Joseph emerged from the depressing jail in Liberty, Missouri, with an undaunted spirit. He had known since January 1838 that he could only count on living for five more years and that his work was far from finished. So Joseph was laser-focused on preparing the Saints for the covenants and ordinances of the holy temple.
He led the Saints in purchasing land along the Mississippi River in the state of Illinois, including a townsite called Commerce. Joseph renamed it Nauvoo, the Hebrew word translated as “beautiful” in Isaiah 52:7. In October 1839 Joseph called for all Saints to gather there and build a holy city. Then Joseph prayed for and received a momentous revelation, the longest in the Doctrine and Covenants—section 124.
Coming shortly after a presidential election and just days before Nauvoo’s first city election, section 124 begins by expressing the Lord’s approval of Joseph’s efforts. Then, “that I might show forth my wisdom through the weak things of the earth,” the Lord commands Joseph to immediately write a proclamation “to all the kings of the world … to the honorable president-elect,” William Harrison, “and the high-minded governors of the nation in which you live.” Joseph was to write “in the spirit of meekness and by the power of the Holy Ghost” and declare the will of Christ to the world’s political authorities. The Lord says nothing of the will of the people but declares his will to “my people” (D&C 124:10, 11, 21, 29, 40, 45, 84, 92, and 104). In the United States, the voice of the people was the voice of God. In Nauvoo, the Lord spoke directly through Joseph Smith.
The command for all the Saints to consecrate to the building of the temple begins with verse 25. The rationale for doing so follows, beginning in verse 28: “For there is not a place found on earth that he may come to and restore again that which was lost unto you, or which he hath taken away, even the fulness of the priesthood.” The Lord grants the Saints sufficient time to consecrate and build the temple as a sacred location for baptisms and the other sacred ordinances, after which he will not accept their ordinances, “for therein,” meaning the temple, “are the keys of holy priesthood ordained, that you may receive honor and glory” (D&C 124:34, cross-reference section 128).
The Lord continues his rationale for building the temple through verse 41, which is a restatement of the promise to reveal fullness in the temple. Some have misread verses 31–34 in self-serving ways. President Joseph Fielding Smith explained that verse 32’s condition (“and if ye do not these things at the end of the appointment,” that is, the period for building the temple) “does not mean ‘if ye do not build a temple at the end of the appointment,’ as our critics infer it does, but it refers to the ordinances that were to be performed in the temple.” President Smith clarified that if the Saints failed to perform the temple ordinances for the dead, then they would be rejected by the Lord per section 124:32.1
President Boyd K. Packer explained the revelation’s references to washing and anointing ordinances in verses 37–39.
The ordinances of washing and anointing are referred to often in the temple as initiatory ordinances. It will be sufficient for our purposes to say only the following: Associated with the endowment are washings and anointing—mostly symbolic in nature, but promising definite, immediate blessings as well as future blessings. … In connection with these ordinances, in the temple you will be officially clothed in the garment and promised marvelous blessings in connection with it.2
Covenants and specific instructions follow the verses on temple ordinances, including the spot on which to build and the terms and conditions on which the Lord will make it holy and on which the Saints will be able to remain in Nauvoo to see it finished. These covenants hinge on the inseparable doctrines of individual agency and accountability and culminate in verses 47–48:
If you build a house to my name, and do not the things that I say, I will not perform the oath which I make unto you, neither fulfill the promises which ye expect at my hand, saith the Lord. For instead of blessings, ye, by your own works, bring cursings, wrath, indignation, and judgments upon your own heads.
In verses 49–54 the Lord explains accountability in terms of agency. That is, he holds accountable those who have power to determine the outcomes he commands. Following that principle, verse 55 is another statement of rationale for building the temple in Nauvoo.
Nauvoo rose like a fortress on a hill, up from a swampy lowland along the Mississippi. Believers streamed into Illinois from Canada, the British Isles, and the Atlantic Seaboard. The population of Nauvoo rose quickly to twelve thousand because of this revelation and Joseph’s counsel to gather and build Zion. Joseph began keeping the Book of the Law of the Lord with section 124, where he recorded it. The revelation oriented his life and the Church’s. It gave Joseph the rest of his life’s work, and he entered the names of those who consecrated to the temple in the Book as well. At April conference in 1841 the revelation was read, and then Joseph rose and urged the Saints to obey it by building the temple and the Nauvoo House.3
Section 124 reorganized the Church, setting in order its presiding priesthood quorums, replacing apostates and filling the vacancies left by brethren who had passed away. The Saints acted on the Lord’s commands to sustain those called to the priesthood quorums, which they did at April conference in 1841, as well as building offices for them in the temple.
Section 124 reoriented the Church by giving it specific work to do, most importantly in building the Nauvoo Temple as a means to the end of receiving the ultimate blessings—the fulness of priesthood ordinances. Knowing that his days were numbered, Joseph began giving the ordinances in May 1842 to a select few, fifty-seven brothers and sisters in all, even before the temple was finished. He sealed couples and confirmed the fulness of priesthood ordinances on a few, according to section 132. Joseph was killed in June 1844, before the temple was ready for ordinances, but in March of that year he had commissioned the apostles to carry on the work and given them all the necessary priesthood keys to do so. Beginning in December 1845, the apostles and others who had been endowed by Joseph officiated in the temple ordinances for 5,600 Saints.
The temple blessings thus resulting from section 124 are inestimable. Speaking of temples, President Gordon B. Hinckley declared, “These unique and wonderful buildings, and the ordinances administered therein, represent the ultimate in our worship. These ordinances become the most profound expressions of our theology.”4
1. Joseph Fielding Smith, quoted in Roy W. Doxey, Latter-day Prophets and the Doctrine and Covenants, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1978): 4:265–66.
2. Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 154–55.
3. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds. and comps., Words of Joseph Smith (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center Brigham Young University, 1980), 69.
4. Ensign (November 1995), 53.
From Doctrine and Covenants Minute
Following their forced exodus from Missouri, the Latter-day Saints regrouped in Illinois as refugees on the banks of the Mississippi River. Joseph Smith and his companions were freed from their captivity in Liberty Jail on April 16, 1839, and joined the Saints a few days later. Dimick Huntington, who was at the docks when Joseph Smith arrived, later vividly described Joseph’s appearance after months of confinement in Liberty Jail. The Prophet “was dressed in an old pair of boots, full of holes, pants torn [and] tucked inside of boots.” He “had not been shaved for some time” and wore a “blue cloak with collar turned up, wide brim black hat, rim sopped down.” Huntington finished his description by adding that Joseph “looked pale and haggard.”1 In many ways, the Prophet’s gaunt appearance was a metaphor for the state of the Church after the trials of Missouri. Most Church members lost nearly everything, and the future was uncertain.
Joseph Smith and other Church leaders moved quickly to find a new gathering place for the Saints. The citizens of Quincy, Illinois, offered temporary refuge and relief from the persecutions of Missouri while Church leaders began looking at available land nearby for a new home. After viewing properties in Lee County, Iowa, and Hancock County, Illinois, Church agents purchased thousands of acres of land in both counties for a new headquarters for the Church2 and laid out a new city on a peninsula that jutted into the Mississippi River. Commerce, as it was then known, was mostly malarial swampland. Willard Richards later wrote that “there were 1 stone house[,] 3 frame hou[s]es & two block hou[s]es which constitu[t]ed the whole city of Commerce . . . the place was literally a wilderness.”3 However, the Saints saw the location with an eye of faith. In April 1840 the name was officially changed to Nauvoo, a Hebrew word meaning “beautiful.” Nauvoo served as Church headquarters from 1839–46.4
Doctrine and Covenants 124 was received nearly two years after Joseph Smith and his companions escaped from Liberty Jail. We know little about the specific context of the revelation, but it was received only a few days after the state of Illinois passed an act to officially incorporate the city of Nauvoo.5 Thus, Doctrine and Covenants 124 acts in many ways as a spiritual charter for the city of Nauvoo. The revelation also served as a set of instructions for reconstructing the Church after the heavy toll exacted by the Kirtland apostasy and the Missouri persecutions. The revelation affirms the importance of the gathering (verse 2) and the centrality of the temple in the spiritual life of the Saints (verses 45–55). It includes directions for reorganizing many of the leading quorums of the Church and for calling new leaders to replace those lost to death or apostasy (verses 84–145). It also contains the first reference in the Doctrine and Covenants to the practice of proxy baptisms for the deceased (verses 37–44). Joseph Smith worked to fulfill the commandments given in this revelation for nearly every waking moment of his life until his death in June 1844.6
Doctrine and Covenants 124 also marks the beginning of the Nauvoo period in the history of the Church, a time ripe with change and controversy. Many of the crowning doctrines and practices of the Church came through revelation during this time. The Nauvoo era is filled with some of the most exciting and most tragic moments in the history of the Church. Doctrine and Covenants 124 was read in the April 1844 general conference of the Church. It was also published in the Church’s Nauvoo newspaper, Times and Seasons, as well as in the September 1841 issue of the Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, the Church’s newspaper in England.7 It was first included in the 1844 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.8
See “Historical Introduction,” Revelation, 19 January 1841 [D&C 124].
1. Quoted in Anthony Sweat, Repicturing the Restoration, 2020, 134–35.
2. Lyndon W. Cook, The Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 1985, 242.
3. “Historical Introduction,” Revelation, 19 January 1841 [D&C 124], fn. 2, JSP.
4. “Nauvoo, Illinois,” reference material, JSP. See also Letterbook 2, p. 135, JSP.
5. Act to Incorporate the City of Nauvoo, 16 Dec. 1840, p. 286, JSP.
6. Cook, Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 243.
7. “Minutes of the General Conference,” Times and Seasons, Apr. 15, 1841, 2:386; “Revelation to J. Smith,” LDS Millennial Star, Sept. 1841, 2:67–69.
8. Robert J. Woodford, Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants, 1974, 3:1626.
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