In the midst of the global and personal tragedies that Joseph F. Smith was grappling with, he turned to the scriptures for solace. President Smith’s statement that “I was greatly impressed, more than I had ever been before, with the following passages” (D&C 138:6) hints that he may have read through these passages many times before. But this time the Holy Spirit used this passage to show President Smith his own vision of the world of spirits. The statements made in 1 Peter 3:18–20 and 4:6 raise the possibility of an expanded view of Jesus Christ’s mission, a message that brought hope not only for a resurrection for all mankind but for eternal salvation for all people, regardless of their background.

President Smith’s vision highlights the labors of Jesus Christ in the days after His death but before His resurrection. Peter writes that Christ was “put to death in the flesh,” meaning He had given up His body, “but quickened by the Spirit,” indicating that His spirit was still living, or “quickened” (1 Peter 3:18). This phase of the mission of Christ is as vital to understanding His saving work as the Savior’s suffering in Gethsemane and on the cross, His death, and His resurrection. Outside of the writings of Peter, Doctrine and Covenants 138 provides more understanding of this phase of the Savior’s mission than any other text we currently have in our possession.

Joseph Smith, Joseph F. Smith’s uncle, also pondered over the meaning of Peter’s statements about the “spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:18–20). In a discourse published in the Times and Seasons in 1842, he taught,

Peter also in speaking concerning our Savior says, that “he went and preached unto spirits in prison, which sometimes were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah.” 1 Pet. iii, 19, 20. Here then we have an account of our Savior preaching in prison; to spirits that had been imprisoned from the days of Noah; and what did he preach to them? that they were to stay there? certainly not; let his own declaration testify; “he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised”—Luke iv, 18, Isaiah has it;—“To bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness from the prison house.” Is. xlii, 7 It is very evident from this that he not only went to preach to them, but to deliver, or bring them out of the prison house.”¹

1. Times and Seasons, 15 April 1842, p. 759–60, JSP, emphasis in original. 

Similar to the revelation found in Doctrine and Covenants 76, section 138 is based on a series of visions rather than a single vision. The first vision, seen by President Joseph F. Smith, was of the “hosts of the dead, both small and great” (D&C 138:11). The place seen in vision by President Smith was not a kingdom of glory, to which men and women are sent after they are resurrected, but the postmortal spirit world. In a discourse given in June 1843, Joseph Smith taught about the postmortal spirit world, saying, “There has been also much said about the word Hell, and the sectarian world have preached much about it, but what is hell?, it is another modern term; it is taken from Hades the Greek or Sheol, the (Hebrew), & the true signification is a world of spirits, Hades, Sheol, paradise, spirits in prison is all one, it is a world of spirits, the righteous and the wicked all go to the same world of spirits.”²

President Brigham Young taught that the world of spirits surrounds us, but it is only discernible through spiritual eyes:

When the spirits leave their bodies, . . . they are prepared then to see, hear and understand spiritual things . . . Can you see spirits in this room? No. Suppose the Lord should touch your eyes that you might see, could you then see the spirits? Yes, as plainly as you now see bodies, as did the servant of [Elisha] [see 2 Kings 6:16–17]. If the Lord would permit it, and it was his will that it should be done, you could see the spirits that have departed from this world, as plainly as you now see bodies with your natural eyes.³

At the funeral of Jedediah M. Grant, a member of the First Presidency, Heber C. Kimball related a vision shared by President Grant on his deathbed:

He said to me, brother Heber, I have been into the spirit world two nights in succession, and, of all the dreads that ever came across me, the worst was to have to again return to my body, though I had to do it. But O, says he, the order and government that were there! When in the spirit world, I saw the order of righteous men and women; beheld them organized in their several grades, and there appeared to be no obstruction to my vision; I could see every man and woman in their grade and order. I looked to see whether there was any disorder there, but there was none; neither could I see any death nor any darkness, disorder or confusion. He said that the people he there saw were organized in family capacities; and when he looked at them he saw grade after grade, and all were organized and in perfect harmony. He would mention one item after another and say, “Why, it is just as brother Brigham says it is; it is just as he has told us many a time.”⁴

2. Discourse, 11 June 1843–A, as Reported by Wilford Woodruff, p. 44, JSP, spelling and punctuation added. 

3. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, 1997, 279.

4. Heber C. Kimball, in Journal of Discourses, 4:135–36.

President’s Smith’s vision was not only of another place (the world of spirits) but of another time as well. He saw that the spirits of the righteous “were assembled awaiting the advent of the Son of God into the spirit world, to declare their redemption from the bands of death” (D&C 138:16). The day that President Smith saw was the day that the Savior was on the cross dying. While the Savior’s death was a time of grief and sorrow for his disciples on earth, His disciples in the spirit world were “rejoicing in the hour of their deliverance,” and “among the righteous there was peace” (D&C 138:18, 22). The ministry of Jesus Christ in Palestine touched hearts and minds in a small corner of the world, but Christ’s ministry in the spirit world began a work that would eventually reach into every culture, country, and climate.

Though Joseph Smith taught that “the righteous and the wicked all go to the same world of spirits,”⁵ on this occasion the righteous congregated to a single place to witness the advent of the Savior into the spirit world. This part of the vision is in harmony with Joseph Smith’s teaching that the “same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there” (D&C 130:2). While both righteous and wicked spirits go to the same place, the righteous and the wicked tend to congregate in separate spaces. Whether this separation is by choice or by design in the world of spirits is not known. What this passage does make clear is, on this occasion, the spirits of the righteous looked upon the Savior’s coming with joy while the wicked remained in darkness and did not behold the Savior during his sojourn into the spirit world (D&C 138:20–22). According to President Smith’s vision, among the group of righteous Saints who greeted Christ were Adam and Eve, along with “many of her faithful daughters,” and many of the Lord’s faithful servants who arrived in the spirit world before the Savior (D&C 138:38–52).

5. Discourse, 11 June 1843–A, as Reported by Wilford Woodruff, p. 44, JSP, spelling and punctuation added.

There were aspects of the Savior’s great act of the Atonement that only He was capable of accomplishing. King Benjamin taught, “He shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people” (Mosiah 3:7). A well-beloved hymn eloquently states the truth that “there was no other good enough to pay the price of sin, He only could unlock the gates of heav’n and let us in.”⁶ Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught, “[Jesus Christ] was apparently the only one sufficiently humble and willing in the premortal council to be foreordained to that service.”⁷ Only Christ was qualified to suffer in Gethsemane and on the cross for our sins, sufferings, and infirmities.

There are other aspects of the Savior’s Atonement, however, that He actively invites His disciples—the living and the dead—to participate in as His co-laborers. The scriptures also speak of “saviors on Mount Zion” (Obadiah 1:21; Mosiah 15:15-18; D&C 76:66). In his vision, Joseph F. Smith was shown that “the Lord went not in person among the wicked and the disobedient who had rejected the truth, to teach them” (D&C 138:29). Instead, the Lord “organized his forces and appointed messengers, clothed 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” (D&C 138:30). The Lord appointed His covenant disciples in the spirit world to carry on His work. His time in the spirit world was “limited to the brief time intervening between the crucifixion and his resurrection” (D&C 138:27). The Savior instead spent His limited time in the spirit world organizing the spirits of the righteous into a great army of missionaries, commissioned and sent forth to teach the gospel. This missionary force included some of the most venerable and powerful preachers of the gospel ever to walk the earth (D&C 138:38–49).

6. “There is a Green Hill Far Away,” Hymns, no. 194.

7. Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Atonement,” Ensign, March 2008.

The ordinances and principles of the gospel are the same for the living and the dead. The primary difference in the way the gospel is taught in mortality and in the spirit world is the way the ordinances of the gospel are carried out. For those who have laid down their mortal bodies, a living person acts as proxy in making covenants. The covenants themselves may be accepted or rejected by the deceased, just as they are here on earth. The act of performing a proxy baptism only opens the door to salvation for a departed soul; that soul must choose to enter through the door themselves.

On a separate occasion, President Joseph F. Smith taught, “The same principles that apply to the living apply also to the dead. . . . And so we are baptized for those that are dead. The living cannot be made perfect without the dead, nor the dead be made perfect without the living. There has got to be a welding together and a joining together of parents and children and children and parents until the whole chain of God’s family shall be welded together into one chain, and they shall all become the family of God and His Christ.”⁸ Baptism for the remission of sins was instituted in the time of Adam (Moses 6:64–66); however Joseph Fielding Smith explains that vicarious baptism for the dead was only available after the Savior completed His visit to the spirit world,

There was no baptism for the dead before the days of the Son of God and until after he had risen from the dead, because he was the first who declared the gospel unto the dead. No one else preached unto the dead until Christ went to them and opened the doors, and from that time for the elders of Israel, who have passed away, have had the privilege of going to the spirit world and declaring the message of salvation.⁹

8. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith, 1998, 407–15.

9. Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 2:116.

While section 138 is certainly not the last addition to the Doctrine and Covenants in our time, verses 38–52 serve as a moving coda to the entire scriptural canon. President Joseph F. Smith was shown again familiar scriptural figures, beginning with Adam and Eve. Redeemed from their fallen state (Moses 5:9–11), the Mother and Father of all mankind stood among their righteous posterity (D&C 138:38–39). After all their struggles and sacrifice, it is wonderful to know that the story of their family continues on in glorious fashion. Listed just behind Adam and Eve are “many of [Eve’s] faithful daughters who lived through the ages and worshiped the true and living God” (D&C 138:39). Though they are not mentioned by name, this group undoubtedly included Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel, Deborah, Hannah, Ruth, Esther, and many other righteous women from the millennia before Jesus Christ.

Abel, the first son of Adam and Eve, who was murdered by Cain, was seen alongside Seth, the heir to the priesthood of the first family (D&C 107:42–43). Shem, a son of Noah identified as a “great high priest,” was also in the group (D&C 138:41). Prophets from the Old Testament, from Abraham to Malachi, rejoiced among the multitude to see the Redeemer arrive in the spirit world. The Prophet Elias, whose precise identity remains unknown but is likely John the Baptist, who appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–4, see also JST Matthew 17:10-14).

President Smith also notes the presence of “the prophets who dwelt among the Nephites and testified of the coming of the Son of God” (D&C 138:49). Surely Lehi, Nephi, Jacob, Enos, King Benjamin, Alma the Elder, Alma the Younger, and Helaman joined the congregation of the righteous in the spirit world. The Prophet Abinadi, condemned to a tragic death on earth, returned triumphantly to the spirit world to preach anew to the spirits there. The sons of Mosiah, among the finest missionaries of any dispensation, received a new call, this time to preach among the congregations of the wicked in the spirit world. President Smith notes that these righteous souls “looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage” (D&C 138:50). However, these mighty men and women knew that before they were reunited with their physical bodies, they must join in the great rescue of the spirits who remained in bondage to sin. The Savior organized the greatest group of missionaries seen on either side of the veil for the mission to spirit prison.

In Doctrine and Covenants 138:53–56, the vision shifts in time to show the spirit world in Joseph F. Smith’s own time. There, he beheld Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Brigham Young, and the other Presidents of the Church Joseph F. Smith had served under. We have no doubt that, like the Old Testament prophets, many of the faithful women of this dispensation—including Emma Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, Mary Fielding Smith, Mary Ann Angel Young, Leonora Taylor, Phebe Woodruff, and other righteous women—labor alongside their companions in the spirit world.

There is an added level of poignance to this portion of the vision, since Joseph F. Smith lost his father, Hyrum Smith, when he was only five years old. President Smith once recorded in his journal that thinking of his childhood in Nauvoo invoked “sacred memories of the past, made doubly and at the same time Dear and dreadful, by the Sacred resting place of my Fathers Dust, and the Dreadful Scenes that once, (and to my memory Clear as day) brought gloom and Horror upon the honest world and filled 10 thousand Hearts with grief and woe!”¹⁰

In his vision just weeks before the end of his mortal life, President Smith saw his father once again, alongside his uncle, the two martyred testators of this dispensation (D&C 135:5). In President Smith’s great vision, all of the great prophets of ancient and modern times united with one purpose: to bring salvation to the dead by preaching the gospel to them by building temples of the Lord for their work. With the end of his time on earth so near, President Smith’s vision of great prophets and missionaries assured him that though one phase of his labor was about to come to a close, an entirely new phase was about to begin.

Even before Doctrine and Covenants 138 was received, President Smith expressed his conviction that the mission of earthly prophets does not end with death. He taught on a separate occasion:

This gospel revealed to the Prophet Joseph is already being preached to the spirits in prison, to those who have passed away from this stage of action into the spirit world without the knowledge of the gospel. Joseph Smith is preaching that gospel to them. So is Hyrum Smith. So is Brigham Young, and so are all the faithful apostles that lived in this dispensation under the administration of the Prophet Joseph. They are there, having carried with them from here the holy Priesthood that they received under authority, and which was conferred upon them in the flesh; they are preaching the gospel to the spirits in prison; for Christ, when his body lay in the tomb, went to proclaim liberty to the captives and opened the prison doors to them that were bound. Not only are these engaged in that work but hundreds and thousands of others; the elders that have died in the mission field have not finished their missions, but they are continuing them in the spirit world.¹¹

10. Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith, 1998, “The Life and Ministry of Joseph F. Smith.”

11. Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine, 1939, 471–72.

We do not know if the last few verses of President Smith’s vision (D&C 138:57–60) constitute a separate vision or a continuation of his vision of the “noble and great ones” sent to earth in the last days (D&C 138:55). It is possible that the last part of the vision, in which he “beheld that 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” (D&C 138:57), was a reference to his own departed son Hyrum Mack Smith, who had passed away only months earlier. It is also likely that he beheld the faithful women of this dispensation, including Hyrum Mack’s wife, Ida Bowman Smith, who died only weeks before President Smith’s vision. His son and daughter-in-law were reunited in death and continue their work together, joining the spirits who died before them who are preaching beyond the veil. 

President Smith’s vision filled in a vital part of the plan of salvation. Just as the vision of the three degrees of glory (D&C 76) explained the final destination of all men and women, Joseph F. Smith’s 1918 vision taught that righteous men and women can expect to continue their labors in preaching the gospel in the next life. In mortality and in the world of spirits, peace for the righteous comes in knowing they are on the path to exaltation and eternal life. But the labors of the righteous continue, as they go on in the work of God, committed to assisting in the great work and glory “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).