The
law of consecration contained in the Doctrine and Covenants is not
the law many Latter-day Saints believe it to be. The intervening
history between when and why the revelations were given and the
present day has resulted in what some historians have called a “folk
memory” among Latter-day Saints. This version of the past recalls
that early Saints could not live the law of consecration, so the Lord
rescinded the higher law and gave the lower law of tithing instead.
Someday we will live the higher law again.[1] No
matter how widely believed it is, that is not the law of consecration
contained in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Hello
Brandon, That is a paragraph from RiC=Revelations in Context. Doesn’t
that match with what you have heard and believe? It does me!
I
was both pleased and surprised when I learned that JC did not reveal
the above “Law of Consecration” until Joseph asked for it. There
was a good brother(Lucy and Isaac Morley) who joined the church who had been trying to live
the NT teachings with a group of people near Kirtland including this
law. Do you remember how JS asked about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
and their wives and how JC answered? That revelation shocked and
alienated Emma. It took JS 10 years to put it into writing. Hyrum
Smith thought he could convince Emma to understand it and accept it
and Joseph told him: “You don’t know Emma as well as I do. Good
luck..“ Hyrum failed to convince Emma. So I am learning that JC
answered JS questions but sometimes Joseph wished he would not have
asked! So Funny!!! Too late now. Now you know. And eventually you
will have to live it. J-Oh crud! RiC-here
is another one I absolutely love:
The
Law\D&C
42\Steven
C. Harper\Ohio.
Lake Co. Kirtland. Isaac Morley Farm.
“We
have received the laws of the Kingdom since we came here,” Joseph
Smith wrote to Martin Harris in February 1831, “and the Disciples
in these parts have received them gladly.”1
Joseph
had been in Ohio less than a month when he wrote those words to
Martin Harris, who was still in Palmyra, New York. Prior to Joseph’s
own move from New York, the Lord gave him a commandment to gather the
Church in Ohio and promised: “There I will give unto you my law.”2
Shortly after Joseph’s arrival in Kirtland, he received the
promised revelation, which in early manuscripts was entitled “The
Laws of the Church of Christ.” It is now canonized as Doctrine and
Covenants 42:1–73.
The
Church’s need for the revelation at this time was acute. When he
arrived in Ohio, Joseph found the Saints there to be sincere but
confused about the biblical teaching that early Christians “were of
one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the
things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things
common” (Acts 4:32).
Many
of the Church’s converts in Ohio were members of “the Family,”
a communal group that shared the home and farm of Lucy and Isaac
Morley in an effort to be true Christians. While their intentions
were in keeping with the account Joseph himself had recently received
of Enoch’s Zion, where the people had achieved the ideal “of one
heart and one mind” and completely eliminated poverty (Moses 7:18),
the Prophet found the Ohio converts following practices that
undermined personal agency, stewardship, and accountability—though
they were “striving to do the will of God, so far as they knew
it.”3 As a result, the converts were, in the words of Joseph
Smith’s history, “going to destruction very fast as to temporal
things: for they considered from reading the scripture that what
belonged to a brother belonged to any of the brethren.”4
Very
shortly after Joseph arrived in Ohio, the Lord revealed that “by
the prayer of your faith ye shall receive my law that ye may know how
to govern my Church.”5 A few days later, Joseph gathered several
elders and in “mighty prayer” asked the Lord to reveal His law as
promised.6
“Consecrate
of Thy Properties”
The
revelation Joseph received in response upheld the first great
commandment, loving God wholeheartedly, as the motivation for keeping
all the others, including the law of consecration, suggesting that
love for God is the reason for the practice. To consecrate, the early
Saints were taught, meant to make their property sacred by using it
for the Lord’s work, including purchasing land on which to build
New Jerusalem and crowning it with a temple. The law revealed that
consecration was as much about receiving as it was about giving,
since the Lord promised that each faithful Saint would receive
“sufficient for him self and family” here and salvation
hereafter.7
The
law clarified that consecration did not envision communal ownership
of property. Rather, it required the willing to acknowledge that the
Lord was the owner of all and that each of the Saints was to be a
hardworking “Steward over his own property”8 and thus accountable
to the actual owner, the Lord, who required that the Saints freely
offer their surplus to His storehouse to be used to relieve poverty
and build Zion.9
The
Ohio converts’ faith in Joseph’s revelations led them to align
their practices with the Lord’s revealed plan. As Joseph’s
history put it, “The plan of ‘common stock,’ which had existed
in what was called ‘the family,’ whose members generally had
embraced the ever lasting gospel, was readily abandoned for the more
perfect law of the Lord.”10
As
time went on, Bishop Edward Partridge implemented the law as best he
could, and willing Saints signed deeds consecrating their property to
the Church. But obeying the law was voluntary, and some Saints
refused. Others were untaught, and many were scattered.11 Some
rebellious Saints even challenged the law in court, leading to
refinements in its language and changes in practice.
Other
early Saints understood that the eternal principles of the
law—agency, stewardship, and accountability to God—could be
applied in changing situations, as when Leman Copley decided not to
consecrate his farm in Thompson, Ohio, sending the Saints gathered
there on to Missouri to live the law, or again when a mob drove
Church members from Jackson County in 1833, ending the bishop’s
practice of giving and receiving consecration deeds but not the law
itself. Just as the law of consecration, though revealed in February
1831, did not begin then, it did not end when some refused to obey
and others were thwarted in their attempts. 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.”12
Answers
to Various Questions
In
addition to expounding the law of consecration, the revelation
answered many questions of importance to the Church at that time.
Joseph and the elders who gathered in February 1831 in pursuit of the
revelation first asked if the Church should “come to gether into
one place or continue in separate establishments.” The Lord
answered with what are now essentially the first 10 verses of
Doctrine and Covenants 42, calling on the elders to preach the gospel
in pairs, declare the word like angels, invite all to repent, and
baptize all who were willing. By gathering Saints into the Church
from every region, the elders would prepare for the day when the Lord
would reveal the New Jerusalem. Then, “ye may be gathered in one,”
the Lord said.13
The
Lord then answered a question that had troubled Christianity for
centuries: was Christ’s Church an orderly, authoritative
institution or an unfettered outpouring of the Spirit and its gifts?
Some people made extreme claims to spiritual gifts, and others
responded with an equal and opposite reaction, stripping away the
spontaneity of the Spirit, completely in favor of rigid rules. This
dilemma existed in the early Church in Ohio, and the Lord responded
to it with several revelations, including His law. The law did not
envision the Church as either well ordered or free to follow the
Spirit; rather, it required that preachers be ordained by those known
to have authority, that they teach the scriptures, and that they do
it by the power of the Holy Ghost.14
Other
portions of the law restated and commented on the commandments
revealed to Moses15 and included conditional promises of more
revelation depending on the Saints’ faithfulness to what they had
received, including sharing the gospel.16
“How,”
the elders wondered, should they care for “their families while
they are proclaiming repentance or are otherwise engaged in the
Service of the Church?”17 The Lord answered with what has become
verses 70–73, then elaborated further in later revelations, now
found in Doctrine and Covenants 72:11–14 and 75:24–28. The
concept was further clarified in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and
Covenants.
Early
versions of the law also include short answers to two additional
questions: Should the Church have business dealings—especially get
into debt—with people outside the Church, and what should the
Saints do to accommodate those gathering from the East? The answers
have been left out of later versions of the text, perhaps because
Doctrine and Covenants 64:27–30 answers the first question, while
the answer to the second is so specific to a past place and time that
it may have been considered unimportant for future generations.18
“How
to Act upon the Points of My Law”
During
that same month (February 1831), Joseph received what became Doctrine
and Covenants 43, which commanded him to assemble a counsel to
“instruct and edify each other, that ye may know how to act, and
direct my church how to act upon the points of law and commandments,
which I have given.”19 With that commandment in mind, Joseph
convened a meeting of seven Church elders to determine how to act on
disciplinary cases regarding the law of chastity revealed in the
law20 and how the Church should enact the law in situations ranging
from murder to meanness. These additional regulations were added to
published versions of the law and now comprise verses 74–93 of
Doctrine and Covenants 42.
The
law, together with the Church’s founding “Articles and Covenants”
(now Doctrine and Covenants 20), organized the rapidly growing Church
under one set of regulations and unified the various budding
congregations in their teaching and practice. It shows how the Lord
has revealed, does reveal, and will yet reveal His will to the
Saints. From clarifying parts of the law given to Moses and
specifying how the Saints in 1831 should apply it in their
circumstances, to promising further revelation as sought and needed
in the future, this living document continues to serve as a law of
the Church of Jesus Christ.
