D&C 97 and the Four Things in Verse 8

Lily moved her backpack three times on Tuesday night, first the bottom of the stairs, then by the front door, then back to the stairs, because she couldn't decide which spot said she was more ready. Caleb's had been sitting in the back of the Odyssey since Saturday and he hadn't mentioned it once. Today they start third grade and sixth, and Ben, who is two, will spend the morning checking the house for the people who are missing.

D&C 97 has a school in it too, which is the only reason backpacks come up. I read section 96 and its job of clearing liens last Thursday, so this is the next chapter over, and it's one where the praise and the warning arrive in the same breath.

What D&C 97 says about the school in Zion

The revelation was given at Kirtland, Ohio, on August 2, 1833, about a school meeting in Missouri, so Joseph was answering for a classroom a long way off. It starts with the people before it gets to the school. Verse 1 calls many of the brethren in Zion "truly humble" and says they are "seeking diligently to learn wisdom and to find truth." I'd like that sentence on the wall of every school I've ever sent a child to.

Verse 3 is the line a teacher would frame:

Behold, I say unto you, concerning the school in Zion, I, the Lord, am well pleased that there should be a school in Zion, and also with my servant Parley P. Pratt, for he abideth in me. (D&C 97:3)

The next verse attaches a condition to the praise. Parley presides "inasmuch as he continueth to abide in me," which asks him to keep doing what he's already doing and promises nothing past that.

Everyone else in the school gets verse 6, where they're offered mercy, with a "nevertheless" right behind it, because there are those who "must needs be chastened" and whose works "shall be made known." After that comes the ax laid at the root of the trees, in verse 7. A parent-teacher conference with that agenda would clear the room.

Verse 8 and the four things

What stayed with me from this chapter is the list in verse 8, where the people accepted are those "who know their hearts are honest, and are broken, and their spirits contrite, and are willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice." That makes four. The first is something you know about yourself and the other three are what you are or will do about it, and only the willingness could ever be checked by anybody else.

Melissa taught third grade for years before she traded the classroom for our kitchen, and she has a story from the first week of one of those years. A boy named Devin stayed in at recess and told her, flat out, that he couldn't read. He asked her not to make him do it out loud in front of the class. She had twenty-six reading checks to run that week, she told me over dinner. His was the only one where the child had already done the first part for her. She started him in the hallway with a book of two-word sentences, twenty minutes before the bell. By Thanksgiving he was reading the lunch menu to the rest of the room, which she said was mostly showing off.

I wouldn't call a nine-year-old's recess confession a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and Melissa would tell me to quit stretching it. Fair enough. But the order in verse 8 is the order she described: know where you stand, then be willing to do the dull next thing, and the rest gets built on that. Verse 9 then gives these people fruit, "a very fruitful tree" by "a pure stream," which puts them in the same orchard as the trees in verse 7, only on the other side of the ax.

What it means that the pure in heart shall see God

Yea, and my presence shall be there, for I will come into it, and all the pure in heart that shall come into it shall see God. (D&C 97:16)

Read verse 15 first, because the glory rests on the house only if "my people build a house unto me in the name of the Lord, and do not suffer any unclean thing to come into it." The verbs are plural. Keeping the unclean thing out is something a people does together, and then verse 16 turns and promises the seeing to the individuals who walk in. I don't see how either half works without the other.

Verse 17 runs it in reverse, with a defiled house and no presence in it.

The house gets its job description back in verse 13. It's "a place of thanksgiving for all saints" and "a place of instruction" for those called to the ministry (D&C 97:13), so the first two things asked of it are gratitude and learning, which is also what the school was for. Near the end, the Lord says "this is Zion" and then points at people, "the pure in heart," where I'd have expected a city.

The chapter never says how the seeing happens. Matthew 5:8 makes the same promise with no building anywhere near it, and I find that comforting on the weeks when I can't get to one.

Verse 19 and a Zion that can't fall

Thirteen days before this revelation a mob in Independence destroyed the printing press, and by that November the Saints had been driven out of Jackson County. That's what makes verse 19 hard, because it says the nations will look at Zion and say "surely Zion cannot fall, neither be moved out of her place." You can read that as a promise and watch it break.

But the nations are the ones saying it, and verse 18, just before, opens with "if Zion do these things she shall prosper." In verse 25 Zion shall escape "if she observe to do all things whatsoever I have commanded her," and verse 26 spells out the other side. Verse 27 has the Lord saying he has "accepted of her offering," with "if she sin no more none of these things shall come upon her" attached. Four verses between 18 and 27 carry an "if," and verse 19 reads to me like a description of what the nations would see once the condition was met.

I won't say whether the conditions were met, because the text can't settle it and a mob isn't a verdict on anybody's heart. The Kirtland temple commandment came with a rebuke attached as well, which is what held me up in the word "considered" in D&C 95:3.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was the school in Zion and who was in it?

It met in Jackson County, Missouri, and Parley P. Pratt presided over it. The chapter names nobody else. If you want a headcount or a meeting schedule you'll need a history book, and I'd check any number you find against a second one.

Does "see God" in verse 16 mean a literal vision?

I don't know, and the chapter doesn't say. Church leaders have taught that "see" in scripture can include recognizing and understanding as well as beholding, so I wouldn't build much on the one verb. I take the promise as real.

Why does the temple have to be built by tithing?

Verse 11 says "by the tithing of my people," and verse 12 goes further and calls the house itself "the tithing and the sacrifice" the Lord requires. That can sound like a fundraising letter. It reads to me as the cost belonging to the commandment from the start.

Does pure in heart mean sinless?

Verse 8 doesn't read that way to me. Honest, broken, contrite and willing describes somebody who knows they've fallen short and is still coming, and verse 15 hands the keeping-clean of the house to a whole people instead of to any one person's record.

Verse 8 gives four things: an honest heart, a broken one, a contrite spirit and a willingness to sacrifice whatever's commanded. Which of the four is hardest for you to judge from the inside? I'd like to hear which one you'd pick.

— D.