints, section 127, in which he shared some of what he had recently learned.
Joseph was nostalgic and melancholy as he hid from extradition officers bent on delivering him to a state in which there was no due process of law for Latter-day Saints. In section 127 he rehearses his eventful life, alternating between frustration at his enemies, the hostility that oppressed him, evidences of God’s deliverance, and hope for a final triumph. Mixed in are two revelations, the first in verse 4 and the second in verses 6-9, before Joseph closes with a lament that he is unable to teach the saints in person and a prayer for their salvation.
In the first revelation the Lord urges the Saints to finish the temple despite persecution. In the second He links recording the ordinances to their being sealed. That is, baptisms for the dead are not valid in heaven unless properly recorded by an eye-witness on earth. It is imperative that the saints learn the conditions on which ordinances performed on earth are validated in heaven, for, as the Lord declares in verses 8-9, he is about to restore more that pertains to the priesthood ordinances of the temple and the records of all such ordinances are to be in order and preserved in the temple.
Section 128
Revelation, 8 July 1838–C [D&C 119]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.Wilford Woodruff wrote that “Joseph has been deprived of the privilege of appearing openly & deprived of the society of his own family Because Sheriffs are hunting him to destroy him without cause Yet the Lord is with him. . . . Joseph has presented the Church of late with some glorious principles from the Lord concerning Baptism for the dead & other interesting subjects, he has appeared occasionally in the midst of the Saints which has been a great comfort.”[1]
Baptism for the dead “seems to occupy my mind,” Joseph wrote. Less than a week after dictating section 127, Joseph dictated a much longer, more detailed explanation of the order of sacred ordinances: section 128. It adds practical instructions to 127’s revelation that baptisms for the dead, to be valid, must be recorded by an eye-witness. Joseph proposes a recorder for each of Nauvoo’s four wards, each of whom will account to a general church recorder who will be responsible to collect, certify, and keep the records.
Verse 5 uses three related words, order, ordinance, and ordained. Boyd K. Packer cited the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of order as “arrangement in sequence or proper relative position,” and noted how often the scriptures emphasize the importance of order. Ordinance, wrote President Packer, derives from order. He defined an ordinance as “the ceremony by which things are put in proper order.” Ordain, “a close relative of the other two words,” is the process of putting in order, including appropriately appointing someone to the ministry. “From all this dictionary work,” Elder Packer said, “there comes the impression that an ordinance, to be valid, must be done in proper order.”[2] That is precisely Joseph’s point in section 128. To be valid, an ordinance must be ordained of God, or, in other words, done according to the order or procedure he dictates.
Beginning in verse 6, Joseph traces the doctrine of recording earthly ordinances full circle through the Bible to make his point and substantiate what he had previously taught. He begins with the Biblical book of Revelation, in which John saw that the dead would be judged by what is recorded on earth, which is mirrored in the book of life kept in heaven (6-8). “It may seem to some to be a very bold doctrine that we talk of,” Joseph says, speaking of the priesthood’s power to seal earthly ordinances in heaven. But in defense he evokes Matthew 16’s description of Jesus’ promise to give Peter sealing keys to bind on earth and in heaven (9-10). Joseph then turns to the symbolic significance of baptism and cites Paul’s teaching at 1 Corinthians 15 and Hebrews 11:40. Joseph adds Malachi’s prophecy of the mission of Elijah to unite generations before the Savior’s second coming, and elaborates on its meaning.
With the teaching of temple ordinances, Joseph remarks that the dispensation of fulness “is now beginning to usher in, that a whole and complete and perfect union, and welding together” of generations, dispensations, and, indeed, of the human family can be accomplished (11-18). Joseph turns exultant at this prospect. Beginning at verse 19 he launches into a celebration of the restoration. Recounting the sources of his knowledge and priesthood power, Joseph lists a who’s-who of heavenly messengers he has seen—Moroni, Michael, Peter, James, John, Gabriel, Raphael, “all declaring their dispensation, their rights, their keys, their honors, their majesty and glory, and the power of their priesthood; giving line upon line, precept upon precept; here a little, and there a little; giving us consolation by holding forth that which is to come, confirming our hope” (D&C 128:19-22). At least one of the events to which Joseph refers—Michael teaching him how to detect false messengers (20)—must have taken place before Joseph moved from the Susquehanna River to Ohio in 1831, yet this is his first known mention of it. These verses are at least a partial answer to the questions when and by whom was Joseph endowed with priesthood power, becoming able to give the temple ordinances to the Saints?
In sum, Joseph had revelatory experiences and learned glorious truths that he did not readily share except in the right places at the right times to prepared people. That is exciting, and in a final burst of rhapsody, Joseph celebrated the profundity of the revealed solution to the terrible theological problem that has perplexed every thoughtful Christian: “What about those who never heard?”[3] The answer? “The King Immanuel . . . ordained, before the world was, that which would enable us to redeem them out of their prison; for the prisoners shall go free” (D&C 128:22).
Joseph had spent the winter of 1838-39 in a cold, tiny cell in Liberty, Missouri, and when he dictated section 128 he was hiding from unlawful extradition efforts to get him back to Missouri. He had some sense of how it felt to be liberated from prison. Joseph closed section 128 excited about these “glad tidings of great joy” (19) and tells the Saints what to do with them. It’s the same thing the Lord’s current prophets and apostles are urging us to do: “Let us, therefore, as a church and a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness; and let us present in his holy temple, when it is finished, a book” or, more recently, electronic files or cards “containing the records of our dead, which shall be worthy of all acceptation” (23). In other words, let us organize families in the order God ordained. Let’s take disordered families and put them in order via the performance of holy ordinances in the House of the Lord.
Having shown that baptism for the dead was practiced by the earliest Christians but not since, Professor Hugh Nibley asked, “where did Joseph Smith get his knowledge? Few if any of the sources cited in this discussion were available to him; the best of these have been discovered only in recent years, while the citations from the others are only to be found scattered at wide intervals through works so voluminous that even had they been available to the Prophet, he would, lacking modern aids, have had to spend a lifetime running them down. And even had he found such passages, how could they have meant more to him than they did to the most celebrated divines of a thousand years, who could make nothing of them? This is a region in which great theologians are lost and bemused; to have established a rational and satisfying doctrine and practice on grounds so dubious is indeed a tremendous achievement.”[4]
It is impossible to estimate the results of these revelations, these glad tidings. Because of them innumerable spirit prisoners have gone free. “Shall we not go on in so great a cause?” (D&C 128:22).
Section 125 notes
[1] George D. Smith, editor, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1995), 86.
[2] Alanson Ripley, in John Smith, Journal, 6 March 1841, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[5] Vilate Kimball to Heber C. Kimball, October 11, 1840, CHL.
[6] Minutes of the General Conference of the Church Held at Nauvoo, Elias Smith and Gustavus Hills, Rough Draft Notes of History of the Church, 1841, 17, CHL. History of the Church, 4:423-429.
[7] Joseph Smith, Discourse, August 31, 1842, Nauvoo Illinois, “A Record of the Organization and Proceedings of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo,” 80-83, CHL, in Andrew Ehat and Lyndon Cook, editors, Words of Joseph Smith, 129-31.
Section 128 notes
[1] Wilford Woodruff, Journal, September 19,1842, CHL.
[2] Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 144-45.
[3] John Sanders, editor, What About Those Who Never Heard?: Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1995).
[4] Hugh Nibley, “Baptism for the Dead in Ancient Times,” Mormonism and Early Christianity, 148-49.
Section 129 is esoteric. It can only be understood by people with temple knowledge. It is also euphemistic. It’s no more about hand shaking than kicking the bucket is about actually kicking a bucket.
In January 1838, Joseph received a revelation. It cursed the saints who had become his enemies, said his work in Kirtland was done, and told him and the faithful saints to gather to Zion in Missouri.[1] That night Joseph counseled with Church leaders and concluded, “Well, brethren I do not recollect anything more; but one thing, brethren, is certain; I shall see you again, let what will happen; for I have a promise of life five years, and they cannot kill me until that time has expired.”[2]
No one could kill Joseph during that time. He had to get the fullness of temple blessings restored first. But people sure made his life miserable in the meantime. He escaped from his persecutors in spring 1839. As soon as he could, knowing that his days were numbered and he had none to spare, Joseph gathered several of the apostles on June 27, 1839, exactly five years before his violent death at the hands of a murderous mob, and taught the apostles what he had learned a decade earlier from Michael about “detecting the devil when he appeared as an angel of light” (D&C 128:20).
Wilford Woodruff drew tiny, symbolic keys in his journal, where he wrote what he learned about the “keys of the Kingdom of God Joseph presented . . . in order to detect the devel when he transforms himself nigh unto an angel of light.”[3] In December 1840, Joseph taught these keys to William Clayton, a trusted convert recently arrived from England. In April 1842, Joseph introduced the principles in section 129 to the Relief Society, and in May he gave the saints a temple preparation sermon, including the explanation that there are “certain signs & words by which false spirits & personages may be detected from true–which cannot be revealed to the Elders till the Temple is completed.”[4] A few days later Joseph endowed a few Church leaders in a temporary temple in the attic story of his Nauvoo store. Heber Kimball was there, and subsequently wrote to fellow apostle Parley Pratt, who remained in England to preside over the mission. “We have received some pressious things through the Prophet on the preasthood that would cause your soul to rejoice,” Heber wrote. “I can not give them to you on paper fore they are not to be riten. So you must come and get them for your Self.”[5]
Parley arrived in Nauvoo early in 1843, eager to be taught by Joseph. At a February 9 meeting, Joseph instructed him in the keys he had learned from Michael and had subsequently taught to Wilford, Heber, and a few others. The entry in Joseph’s journal for that day is the source for section 129.
Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 1, 21 December 1842–10 March 1843. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.
The rough journal entry captures only some of the teaching that took place. It reads, “Parley Pratt & other come in—Joseph explained the following. There are 3 administrater: Angels, Spirits, Devils one class in heaven. Angels the spirits of just men made perfect—innumerable co of angels and spirits of Just men made perfect. An angel appears to you how will you prove him. Ask him to shake hands. If he has flesh & bones he is an Angel ‘spirit hath not flesh and bones.’ Spirit of a just man made perfect. Person in its tabernacle could hide its glory. If David Patten or the Devil come. How would you determine should you take hold of his hand you would not feel it. If it was a false administrator he would not do it. True spirit will not give his hand the Devil will. 3 keys.”[6] Clearly there was more said on this occasion than what got cryptically recorded.
In its polished form, section 129 is more clear but still vague. In heaven there are resurrected beings and spirits who are not yet resurrected. Either kind can be sent as messengers. Satan or his angels can counterfeit this kind of revelation. But there are keys to discern such imposters as explained in verses 5-9. It is not safe to draw the conclusion that Satan does not know these keys. It seems more likely, as Joseph taught, that there are boundaries to Satan’s power to deceive.
Part of being endowed with God’s power is the ability to discern true from false messengers (D&C 128:20). As Joseph taught, if Satan could appear in the guise of an angel without our having any ability to know better, “we would not be free agents.”[7]
Section 130
“I am going to offer some corrections to you.” That’s what Joseph said to Orson Hyde at lunch on April 2, 1843 after Elder Hyde had spoken at a morning session of a stake conference in Ramus, Illinois. A Protestant preacher before his conversion to the restored gospel, Elder Hyde mixed unrestored ideas into his sermon. Elder Hyde wisely replied to Joseph, “they shall be thankfully received.”[1]
Joseph and Elder Hyde and everyone else were aware of the prophecies of a contemporary named William Miller, who had predicted that the Savior’s second coming would be April 3, 1843, the day after conference. Elder Hyde spoke about what John 14:23 and 1 John 3:2 had to say about that.
Joseph preached twice at the stake conference, offering corrections to Elder Hyde, answering William Clayton’s question about time relativity, and correcting Miller’s prediction of the Second Coming. William Clayton captured Joseph’s teachings in his journal and Willard Richards later copied them into Joseph’s journal. Some of the teachings were then clarified and prepared for publication in the church’s newspaper in the 1850s and finally added to the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.
Section 130 begins by clarifying John 14:23, which prophesies that the Savior will appear and reveal his Heavenly Father. Joseph emphasized, contrary to what Elder Hyde had suggested, that the appearance of the Father and Son are literal. They are exalted, embodied Gods; the designation Heavenly Father not a euphemism, and the social relationship sealed here will endure into eternity only with “eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy” (2).
Beginning in verse 4, Joseph answers a question William Clayton posed about the relativity of time depending on one’s proximity to God. Joseph declared that time is relative, but that all angels who minister to our earth have themselves lived on this earth, or will. The angels now reside with God “on a globe like a sea of glass and fire” where there is no time since “past, present, and future . . . are continually before the Lord” (7). Joseph taught that this earth will become a celestial kingdom, a great seer stone in which its inhabitants will be able to see kingdoms of lesser glory. Even more exciting, each individual who enters this kingdom will get a personal “stone” as a means of learning and progressing eternally.
Beginning in verse 12, Joseph prophesies the American Civil War based on his Christmas 1832 revelation (see section 87). He refuses to prophesy specifically about the date of the Savior’s second coming, having learned his lesson in from an earlier earnest prayer, which the Lord answered with intentional ambiguity, leaving Joseph “unable to decide” (16).
One result of Section 130 is clarification of what we do not know: the timing of the Savior’s second coming. The Section leaves no doubt that Joseph was a true prophet, however. He knew by revelation the nature of the American Civil War long before it came to pass. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell wrote, “the Prophet Joseph and the revelations confirm that God lives in an ‘eternal now,’ where the past, present, and future are continually before Him. He is not constrained by the perspectives of time as we are.”[2]
Verses 18-21 teach principles revealed in sections 51, 58, 88, 93 and elsewhere about the relationship between God’s law, individual agency, and growth. Intelligence is gained by choosing to diligently obey God’s laws. This is one of Joseph’s most profound, exalting teachings.
The last two verses clarify the nature of the Godhead. Joseph’s teachings at the conference focused on the Holy Ghost. “The Holy Ghost is a personage,” he said, “and a person cannot have the personage of the H.G. in his heart. A man may have the gifts of the H.G., and the H.G. may descend upon a man but not to tarry with him.”[3] Church historians, apostles, amended the text in the 1850s to more explicitly clarify the embodied nature of the Father and the Son.
Section 130 captures glimpses of the expansive Nauvoo teachings of Joseph Smith. In the last years of his life Joseph was teaching temple ordinances to select saints and related principles to the general body of saints. Some of Section 130 is simply fascinating answers to the questions of curious enquirers. But it is laced with temple teachings including the eternal nature of social relationships, the exaltation of man in the image of God, the heavenly temple, eternal progression, and growth by degrees of knowledge or intelligence based on obedience to the laws of God.
Section 131
Instruction, 16 May 1843, as Reported by William Clayton. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.
Section 131 also includes esoteric temple knowledge, but maybe less new knowledge about the celestial kingdom than it has been interpreted to include. The first four verses came in the evening. It was May 16, 1843. Joseph was in the home of Melissa and Ben Johnson with his scribe/recorder, William Clayton. Melissa and Ben were in their mid-twenties, married two years ago on Christmas day, and parents of one child so far, Benjamin Jr. Joseph invited them to sit down and told them he was there to marry them according to the law of the Lord.
Benjamin had joked with Joseph before and thought he was joking now. He tried to join in the fun. He said he wouldn’t marry Melissa again until she paid for their dates, since he paid the first time they courted. Joseph might have thought that was funny on a different day, but he was in a hurry, he was solemn, and this occasion was sacred. He scolded Ben for being light-minded in this moment. Then he invite Melissa and Ben to stand and sealed them together by the power of the holy priesthood vested in him by ministering angels of Almighty God. He promised that if they keep the terms and conditions of this covenant, no power on earth or in hell could prevent them from being resurrected together and crowned with exaltation and eternal lives (D&C 132:19-24).[1]
That got their attention. Joseph sat them down again and taught them about the new and everlasting covenant of marriage they had just “made and entered into” (D&C 132:7). He said there were three parts to it (see section 132), and it’s blessings wouldn’t be sure unless and until Melissa and Ben made them sure by being faithful to the covenant. Using his secretary, William Clayton, as an example of one who had taken the step the Johnson’s were taking, Joseph taught them the doctrine of exaltation through faithfulness to covenants sealed by sacred ordinances.
The context for the first four verses, then, is exaltation. All of the sources suggest that what Joseph taught the Johnsons that night is not the same as what D&C 131:1-2 has been understood to mean–that there are three degrees inside the highest of the three degrees of glory. That idea hangs on nothing more than D&C 131: “In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees,” and the assumption that celestial there means the highest of the three heavens revealed in D&C 76. That is not the only possibly interpretation, and in context it’s not the best one. In Joseph’s vocabulary and the Johnson’s, celestial could still just mean heavenly. If we read D&C 131:1 that way it makes sense in context. In other words, Joseph probably taught the Johnsons what we are taught: that there are three glories in heaven, and exaltation in the highest one comes from making and keeping the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. Joseph meant what sections 76 and 132 teach.
According to William Clayton’s journal, Joseph taught that “in order to obtain the highest [degree of glory] a man [and woman] must enter into this order of the priesthood,” meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. Joseph explained that a man and a woman sealed together “by the power and authority of the holy priesthood” would continue to be married and have their family after resurrection, while those who weren’t would not.[2] There are many, many descendants of the Johnson’s today, and will be forever, as a result of this revelation.
The day after he sealed the Johnsons, Joseph preached a sermon on 2 Peter 1 about making one’s eternal destination sure. It included Section 131:5-6. William Clayton noted Joseph teaching “that knowledge is power and the man who has the most knowledge has the greatest power. Also that salvation means a man’s being placed beyond the powers of all his enemies. He said the more sure word of prophecy meant, a man’s knowing that he was sealed up unto eternal life by revelation and the spirit of prophecy through the power of the Holy priesthood. He also showed that it was impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance.”[3]
In speaking of knowledge and ignorance, Joseph did not mean that book learning or secular subjects were sources of salvation. He meant that unless one knows for themselves the fulness of temple ordinances and their promised blessings, they are not yet endowed with power over all enemies, including death both spiritual and physical.
Joseph had taught the same principle in other words the preceding Sunday. He tried to help the Saints understand the difference between having a testimony that one could be saved if they obeyed the gospel and gaining the testimony that one had been saved because they obeyed the gospel. Step one is to gain a testimony of Christ and the possibility of salvation, Joseph taught. That was just the beginning of the quest for knowledge of God, which to Joseph was the equivalent of power over sin and death. “They would then want that more sure word of Prophecy that they were sealed in the heavens & had the promise of eternal live in the Kingdom of God,” Joseph taught. This is what he called knowledge, which is what he meant in section 131—and what the Lord meant all the way back in section 84:19-24.[4]
Section 131 leads willing Saints to the knowledge of God, the certainty of a future exaltation by virtue of the sacred covenants sealed by priesthood. Ignorance of the knowledge of God leads to a less certain, or at least less celestial, future. One wants to be more sure in what the young Joseph called “matters that involve eternal consequences” (131:5).
Samuel Prior, a Methodist, had listened to Joseph’s sermon on 1 Peter 1 and come away unexpectedly impressed. Joseph returned the gesture in the evening by listening to Prior’s sermon. Afterward Joseph “arose and begged leave to differ from me in some few points of doctrine,” wrote Prior, “and this he did mildly, politely, and affectingly; like one who was more desirous to disseminate truth and expose error, than to love the malicious triumph of debate over me.” Drawing on Section 93:33, Joseph noted that matter endures eternally and added verses 7-8. “I was truly edified with his remarks,” Prior noted, “and felt less prejudiced against the Mormons than ever.” Joseph invited Prior to visit him in Nauvoo, which he did.[5]
Section 132
Section 132 is heaven and hell, exaltation and damnation, the best thing in the Doctrine and Covenants and the worst. It made Joseph F. Smith feel like he had to qualify it. “When the revelation was written, in 1843,” he explained, “it was for a special purpose, by the request of the Patriarch Hyrum Smith”—Joseph F.’s father—“and was not then designed to go forth to the church or to the world. It is most probable that had it been then written with a view to its going out as a doctrine of the church, it would have been presented in a somewhat different form.” He said it included intensely personal stuff that addressed its immediate context but wasn’t relevant “to the principle itself.”[1]
Joseph F. was spot on. Section 132 is about marriage, specifically Joseph’s marriage to Emma Hale. Would it endure beyond death? Would it even endure for another week? Those were Joseph’s questions in July 1843. The revelation answers them conditionally. Joseph had those questions because of the answers he had received years before to two questions about the Bible. Verse 1 restates Joseph’s question about seemingly adulterous yet Biblical practice of polygyny—simultaneously having more than one wife—by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others. The other question comes from Matthew 22:30, Jesus’ teaching that “in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.”
The answer to that one was wonderful news: those who make and keep the new and everlasting covenant of marriage will be exalted. But the answer to the other question was more than Joseph anticipated. The Book of Mormon forbade plural marriage unless the Lord commanded otherwise (Jacob 2:28-30). Joseph’s own revelations declared adultery an abomination and promised punishment. “With these prohibitions emblazoned on his own revelations, Joseph was torn by the command to take plural wives. What about the curses and the destruction promised adulterers? What about the heart of his tender wife?”[2]
Though he began to obey it within a few years, Joseph did not dare to write the revelation until its hard doctrines put so much strain on his marriage to Emma in the summer of 1843 that he decided to write it in hopes that it would help her. He entered a plural marriage with Fanny Alger in the 1830s, though it did not last. Then, between early 1841 and fall 1843, Joseph was sealed to approximately thirty women. About a third of them were already married at the time. As historian Richard Bushman noted, “nothing confuses the picture of Joseph Smith’s character more than these plural marriages.” He continues, “What drove him to a practice that put his life and his work in jeopardy, not to mention his relationship with Emma?”
At times Emma worked up the will to consent to some of the sealings, but then her will to do so broke. She had forsaken her parents and siblings to marry and follow Joseph. She believed in him as much as anyone and made monumental sacrifices for her faith. But this one was Abrahamic. All she had was Joseph, and that was enough to compensate for all she had laid aside, but now she was being asked to share him. She would not do it willingly, at least not consistently. During a period of willingness, however, in May 1843 she and Joseph were sealed together.
By July Emma was struggling to be reconciled to the revelation. Joseph and Hyrum counseled about what to do for her and decided to write the revelation and see if it would help. William Clayton, Joseph’s secretary, wrote the revelation as Joseph dictated with Hyrum present at Joseph’s upstairs office in his Nauvoo store. It took nearly three hours and ten pages to write, after which William read it back to Joseph for accuracy. Hyrum optimistically took it to Emma, who rejected it. Clayton confided to his journal that Joseph “appears much troubled about E[mma].”[3]
By September Emma again reconciled to the revelation and she and Joseph received the crowning ordinances of exaltation section 132 describes esoterically in verses 7 and 19.[4] Joseph was determined that if he was going to break Emma’s heart to obey a command, he would not lose her eternally. He was heard to say, “you must never speak evil of Emma.”[5]
Section 132 is an extraordinarily complicated text. Not only does it intertwine the answers to two questions. It is the culmination of the restoration, the most exalted of the exaltation revelations (see sections 76, 84, 88, 93, 131). It sets forth gospel fulness in cryptic terms, as if some of its pearls are too precious to be viewed publicly. Moreover, though it contains much that was revealed to Joseph earlier, the actual text of section 132 was determined by events in the summer of 1843 including Emma’s opposition to Joseph’s plural marriages, an otherwise unknown test the Lord gave her, and her concerns about the economic security of herself and her children.
Section 132 is Abrahamic in every sense. If you choose to read it, pay special attention to the Lord’s rationale throughout. Plural marriage is meant to be an Abrahamic test. The revelation ends with assurance the Lord will reveal more later (D&C 132:66). Meanwhile, “plural marriage was the most difficult trial of 1843,” wrote historian Richard Bushman, and he could just as accurately have said of Joseph and Emma’s life and in the lives of many Latter-day Saints today.[6] It is hard to imagine a more wrenching test for Joseph, and it was incomparably difficult for Emma. The revelation forced them—and us—to find out whether we will trust the God who gave it. That is characteristic of the God of Abraham, who puts his children through wrenching tests to “prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them” (Abraham 3:25).
Section 132 leads us to the conclusion that God requires all our hearts first and foremost before he finishes the work of sealing them to each other and exalting them forever. The same revelation that requires such an extreme sacrifice of Emma, after all, sets forth the terms and conditions on which she will be exalted with Joseph. It seems that one of the main points of Section 132, in fact, is to assure Joseph that he and Emma will be exalted together, that despite the wedge plural marriage drove between them, the Lord will weld them eternally. Joseph specifically prayed in the Kirtland temple that Emma and their children would be exalted. The Lord seems likely to answer that prayer (D&C 109:68-69).
When he does it will not be an exception to the law of exaltation in section 132:7, 19-20. Historical records show that Joseph and Emma met its terms and conditions. They made and entered the covenant on May 28, 1843 and received the confirming ordinance section 132 refers to as “most holy” on September 28, 1843 (D&C 132:7).[7] Though neither Joseph nor Emma was flawless after meeting the conditions on which the Lord will exalt them, neither committed the unpardonable sin verse 27 describes as the only way to nullify the promised blessings. Emma was not excommunicated; her ordinances were not voided. She gave her children faith in the Book of Mormon but blamed Brigham Young for plural marriage. It seems as if the Lord spoke D&C 132:26 specifically to set Joseph at ease about Emma’s eternal destiny. Perhaps that knowledge was an “escape” Joseph needed in order to make the extreme “sacrifices” for plural marriage that contributed to his death (see section 135) (D&C 132:49-50).
As they parted for the last time on earth, Emma asked Joseph for a blessing. He was under pressure and unable to bless her then but bade her to write the desires of her heart and he would seal them later. She wrote of her desire “to honor and respect my husband as my head, ever to live in his confidence and by acting in unison with him retain the place which God has given me by his side.”[8] She wrote, in other words, that she wanted the blessings promised to her in section 132 and that she desired to obey its challenging commands. The next time Emma saw Joseph he had been shot to death. Section 132 makes that a small matter. It promises them, and all others who make and keep the same covenants, “Ye shall come forth in the first resurrection; and if it be after the first resurrection, in the next resurrection; and shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths.”
There it is. Section 132 is heaven and hell, exaltation and damnation, heights and depths. Perhaps we are to learn from it that if we never plumb depths we can’t expect to ascend the heights.
[5] Ehat and Cook, comps. and eds., Words of Joseph Smith, 202-04.
Section 132 notes
[1] Joseph F. Smith, “Discourse,” Deseret News, September 11, 1878, 498.
[2] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 441.
[3] Smith, editor, William Clayton, Journal, July 12, 1843. William Clayton Letterbooks, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
[4] Faulring, editor, American Prophet’s Record, 28 September 1843.William Clayton, Journal, October 19, 1843, in George D. Smith, editor, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1995), 122.
[5] According to Lucy M. Wright in Woman’s Exponent, 30:59.
[6] Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, 490.
[7] Faulring, American Prophet’s Record, September 28, 1843. Andrew F. Ehat, “Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Mormon Succession Question,” M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1981, pages 76-84. William Clayton, Journal, October 19, 1843, in George D. Smith, editor, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1995), 122.
[8] Cited in Carol Cornwall Madsen, “The ‘Elect Lady’ Revelation: The Historical and Doctrinal Context of Doctrine and Covenants 25,” in The Heavens Are Open (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1993), 208.
Section 133 ends what section 1 began. The November 1831 conference at Hiram, Ohio planned to publish 10,000 copies of Joseph’s revelations as A Book of Commandments for the Government of the Church of Christ. Joseph began to edit the revelations and Oliver Cowdery made plans to take them to Independence, Missouri for publication by William Phelps on the Church’s press. Joseph’s History says that “at this time there were many things which the Elders desired to know relative to the preaching of the Gospel to the inhabitants of the earth, and concerning the gathering; and in order to walk in the true light, and be instructed from on high, on the 3rd of November, 1831, I inquired of the Lord and received the following important revelation, which as since been added to the book of Doctrine and Covenants, and called the Appendix.”[1]
Section 133 continues and even escalates the apocalyptic tone of section 1. It announces that Christ will dramatically come soon. He will come to judge all that forget God, including the ungodly Latter-day Saints. So the saints should prepare for his coming by sanctifying their lives and becoming Zion. “Go ye out from Babylon,” the Lord says again and again, solidifying the dualistic, Zion versus Babylon typology he chose in sections 1 and 133 to frame the Doctrine and Covenants.
Zion will be rescued when the Lord comes. Babylon will be destroyed. “Hearken and hear, O ye inhabitants of the earth. Listen, ye elders of my church together, and hear the voice of the Lord; for he calleth upon all men everywhere to repent” (D&C 133:16). The angels have already been sent to announce that the hour of his coming nears. Indeed, that is the beginning of the restoration. As Section 133 explains, messengers commit the gospel to mortal prophets, who offer it to “some,” who then go to “many” until “this gospel shall be preached unto every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” (D&C 133:36-37). Then the Lord answers the prayers of his people, who have long pled, “O that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou wouldst come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence” (D&C 133:39). He will answer “as the melting fire that burneth, and as the fire which causeth the waters to boil” (D&C 133:41). He comes soon to sanctify the repentant and to burn the unrepentant.
So how does the revelation answer the elders’ questions about preaching the gospel and gathering Israel? First, it emphasizes, the saints must get themselves out of Babylon, and the only alternative is to “flee unto Zion” (D&C 133:12). Second, send the elders back in to rescue any who will repent. Send them first to the Gentiles and then to the Jews. They should “thrash the nations by the power of his Spirit” (D&C 133:59) and send any who will repent on to Zion to be endowed with priesthood power and the blessings promised to the House of Israel. That’s why the revelations were given and why they are to be published to all mankind. “And unto him that repenteth and sanctifieth himself before the Lord shall be given eternal life. And upon them that hearkeneth not to the voice of the Lord shall be fulfilled that which was written by the prophet Moses, that they should be cut off from among the people” (D&C 133:62-63).
Section 133 answers the elders’ questions about preaching the gospel and gathering lost Israel. Other revelations give much more detailed instructions how to do those things. This one emphasizes why and when. To a fledgling group of fallible Latter-day Saints gathered in a private home, it sets forth an audacious scope of covering the globe with the restored gospel. It reiterates Christ’s great commission to take the gospel to every creature so that each can decide whether to repent or not. Moreover, there is no time to lose. The revelation’s urgent tone emphasizes that Christ soon comes to judge an apostate world—Babylon.
What resulted from this revelation? That little group of faltering saints has grown exponentially and sent tens of thousands of its sons and daughters to the ends of the earth to preach the gospel and gather scattered Israel to Zion in anticipation of the Lord’s second coming. It would be hard to overstate the motivating power of sections like 133. It is, as one early saint declared, “fraught with so much heavenly intelligence.”[2]
Section 134
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been dubbed quintessentially American, but in the beginning it struck many people as anything but. Direct revelations to a prophet–in which Christ reserved to himself ultimate executive, legislative, and judicial power–seemed undemocratic to the saints’ neighbors.[1] Moreover, controversial statements made in a church newspaper by editor William Phelps demanded that the church clarify its position relative to slavery.[2]
A general assembly of priesthood leaders convened in Kirtland, Ohio on August 17, 1835 to listen to Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon present the Doctrine and Covenants for their approval. Oliver introduced the book and its contents to the assembled councils, after which the priesthood leaders unanimously testified of their satisfaction with the work. Then Oliver Cowdery read section 134, “Of Governments and Laws in General,” which may have been primarily if not exclusively the product of his mind and pen. The assembly “accepted and adopted” it too for inclusion, and thus Section 134, though not a revelation, became canonized as part of the Doctrine and Covenants.[3]
Section 134 mixes republican principles of constitutional government and individual liberties, emphatically including the right of religious conscience, with the church’s concern for its ecclesiastical rights. Nothing in it was new or objectionable to Joseph. It informs a misled and sometimes hostile public that the church is in harmony with mainstream American values at the time of its publication. It distances the church from parties or causes other than sharing the gospel.
Joseph was in Michigan when the general assembly made these decisions. He did not author section 134 but he endorsed it in April 1836.[4] The principles in section 134 continue to guide the church’s actions regarding political questions and controversies. The principles in verses 4-6 are more tersely expressed in Articles of Faith 11-12. While the Church took a pragmatic position relative to slavery in section 134, the Lord declared the doctrine of individual agency as the reason for his repudiation of slavery in section 101:77-79.
[2]The Evening and the Morning Star (May 1833): 89.
Section 134 notes
[1] Steven C. Harper, “‘Dicated by Christ’: Joseph Smith and the Politics of Revelation,” Journal of the Early Republic 26 (Summer 2006): 275-304.
[2] See “Free People of Color,” and his statement published later in the same issue, wherein he noted approvingly that much was being done “towards abolishing slavery,” TheEvening and the Morning Star 2, no. 14 [July 1833]: 109, 111. The church’s political Northern Times newspaper printed on 9 October 1835 that the church was “opposed to abolition, and whatever is calculated to disturb the peace and harmony of our Constitution and Country” (See “Abolition,” Northern Times 1:28 [9 October 1835]. Joseph’s views on race and blacks changed during his lifetime. In 1836, Joseph Smith criticized the abolition movement and defended slavery as biblical (Latter Day Saints Messenger and Advocate 2:7 [April 1836]: 289-91. Also see Warren Parrish, “For the Messenger and Advocate,” Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate 2, no. 7 (April 1836): 295-96; and “The Abolitionists,” Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate 2, no. 7 (April 1836): 299-301.
It was “a deliberate political assassination, committed or condoned by some of the leading citizens of Hancock County.”[1] That’s how law professor Dallin H. Oaks and co-author Marvin S. Hill described the murder of Joseph Smith, who was butchered with his brother Hyrum on June 27, 1844.
Apostles John Taylor and Willard Richards were voluntarily with Joseph and Hyrum in jail when he was murdered on June 27, 1844. They survived as witnesses of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, the Prophet Joseph Smith who restored it, and of his brutal martyrdom. Their witness is declared in section 135
Section 135 is a eulogy of the Prophet and an indictment of the state and nation that allowed them to be slain. As such, its tone is a rich mixture of reverence and disdain, praise and contempt. Attributed to John Taylor, who was himself shot repeatedly in the massacre, the document has an apostolic air. It declares a witness in certain terms. It announces Joseph Smith’s significance to mankind, his translation of the Book of Mormon and spreading of the gospel, his receipt of revelations, gathering of Israel, founding of Nauvoo, and, with Hyrum, the sealing of his testimony with his life.
Though critics have knowingly manipulated the language of verse 3 to make it sound as if Latter-day Saints value Joseph Smith more than Jesus Christ, the text does not say that, nor do Latter-day Saints believe it. Rather, they praise Joseph Smith because he revealed Jesus Christ, which no one had done for more than a millennium. Section 135 testifies that Joseph and Hyrum died innocent, and that their deaths put their testaments in full force. It testifies that the Lord will avenge their deaths and that honest hearted in all nations will be touched by their testimony of Jesus Christ.
Section 135 emphasizes the enduring significance of Joseph Smith and his testimony. Joseph regarded himself as “obscure,” a “boy of no consequence” (Joseph Smith-History 1:23), but at age seventeen he received from an angel named Moroni the improbable news that “my name should be had for good and evil among all nations” (Joseph Smith-History 1:33). In his own lifetime his name became known for good and evil in Nauvoo, in Illinois, the United States, and now globally. However unlikely, Moroni’s prophecy has been fulfilled. Bostonian Josiah Quincy visited Joseph shortly before he went to Carthage. Quincy wrote that Joseph Smith was “born in the lowest ranks of poverty” and came of age “without book-learning and with the homeliest of all human names,” and that by the end of his shortened life he had become “a power on earth.”[2]
It is not remarkable that a flawed, teenage Joseph sought forgiveness in the woods and at his bedside, nor that he had to repent relentlessly and grow into his demanding calling, nor that he often felt frustrated at both himself and the saints, nor that his testimony deeply touched the hearts of some and antagonized others, nor that it continues to do so. The remarkable thing about Joseph Smith, as section 135 emphasizes, is what he did. Who else has brought forth the equivalent of the Book of Mormon or the Doctrine and Covenants? Who else restored the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ? “He left a fame and a name,” no matter how plain, “that cannot be slain” (D&C 135:3). In every way he gave his life for the Lord’s work. What a life!
“Fanatics and imposters are living and dying every day,” Josiah Quincy wrote, “and their memory is buried with them; but the wonderful influence which this founder of a religion exerted and still exerts throws him into relief before us, not as a rogue to be criminated, but as a phenomenon to be explained. The most vital questions Americans are asking each other today have to do with this man and what he has left us.”[3] That is Joseph Smith’s significance and his appeal: he revealed the answers to the ultimate questions: Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Is there purpose in life? What is the nature of people? Are individuals free agents or determined? What is the nature of the Savior’s atonement? Does it reach those who do not hear the gospel in mortality? And perhaps above all, what is the nature of God?
“if I am so fortunate as to be the man to comprehend God, and explain or convey the principles to your hearts, so that the Spirit seals them upon you,” Joseph taught just a few weeks before he was murdered, “then let every man and woman henceforth sit in silence, put their hands on their mouths, and never lift their hands or voices, or say any thing against the man of God, or the servants of God again.”[4] Joseph answered the ultimate questions as a witness. He beheld angels, translated by the power of God, received visions and revelations. He knew God and Christ. He thus died as a testator—a witness. Section 135 announces that a testator had been killed, but his testimony endures forever.
Section 136
Of all the would-be successors to Joseph Smith, only Brigham Young understood what was at stake. He explained that no one could lead the Church without the keys of the holy priesthood Joseph had received from ministering angels. Joseph had conferred those keys on Brigham and eight other apostles.
Joseph had gathered them three months before his death and said, “It may be that my enemies will kill me, and in case they should, and the keys and power which rest on me not be imparted to you, they will be lost from the earth; but if I can only succeed in placing them upon your heads, then let me fall a victim to murderous hands if God will suffer it, and I can go with all pleasure and satisfaction, knowing that my work is done, and the foundation laid on which the kingdom of God is to be reared in this dispensation of the fullness of times. Upon the shoulders of the Twelve must the responsibility of leading this church hence forth rest until you shall appoint others to succeed you. . . . Thus can this power and these keys be perpetuated in the Earth.”
Joseph and his brother Hyrum then confirmed the ordinations of each of the apostles who were present and Joseph gave them a final charge. “I roll the burthen and responsibility of leading this church off from my shoulders on to yours,” he declared. “Now, round up your shoulders and stand under it like men; for the Lord is going to let me rest.”[1]
As president of the twelve apostles, Brigham Young explained these principles to the Saints on August 8, 1844. Many, including Martha Tuttle Gardner, received a confirming witness from the Lord. She testified that Brigham Young “told the people that although Joseph was dead, Joseph had left behind the keys of the Kingdom and had conferred the same power & authority that he himself possessed upon the Twelve Apostles and the Church would not be left without a leader and a guide.”
Martha had written reverently of witnessing the capital P Prophet Joseph Smith and she now confidently transferred that designation to “the Prophet Brigham Young.” She wrote that he “had the Nauvoo Temple finished” and endowed her with power there early in 1845. Then, under Brigham’s leadership, she and many other Saints fled Nauvoo for peace and safety somewhere in the West.[2]
President Young led them across Iowa Territory and they camped for the winter on the banks of the Missouri River. There, in a January 1847 council meeting, the Prophet Brigham Young asked the Lord to reveal “the best manner of organizing companies for emigration.” The Lord answered. “President Young commenced to give the Word and Will of God concerning the emigration of the Saints,” section 136.[3] It is concerned with three basic issues: governing authority, camp organization, and individual behavior.[4]
The key words in the early verses of Section 136 are organized and covenant. The Saints were to be organized into companies “under the direction of the Twelve Apostles” (3). “And this shall be our covenant—that we will walk in all the ordinances of the Lord” (4). Like Martha, many of them had recently made temple covenants in Nauvoo. Section 136 tells them how to consecrate their lives to Zion. It reiterates the principles of consecration that pervade so many of Joseph Smith’s revelations. The first principle is agency. Section 136 tells the Saints how to act relative to organization, preparation, property, contention, the commandments to not covet and or take the Lord’s name in vain, alcohol, fear, sorrow, and ignorance. The Lord prescribes specific behaviors for each of these.
Another principle of consecration is stewardship. Free agents act upon stewardships, or what the Lord gives them to act upon. “Thou shalt be diligent in preserving what thou hast,” He commands in verse 27, “that thou mayest be a wise steward; for it is the free gift of the Lord thy God, and thou art his steward.” Section 136 gives commands that tell the saints how to act relative to stewardships that include draft animals, seeds, farming tools, widows, orphans, the families of the men who have joined the United States Army, houses, fields, and the saints who will follow in later waves of migration. He adds instructions for the use of “influence and property” (10) and even for borrowed and lost property.
Another principle of consecration is accountability. Verse 19 declares the consequence of failing to keep one’s covenant to walk in the ordinances of the Lord: “And if any man shall seek to build himself up, and seeketh not my counsel, he shall have no power, and his folly shall be made manifest,” suggesting that one’s endowment of power is dependent on keeping the covenants made in the endowment ordinance (4, 19).
The motif of pilgrims in search of a promised land, of exodus as a sanctifying precondition to finding and becoming Zion, is common in scripture and the backbone of section 136. It casts the saints as a modern Camp of Israel (1), following the “God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob” as they are led through the wilderness by a modern Moses in search of a promised land (21-22). They are wanderers, exiles even from the United States, upon which the Lord prophesies a imminent punishment for rejecting the Saints’ testimony and killing the prophets “that were sent unto them” (34-36). In these ways Section 136 includes the Latter-day Saints with all the former faithful of past dispensations, those Section 45 describes as “pilgrims on the earth” who wandered in search of Zion and “obtained a promise that they should find it” (D&C 45:12-14).
Finally, section 136 explains Joseph Smith’s martyrdom from the Lord’s perspective. “Many have marveled because of his death,” the Lord omnisciently knows, “but it was needful that he should seal his testimony with his blood, that he might be honored and the wicked might be condemned” (39). From the Lord’s vantage, allowing Joseph to die as a testator was a wise move that left an enduring witness of His name even as it delivered the Saints, including Joseph, from their enemies (40). The revelation ends with a poetic covenant in verse 42, promising deliverance on the condition that the Saints choose to diligently keep commandments.
Section 136 resulted in the best organized and executed overland emigration in American history. However, it may be more important for the way it established Brigham Young as a revelator. Saints exercised faith to see in him their capital P Prophet, and it required personal sacrifice. Section 136 confirmed the correctness of their choice. There was much outspoken criticism of Brigham before and after section 136. The saints had other options besides him.[5]
Apostle Heber Kimball noted in his journal that section 136 was the first revelation “penned since Joseph was killed. . . . The Lord has given it through the President for the good of this people as they are traveling to the west.”[6] Jedediah Grant voiced what many Saints felt. “Since the death of Joseph, [I] have believed that the keys of revelation were in the Church. When I heard that [section 136] read I felt a light and joy and satisfied that the Holy Ghost had dictated the words within.”[7]
For Saints who had covenanted to literally “walk in all the ordinances of the Lord” up and over the Rocky Mountains as outcasts, section 136 would sustain them in the heat of the day (4). Joseph was gone but the Prophet Brigham Young was just as much a Moses (D&C 28:3).
Section 135 notes
[1] Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (Urbana, 1975), 6, 214.
[2] Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past From the Leaves of Old Journals, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1883), 337.
[3] Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past From the Leaves of Old Journals, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1883), 317.
[1] Declaration of the apostles, circa September 1844 to March 1845, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[2] Testimony written by Martha Tuttle Gardner, in possession of the author.
[3] “At 4:30 PM the council adjourned. At seven, the Twelve met at Elder Benson’s. President Young continued to dictate the word and will of th Lord. Council adjourned at ten P.M., when President Young retired with Dr. Richards to the Octagon and finished writing the same.” Journal History of the Church, January 14, 1847, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[4] Richard E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus 1846-1848 (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1997), 70.
[5] Richard E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus 1846-1848 (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1997), 69.
[6] Heber C. Kimball, Journal, January 19, 1847, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[7] As quoted by Willard Richards, Journal, January 15, 1847, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Soteriology (so·te·ri·ol·o·gy) is theology about salvation. Christianity’s soteriological problem is based on three premises:
God loves all people and desires their salvation (1 Timothy 2:3-4)
Salvation comes to those who knowingly and willfully accept Jesus Christ as their Savior (John 3:16)
Most people live and die without accepting Christ, or even knowing that they could or should
The problem says that all three premises are true but they can’t be reconciled. Proposed solutions tend to discredit one of the premises. Maybe God doesn’t desire the salvation of all people. Or maybe Jesus saves people who don’t knowingly and willfully accept Him.
The first Christians didn’t have this problem because they didn’t make the unstated assumption that makes it a problem in the first place. In other words, the first Christians didn’t believe that death was a deadline that determined a person’s salvation. Peter taught that Jesus Christ preached His gospel to the dead so they could be judged as justly as the living (1 Peter 3:18-20, 4:6). Paul taught that Christians could be baptized for the dead (1 Corinthians 15:29).
Rohan Hellmouth. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 9471, fol. 76r.
Jeffrey Trumbower’s very cool book Rescue for the Dead (Oxford 2001) traces the doctrine of redemption for the dead through Christian history. It turns out that it was Augustine, not Jesus or his apostles, who decided that death should be a deadline that determined a person’s salvation. But Augustine’s view prevailed in Christ’s church, at least in the West. Many medieval Christians continued to believe that (after his death and before his resurrection) Christ opened the spirit prison. They called this event the harrowing of Hell, and they created a lot of art depicting it.[1]My favorite images are the ones in which Hell is an awful monster, and Christ causes it to cough up its captive dead (as in 2 Nephi 9). However, the Protestant reformers, for all the good they did, generally followed Augustine on this point. Then along came Joseph Smith.
He was immersed in Protestant culture and assumptions. His big brother died painfully in 1823. The loss was heartbreaking to Joseph. It stung even worse when Reverend Benjamin Stockton implied pretty strongly at Alvin’s funeral that he would spend eternity in Hell. Joseph couldn’t reconcile Alvin’s goodness, Rev. Stockton’s doctrine, and a just and merciful God.
Fast forward twelve years to 1836. Joseph now knows from the Book of Mormon that unaccountable infants who die are not damned, but as distasteful as Rev. Stockton’s doctrine still sounds, Joseph doesn’t know that adults who die before embracing the Savior’s gospel are not automatically damned. Sincere and devout but mistaken theologians have caused this problem.
If you’re the Lord Jesus Christ, how will you solve it? How will you inform a world that has already decided otherwise that your saving grace reaches beyond death and saves all who choose to embrace your gospel? Joseph hasn’t even thought to ask. He is so thoroughly acculturated by Protestantism. So how do you get him to become open to it? How do you help him become aware of things he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know?
You show him a vision of the future, and of heaven, and you make sure he sees Alvin there. That makes him marvel and wonder. How will Alvin get past the flaming gates of God’s kingdom? Having purposely provoked the question, you answer it:
Visions, 21 January 1836. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.
All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it, if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God— also all that shall die henceforth, without a knowledge of it, who would have received it, with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom, for I the Lord will judge all men according to their works according to the desires of their hearts (D&C 137).[2]
Desire, not death, is the determinant of salvation through Jesus Christ. He saves all who desire to be saved by Him once they know that good news. Which side of death they are on makes no difference. By removing the assumption that death determines salvation, Jesus resolved the soteriological problem for Joseph and for everyone else. There is no conflict between the premises now.
Section 138
Early Christians believed that people were not saved or damned based on when they lived or died, but based on what they decided to do with Christ’s offer of salvation when they learned about it. Over the subsequent centuries, however, death became “a firm boundary of salvation” in western Christianity.[1]
Based on teachings of Peter and Paul, medieval Christians continued to believe in what they called the “harrowing of hell,” Christ’s disembodied descent into the spirit world between his crucifixion and resurrection to redeem the captives. A rich tradition of drama and art depict the Savior’s mission of “deliverance” in which he declared “liberty to the captives who had been faithful” (D&C 136:18).[2]
A thousand years later, in 1918, the problem of death had not diminished and the aged Prophet Joseph F. Smith contemplated the same teachings of Peter and Paul. The Great War, known to us as World War I, was claiming more than nine million lives. A global influenza pandemic dwarfed that total. Worldwide the virus reaped a grim harvest of perhaps 50 million souls or more. It killed over 195,000 Americans in October 1918, the deadliest month in American history, the month the Lord revealed section 138.[3]
In the midst of the dead and dying was Joseph F., His father Hyrum had been brutally shot to death when Joseph was five. “I lost my mother, the sweetest soul that ever lived,” Joseph wrote, “when I was only a boy.”[4] His first child, Mercy Josephine, died at age two, leaving Joseph “vacant, lonely, desolate, deserted.” His eldest son died unexpectedly in January 1918, leaving President Smith “my overwhelming burden of grief.” In between those deaths, President Smith buried a wife and eleven other children.[5]
President Smith was ill as General Conference approached in October 1918. He surprised the Saints by attending on October 4 and speaking briefly. “I have dwelt in the spirit of prayer, of supplication, of faith and of determination; and I have had my communications with the Spirit of the Lord continuously.”[6] The day before, the Lord had given him the visions described in section 138.[7]
Section 138 is a Christ-centered testimony from beginning to end. It starts with President Smith pondering the Savior’s atonement, continues with a witness of Christ’s “harrowing of hell,” proceeds with the gospel of Jesus Christ being preached to departed spirits, and concludes in the name of Jesus. “I saw” (11), “I beheld” (15, 57), “I understood” (25), “I perceived” (29), “I observed” (55), “I bear record, and I know that this record is true,” Joseph F. declares (60).
He used powerful verbs to describe how he sought revelation. “I sat in my room pondering over the scriptures; And reflecting upon the great atoning sacrifice that was made by the Son of God, for the redemption of the world.” He intellectually “engaged” the soteriological problem of Christian theology and the most terrible questions of his time in which “the sheer, overwhelming quantity of death awakened individual and communal grief on an unprecedented scale. With the loss came questions: What is the fate of the dead? Do they continue to exist? Is there life after death?”[8]He returned to relevant Bible passages he already knew well and “pondered over these things which are written” (11).
That resulted in a series of visions. Joseph F. saw an innumerable gathering of the righteous dead, those who had been faithful Christians in life, “rejoicing together because the day of their deliverance was at hand” (15). They had been eager waiting for Christ to deliver them from the bondage of being disembodied, what verse 23 calls the “chains of hell” (cross reference D&C 45:17 and 93:33). The Savior arrived and preached the gospel to them but not to those who had rejected the warnings of prophets in life.
This vision led President Smith to wonder and inquire further. Christ’s miraculous three-year mortal ministry resulted in few converts. How could his short ministry among the dead be effective? What did Peter mean by writing that the Savior preached to the spirits in prison who had been disobedient? These questions brought another revelation, a recognition “that the Lord went not in person among the wicked and disobedient” but sent messengers. He mustered an army to wage war with death and hell. He “organized his forces” and armed them “with power and authority, and commissioned them to go forth and carry the light of the gospel to them that were in darkness, even to all the spirits of men; and thus was the gospel preached to the dead” (30).[9] Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Wilford Woodruff all taught that the Savior unlocked the spirit prison and provided for redemption of the dead.[10] Not until Joseph F.’s vision, however, did mankind know how Christ “organized his forces,” “appointed messengers,” and “commissioned them to go forth” (D&C 138:30). That made it possible for the dead to act for themselves, to be fully developed free agents who were accountable for their new knowledge. The teaching fulfilled God’s just plan of salvation, making each individual responsible to receive or reject “the sacrifice of the Son of God” (35).
President Smith saw “our glorious Mother Eve, with many of her faithful daughters who had lived through the ages and worshiped the true and living God” (39). He must have moved to see his father, Hyrum Smith, together with his brother Joseph, “among the noble and great ones” (55). Most comforting to me is his vision of “the faithful elders of this dispensation, when they depart from mortal life, continue their labors in the preaching of the gospel of repentance and redemption, through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of god, among those who are in darkness and under the bondage of sin in the great world of the spirits of the dead” (57). As both orphaned son and grieving father, President Smith appreciated the vision’s confirmation of “the redemption of the dead, and the sealing of the children to their parents” (48).
A survivor of the influenza pandemic repeatedly asked, “where are the dead?” Section 138 “answers this question and speaks to the great, worldwide need that underlies it.”[11] On October 31, 1918, ailing President Smith sent his son Joseph Fielding to read the revelation to a meeting of the First Presidency and quorum of the twelve apostles. They “accepted and endorsed the revelation as the word of the Lord.”[12] The Deseret Evening News published the revelation about a month later. In the meantime Joseph F. passed from life to death knowing better than anyone else what he could expect on arrival.
Section 137 notes
[1] David L. Paulsen, Roger D. Cook, Kendel J. Christensen, “The Harrowing of Hell: Salvation for the Dead in Early Christianity,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19:1 (2010): 56-77.
[1] Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3-9, 126-40.
[2] K.M. Warren, “Harrowing of Hell,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII. (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910).
[3] George S. Tate, “The Great World of the Spirits of the Dead: Death, the Great War, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic as Context for Doctrine and Covenants 138,” BYU Studies 46 no. 1 (2007): 27, 33.
[4] Joseph F. Smith, “Status of Children in the Resurrection,” in Messages of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, compiled by James R. Clark, 6 volumes (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965-75), 5:92.
[5] Joseph Fielding Smith, compiler, Life of Joseph F. Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1938), 476.
[6] Joseph F. Smith, 89th Semi-Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1918), 2.
[7] Joseph Fielding Smith, compiler, Life of Joseph F. Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1938), 466.
[8] George S. Tate, “The Great World of the Spirits of the Dead: Death, the Great War, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic as Context for Doctrine and Covenants 138,” BYU Studies 46 no. 1 (2007): 21.
[9] The insight belongs to George S. Tate. See, “The Great World of the Spirits of the Dead: Death, the Great War, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic as Context for Doctrine and Covenants 138,” BYU Studies 46 no. 1 (2007): 34.
[10] See Ehat and Cook, Words of Joseph Smith, 370. Brigham Young in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: F.D. Richards, 1855-86), 4:285, March 15, 1857, and Wilford Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 1833-1898, Typescript., ed. Scott G. Kenney, 9 vols., (Midvale, Utah: Signature, 1983-84), 6:390.
[11] George S. Tate, “The Great World of the Spirits of the Dead: Death, the Great War, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic as Context for Doctrine and Covenants 138,” BYU Studies 46 no. 1 (2007): 39-40.
[12] James E. Talmage, Journal, October 31, 1918, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University. Anthon H. Lund, Journal, October 31, 1918, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
