D&C 114: Two Verses, and Verse 2 Names Nobody

Years ago a friend from my old elders quorum, Craig Ostler, told me over lunch that D&C 114:2 is the Lord lining up the replacements for the apostles who were about to fall away. He had the names ready. I said I didn't see them in the verse, and he said they were obvious from the history. Some of that history is well documented, and I didn't argue it. What I still don't buy is that the verse is doing the work he gave it. The chapter is two verses long, so you can check this one in under a minute.

Here's the first verse, in full.

Verily thus saith the Lord: It is wisdom in my servant David W. Patten, that he settle up all his business as soon as he possibly can, and make a disposition of his merchandise, that he may perform a mission unto me next spring, in company with others, even twelve including himself, to testify of my name and bear glad tidings unto all the world. (D&C 114:1)

An errand with a deadline

Read slowly, the verse turns out to be an errand, and a businesslike one. It says "wisdom," not command: it is wisdom that Patten wind things up. The phrase I'd underline is "as soon as he possibly can," which asks for speed without giving a date. He's to dispose of his merchandise, and the verse doesn't say what that merchandise was, who bought it or what it fetched.

The heading in the Church's scriptures dates the revelation April 11, 1838, at Far West, Missouri, and the Joseph Smith Papers agree. Some older manuals say April 17, in case you run into it. Spring was about a year off.

Then comes the count, which is the part I keep stopping on. "Even twelve including himself." The verse doesn't say the Twelve and doesn't name anyone else, so what Patten learns is that he's one of a dozen, with eleven others going.

The purpose clause is worth a second look too: "to testify of my name and bear glad tidings unto all the world." Keep that word "name" in your head, because verse 2 uses it again.

Selling off the small stuff

The summer I was getting ready for Brazil, I had about eighty CDs I'd bought over three years with lawn-mowing money. A few weeks before I reported, my dad drove me to a used music place on State Street in Salt Lake. He stayed in the car with the newspaper.

The man behind the counter went through my stack in about four minutes. He kept fifty-two and handed the other twenty-eight back, wrinkling his nose at a couple of them, and offered me seventy-eight dollars. A dollar fifty a disc. I took it.

The twenty-eight went into a shoebox in my parents' basement, and as far as I know they're still in a shoebox somewhere.

Verse 2 and the word "stead"

The second verse is shorter, and it's the one that gets all the attention.

For verily thus saith the Lord, that inasmuch as there are those among you who deny my name, others shall be planted in their stead and receive their bishopric. Amen. (D&C 114:2)

It opens with "For," which ties it to verse 1, though the verse doesn't say how. And there's the word "name" again. In verse 1 the twelve are to "testify of my name." In verse 2 some "deny my name." "Inasmuch as there are those" is a condition: to whatever extent such people exist, replacements follow. Nothing is said about what becomes of the ones who deny.

The words "others shall be planted in their stead" turn up again in D&C 64:40, about a bishop and his counselors: "if they are not faithful in their stewardships shall be condemned, and others shall be planted in their stead." D&C 35:18 has a nearby wording, said of Joseph Smith: "if he abide in me, and if not, another will I plant in his stead." Both sentences turn on faithfulness. Verse 2 here turns on denying the Lord's name.

"Bishopric" is the other word worth slowing down on, and I'd keep a modern ward bishop out of the picture. The Joseph Smith Papers note that the word was sometimes used for an office in general and point to Acts 1:20, which reads "his bishoprick let another take." In Acts 1 that sentence is about Judas, and by verse 25 the same place is called "this ministry and apostleship." That fits a verse that follows a count of twelve, though the revelation doesn't itself make the connection.

The editors of the Joseph Smith Papers also record that at the conference a few days earlier, on April 7 and 8, Patten said he couldn't recommend four men as apostles. That's good context to hold beside verse 2, and it comes from the editors.

Last Wednesday's post on D&C 113 covered the revelation from the month before this one, March 1838. Short answers there too, and the thing readers go looking for was left out.

What came after the verse

Three months later, on July 8, 1838, D&C 118 was given. Verse 1 asks for a conference and says "let men be appointed to supply the place of those who are fallen." Verse 6 names four of them: John Taylor, John E. Page, Wilford Woodruff and Willard Richards. Verse 4 repeats the plan for "next spring" to go "over the great waters," and verse 5 puts a day on the leave-taking, "the twenty-sixth day of April next," at Far West, on the building-spot of the Lord's house. So by July the spring had a date and a place, and the roster was being rebuilt around both.

Setting 114:2 beside 118:1 and 118:6 makes a pair, and that pairing is a reading. The later revelation says "fallen" where the earlier one says "deny my name," and three months separate them.

Patten never made it. He was wounded at the Battle of Crooked River and died on October 25, 1838, months short of the spring that verse 1 has in view. Nothing in section 114 hints at that. A later revelation, D&C 124:19, speaks of him as already received: "even as I did my servant David Patten, who is with me at this time." So verse 1 stays what it was on April 11, an errand, a wise one, for a spring he didn't reach.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was David W. Patten?

He was ordained one of the original Apostles in February 1835. In 1838 he was in Missouri, where he and Thomas B. Marsh served as presidents pro tempore of the Church. He died on October 25, 1838, after the Battle of Crooked River.

Did Patten go on the mission in D&C 114?

No. The mission was set for the next spring and he died in October 1838. The chapter says nothing about his death, and you have to leave it for D&C 124:19 to find him spoken of afterward.

Who are the "others" in verse 2?

D&C 118:6 names four men appointed to fill the places of those who have fallen, but that's another revelation, given in July.

What does "bishopric" mean in D&C 114:2?

The Church's Student Manual treats it as a divinely appointed office and authority. The Joseph Smith Papers say the word could cover an office in general. I'd go with office and leave the ward bishop out.

What I still don't like about this chapter

Mostly I'd like more than two verses. Verse 1 gives a man a date and a headcount. Verse 2 gives a condition. Neither says how any of it came out. For that you go to D&C 118, then D&C 124:19, and each stop answers part of it. Craig's version is the tidy one, and I understand why it appeals, because I went to 118:6 myself to feel better about verse 2. I still don't like doing that. It means reading three months of later history back into a sentence that says "inasmuch as there are those," and I'd rather leave the sentence as thin as it is than pretend it knew.

— D.