Come, Follow Me: Doctrine & Covenants 63

Section 63

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

Author: Steven Harper

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