D&C 90 and the Radio Repairman Who Wanted My Own Words

By the winter of 1999 I had taught the first discussion in Portuguese about a hundred times and could do it to the comma. This was Diadema, my second area. The man across the card table was Seu Valdir, who repaired radios out of his front room and had the patience of somebody who spends his days listening for one bad capacitor. I got through all of it. He nodded in the right places. Then he set down his coffee and said, "Elder, agora me diz com as suas palavras," which means tell me again in your own words.

I didn't have any, only the words from the lesson book, which I'd learned the way you learn a phone number, so I could recite them and not do one other thing with them. We sat there. A soccer match was going on a shelf behind him with the sound turned down to a mutter, and I remember that more clearly than I remember anything I said.

That was twenty-seven years ago, and I thought of him all week because of one verse in D&C 90.

What does it mean to hear the gospel "in his own tongue"?

The verse is this.

Every man shall hear the fulness of the gospel in his own tongue, and in his own language...

Doctrine and Covenants 90:11

For years I read "tongue" and "language" as the same thing said twice, the way scripture sometimes piles up words for weight. Maybe it is. But I've started reading them apart, and I'll say plainly that this is my reading and not anything the section spells out. A tongue is Portuguese or English or Danish, which is what my great-great-grandparents spoke in Sanpete County before they learned anything else. A language is how an actual person talks, the vocabulary of a radio repairman or a third grader or a man at a loading dock. Seu Valdir had a tongue I could more or less handle by then. What he was waiting for was whether I could get into his language, and I couldn't, not yet.

Joseph Smith received this revelation in Kirtland on March 8, 1833. He'd finished working through the second half of the Bible about five weeks earlier, on February 2 by the record, and was going on with the rest of the Bible revision. The revision was Bible text into better English, so it isn't the same job as carrying the gospel across to someone who speaks Portuguese, and I won't pretend it is. Still, men who spent their days weighing which word a verse needed were being told that every person would get the message in terms they could actually take in. I can't prove they connected the two. I like that they were at the table for both, though, since the same Joseph who was fussing over English verbs that winter was told within weeks that the gospel was meant for every tongue.

Over the next few months I got better at it, and by the time I was transferred I could tell Seu Valdir about the Restoration while he worked on a Philco with the back off, and the lesson book stayed in my bag. He never joined the church. Seu Valdir died a few years ago, which I learned from a former member of that branch who found me online.

Why does a revelation about the First Presidency stop to talk about books?

The section opens with a personal word to Joseph, "thy sins are forgiven thee," and then moves quickly to keys, to the oracles and to Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams being named as counselors. Ten days later, on March 18, they were ordained to that office. A few verses after the great declaration about every nation and every tongue, the Lord says this.

Study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people.

Doctrine and Covenants 90:15

I used to read D&C 90 as two documents stapled together. The first half is the organization chart and the second half is a list of chores: study, set your houses in order, take care of a woman named Vienna Jaques, handle some discipline problems. I'd read the first half slowly and skim the rest, which says something about me.

I read it differently now. The verse that says to preside over the affairs of the church and the school sits right beside the one about books, and nobody in the text seems to think those belong in separate chapters. Men who've just been told they hold keys are told, in the same breath, to go learn about people. The word "people" is the one that gets me, because you can't pick it up from a book and I know that from Diadema. If you want a man to hear the gospel in his own language, somebody has to sit in his front room and learn it first.

Last week I rewrote the first page of a design document for the finance team at work. I'd written it the way I'd explain it to another engineer and I knew they wouldn't read past the second paragraph, so I redid it using their words for things, ledger and close and reconciliation. They read it. Nobody noticed except me and one grateful analyst.

What are "the oracles of God," and who holds the keys?

This is the part that needs care, and I've seen people get it wrong in both directions.

Nevertheless, through you shall the oracles be given to another, yea, even unto the church.

Doctrine and Covenants 90:4

Oracles here means revelations, the words of God as they come through a prophet. The verse describes a channel. They come through Joseph and they're given to the church, which is a different thing from every individual being their own source for everything. And the revelation is precise about the counselors. Verse 6 says Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams are "accounted as equal with thee in holding the keys of this last kingdom." Read quickly, that sounds like three equal presidents. Read slowly, the phrase is about holding. The section keeps Joseph as the one through whom the oracles come.

I work in payments, where a service account can move real money only because someone with the authority to issue that access gave it. It doesn't generate its own authority and nobody would want it to. That's about as far as I'd take the comparison. A counselor is a man, and a man is a long way from a service account.

Verses 4 and 5 talk about guarding the oracles carefully so you don't fall when the storms come, and I know what that sounds like in the abstract. I don't know whether I've ever really guarded one. I've read revelations, and I've marked them up. Guarding seems like a heavier verb than the one I've been using.

Setting your house in order

Verse 18 is one line of plain instruction, and I'd guess it's the verse most people read right past.

Set in order your houses; keep slothfulness and uncleanness far from you.

Doctrine and Covenants 90:18

I read it out loud to Melissa on Sunday evening, mostly as a joke. She said "start with the garage" without looking up, and I've decided that counts as a revelation of a sort.

It sits somewhere between keys and the gospel going to every tongue and the kitchen floor, which tells me the home gets named right next to the authority. Verse 24 is the gentler half.

Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good, if ye walk uprightly and remember the covenant...

Doctrine and Covenants 90:24

They put me in mind of D&C 89: The Word of Wisdom and the Principle with Promise, where the promises are also attached to habits you could mistake for housekeeping. And D&C 88: The Olive Leaf and the Light of Christ, a few chapters back, has the same Kirtland men being told how to carry themselves, if you want to read the three in a row.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who were Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams?

They were the two men named in this revelation as counselors to Joseph Smith, ordained on March 18, 1833. Verse 6 has them accounted equal with Joseph in holding the keys of the kingdom, which in practice meant acting as he directed with Joseph presiding.

What does "the oracles of God" mean in D&C 90?

Revelations, the word of God as it comes through a prophet. Verse 4 says they come through Joseph and are given to the church, so they belong to the whole body and not to one man's private shelf.

Does D&C 90 tell families to limit how many children they have?

No, and I've heard it read that way more than once. Verses 25 to 27 are about how many dependents and servants a household takes in, since resources were needed for missionary work and building Zion. It was an economic instruction for Kirtland in 1833 and it doesn't set a number of children.

Why does D&C 90 jump from translation to leadership to books?

I don't think it jumps. Joseph was in the middle of the Bible revision and getting counselors. He was also told to preside over the church and the school. Verse 15 is the Lord saying that the work takes learning.

Caleb is eleven and thinks languages are what you suffer through in seventh grade. I'm going to read him verse 15 on Sunday and see whether it improves his opinion.

— D.