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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Warren Cowdery, Oliver’s older brother, ledged and fed Joseph and his companions when the were recruiting for the Camp of Israel in the spring of 1834. Warren was sympathetic to the saints’ suffering in Missouri, and that summer he joined the Church. There were a few dozen other converts in the area, all converted by missionaries who passed through. Warren wrote to Oliver that they could really use a permanent preacher.[1] He wrote again a few weeks later saying he “had thoughts of requesting you to enquire what is the will of the Lord concerning me.”[2] Joseph asked, and the Lord answered with section 106.
The revelation says the Lord wants Warren to devote all of his time to the high and holy calling of presiding over the Saints in and around Freedom, New York and preaching the gospel in the area. In verse 3 the Lord promises Warren a living if he obeys the revelation and in verses 4-5 explains that he should serve in order to prepare himself and his neighbors for the Lord’s coming. Beginning in verse 6, the Lord reveals the joy he experienced when Warren joined the Church, and blesses him for it. The language of this verse suggests that what pleased the Lord was Warren’s willing submission to his divine authority, his kingly scepter. The Lord exposes Warren’s vanity and promises to preserve him at the Second Coming on the condition that Warren will choose to be humble. The last verse, too, is a conditional promise, a covenant between the Lord and Warren in which the Lord promises him his own kingly crown in heavenly mansions “if he continue to be a faithful witness and a light unto the church” (8).
Warren presided over his fellow Saints in New York until he and his family moved to Kirtland early in 1836. There he served the Church as a scribe and recorder but by 1838 he became one of many in that era who did not “continue” to be “a faithful witness and a light unto the church” (D&C 106:8).[3]
Section 107
Instruction on Priesthood, between circa 1 March and circa 4 May 1835 [D&C 107]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.orgThe members of the first quorum of twelve apostles in the last dispensation were called and ordained between February and April 1835. The met frequently to receive instructions from Joseph. In their March 12 council meeting, Joseph proposed that the apostles spend the coming summer traveling “through the Eastern States, to the Atlantic Ocean, and hold conferences in the vicinity of the several branches of the Church for the purpose of regulating all things necessary for their welfare.”[1]
The apostles were all young men, the oldest being in their mid-thirties. They began to realize “that we have not realized the importance of our calling to that degree that we ought, we have been light minded and vain and in many things done wrong.” They repented, and as their mission approached, they united in prayer and asked God to “grant unto us through his Seer, a revelation of his mind and will concerning our duty the coming season even a great revelation that will enlarge our hearts, comfort us in adversity and brighten our hopes amidst the powers of Darkness.” Section 107 answered that prayer.[2]
According to Heber Kimball, one of the apostles, the revelation “was given to Brother Joseph as he was instructing us, and we praised the Lord.”[3] In its current form, section 107 includes not only what Joseph received on that occasion, but the text of a revelation he dictated in November 1831 and other information on the duties of bishops and on the newly called Seventy. The amalgamated revelation was composed in time to be included in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, and it highlights the priesthood precepts that Joseph had received to that point.[4]
Section 107 begins with a clear description of the two divisions of priesthood and the names given to them—Aaronic and Melchizedek. In 1841 Joseph taught that “All Priesthod is Melchizedek; but there are different portions or degrees of it.”[5] Verses 18-19 declare the exalting power of the Melchizedek priesthood, and verse 20 the preparatory power of the Aaronic.
Several offices are described within these divisions of priesthood, and several quorums and councils composed of priesthood holders. Most notably the revelation describes a first presidency as a quorum of three presiding high priests who preside over all priesthood holders (21-22). Twelve apostles, “or special witnesses of the name of Christ in all the world,” form a quorum whose authority is equal to the first presidency. Seventy missionaries to the Gentiles form a quorum whose authority is equal to the quorum of apostles. These quorums are to arrive at their decisions by consensus and finally unanimity, in order to be binding. And the decision making process is to be characterized by the Christ-like attributes listed in verse 30 because they are the condition on which the Lord will endow the presiding quorums with His “knowledge” (31). Verse 32 provides an appellate process in case decisions are made “in unrighteousness.”
Beginning in verse 33, Section 107 describes the order and relationship of the quorums of twelve apostles, Seventy, and stake high councils. The apostles preside under the First Presidency and travel the globe to build and regulate the church because they hold the keys to open doors through which the gospel is proclaimed (35, cross reference D&C 112:16-19). The Seventy also travel the world to build and regulate the Church, but under the direction of the apostles, who call on the Seventy for assistance. Verses 35-36 explain that the presidencies of the Church in Zion (Missouri) and the stake in Kirtland, Ohio, as well as future stakes with the twelve high priests in each location that served as councilors to these presidencies, functioned with the same authority in their local jurisdictions as the General Authorities did worldwide.
Patriarchs, or what verse 39 calls “evangelical ministers,” are to be identified by revelation to the apostles, who have the duty of ordaining them in any area where there are a large number of Saints, which, today, generally means a stake. Before Section 107 describes the next duty of the apostles in verse 58, verses 40-57 explain the rich history and provenance of the patriarchal priesthood, as recorded in the Book of Enoch, as it was handed down from Adam to his posterity. They tell how Adam gathered his righteous posterity prior to his death for a patriarchal blessing. Adam, “though bowed down with age, being full of the Holy Ghost, predicted whatsoever should befall his posterity unto the latest generation” (56).
Verse 58 transitions between the two major segments of Section 107 and gives the apostles responsibility for implementing the November 1831 revelation (generally verses 59-100) by ordaining priesthood holders and setting the Church in order under their direction. Much of the subsequent verses restate, or, more accurately, were restated by, the first part of Section 107 as well as Section 68, including the nature of being a bishop, a provision for a “common council of the church” headed by the a presiding bishop in case the president of the Church is tried for transgression (76-84).
Verses 85-88 describe the duties of presiding in Aaronic priesthood quorums, and beginning in verse 89 the Lord sets forth the duties of presiding in Melchizedek priesthood quorums both generally and locally. Having declared the duties of priesthood holders, quorums, and presidents clearly, the Lord finishes Section 107 with a statement of accountability, a terse restatement of the oath and covenant of the priesthood that emphasizes learning and acting diligently in one’s appointed office or else being judged unworthy of that office in the holy priesthood (99-100).
Section 107 came at a time when American culture was beginning to erode fatherhood. Noting how Section 107’s exalting priesthood principles seemed to have a powerful redeeming influence on Joseph’s own father, historian Richard Bushman went so far as to say that “in restoring priesthood, Joseph restored fatherhood.”[6] Section 107 continues to do that work.
It has evoked a response from countless men to quit being “slothful” and instead learn their duty and act accordingly. It inspires many men to “stand” (107:99-100). It’s a divine version of Lehi’s admonition, “arise from the dust, my sons, and be men” (2 Nephi 1:21).
Section 108
Joseph Smith was studying his Hebrew lesson on 26 December 1835 when Lyman Sherman, who was serving in the new quorum of the seventy, came to his home. “I have been wrought upon to make known to you my feelings and desires,” Lyman told Joseph, “and was promised that I should have a revelation which should make known my duty.” Joseph received Section 108 for Lyman that day.[1]
When Lyman said he was “wrought upon,” he meant that he was unsettled, even disturbed. “Let your soul be at rest” the Lord counsels him, and “wait patiently until the solemn assembly . . . of my servants.” Lyman waited patiently for the meetings in the House of the Lord. There he and others received sacred ordinances and blessings in 1836 (D&C 108:2,4).
Joseph Smith taught that revelations were universally available to mankind directly, but also that there was order to revelation. Both principles are evident in section 108. The Lord revealed to Lyman personally that he should seek revelation through Joseph, presumably because Lyman’s role as a general authority and his invitation to the upcoming solemn assembly were matters to be revealed through Joseph Smith. In verse 1, the Lord forgave Lyman because he submissively acknowledged and followed the revealed order. He was a loyal, devoted saint. In January 1839, the First Presidency called Lyman as an apostle, but he died before being ordained.[2]
Section 106 notes
[1]Warren Cowdery, Freedom, NY, to Oliver Cowdery, Kirtland, OH, 1 Sept. 1834, in The Evening and the Morning Star, Sept. 1834, 189.
[2]Warren Cowdery, Freedom, NY, to Oliver Cowdery, [Kirtland, OH], 28 Oct. 1834, in LDS Messenger and Advocate, Nov. 1834, 1:22.
[4] See Doctrine and Covenants 107:1-58; 1835 and 1844 editions, 3:1-30. Before its 1835 publication, this revelation was redacted by Joseph, who added information about the priesthood offices of priest, bishop, elder, and seventy. Much of the new revelation draws on Section 68:15-22. The redactions to Section 107 include much or all of what is now verses 61, 69-71, 73, 76-77, 88, 90, and 93-98.
[5] Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds. and comps., Words of Joseph Smith (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center Brigham Young University, 1980), 59-60.
[6] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 263.
Joseph Smith convened councils to arbitrate and adjudicate church decisions, especially disciplinary decisions. These councils were called as needed, according to the law of the church revealed in February 1831 (D&C 42). By 1834, experience and church growth revealed the need for standing councils to deal with complex issues. On 17 February 1834, Joseph told a group of priesthood leaders that he “would show the order of councils in ancient days as shown to him by vision.”
Joseph explained that “Jerusalem was the seat of the Church Council in ancient days.” He said that “the apostle, Peter, was the president of the Council and held the keys of the Kingdom of God on the earth [and] was appointed to this office by the voice of the Savior and acknowledged in it by the voice of the Church. He had two men appointed as Counsellors with him, and in case Peter was absent, his counsellors could also transact business alone.” Joseph explained that church councils operated on different principles of jurisprudence than secular courts. “It was not the order of heaven in ancient councils to plead for and against the guilty as in our judicial courts (so called) but that every councilor when he arose to speak, should speak precisely according to evidence and according to the teaching of the Spirit of the Lord.”
Clerks kept minutes of Joseph’s teachings on how the council should be organized. They record that “many questions have been asked during the time of the organization of the Council and doubtless some errors have been committed, it was, therefore, voted by all present that Bro. Joseph should make all necessary corrections by the Spirit of inspiration hereafter.” Joseph began that job the next day, February 18, and the following day an even larger gathering of priesthood holders and general members met to review and consent to the new “constitution of the high council of the Church of Christ.” The minutes Joseph refined were subsequently canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants and are currently found in Section 102.
At the February 19 meeting, Joseph then laid hands on his two counselors and blessed them with “wisdom to magnify their office, and power over all the power of the adversary.” He then laid hands on the twelve men called as high counselors and set them apart. He blessed them with “wisdom and power to counsel in righteousness upon all subjects that might be laid before them.” He also prayed that they might be delivered from those evils to which they were most exposed and that their lives might be prolonged on the earth. Then, in the name of Jesus Christ, Joseph gave his counselors and the high council a charge to “do their duty in righteousness and in the fear of God.” They signified their acceptance of Joseph’s charge by raising their right hands. Joseph pronounced the council organized “according to the ancient order, and also according to the mind of the Lord.”[1]
Section 102 restores the ancient order of church councils. The organization of the high council also went far toward establishing a stake of Zion in Kirtland, an ecclesiastical jurisdiction drawn on imagery from Isaiah 33:20 and 54:2 and applied to the church in a May 1833 revelation (D&C 94:1, 96:1). Moreover, these minutes provided for other standing high councils to be established as well as temporary councils to be organized beyond Zion and her stakes.
The church’s first high council went to work immediately. As specified in the minutes, the counselors drew numbers 1-12, with even numbers responsible to prevent insult and injustice against the accused person and the odd numbered counselors responsible to ensure the interests of the church. Ezra Thayer charged Curtis Hodges, an elder, with preaching too loudly and unclearly, and demanding that he was justified in doing so when corrected. Curtis said he was not guilty. Witnesses confirmed “that bro. Hodges was guilty of hollowing so loud that he, in a measure, lost his voice.” Oliver Cowdery, who had drawn number 1, summarized the church’s case against Curtis. Joseph Coe, who had drawn number 2, summarized the case for Brother Hodge “but could say but few words.” Ezra restated his accusations and Curtis restated his pleas.
In other words, the case, which was not considered complicated, was conducted exactly as Section 102 specifies, including the ruling of Joseph Smith, president of the council. He announced “that the charges in the declaration had been fairly sustained by good witnesses, also, that bro. H[odges]. ought to have confessed when rebuked by bro Thayer also that if he had the spirit of the Lord at the meetings when he hollowed, he must have abused it, and grieved it away. All the council agreed with the decision.” Brother Hodges then confessed, acknowledging that he could now see his error and would repent.[2]
Not all high council hearings are this straightforward but, remarkably, the specific instructions set forth in Section 102 continue to guide the standing high councils of the church in each stake of Zion.
Section 103
As 1834 dawned, the Saints in Missouri were “exiles in a land of liberty.”[1]They sent Parley Pratt and Lyman Wight to seek Joseph’s counsel in Kirtland, Ohio. The messengers probably carried a letter from William Phelps informing Joseph that Missouri governor Daniel Dunklin was willing to help the Saints get their Jackson County lands back, but he would not maintain a militia to defend them indefinitely.[2]
Would eastern saints come to the aid of Zion? Joseph counseled with his brethren, resolved that “he was going to Missouri, to assist in redeeming it,” and asked for volunteers to go with him. Sometime in this sequence of events, the Lord revealed section 103 to Joseph. It is not clear whether the revelation motivated Joseph’s actions or affirmed them after the fact.[3]
Zion depended on the Latter-day Saints. They had been driven by wicked people acting on their own free will. In section 103, the Lord promises to punish them “in mine own time” (2-3). But the saints were driven “because they did not hearken altogether unto the precepts and commandments which I gave unto them” (5). The Lord offers another chance at Zion by revealing the conditions on which the saints can prevail against their enemies. First he states these positively (what will happen if they do, 5-7), then restates them negatively (what will happen if they do not, 8-10). Section 103 reaffirms the section 58’s promise Zion will come “after much tribulation” (12). Even that promise, the Lord qualifies, is conditional. “If they pollute their inheritances,” he says of the saints again, “they shall be thrown down” (14, cross reference D&C 84:59).
Beginning in verse 15, the Lord maps out the way Zion will be reclaimed “by power.” Then the Lord evokes section 101, reminding the Saints of his promise to raise up a Moses to lead the modern Israelites. He calls on Joseph to gather an army of Israel. It could get violent, the Lord suggests, perhaps to as a test to see who is willing “to lay down his life for my sake” (27).
The Lord appoints calls eight recruiters, including Joseph, to gather five hundred more men to march to Zion, though he acknowledges that, because they are free agents, “men do not always do my will,” and that relatively few may respond to the call. He forbids the undertaking unless at least one hundred men are willing to consecrate their lives to Zion. The Lord leaves the outcome in the hands of the free agents. “All victory and glory is brought to pass unto you through your diligence, faithfulness, and prayers of faith” (36).
Heber Kimball described the action motivated by Section 103. “Brother Joseph . . . . sent Messengers to the East and to the North, to the West and to the South to gather up the Elders and, He gathered together as many of the brethren as he conveniently could, with what means they could spare to go up to Zion and render all the assistance that we could to our afflicted brethren. We gathered clothing and other necessaries to carry up to our brethren and sisters who had been plundered; and putting our horses to the wagons and taking our firelocks and ammunition, we started on our journey.”[4]
They were a faltering band, to be sure, but willing to give their lives for Zion. Section 103’s most significant result is the way it tested that resolve. A local newspaper reported on section 103, “in obedience to a revelation communicated to their great Prophet, Joseph Smith, three hundred young men are to ‘to well armed and equipped to defend the promised land in Missouri.”[5] The revelation seems purposefully ambiguous, leaving Joseph and his followers uncertain how Zion would be redeemed. “By power,” they knew, but what kind of power? Were they to take the promised land by the force of arms? Would the God of Israel lead them with “a stretched-out arm” (17). Would they lay down their lives? The revelation raised these questions but did not answer them, making it a suitable test of faith and sacrifice (D&C 101:4-5).
The Camp of Israel, as it came to be known, literally walked in faith, the considerable faith required to kiss one’s family goodbye and march with a small, poorly-equipped band to an unknown encounter for the cause of Zion. As a result of Section 103, the Lord let many, though not as many as he asked for, pledge their allegiance to him and his cause. Their lives were his. He let them march all the way there before explaining that the power to redeem Zion would come not from a confrontation in Missouri, but from an endowment in the House of the Lord back in Kirtland. (See Section 105).
Section 104
Revelation, 23 April 1834 [D&C 104]. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.The Savior told a story in Luke 16:19-31 about a rich man who “fared sumptuously” in life while a “beggar named Lazarus” waited in vain for some of his table scraps. When the two men died, angels carried Lazarus into Abraham’s bosom while the rich man went to hell. “And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments,” begging for Lazarus to relieve his suffering. Section 104 evokes that story and applies it to Latter-day Saints, but it is hard to recognize that now.[1]
Early manuscripts of the revelation refer to Dives, a proper name: “he shall with Dives lift up his eyes <in hell> being in torment.”[2] The intertextual relationship of this passage and the story in Luke is obvious, but who is Dives? Dives is Latin for rich, opulent, wealthy, and is the word in the Latin Vulgate Bible translated into English as rich in Luke 16:19, “there was a certain rich man.” In the middle ages, the word dives adopted as the name of the rich man, and that’s how it’s used in D&C 104:18.
The revelation came when the problems of the United Firm had become acute. The Firm was composed of Church leaders, including the two bishops, and was responsible to manage the Church’s two mercantile firms and its printing office. The printing office had been destroyed in Independence, Missouri and the mercantile there had also been shut down by the mob’s ultimatum. The United Firm still owed debts on these unprofitable losses, and its members were growing more indebted to Bishop Whitney’s remaining mercantile in Ohio, which in turn was owing its creditors. Section 103’s expensive command to lead a large group of men to Missouri to aid the saints there added to the pressure.
Joseph counseled with the other members of the United Firm. He sought and received the revelation in section 104 to address the complex financial reality. It is no overstatement to say that Joseph was pretty frustrated with saints who could and should have relieved the Church’s financial obstacles, but chose not to.[3]
The Lord was pretty frustrated too, including with some members of the United Firm whose covetousness was complicating the problem. Joseph and the members of the United Firm who were in Kirtland met on April 10, 1834 and reluctantly decided to dissolve the Firm and make its members individual stewards over its various properties. Section 104 affirmed those decisions.
All that helps explain why the revelation emphatically sets forth the law of consecration. The Lord declares the first principle of consecration—“the earth is the Lord’s” (Exodus 9:29) —repeatedly and clearly: “I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine” (14).
The Lord’s logic is potent: He made the earth. It is therefore His. He endowed mankind with agency to act on the ample, abundant earth as stewards. He decreed that the rich must share with the poor (16). “Therefore,” the next premise follows, “if any man take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment” (18).
Section 104 begins with a curse upon the members of the United Firm who had broken the covenant of Section 82. “I the Lord am not to be mocked in these things,” He says, referring to making covenants with “feigned words” (4-6). Covenants are serious, and section 104 announces that those who break the covenant to consecrate cannot escape the Lord’s wrath and the buffetings of Satan, as prophesied in Section 82:21. So the Lord offers the members of the United Firm an opportunity to repent and consecrate in verse 10, after which he reviews the law of consecration in verses 11-18, before getting very specific in verses 19-46 about the stewardships for which He will hold each members of the Firm accountable.
Beginning in verse 47, the Lord dissolves the United Firm into two firms, one in Kirtland, Ohio and the other in Missouri. Again He emphasizes that this Firm, which was supposed to last and would have according to the terms of the covenant in Section 82:20-21, has been undermined by the broken covenants of free agents, “the covenants being broken through transgression, by covetousness and feigned words” (52).
Beginning in verse 54, the Lord reviews the principle of stewardship with emphasis on how it relates to the specific stewardships he gave to the Literary Firm in Section 70 (and the United Firm’s responsibility to support the Literary Firm as revealed in Sections 78 and 82). Verses 55-56 reaffirm the first premise of consecration—“the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (Psalm 24:1)–with an inescapable logic that brings covenant-breaking Saints face to face with hypocrisy: If the Lord is not Creator and Owner of the earth, why worship Him? If He is, why pretend to be “owners” of anything or to resent or resist his prerogative to distribute his resources in what he calls “mine own way” (16)? In other words, to acknowledge the Lord at all is to accept one’s role as an accountable steward, not an unaccountable owner determined to “play-act just a little longer—risking righteousness and true happiness merely in order to be reassured about our independence.”[4]
The revelation ends by reminding the brethren that the Lord is the sovereign master who has given them agency to act and stewardships to be acted upon, and that he will continue to hold them accountable. He concludes with what must have been a reassuring guarantee that His house will not be broken up (86).
After the Lord revealed section 104, Joseph and his brethren in the United Firm at Kirtland acted on properties the Lord had assigned each of them as stewardships. They also forgave each other all debts they owed to the Firm. This relieved Joseph of paying more $1,151.31, and the six men combined forgave debts to each other totaling $3,635.35.[5] That did not satisfy the debts they owed other creditors, however.
Mindful of those obligations, Joseph and his brethren acted on this revelation. They did the specific things the Lord set forth as terms on which He promised to “soften the hearts of those to whom you are in debt, until I shall send forth means unto you for your deliverance” (104:80-82). Joseph’s journal records humility, diligent effort, and faithful prayers for this deliverance, and documents that it came as prophesied. On the day the revelation came, Joseph and other members of the Firm “united in asking the Lord” to bless Zebedee Coltrin and Jacob Myers in their efforts “to borrow for us.” Meanwhile, donations began to pour in from consecrating Saints. Joseph and Oliver Cowdery “united in prayer” for such blessings to continue, and covenanted as the Lord was enabling them to pay their debts, they would return one-tenth of what they received “to be bestowed upon the poor of his Church, or as he shall command, and that we will be faithful over that which he has entrusted to our care.”[6] They prayed and prayed, asking the Lord “to lift the mortgage on the farm upon which the temple was being built.”[7]
One evening they received an impression “that in a short time the Lord would arrange his providences in a merciful manner and send us assistance to deliver us from debt and bondage.”[8] Two months later as creditors were about to foreclose on the temple site, a converted hotel owner from New York, John Tanner, arrived in Kirtland with $2000 “with which amount the farm was redeemed.”[9] Good for His word, the Lord had delivered the “means” as promised (104:80). In the meantime, Joseph and his brethren learned to trust in the Lord, pray in faith, to be humble and diligent. The Saints in general also rose to the occasion and, though belatedly, consecrated to the building of Kirtland and its crowning temple. As a result of their offerings, the Lord poured out blessings in that temple that no amount of money could buy (see sections 109-110).
Section 105
As the Camp of Israel journeyed to Missouri in the summer of 1834, Governor Daniel Dunklin backed away from his promise to provide a militia force to assist the saints’ return to their Jackson County land.[1] Meanwhile, Joseph knew very well that the camp was “altogether too small for the accomplishment of such a great enterprise.” He repeatedly urged the eastern Saints to provide men and means to reclaim Zion, but they offered too little, too late.[2]
The camp was preceded by exaggerated rumors of its size and intentions. When it arrived, local citizens were already alarmed. Several hundred of them gathered, threatening attack. Joseph assured the sheriff and militia officers that the camp had come to defend, not to attack. “We are anxious for a settlement of the difficulties existing between us,” Joseph assured them, “upon honorable and constitutional principles.”[3]
Wondering when and how, not if, Zion would be reclaimed, Joseph sought revelation to know what the Lord wanted the camp to do next. While encamped near Fishing River, he received the landmark revelation in section 105.[4]
“I do not require at their hands to fight the battles of Zion,” the revelation said of the camp. It assured them that their prayers were heard, their offering accepted, and that they had been “brought thus far for a trial of their faith” (D&C 105:19). Because too few saints had chosen to live the law of consecration and respond to the Lord’s will and Joseph’s repeated invitations to send men and means to redeem Zion, the Lord postponed Zion (1-10). He said it had to wait until the elders could be endowed with the necessary power. The power, it turned out, would come through a priesthood endowment in the House of the Lord being constructed back in Kirtland (D&C 105:11, 33).
The revelation is a document of détente. It calls for proclamation of peace now and foreshadows a future role for the army of Israel in redeeming Zion. It postpones Zion in Jackson County for an ambiguous “little season” (9). It commands saints in the meantime to receive the anticipated endowment of power to help them gain experience, learn their duty and doctrine better, and to increase in number and in holiness. In the little season the saints are to continue to purchase all the land in western Missouri but to avoid gathering in quantities perceived as threatening by neighbors.
Section 105 gives Joseph and his army orders to retreat. They were instructed to seek redress lawfully, but the war was far from over. These tactics would buy time “until the army of Israel becomes very great” while more and more land in Jackson and adjoining counties could be legally purchased. Once it was, the revelation said, “I will hold the armies of Israel guiltless in taking possession of their own lands, which they have previously purchased with their moneys, and of throwing down the towers of mine enemies that may be upon them.” Meanwhile, Latter-day Saints are to “sue for peace, not only to the people that have smitten you, but also to all people; and lift un an ensign of peace, and make a proclamation of peace unto the ends of the earth” (D&C 105).
Section 105 led Joseph to disband the camp and direct its members to return to their families or, if they had none, to remain in Missouri to assist the exiled Saints. The revelation reoriented Joseph Smith and the Church. Zion remained the ultimate goal, but the revelation declared that Zion would not be redeemed until the saints were endowed with power. Now, having submitted to the trial of their faith, the brethren could understand section 103’s promise that Zion would be redeemed by power. They were to return to the House of the Lord in Kirtland, there be endowed with power on conditions of humility and faithfulness (12), and then spread out over the globe to gather Israel. Then, when the army became very great both numerically and by obedience to the law of consecration, they would regain Zion.
Joseph organized the saints in Missouri and appointed many of them to return to Ohio to participate in the solemn assembly. Back in Kirtland, Joseph and the saints finished the temple and received an endowment of priesthood power (see section 110). These were means to the end of Zion, and Joseph turned his attention back to regaining the promised land. He anticipated that the “little season” (D&C 105:9) leading up to Zion would end within a few months, and it could have if the saints had done the specific things listed in verse 10.
We remain in the little season, perhaps in part because we have not acted on section 105’s specific instructions to learn obedience to the law of consecration and gain experience obeying it. Some commentators have suggested that D&C 105:34 rescinds, postpones, or suspends the law of consecration, but that is not what it says. It says that the specific commands for the bishop to give the saints inheritances of the land in Zion, and to establish a storehouse and print the scriptures there, will necessarily need to wait until after the saints reclaim the land on which to keep those commandments (see section 57).
Section 105 charts the way to Zion by obedience to the law of consecration. It declares that “Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom; otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself” (105:5). So Zion will be postponed as long as Latter-day Saints postpone fidelity to the law. Verse 34 cannot be to blame for that. President Gordon B. Hinckley taught that “the law of sacrifice and the law of consecration have not been done away with and are still in effect.”[5] Just as when Section 105 was given, however, “there are many who will say: Where is their God? Behold, he will deliver them in a time of trouble, otherwise we will not go up to Zion, and will keep our moneys” (8-9).
[4] Neal A. Maxwell, All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1979), 2.
[5] Frederick G. Williams Papers, CHL. Amt. of Balances due as of April 23, 1834, Newel K. Whitney Collection, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Max Parkin painstakingly documented each of these in “Joseph Smith and the United Firm,” BYU Studies 46:3 (2007): 5-66.
[9] John Tanner, “Sketch of an Elder’s Life,” Scraps of Biography (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor’s Office, 12.
Section 105 notes
[1] Peter Crawley and Richard L. Anderson, “The Political and Social Realities of Zion’s Camp,” BYU Studies 14:4 (1974): 406-20. History of George Albert Smith, Church History Library. Parley P. Pratt, Jr., editor, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1950), 115.
[3] Letter From Cornelius Gilliam, Clay County, Missouri, 21 June 1834, and a statement of reconciliation, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
[4] Autobiography of Joseph Holbrook, typescript, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Autobiography of Harrison Burgess in Kenneth Glyn Hales, ed. and comp., Windows: A Mormon Family (Tucson, Arizona: Skyline Printing, 1985).
[5] Gordon B. Hinckley, Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1997), 639.
Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson County, Missouri, 18 August 1833. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org
In the summer of 1833, Oliver Cowdery wrote from Independence, Missouri to church leaders in Kirtland, Ohio, informing them that opposition from the saints’ Missouri neighbors was rising. By the time the letter arrived in Ohio, Bishop Partridge had been tarred and feathered in Missouri, the church’s press there had been destroyed, and the saints given an ultimatum to leave Jackson county or face escalating violence.
In Kirtland, Doctor Philastus Hurlbut had been excommunicated twice from the Church in a short period, and he thereafter “sought the destruction of the saints,” Joseph wrote, “and more particularly myself and family.”[1]Section 98 is the Lord’s prescription for peace and diplomacy amidst the strife and violence.[2]
Foreseeing the saints emotional reactions to hostility and violence, the Lord prescribes “be comforted,” “rejoice,” “give thanks,” and wait “patiently” for him, the Lord of Hosts, the defender of his people, to answer their prayers, for he has covenanted to do so. He promises that “all things wherewith you have been afflicted shall work together for your good, and to my name’s glory” (3).
The revelation then upholds the rule of constitutional law applied without bias. Freedom comes from God and “belongs to all mankind” (5, 8). The saints should therefore do all that lies in their power to preserve freedom for themselves and everyone else.
Section 98 reiterates the law of sacrifice described in Section 97. The saints are being tried and proven to see “whether you will abide in my covenant,” the Lord says, “even unto death” (14, cross reference Mosiah 18:8-10). Saints are commanded to “renounce war and proclaim peace” (16).
At verse 19 the Lord expresses his displeasure with materialistic saints in Kirtland, condemning pride, covetousness, and “all their detestable things,” he repeats the terms and conditions on which he will save or damn them.
Beginning in verse 23 the Lord reveals his law of forbearance and justified retaliation. It is the same law Nephi and Israelite patriarchs knew and obeyed. It applies to all people (32, 38). Simply put, the law requires saints to bear attacks “patiently and revile not . . . neither seek revenge” (23). After three offenses, patiently endured, the saints are to warn their attackers in the name of the Lord to stop. If they do not, the Lord says, “I have delivered thine enemy into thine hands” (29). At that point the saints can opt to spare the transgressor or deliver justice. “If he has sought thy life, and thy life is endangered by him, thine enemy is in thine hands and thou are justified” (31).
The Lord’s law includes the commandment that his people should “not go out to battle against any nation, kindred, tongue, or people, save I, the Lord, commanded them” (33). When an enemy declares war, the saints “should first lift a standard of peace” (34). If that gesture is rejected three times, the saints should testify to the Lord of their good faith efforts. “Then I, the Lord, would give unto them a commandment, and justify them in going out to battle against that nation,” and then the Lord would be on the saints’ side (36-37).
Beginning in verse 39, the Lord adds another dimension to the law. It is that enemies are to be forgiven as often as they repent, truly repent. The Lord’s vengeance is just and sure but it evaporates just as soon as there is real repentance (46-48).
Three days after section 98 was revealed, Oliver Cowdery arrived in Kirtland with the latest news from Missouri about the violent persecution and the saints’ pending expulsion from Jackson County. Joseph was passionate about Zion and responded to the crisis with a long letter in his own hand, written to the leaders in Missouri. Joseph’s letter begins with a broken-hearted prayer that the Lord would comfort the saints and curse their enemies before concluding, “O Lord glorify thyself thy will be done and not mine.”
Joseph’s first reaction was to curse the Saints’ enemies but he believed section 98’s promises and bowed to its moderating instructions in response to the crisis. For example, he urged the Saints to “wait patiently until the Lord come[s] and resto[res] unto us all things and build the waist places again for he will do it in his time.” He wrote to Zion, “th[ere] is no saifty only in the a[r]m of Jehovah none else can deliver and he will not deliver unless we do prove ourselves faithful to him in the severeest trouble for he that will have his robes washed in the blood of the Lamb must come up throught great tribulation even the greatest of all affliction but know this when men thus deal with you and speak all maner of evil of you falsly for the sake of Christ that he is your friend and I verily know that he will spedily deliver Zion for I have his immutible covenant that this shall be the case but god is pleased to keep it hid from mine eyes the means how exactly the thing will be done.” Joseph concluded his letter “by telling you that we wait the Comand of God to do whatever he plese and if <he> shall say go up to Zion and defend thy Brotheren by <the sword> we fly and we count not dear our live[s] dear to us.”[3]
Section 99
Section 99 fits chronologically between sections 83 and 84. Generically it is like sections 32-34 and 66. It is a mission call for John Murdock, but his is unique. No other missionaries were given the option to inherit Zion or serve as missionaries for the rest of their lives.[1]
John was among the early converts in Ohio, and from the time of his baptism in November 1830, he had hardly stopped preaching the gospel. His wife Julia had died after giving birth to twins, giving John five children under age seven to care for.
Then section 52 called John to preach and travel to Missouri in the summer of 1831. John shouldered and balanced his family and missionary calling as best he could. He made a selfless decision to accept an invitation an invitation from Emma and Joseph Smith, whose twins had just died, to adopt John and Julia’s. John left his other children in the care of relatives and fellow saints and endured a long, sickly, and extremely successful mission to Missouri and back. He found his children well with the exception of little Joseph, who had succumbed to measles in March 1832.
John nurtured his children, regained his health, and served in the church at headquarters until August 1832, when section 99 called him back to the mission field. The revelation shows the Lord’s familiarity with John’s family situation and tells him how to both provide for his motherless children and perform his mission. John, meanwhile, is given the unusual choice to inherit Zion in a few years or continue his missionary labors for the rest of his life.
John wrote that having received Section 99, “I immediately commenced to arrange my business and provide for my children and send them up to the Bishop in Zion,” Edward Partridge. Then John set out to preach the gospel. Some received him as section 99 predicted. Others, including his in-laws, rejected his message. When John “met with a Dr. Matthews, a very wicked man” who rejected his offering, John and his companion followed the revelation’s instruction: “We bore testimony according to the commandment and the Lord helped us in tending to the ordinance” of cleansing their feet “in the secret places by the way for a testimony against them” (99:4).[2]
Section 100
The adulterous apostate Doctor Philastus Hurlbut threatened to wash his hands in Joseph Smith’s blood.[1] Besides that, the saints in Missouri were in the midst of being forced from the promised land. On the bright side, missionary work around the Great Lakes was thriving. In the midst of the chaos, Joseph and Sidney accepted the invitations from prospective converts and referrals from friends and relatives, and went on a mission through Pennsylvania to upstate New York and Ontario, Canada.
Journal, 1832–1834. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org
On October 12, 1833, Joseph did something he rarely did. He wrote his own journal entry, or at least part of it. “I feel very well in my mind,” it says in his handwriting, “the Lord is with us but have been much anxiety about my family.”[2] The Lord was with them, and gave Joseph section 100 that day. It addresses Joseph’s mission with Sidney Rigdon and the two concerns that occupied his anxious mind: Zion and the safety of his family and other Saints.[3] The revelation begins with the Lord’s omnipotent assurance that Joseph and Sidney’s families are well. “They are in mine hands, and I will do with them as seemeth me good” (1).
About the mission, the Lord gives Joseph and Sidney specific, omniscient counsel to ensure success that could guarantee their success, depending on how they decide to act on the counsel. If Joseph and Sidney speak the thoughts the Lord puts into their hearts, he says, they will not be confounded. If they solemnly, meekly declare the gospel in the Lord’s name, He promises that the Holy Ghost will testify of their words. He promises Joseph a powerful testimony and Sidney the ability to expound scripture. He makes Joseph a revelator for Sidney and Sidney a spokesman for Joseph.
Beginning in verse 13 the Lord offers “a word concerning Zion.” He promises protection and salvation to the brethren Joseph sent to Missouri with messages. “Zion shall be redeemed,” the Lord promises, after she is chastened and becomes pure and willing to serve the Lord.
Joseph Smith possessed a dogged tenacity. He did not want to give up on Zion, on New Jerusalem being built around a holy temple in Jackson County, Missouri. Oliver Cowdery had recently suggested that the Saints could start over somewhere else. Joseph resisted that thought. He told the Saints in Missouri that the Lord wanted them to hold on to their land, not sell it, not give up on Zion. He promised them that Zion would flourish in spite of Hell, though he did not pretend to know how or when.
Joseph described himself as praying fervently and often in the past weeks after Zion had been beaten. He could not understand why. He even said that he murmured about it. Section 100 comforted Joseph. It reinforced his faith in Zion, though it did not answer his questions about how or when the Lord would put the Saints back in the promised land. Joseph wrote that based on Section 100, “I know that Zion, in the own due time of the Lord will be redeemed, but how many will be the days of her purification, tribulation and affliction, the Lord has kept hid from my eyes; and when I enquire concerning this subject the voice of the Lord is, Be still, and know that I am God! all those who suffer for my name shall reign with me, and he that layeth down his life for my sake shall find it again.”[4]
Section 100 eased Joseph’s anxieties about his family’s safety in the hostile environment of Kirtland, Ohio. On returning from his month-long mission, he dictated the following journal entry: “Found my family all well according to the promise of the Lord for which blessings I feel to thank his holy name.”[5]
Section 101
On December 10, 1833, the morning mail brought Joseph Smith “the melancholy intelligence” that the Saints in Missouri were being exiled from the promised land.[1] He had already learned that leading citizens had mobbed the saints, destroyed their press, and forced on them an ultimatum to leave the county. Joseph hoped, however, that the rule of law would prevail, that the saints could get redress for the illegal acts against them, and that they would not have to leave the land they had legally purchased and occupied. The letter disappointed that hope.
The news depressed and bewildered Joseph. Why had the Lord let the saints be driven from the promised land. Would they return? If so, how? It was the Lord who had told Joseph to consecrate Independence, Missouri as Zion, a refuge and gathering place for the saints. “Therefore I ask thee,” Joseph prayed, “in the name of Jesus Christ, to return thy people unto their homes . . . [and] that all the enemies of thy people, who will not repent and return unto thee be destroyed from off the face of that Land.”[2] Section 101 came a week later to answer these questions and Joseph’s prayer, though not as he had hoped.
The Lord explains that he will let the saints be tried and chastened even as much as Abraham was if it will lead to their sanctification. They must choose to stop being contentious, jealous, covetous, and lustful or there will be no Zion even if he rescues them. Then he promises emphatically that he will rescue them. “Notwithstanding their sins, my bowels are filled with compassion towards them. I will not utterly cast them off; and in the day of wrath I will remember mercy” (9).
Just a week earlier, Joseph felt like murmuring because “those who are innocent are compelled to suffer for the iniquities of the guilty; and I cannot account for this.”[3] The Lord acknowledges the injustice in Section 101:41 and has his own “wisdom” in allowing it. From the Lord’s perspective, a potent does of “trouble” can be useful. For when the Saints were well and good they treated lightly the revelations to gather, to consecrate, to buy land and to build a temple. Now all of a sudden they “of necessity feel after me,” the Lord says (8).
Section 101 reaffirms that Zion will be established despite the Saints being driven. It prophesies the millennial day when the pure in heart will inherit Zion, enmity will cease, Satan will be rendered powerless, the Lord will reveal all things, and death, like sorrow, will depart. With that perspective, the faithful, persecuted saints can afford to “fear not even unto death; for in this world your joy is not full, but in my your joy is full” (36).
Beginning in verse 43, the Lord relates a parable to explain his will concerning how to get Zion back. It implies that the unfaithful Saints in Zion were bad stewards. Rather than building the temple as commanded, they second-guessed the Lord, used his money selfishly, and opened themselves to attacks that could have been prevented by obedience. “Ought ye not to have done even as I commanded you,” the nobleman of the parable asks the disobedient servants? (53).
The nobleman’s plans for reclaiming his vineyard from enemies includes gathering an army of his servants, “the strength of mine house” to go to battle (55-58). The nobleman promises to redeem his overrun vineyard and the servants ask when. “When I will” comes the answer, “go ye straightway, and do all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (60). The servants go and do as the nobleman commanded, “and after many days all things were fulfilled” (62).
Immediately following the parable the Lord resumes, as if he were the nobleman commanding his servants what to do, or, in the words of verse 43, “my will concerning the redemption of Zion.” He commands the Saints to obey Sections 57, 63, and 86—that is, to continue the work of gathering by preaching the gospel, gaining converts, and gathering together to pool resources so they can systematically (not hastily or haphazardly) purchase land and build Zion legally. The Lord calls for wise men to be sent to purchase the lands, to buy out the settlers of Jackson County, satisfy them for their land and resolve the controversies between them (73). There is no shortage of money among the saints in the eastern branches, the Lord says. They have enough to buy the land if they are willing to consecrate it for Zion (75).
In verse 76 the Lord calls for the Saints to continue to appeal to government for redress of their civil and property rights like the biblical parable of the unjust judge who finally relented to an insistent woman’s pleas for justice. Similarly, the saints are to petition for justice at the feet of every government official including the president. “And if the president heed them not, then will the Lord arise and come forth out of his hiding place; and in his fury vex the nation” (89). The Saints are to pray for their government officials to be responsive and therefore escape the Lord’s vengeance.
The revelation closes with a command that the saints not sell the storehouse nor any of the land they legally own. Though driven unjustly, they must not relent to their oppressors. They must not sell the promised land.
Section 101 explains why Zion was postponed. God could stop every mobbing and prevent every Saint from being lustful, covetous, and contentious. He chooses instead to put agency in his individual children. He gives them power to act and commandments to act upon. When they or some of them act disobediently to His commands, the blessings promised for obedience are not forthcoming. That’s how some of the Saints, and their enemies, postponed Zion. It is our fault, not God’s, that there is still no holy city in Jackson County, Missouri.
Section 101 promises an ultimate redemption of Zion, though its timing is dependent on the Saints’ decisions. In several places the Lord guarantees that Zion will come. In just as many he speaks ambiguously about when. When depends on what the Saints decide to do with the Lord’s commandments.
[2] John Murdock, “An Abridged Record of the Life of John Murdock, Taken from His Journal by Himself,” typescript, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
[2] Joseph Smith, Kirtland, Ohio, to Edward Partridge, William W. Phelps, John Whitmer, Algernon Sidney Gilbert, John Corrill, Isaac Morley and all Saints, Independence, Missouri, 10 December1833, in Joseph Smith Letterbook 1, pp. 70-75, in hand of Frederick G. Williams, CHL.
Section 94 may make more sense after you have studied sections 95 and 96 and 97, because it was actually revealed right after section 97, though for many years it was misdated and thus misplaced. It makes the most sense when it is read as an extension of section 97.[1] It addresses similar concerns as section 97, and says that the Lord had already revealed the pattern for the House of the Lord in Kirtland, which he did in section 95.
In Section 97, the Lord required the saints in Missouri to build a temple. In Section 94 he commands the saints in Ohio to build a stake to Zion, beginning with another temple in Ohio, as commanded in section 88 and again in section 95. The Lord calls for the construction of an office for the First Presidency next to the temple in Kirtland, Ohio. He specifies its design and the conditions on which he will abide there. On the next lot south the Lord wants a printing office, perhaps to replace the church’s press destroyed by a mob just a few days earlier in Missouri (unbeknownst to Joseph). The members of the church’s building committee, Hyrum Smith, Reynolds Cahoon, and Jared Carter, are appointed lots or “inheritances” near the building sites. Verse 16 is not in the early manuscripts. Probably Joseph added it as clarification before the revelation was published in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.
In the letter to Missouri church leaders that included section 94, the First Presidency explained that the saints in Zion should build similar buildings for meetings and printing the scriptures.[2] But the saints in Zion were already being forced from their land and homes and saints in Kirtland struggled to muster enough resources to build the temple. They eventually scaled down the instructions in section 94, built one building instead of two, and used it as a printing office, a school, and office space for the First Presidency.
Section 95
Six months after the Lord told the Saints in Kirtland, Ohio to build a house of the Lord where they could learn his law, be endowed with his power, and come into his presence (see section 88), the saints had not begun to build the Lord’s house. Joseph wrote to tell the saints in Missouri. “The Lord commanded us in Kirtland to build an house of God,” he said “and we must—yea the Lord helping us we will obey, as on conditions of our obedience, he has promised us great things, yea even a visit from the heavens to honor us with his presence.”[1]
Joseph seemed to be the only one who sensed any urgency in the command. It was the dead of winter, 1833. In the spring the saints got around to having a meeting about building the Lord’s house, and appointed a Jared Carter, Reynolds Cahoon, and Hyrum Smith to a committee to raise money for construction and oversee it.[2] The meeting ended after that and nothing more happened for a month. Then the Lord gave section 95.[3]
It is a revelation of God’s love, his conditional love. “Thus saith the Lord unto you whom I love, and whom I love I also chasten that their sins may be forgiven, for with the chastisement I prepare a way for their deliverance in all things out of temptation, and I have loved you” (1). Given the premises that God loves the saints and chastens those he loves as a means to their forgiveness, the revelation’s next passage is a predictable rebuke for what the Lord calls the “very grevious sin” of not building the temple.
Then the Lord reemphasizes the importance of the temple. It is the school for prophets, the way to “pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,” the way out of darkness, the venue for receiving an endowment of heavenly power. The Lord wanted the elders to remain in Kirtland to receive this endowment, but they were contentious and he sent them into the field to be chastened–because he loved them.
Beginning in verse 11, the Lord promises the saints power to build the temple if they keep his commandments. “If you keep not my commandments,” he emphasizes, “the love of the Father shall not continue with you, therefore you shall walk in darkness” (12). The revelation does not say that the Love of God will not continue, only that it will not continue with those who choose to reject it, who “love darkness rather than light” (D&C 29:45). By juxtaposing his love with darkness, the Lord equates his love with light and the synonyms for it described in sections 88 and 93, including truth, glory, intelligence, power, and life. Why, the Lord seems to lament in Section 95, would saints choose to walk in darkness at noon when God’s loving light shines for all who choose to obey the conditions on which he offers it?
So what would be the wise course? “Let the house be built,” the Lord says, and gives the dimensions and a promise to reveal it to “three” (13). The building committee sent a letter to all the saints the same day the revelation came, urging them to “make very possible exertion to aid temporally as well as spiritually in this great work,” and “it is as important as our salvation is that we obey this . . . command.”[4]
The saints got the point. They went to work at enormous cost. The Lord revealed the building to the First Presidency (14).[5] Hyrum Smith broke ground on June 5, 1833 in a wheat field on the bluffs above the Chagrin River. Everyone helped. Saints consecrated funds, labor, expertise but “the project was far out of proportion to the Church’s pitiful resources.” They had to rely on the Lord’s promise of power to build it if they kept his commandments. Joseph borrowed money to finance the construction “but the economic realities gave Joseph no pause.” He understood the Savior’s “great and last promise” to be worth any cost, any sacrifice (D&C 88:68-69).
After receiving section 95, the saints no longer walked in darkness at noon. “Beginning in Kirtland,” wrote historian Richard Bushman, “temples became an obsession. For the rest of his life, no matter the cost of the temple to himself and his people, [Joseph] made plans, raised money, mobilized workers, and required sacrifice” (see section 97).[6]
Section 96
Reading section 96 is like walking in on an interesting conversation that is already underway. You try hard to catch on, to understand what’s being said, but you realize there’s so much you’ve missed that you just can’t make sense of what you’re hearing. It would be nice, in such cases, if there was a way to catch up on the earlier parts of the conversation. Those parts are sections 42, 72, 78, and 82. Those sections reveal the law of consecration, establish an organization (of church leaders) called the United Firm, to be trustees of church properties, manage storehouses, and relieve poverty.
Members of the Firm and others strategized in the spring of 1833 to acquire several farms in the Kirtland, Ohio area, especially a farm and brick tavern owned by an early settler named Peter French. The saints hoped to build a stake of Zion surrounding the House of the Lord, which they intended to build on French’s farm. They sent a committee to ask the farm owners the terms on which they would be willing to sell. The committee returned with news that the farms were available, and the council decided to buy, appointed agents to negotiate the sale, and called the elders out of their school to go raise funds among the saints.[1] The funds were raised and the farms purchased, leading to another council on June 4, which disagreed about who should manage the French farm, “but all agreed to inquire of the Lord.”[2]
The Lord answered that Newel Whitney, the bishop in Kirtland, was to “take charge of the place” as a good steward. The Lord, however, is the owner of “the place . . . upon which I design to build my holy house” (2). He begins the revelation by stating the rationale for buying the farm: “It is expedient in me that this stake that I have set for the strength of Zion should be made strong” (1). The Lord instructs the bishop and others how to act relative to the land, by dividing it among the saints and using the proceeds to fund the United Firm, called the “order” in verses 4 and 8 but “the Firm” in early manuscripts (see eections 70, 78, 82, 92). The Lord says John Johnson “should become a member of the order” and use his financial resources and skills to pay the church’s debts (D&C 96:8).[3]
Bishop Whitney became steward of the farm and acted on the revelation’s instructions to divide it and to finance the church’s publications with proceeds. John Johnson moved from Hiram to Kirtland, joined the United Firm, became steward of the tavern, and tried to obey the revelation by paying the firm’s debts.[4]
Section 97
Parley Pratt described Zion during the summer of 1833 as the opposition escalated. “Immigration had poured into the County of Jackson in great numbers; and the Church in that county now numbered upwards of one thousand souls.” He described how they industriously improved their situations by building homes and cultivating farms. He said that they observed the Sabbath according to Section 59, but made no mention of building the temple described in section 84. “I devoted almost my entire time in ministering among the churches,” Parley wrote, “holding meetings; visiting the sick; comforting the afflicted, and giving counsel. A school of Elders was also organized, over which I was called to preside. This class, to the number of about sixty, met for instruction once a week. The place of meeting was in the open air, under some tall trees, in a retired place in the wilderness, where we prayed, preached and prophesied, and exercised ourselves in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Here great blessings were poured out and many great and marvelous things were manifested and taught. . . . To attend this school I had to travel on foot, and sometimes with bare feet at that, about six miles. This I did once a week, besides visiting and preaching in five or six branches a week.”
Parley and his brethren wrote to Joseph, seeking the Lord’s will concerning their school. While “thus engaged,” Parley wrote, “and in answer to our correspondence with the Prophet, Joseph Smith, at Kirtland, Ohio, the following revelation was sent to us by him, dated August, 1833.”[1]
Joseph Smith did not know when he received section 97 that the Saints in Zion had received an ultimatum from their antagonistic neighbors—stop obeying the revelations or we will force you to. In section 97, the Lord issues a counter ultimatum. “The ax is laid at the root of the tree,” he says, “and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire. I, the Lord, have spoken it” (D&C 97:8).[2]
Section 97 highlights the Lord’s priorities for Zion. “I, the Lord, am well pleased that there should be a school in Zion, and also with my servant Parley P. Pratt, for he abideth in me” (D&C 97:3). Right away, however, the Lord notices that there is no temple in Zion yet. He requires one to “be built speedily, by the tithing of my people,” by obedience to the law of sacrifice set forth in section 97 (D&C 97:8-12). The temple—or, rather, the keeping of covenants required to build and worship in the temple—will be the salvation of Zion.
Section 97 is conspicuously full of if/then statements. It prophesies conditionally that if the saints obey the commandment to sacrifice to build a temple in Independence, then Zion will prosper and become great and immovable. She will escape her enemies if she observe to do all things whatsoever I have commanded her. If not, Zion will be visited with sore afflictions. The future of Zion is in the hands of the Latter-day Saints. If the saints want Zion as their first priority, they will sacrifice to build it and keep it holy. In verse 27, the Lord gives Zion a second chance. If Zion has since been, at least temporarily, “moved out of her place,” it is because too few Latter-day Saints share the Lord’s priorities set forth in Section 97 (D&C 97:19).
Parley Pratt testified that the Lord poured forth the promised blessings of section 97 when he did as the revelation commanded regarding the school for the elders. “The Lord gave me great wisdom,” Parley wrote, “and enabled me to teach and edify the Elders, and comfort and encourage them in their preparations for the great work which lay before us. I was also much edified and strengthened.”
Parley also noted that “this revelation was not complied with by the leaders and Church in Missouri, as a whole.” As Section 97 shows, the saints in Zion were not unified, not all committed to keeping their covenants. Thus, “notwithstanding many were humble and faithful,” Parley noted, “the threatened judgment was poured out to the uttermost.”[3]
[5]“Minute Book 1,” p. 12, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 9, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minute-book-1/16. Truman Angell, Journal, typescript, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Truman Angell to John Taylor, 11 March 1885, Church History Library.
[6] Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 217-18.
Section 96 notes
[1] Zebedee Coltrin, Journal, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
[3] Scot Facer Procter and Maurine Jensen Proctor, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt: Revised and Enhanced Edition (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2000), 115-16.
