D&C 96: A Promise of Eternal Life and a Job Clearing Liens

I told you Saturday I'd get to D&C 96, and I should warn you it has no famous verse. Nobody's grandmother has verse 9 stitched on a pillow. It's nine verses about a farm, and it ends with a man being told to go clear the debts off a house so he can live in it.

That ending is what I kept turning over, so I'll start with the farm.

Why did the Saints need a revelation about 103 acres?

By the spring of 1833 the Church in Kirtland had a farm in front of it that belonged to a man named Peter French. It was 103 acres, and the price was $5,000. The temple was going to need a site, and the high priests who met in Newel K. Whitney's store couldn't agree on what to do with the property. Histories say they met more than once. The June 4 meeting is the one that ended with the question put to the Lord instead of to each other.

The answer starts oddly for a land dispute, because verse 1 skips the rebuke and skips any paragraph on the nature of Zion and says "here is wisdom, whereby ye may know how to act concerning this matter." Then it tells them how.

Whitney is to "take charge of the place which is named among you, upon which I design to build mine holy house" (D&C 96:2). Then the land is to be divided, and the part I find interesting is who does the dividing:

And again, let it be divided into lots, according to wisdom, for the benefit of those who seek inheritances, as it shall be determined in council among you.

D&C 96:3

So the revelation hands the argument back. It settles who holds the property and why, and it leaves the actual map to the same men who couldn't agree on it, which I don't take as vagueness. Somebody had to hold the deed, and everybody else still had to sit in a room and work out which lot went to whom. I've been in that room at church and in a few at work. The plan is rarely the hard part. The third meeting is.

What is John Johnson doing in the last four verses?

Verses 6 through 9 turn to a man who hasn't been mentioned yet. The Lord says that John Johnson's "offering" has been accepted and his "prayers" have been heard, and that he's given "a promise of eternal life inasmuch as he keepeth my commandments from henceforth" (D&C 96:6). Verse 7 calls him a descendant of Joseph. Verse 8 says he should become a member of the order, which Church history identifies as the United Firm. Then verse 9.

Therefore ye shall ordain him unto this blessing, and he shall seek diligently to take away incumbrances that are upon the house named among you, that he may dwell therein.

D&C 96:9

Some background from the histories, since the verses don't supply it. Johnson had come from Hiram, Ohio, where he and his wife sold a prosperous farm and gave a good part of the money to the Church. In Kirtland they ran an inn beside Whitney's store. He was ordained a high priest on the very day of this revelation, so "ordain him" in verse 9 was about to happen in the same room. The sources I trust say the inn became Church property in 1833 and was then given to Johnson as a stewardship. The verse itself only says "the house named among you," so I'll leave it at that.

What gets me is how close together the two things sit: eternal life, conditional on keeping the commandments from here on, and then three verses later go find out what's owed on the house. Nobody treats that as a step down.

What's an incumbrance, and why would heaven care?

A claim against property: a mortgage, an unpaid tax, a neighbor's right to cross your land. The verse doesn't say which of those Johnson was facing and I won't guess at the ledger.

When I was twelve I rode along on one of these errands. Lamar Hess had a peach orchard on the east bench in Bountiful, next to my grandparents' place. In the late eighties he sold it off in lots, which happened to nearly every orchard up there, and he held back the last one for his own house. My dad, who reads plats for a living at UDOT, offered to help him with the paperwork when the lender wouldn't move. The title company had found a claim recorded in 1952 by an irrigation company for unpaid assessments on water shares. It was $41. Forty-one dollars, on a lot where Lamar planned to spend a hundred thousand.

I went along because it was July and my grandmother wanted me out of her kitchen. We drove to Farmington, and the clerk found the filing in under an hour, which was the easy part. The irrigation company had since been folded into another one, and the only person who could sign a release turned out to be a woman running what was left of it from her kitchen table in Centerville. It took five weeks. Lamar paid the $41 and a filing fee, then sat in my grandparents' front room waiting on one notarized page while the lender's rate moved a quarter point, and I remember my grandfather saying that a man could build a barn faster than he could clear forty-one dollars.

He built the house in 1992 and lived there until he died.

I think about that lot every time I read "that he may dwell therein," because the verse ties the cleanup to the living. The work and the home are the same sentence.

What do those four verses add up to?

A steward isn't an owner, but this chapter shows a steward living in the house, watching the title and answering for what's owed on it. The Doctrine and Covenants teaches stewardship in several places, so I wouldn't hang the whole idea on nine verses.

Paul's pairing of bear one another's burdens, then carry your own comes to mind. D&C 96 puts both halves on one piece of land: the Saints hold the farm together, and John Johnson, by name, gets the lien search. The two houses D&C 94 told to wait sit right beside it if you want the building side.

The United Firm is no model for how the Church handles money today. It lasted a couple of years in the early 1830s and was replaced.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "descendant of Joseph" mean in D&C 96:7?

It isn't a claim that Johnson was related to Joseph Smith, though a lot of people read it that way on first pass. The verse pairs it with "a partaker of the blessings of the promise made unto his fathers," which is covenant language that goes back to Genesis. The usual reading is lineage through the ancient Joseph, and I haven't seen a better one.

Was the house in verse 9 the Johnson Inn?

Probably, going by the Church history sources. They say the inn next to Whitney's store became Church property in 1833 and was given to Johnson as his stewardship. The verse never uses the word inn, only "the house named among you," so I treat the identification as likely and not as something the text proves.

Who was in charge of the temple lot, Whitney or Johnson?

Whitney, in verse 2, while Johnson's assignment in verse 9 covers only the house. They're two stewardships in one revelation and it's easy to blend them.

Does this chapter say how the $5,000 got paid?

No, though history records $2,000 down and the rest in two installments, and the debt strained the Church for years. The revelation gives direction and a promise and stays quiet on where the money comes from.

Johnson is promised eternal life in verse 6 and handed a stack of paperwork in verse 9, and the chapter treats both as ordinary parts of the same week. If you've ever been given something to look after, a calling, a house, a budget, what was the unglamorous job attached to it that nobody mentioned when you got it? I'd really like to hear.

— D.