D&C 101: They Started the Tower and Then Debated It

Verse 2 of section 101 gives the reason for the affliction, and it's a hard one. The Lord says he suffered it to come upon them in consequence of their transgressions. The revelation is dated December 16 and 17, 1833, a month or so after the Saints were driven out of Jackson County, and that sentence is the one I said last Thursday, at the end of the post on section 100, I hadn't made peace with. Still haven't. What I can report is that verse 41 sits well down the page and won't let verse 2 mean everything it sounds like on its own.

By mid-November something over twelve hundred Saints were across the Missouri, more than two hundred homes had been burned and the damage was put at $175,000. The printing office in Independence had been wrecked on July 20, the same day a mob tarred and feathered Bishop Edward Partridge and Charles Allen, thirteen days before the revelation I wrote up as the four things in verse 8. So section 101 doesn't warn anybody about trouble coming. The trouble came first, and the Lord is speaking to people who had already lost the farm.

Why were the Saints driven out of Jackson County?

Verse 6 names the sins.

Behold, I say unto you, there were jarrings, and contentions, and envyings, and strifes, and lustful and covetous desires among them; therefore by these things they polluted their inheritances.

(D&C 101:6)

I don't get to keep the jarrings and drop the covetous desires. It's one chain, and the verse says the chain polluted the inheritances, with no mob in the sentence at all. The mob was real and so was Partridge's tar. So is verse 6. Verse 7 is the one I like least. It says they were slow to hearken and the Lord is therefore slow to hearken to their prayers in the day of their trouble. That reaches into prayers said while people were being pushed toward a riverbank and tells them the slowness ran both ways. Verse 8 puts a date on it, the day of their peace, when they esteemed his counsel lightly. The parable comes back for that phrase.

Compassion is in the same opening.

Verily I say unto you, 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.

(D&C 101:9)

It takes nothing back from verse 2 or verse 7. It sits beside them.

Then, thirty-odd verses later, the narrowing.

Behold, here is wisdom concerning the children of Zion, even many, but not all; they were found transgressors, therefore they must needs be chastened—

(D&C 101:41)

Preach verse 2 by itself and you can stand every person on that riverbank under the word transgressors. Verse 41 was written to stop you. I still hear verse 2 the way I heard it Thursday, and I read 41 in the same sitting, or I'm trimming a revelation down to the line that bothers me.

Everything between is mostly the nations and the day when the Lord shall come, with the elements melting and an infant living to the age of a tree, and I'm leaving that alone. It's a different day, and verse 43 says the parable that follows is there so they may know his will concerning the redemption of Zion, and that's the part I want room for.

What need hath my lord of this tower?

A nobleman has a very choice spot of land. He tells his servants to plant twelve olive trees, set watchmen round about them and build a tower, so one man can overlook the land and the trees won't be broken down when the enemy comes to spoil the vineyard (verses 44 and 45). It's a single order with three parts.

The servants of verse 46 went and did as their lord commanded. They planted the trees, built a hedge, set watchmen and began to build a tower. Began. Verse 47 has them still laying the foundation when somebody asks the question.

And while they were yet laying the foundation thereof, they began to say among themselves: And what need hath my lord of this tower?

(D&C 101:47)

In verse 48 they consult for a long time on the grounds that this is a time of peace, and by verse 49 the reasoning has landed: might this money not be given to the exchangers, for there is no need of these things? An exchanger takes money and puts it to work, so the proposal is that the capital would earn more lent out than sunk into a tower nobody is using. A careful man can say that with a straight face and feel prudent saying it.

I know a smaller version of that argument, from our backyard. The chicken run went up in April, and I stapled hardware cloth to every wall and ran it up over the top. The last part, a strip of the same cloth buried along the bottom so nothing can dig in, I skipped. It was a Saturday and the soil was clay and nothing had come near the coop all spring. By the end of July I had a good case for why the strip was optional, and I could have given it to you in the same tone the servants use. On a Tuesday morning in August there was a hole at the corner of the run about the size of a dinner plate, and no eggs. The hens were fine. Lily wanted to know if the raccoon would be back for breakfast. Melissa asked me where the roll of cloth was, and I had to go and look.

The servants lost a good deal more than eggs, and they had an order, which nobody gave me. All I'd carry over is how reasonable the case for skipping the last piece sounded while it was being made.

Verse 50 gives the bill: while they were at variance one with another they became very slothful and hearkened not unto the commandments of their lord. The trees were in the ground, the hedge was up and the watchmen were posted, which is most of what a worried man would call obedience, and the one piece left at the foundation was the piece for seeing trouble from far off.

Then the enemy comes by night, breaks down the hedge and destroys their works, and the servants wake up afraid and run. The lord of the vineyard calls them in with an exclamation, "Why! what is the cause of this great evil?", and answers it himself. Ought they not to have done as he commanded, built the tower also and set a watchman upon it and watched? That watchman would have seen the enemy while he was yet afar off (verse 54).

A couple of things in that rebuke are easy to slide past. The servants' report in verse 46 never mentioned watchmen on the walls or sleep, so the lord's list of what he ordered is fuller than the list of what they did. The gap he points at is the tower and a man standing on it awake. He has no complaint about the trees or the hedge.

After the scolding one servant is sent to gather the warriors and the strength of his house and go straightway to redeem the vineyard, which is his, bought with money. Break down the enemies' walls, throw down their tower and scatter their watchmen (verse 57). Their tower. The enemy had walls and a watch of his own all along, and nothing in verse 51 had room to say so on the night of the attack. However long the delay was, the other side didn't spend it debating a foundation.

The servant asks when.

And he said unto his servant: When I will; go ye straightway, and do all things whatsoever I have commanded you;

(D&C 101:60)

He goes, and verse 62 says after many days all things were fulfilled. The next summer a company marched to Missouri under Joseph, and Jackson County wasn't redeemed. That march doesn't hand me the parable's date. The parable had already declined to give one.

Judge, then governor, then president

Verse 63 begins "Again," and what follows is a second speech to a different audience, the churches. If you lift the warriors out of verses 55 to 58 and stop reading, you've enlisted people whom the next verses tell to slow down.

Let not your gathering be in haste, nor by flight; but let all things be prepared before you.

(D&C 101:68)

They're to buy land with money, through honorable men sent to do it, in their own time. Verse 75 says there is already in store an abundance to redeem Zion, if the churches who call themselves after his name would hearken.

Alongside the buying runs a second slow instruction, which is that the scattered are to keep importuning for redress by the hands of the rulers, according to the laws and constitution of the people. Section 98 had already said those laws were worth befriending, which I went through in what happens on the fourth offense, and losing the houses didn't cancel that. Then comes the widow and the unjust judge, a judge who feared not God and regarded not man, and a widow who came saying avenge me of mine adversary. He wouldn't for a while. Then he said within himself that she troubled him and he'd do it, lest by her continual coming she weary him.

Out of that widow the Lord builds a staircase of offices: importune at the feet of the judge, then the governor if the judge won't heed, then the president (verses 86 to 88). Three offices, in order, with no shortcut around a door because the people knocking are angry, and they had good reason to be.

If the president won't heed them, the Lord will arise out of his hiding place and in his fury vex the nation, and the verses after that are hot enough that a lot of readers stop there. Verse 92 is next.

Pray ye, therefore, that their ears may be opened unto your cries, that I may be merciful unto them, that these things may not come upon them.

(D&C 101:92)

Pray that the rulers' ears open, so that he may be merciful to them. I want that verse read aloud in any class that reads the fury. The prayer is for the same nation the previous verses are ready to vex, and it comes second, after the fire, when it would have been easy to put it first and let the fire sit at the end.

Sidney Gilbert is not to sell the store

The last stretch gets particular again, and I trust that more than the wide parts, because a name is harder to turn into a mood. Verse 96 says it is contrary to the commandment that Sidney Gilbert should sell the storehouse into the hands of the Lord's enemies. Verse 98 calls the consent of those who call themselves after his name a very sore and grievous sin. The mob had already shown it knew how to break a printing office. This is one of their own signing the store away.

Therefore, it is my will that my people should claim, and hold claim upon that which I have appointed unto them, though they should not be permitted to dwell thereon.

(D&C 101:99)

The next verse won't let that "though" harden into a permanent no. If they bring forth fruit and works meet for his kingdom, they shall dwell thereon. Verse 101 says they shall build and another shall not inherit it, they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit. The section stops there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does D&C 101 blame the Saints for getting driven out?

Yes, and it doesn't blame them for all of it or all of them. Verse 2 and verse 6 put the cause in their own jarring and covetousness. Verse 41 says many but not all, and verse 9 says he won't utterly cast them off. I can hold all three at once, and I get nervous about anyone who can only hold one.

What does the parable of the nobleman and the olive trees mean?

I read the tower as the thing commanded so somebody could see the enemy coming. People call it the temple, and the parable never uses that word. Verse 23 does speak of his temple, but that's a different passage and I won't staple it onto verse 45 to tidy things up.

Were they supposed to sue or to fight?

Both are printed in the section, as different speeches. The warriors in the parable go to throw down the enemy's tower. The churches in verse 68 are told not to gather in haste, and the scattered get the judge, the governor and the president. If I had to pick, I'd trust the staircase and the land purchase before I trusted anybody's reading of the warriors as this year's orders.

Are the millennium verses the same event as Zion being redeemed?

I don't think so, because verses 24 to 35 hang on the day "when the Lord shall come," with no death and Satan unable to tempt. The parable answers "when shall these things be" with "when I will," and the commandments after verse 63 are about buying land and refusing a panicked gathering. A church can fail at those next spring. Nobody schedules the day the elements melt.

The servant in the parable is called a faithful and wise steward in verse 61, a verse ahead of the one where he goes. The fulfillment in verse 62 comes only after many days. He's the steward already, with the days still in front of him, which means you can be under the order and done arguing and still not be in the vineyard.

— D.