Doctrine and Covenants 99

Doctrine and Covenants 99

Historical Context

This revelation was given to John Murdock in late August 1832. John Murdock was among the first people converted to the Church in the Kirtland area when Oliver Cowdery and the missionaries to the Lamanites arrived in the area in November 1830, and later John served as one of the first missionaries in the region. On April 30, 1831, John suffered a terrible loss when his wife, Julia, died just a few hours after giving birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The same day Emma Smith gave birth to two twins, who both passed away. A widower with three other children to care for, John asked Joseph and Emma to adopt the twins, and they gladly did. Joseph and Emma named the female twin Julia after the twins’ mother, and they named the male twin Joseph. The infant Joseph died ten months later as a result of exposure suffered during a mob attack on Joseph Smith at the John Johnson home, but Julia eventually became the first Smith child to live to adulthood.1

After John received the revelation in section 99, He left on a mission to the East while his three children traveled to Missouri. John recorded the following regarding this revelation: “I then continued with the church preaching to them and strengthening them and regaining my health till the month of Aug. [1832] when I received the Revelation [D&C 99], at which time I immediately commended to arrange my business and provide for my children and sent them up [to] the Bishop in Zion, which I did by the hand of Bro. Caleb Baldwin in Sept [1832]. I have [sic] him ten Dollars a head for carrying up my three eldest children [Orrice C., John R., and Phebe C.]”2 It was two years before John was reunited with his children, a moment that only happened when John arrived in Missouri as a member of Zion’s Camp.3

Revelation Book 1, Revelation Book 2, and John Murdock’s own journal date the revelation found in section 99 to August 1832, as does every published version of the revelation until the 1876 Doctrine and Covenants.4 Because of an error in the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, the revelation’s date was listed as August 1833. The error remained until it was corrected in the 2013 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. In proper chronological order, this revelation was received after section 83 but before section 84 of the Doctrine and Covenants.

See “Historical Introduction,” Revelation, 29 August 1832 [D&C 99].

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

D&C 99:1–8

1 Behold, thus saith the Lord unto my servant John Murdock—thou art called to go into the eastern countries from house to house, from village to village, and from city to city, to proclaim mine everlasting gospel unto the inhabitants thereof, in the midst of persecution and wickedness.

2 And who receiveth you receiveth me; and you shall have power to declare my word in the demonstration of my Holy Spirit.

3 And who receiveth you as a little child, receiveth my kingdom; and blessed are they, for they shall obtain mercy.

4 And whoso rejecteth you shall be rejected of my Father and his house; and you shall cleanse your feet in the secret places by the way for a testimony against them.

5 And behold, and lo, I come quickly to judgment, to convince all of their ungodly deeds which they have committed against me, as it is written of me in the volume of the book.

6 And now, verily I say unto you, that it is not expedient that you should go until your children are provided for, and sent up kindly unto the bishop of Zion.

7 And after a few years, if thou desirest of me, thou mayest go up also unto the goodly land, to possess thine inheritance;

8 Otherwise thou shalt continue proclaiming my gospel until thou be taken. Amen.

In section 99 John Murdock is called to serve as a missionary but is instructed first to provide for his children and arrange for them to travel to Zion. The situation with John’s children was complex at the time this revelation was given. The family caring for his oldest son, Orrice, had left the Church, and they insisted that John should pay them for keeping Orrice. The family looking after his next son, John, had moved to Missouri, and the family caring for his daughter Phebe told John they would “keep her no longer” and also demanded payment. John’s other daughter, Julia, was healthy and well in the care of Joseph and Emma Smith, but his last son, Joseph, was gone. “My little son Joseph was dead,” John painfully recorded. “When the Prophet was hauled out of bed by the mob in Hiram, the child having the measles lay in bed with him . . . at that time they stripped the cloth off the child. He took cold and died.” Writing of the mob responsible for his son’s death, John simply wrote, “they are in the Lord’s hands.”5

John spent two months in Kirtland making arrangements for his children before fulfilling his call to serve in the eastern states. His children traveled to Zion with Caleb Baldwin. There they were placed in the care of Edward Partridge, the bishop of the Church in Missouri. It was two years before John was reunited with them. When John arrived in Missouri as part of Zion’s Camp, he was told that his daughter Phebe, then just six years old, was deathly ill with cholera. “I had seen all my children in good health,” he later wrote, “but the destroyer commenced his work.” 6 John continued, “I immediately went and took care of her until July 6^th [1834] when the Spirit left the body just at the break of day, being 6 years 3 months and 27 days old.”7 John’s two older sons lived to adulthood and served with distinction in the Church.

Doctrine and Covenants 99 also contains a promise from the Savior to John: “whoso receiveth you receiveth me” (D&C 99:2). John had become a very real witness of Jesus Christ only a few months earlier. During the meetings of the School of the Prophets in the spring of 1833, John recorded a vision in his journal:

In one of these meetings the prophet told us if we could humble ourselves before God, and exercise strong faith, we should see the face of the Lord. And about midday the visions of my mind were opened, and the eyes of my understanding were enlightened and I saw the form of a man [the Savior] most lovely. The visage of his face was sound and fair as the sun. His hair a bright silver gray, curled in the most majestic form. His eyes a keen, penetrating blue, and the skin of his neck a most beautiful white. And he was covered from the neck to the feet with a loose garment, pure white, whiter than any garment I have ever before seen. His countenance was most penetrating, and yet most lovely. And while I was endeavoring to comprehend the whole personage from head to feet, it slipped from me and the vision was closed up. But it left on my mind the impression of love for months that I never felt before to that degree.8

John Murdock remained a witness of Jesus Christ throughout the remainder of his life. After serving as one of the first missionaries to Australia, he eventually settled in Utah. He died as a patriarch of the Church and is buried in Beaver, Utah.

Footnotes

• 1. Susan Easton Black, Who’s Who in the Doctrine and Covenants, 1997, 202.
• 2. Lyndon W. Cook, The Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 1985, 201–3.
• 3. Lisa Olsen Tait, “I Quit Other Business: Early Missionaries,” in Revelations in Context, 2016, 87–89.
• 4. Revelation Book 1, p. 148; Revelation Book 2, p. 19, JSP; John Murdock Journal, MSS 1194, fd. 2, Church History Library.
• 5. Lisa Olsen Tait, “I Quit Other Business: Early Missionaries,” in Revelations in Context, 2016, 88.
• 6. Tait, “I Quit Other Business,” 88.
• 7. John Murdock Journal, p. 25, BYU Special Collections.
• 8. John Murdock Journal, p. 13.