2025 Doctrine and Covenants

Martin Harris found himself in a tight spot when he agreed to put up the money to pay for the printing of the Book of Mormon. E.B. Grandin, editor of the Wayne County Sentinel, whose office was right in Palmyra, agreed to publish 5,000 copies of the 592-page Book of Mormon, but because of the unusual size of the order, and its risky nature, Grandin “told Joseph and Martin that he would not even buy the type or start the printing until one of them agreed to ‘promise to insure the payment for the printing.’ To begin the printing, Martin would have to put up nearly all of the property he owned.” Martin began to have doubts and “stagger in confidence” at the amount of debt he was entering into, whose payback would depend entirely on sales of the Book of Mormon. He was a wealthy and respected farmer in Palmyra. He had repented of his sins and become one of the Three Witnesses, but now he was putting up his farm as collateral and everything was at stake. What would he lose if people didn’t pay for copies of the Book of Mormon and redeem his debt? Everything! What a trial of his faith

Scot

Welcome to Meridian Magazine’s Come Follow Me podcast. We’re Scot and Maurine Proctor and today we are studying Section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s a section filled with deep doctrine, but also plays out as a human drama. Martin could hope that the sales of the Book of Mormon would go well, but what if they didn’t? If the books sold well, the proceeds would go to redeem the note, but if they did not, his acreage would be put up at a public auction until the debt to Grandin was satisfied.

This was a harrowing place for Martin to stand with so much at stake and he would see the situation became even more stressful as opposition to the book increased.

Maurine

Lucy Mack Smith describes the attitude of the townspeople toward the Book of Mormon like this:

“The printing went on very well for a season, but the clouds of persecution again began to gather. The rabble, and a part of restless religionists, began to counsel together as to the most efficient means of putting a stop to our proceedings.”

They banded together and pledged that they would not buy the Book of Mormon without one dissenting vote. When the Book of Mormon was first offered for sale, months later, the reception would be very chilly indeed.

Maurine

During publication, with so many forces at work against purchasing the Book of Mormon, Martin went to Joseph and asked for a revelation from God. He was evidently worried that no one would buy the books and he would lose the farm. I have wondered, too, if he wanted some kind of guarantee from the God of miracles, that if he made this sacrifice, his money would be safe? We cannot know what Martin was thinking exactly, but I certainly have seen this temptation play out in my own life. If I do this, then God must do that to bless me. If I make this particular sacrifice, I demand protection and a happy, easy outcome. If I pay my tithing when I am financially stretched, then surely God will deliver a much larger check to compensate. What a fallacy that is, as if we who have such limited vision, could bargain with the Lord, who sees all.

I remember when we were contemplating having our last child, which would make number 11. I was older at the time and felt like I just couldn’t go ahead and become pregnant unless the Lord gave me the green light and a promise that the baby would be healthy, despite my age. We prayed and prayed for a year about it, hoping for that guarantee, and nothing came. No sense of particular peace. Just no answer at all. We were reminded again, then, that part of this mortal experience is that, in our every day lives, God does not often give us guarantees about what will happen and if we will receive the blessings that we hope for in our time frame.

Scot

We who are in a covenant with God have been promised that if we are true, He will give us all He has, share a joint inheritance with Christ, yet that does not translate to be a one on one exchange that I am instantly rewarded with what I want when I want it, because I have tried to be a devoted disciple.

Maurine

We have to learn to trust the way He is blessing us, rather than present him a list of demands that require his immediate attention. We can’t demand things from God and then expect him to jump. His work is not to please us right now, no matter about important this seems, but to transform us. Not to please us, but to transform us toward the light.

Scot

So, though we don’t know Martin’s motive, we do have this record of his coming to Joseph Smith, pleading for a revelation about the matter of the publishing debt.

Joseph Knight recorded that meeting, “He [Martin Harris] came to us [Joseph Smith and Joseph Knight Sr.] and…says, ‘The Books will not sell for nobody wants them. Joseph says, ‘I think they will sell well,’ Says he, ‘I want a commandment [a revelation].’ ‘Why?’ says Joseph, ‘fulfill what you have got .’ ‘But,’ says he, I must have a commandment.’ Joseph put him off. But he insisted three or four times he must have a Commandment.

“In the morning (the next day) he got up and said he must have a Commandment to Joseph and went home. And along in the after part of the day, Joseph and Oliver received a commandment [which] in the Book of Covenants,” is what we now call Doctrine and Covenants 19.

Maurine

Historians at the Joseph Smith Paper project put this revelation as coming some time in the summer of 1829, but it could have also come a few months later in 1830. Either way, what we have in Doctrine and Covenants 19 is not a guarantee that Martin’s farm will be safe, but a section with deep doctrine and understanding, a gift more important than even the particulars of his farm. if Martin was hoping that he would find some hope or promise in a revelation that his financial position might be secure and that he wouldn’t lose the farm. Instead, in a word, Martin received the word to repent.

Scot

He is told:

I command you to repent, and keep the commandments which you have received by the hand of my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., in my name.:

And it is by my almighty power that you have received them,

Therefore I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth and by my wrath and by my anger” (D&C 19: 16-18.)

Maurine

Then he is also told this most interesting thing in verse 26:

I command thee that thou shalt not covet thine own property, but impart it freely to the printing of the Book of Mormon, which contains the truth and the word of God.

What does it mean to covet your own property?

Scot

We know what it means to covet someone else’s property. Covet in the Bible means an evil desire for someone else’s things or property or lifestyle. It may mean to desire it so fiercely that you will do anything to get it, heedless of the rights or needs of others. It can mean that you would rejoice to see another lose the thing you want. You may covet someone else’s talents, ease, achievements, power in social situations, so much so that resentment grows in your soul and a sense of self-pity. Coveting is corrosive and is often the fruit of comparison. “Why don’t I have what this other person has?”

But coveting your own property is something we don’t very often think about. It means desiring to keep and fight for what you have without looking at anything more. It means to clutch, grab and hold tight to your own possessions, thinking you alone earned them by your hard work instead of understanding they were a gift from God. It is refusing to give things to those in need or to consecrate to the Lord whatever he asks.

Maurine

Martin needed to be reminded that the Lord was asking him to risk his farm for something that would affect generations to come. To do less was to directly disobey the word of the Lord. To do less was to stand in resistance against the everlasting God.

He was to impart of his property freely and pay the debt that had been contracted with the publisher no matter what the consequences.

Scot

Martin was given marvelous promises if he would do this and raise up his voice to this generation. The Lord told him in verse 38, “Pray always, and I will pour out my Spirit upon you.” What a wonderful image to think of the Lord pouring blessings like a deluge in a thirsty land. He doesn’t just give a smattering of rain that is not enough for trees to grow, a little bit here, a little bit there, as we see in a desert.  His blessings are poured. The Lord is an abundant giver and those who hunger and thirst for him will be filled (Matthew 5:6). He is watering the tree of life that is to grow up in us.

Yet if we don’t or won’t obey him, we will personally take the full consequences of breaking the law. When we utterly turn from the Lord, we know “endless torment” and “eternal damnation” as we read in scripture.

Maurine

Now, what that evokes to our imagination is writhing in the fires of hell forever, weeping and wailing forever and ever, without end. But in this section, we learn differently. God’s name is endless and His name is eternal. So these sufferings we hear about are not a misery without end, but a different kind of punishment. We read in verses 11 and 12:

11 Eternal punishment is God’s punishment.
12 Endless punishment is God’s punishment.

We don’t completely understand what that means, but we do know that, among other consequences, when we break an eternal law, the Lord’s spirit withdraws from us. His spirit of light and truth and making order out of chaos diminishes and fades. We feel forsaken and forlorn. Our minds are darkened, heavy. Hopelessness begins to spring inside of us. We are blind. We cannot find our way. We suffer. We become angry, resentful, fearful, threatened and threatening. We pay full consequences for our missteps or bad behavior.

Scot

The consequences of our sins are not always immediate, but they are sure. We cannot have God’s presence and grace if we are in a state of rebellion. We cannot enjoy his approval if we insist on justifying our own sins, embracing our pride, or ignoring and trivializing the truths we’ve been taught. In our rebellious, resistant and sinful state, we simply cannot be in the presence of God. This is irreducible. The two cannot co-exist.

God’s commandments are the description of a happy life, putting us in harmony with ourselves and with the universe where this law is eternal. To step away from that is to step into misery.

Elder Matthew S. Holland said, “While reading the Book of Mormon for a Come, Follow Me lesson last summer, I was struck by Alma’s report that when he became fully conscious of his sins, there was “nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were [his] pains.”

Maurine

Elder Holland continues:

Alma’s language also stood out to me because the word exquisite, in the English translation of the Book of Mormon, typically describes things of exceptional beauty or unparalleled magnificence. For example, Joseph Smith noted that the angel Moroni wore robes of “exquisite whiteness,” “a whiteness beyond anything earthly [he] had ever seen.” Yet exquisite can also convey an extreme intensity even for awful things. Thus Alma and top dictionaries link exquisite pain to being “tormented,” “racked,” and “harrowed” to the “greatest degree.”

Alma’s imagery reflects the sobering reality that at some point the full, excruciating guilt of every sin we commit must be felt. Justice demands it, and God Himself cannot change it. When Alma remembered “all” his sins—especially those that had destroyed the faith of others—his pain was virtually unbearable, and the idea of standing before God filled him with “inexpressible horror.” He yearned to “become extinct both soul and body.”

Scot

However, Alma said everything started to change the moment his “mind caught hold upon” the prophesied “coming of one Jesus Christ … to atone for the sins of the world” and he “cried within [his] heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me.” With that one thought and that one plea, Alma was filled with “exquisite” joy “as exceeding as was [his] pain.”

We must never forget that the very purpose of repentance is to take certain misery and transform it into pure bliss. Thanks to His “immediate goodness,” the instant we come unto Christ—demonstrating faith in Him and a true change of heart—the crushing weight of our sins starts to shift from our backs to His. This is possible only because He who is without sin suffered “the infinite and unspeakable agony” of every single sin in the universe of His creations, for all of His creations—a suffering so severe, blood oozed out of His every pore. From direct, personal experience the Savior thus warns us, in modern scripture, that we have no idea how “exquisite” our “sufferings” will be if we do not repent. But with unfathomable generosity He also clarifies that “I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent”—a repentance which allows us to “taste” the “exceeding joy” Alma tasted. For this doctrine alone, “I stand all amazed.” Yet, astonishingly, Christ offers even more.

Maurine

It is in this marvelous Section 19 that is the only place in scripture where the Lord tells us in his own words about the suffering he endured, all for one reason—so that our suffering from sin can be lifted and taken away, so for those of us like the younger Alma, in exquisite pain from sin, can be snatched from such misery into the arms of our Savior.

Then we add these additional dimensions from Alma—that the Lord took on our afflictions and temptations of every kind, our pains and our sicknesses.

What was Christ’s atoning sacrifice like for Him? How did He experience it? The Lord says in verses 16-18:

16 For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they not suffer if they would repent:

17 But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;

18 Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink.

Scot

Some of our latter-day apostles and prophets have sought to put the magnitude of Christ’s horrific suffering into words.

John Taylor taught: “There came upon Him the weight and agony of ages and generations, [an] indescribable agony…Hence His profound grief, His indescribable anguish, His overpowering torture…

“Groaning beneath this concentrated load, this intense incomprehensible pressure, this terrible exaction of Divine justice…placed below all things, His mind surcharged with agony and pain, lone…and forsaken, in his agony the blood oozed from his pores.”

Maurine

In his masterpiece, Jesus the Christ, Elder James E. Talmage wrote that “He struggled and groaned under a burden such as no other being who has lived on earth might even conceive as possible…[He suffered] a spiritual agony of soul such as only God was capable experiencing.”

Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught: “The cumulative weight of all mortal sins—past, present, and future—pressed upon that perfect, sinless, and sensitive Soul! All our infirmities and sicknesses were somehow, too, a part of the awful arithmetic of the Atonement…His suffering [was] as it were, enormity multiplied by infinity.”

Scot

Why? Why was this so necessary? I remember, Maurine, that your very first spiritual experience in life was about this.

Maurine

Yes, I could not have been much older than five or six, and I was sitting in sacrament meeting by my mother. She had rolled up a clean handkerchief as it to make two babies sleeping side by side in a hammock and I was playing with those—and I say that to remind myself just how young I was. Then the congregation began singing, “I Stand All Amazed,” and when we got to the third verse where we sang, “I think of his hands pierced and bleeding to pay the debt”, Even in my young, little body, I felt the Spirit and I started to cry. I couldn’t bare to think this loving Savior would suffer for me, that I personally had made Him suffer. It broke my heart to think of it.

But I can feel that His suffering, this personal gift changed my life because even now as I struggle against my own false ideas and self-centered inclinations, I can feel His directing me beyond them. I can feel that He utterly knows me, that I am not cast off forever because I am fallen.

Scot

It may take an eternity for us to comprehend the Atonement, but our spirits can feel its power now. James Ferrell said, “The problem of life—the problem that the whole plan of salvation and redemption was conceived to solve—is how to transform and sanctify beings whose impure hearts, desires, and wills cannot abide the glory of God into beings whose hearts, desires, and will can abide that glory.”

Joseph Smith said: “God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory…saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself.”

So here we are in the process, separated from God in a fallen world and fallen ourselves in that we can no longer abide His presence. In fact, I don’t have to be a terrible sinner to not abide His presence, even the first sin will do to separate me from God. My dilemma would be impossible without the Savior’s suffering for me.

Maurine

Without Him, our sins would be too heavy to carry, a burden like boulders on our backs of deficits and missteps and willfulness that would make us stagger and fall. How could we ever live with what we have done—even what we have done inadvertently in this myopic world? How could we live with the natural consequences of our sometimes bad judgment, our bad outlooks and our bad attitudes? Cast away from the light. Cast away from our God.

It would just be impossible if we could not leave earlier and more flawed iterations of ourselves behind us and emerge pure and transformed through the Savior’s marvelous cleansing atonement.

God warns us that suffering follows sin, not to scare us, but to love us. This is the happy way, he points for our journey. There are soul-eating beasts in any other direction. If we do not comply with the eternal laws of existence, the way things really are, we will run straight up against those laws, broken because we broke them..

And His agony is so far-reaching, infinite. We have not gone so far, that His suffering and love cannot pull us back. Through the atonement, even if your sinfulness has been enormous, you can arise again clean and pure. The Savior did not suffer this agony for everyone but you. What a gift.

Scot

That Christ suffered for us, of course, does not mean that we will be altogether excused from suffering in this world. A fallen world may offer us plenty. We wrestle against the failings in our health, the disappointment in our selves. People we love die too young. Accidents steal our contentment. Our lives have cross currents of worry and pain and frustrating limitation. The finances grow thin. We are frightened and unsure about tomorrow.

Much of our suffering also comes from our struggle against our own sinfulness, our disappointing inclinations, our anger, resentment and self-absorption. It sometimes involves a personal suffering to give up our favorite weakness. We have become so accustomed to it, that we think it is us. We identify with the way we have always done things, even if it is flawed and we always find ourselves missing the mark.

Maurine

Here we look to the Savior again. Because He has suffered for our pain, as well as our sins, He understands it and comforts us perfectly. In the midst of the worst nightmare that earth has to offer, the Lord will stand by you, hold you, fill you with peace in the storm, light your mind when darkness is pushing against you.

We can count on that support. I know what it is to kneel down in pain and confusion and arise with new strength. He has told us in Isaiah 40:

28 ¶ Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting  God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:

31 But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Scot

That “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength” is a glorious concept. He has felt it when we are faint and have no might. He sees it. He knows it and He sends comfort if we will let Him. He can make the burdens others place upon us seem light. He can protect our hearts when we may otherwise be hopelessly broken-hearted. He can assure us when it is midnight that the sun also rises.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell puts it this way:

 As He began to feel the awful weight of the approaching Atonement, Jesus acknowledged, “For this cause came I into the world” (John 18:37). We too, brothers and sisters, came “into the world” to pass through our particularized portions of the mortal experience. Even though our experiences do not even begin to approach our Master’s, nevertheless, to undergo this mortal experience is why we too are here! Purposefully pursuing this “cause” brings ultimate meaning to our mortal lives.

Maurine

Elder Maxwell continued:

Christ on the cross gave out the cry “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That cry on the cross is an indication that the very best of our Father’s children found the trials so real, the tests so exquisite and so severe, that he cried out—not in doubt of his Father’s reality, but wondering “why” at that moment of agony—for Jesus felt so alone…

It is interesting to me, brothers and sisters, to note that among the qualities of a saint is the capacity to develop patience and to cope with the things that life inflicts upon us. That capacity brings together two prime attributes—patience and endurance. These are qualities, in the process of giving service to mankind that most people reject or undervalue. Most people would gladly serve mankind if somehow they could get it over with once, preferably with applause and recognition. But, for the sake of righteousness, to endure, to be patient in the midst of affliction, in the midst of being misunderstood, and in the midst of suffering—that is sainthood!

Scot

Elder Maxwell continues:

If we use Jesus as a model in the midst of the suffering about which we’re speaking, then it is also noteworthy that even in the midst of his exquisite agony he managed to have compassion for those nearby who were then suffering much, though much less than he—those on the adjoining crosses or about him below the cross. How marvelous it is when we see people who are not so swallowed up in their own suffering that they cannot still manage sympathy, even empathy, for those who suffer far, far less.

If we at times wonder if our own agendum for life deliver to us challenges that seem unique, it would be worth our remembering that, when we feel rejected, we are members of the church of him who was most rejected by his very own with no cause for rejection. If at times we feel manipulated, we are disciples of him whom the establishment of his day sought to manipulate. If we at times feel unappreciated, we are worshipers of him who gave to us the Atonement—that marvelous, selfless act, the central act of all human history—unappreciated, at least fully, even among those who gathered about his feet while the very process of the Atonement was underway. If we sometimes feel misunderstood by those about us, even those we minister to, so did he, much more deeply and pervasively than we. And if we love and there is no reciprocity for our love, we worship him who taught us and showed us love that is unconditional, for we must love even when there is no reciprocity.

Maurine

I should like, therefore, to speak to you on the premise that it is a part of discipleship for us to be prepared for the kind of rigors that Jesus always leveled his disciples. He said, “My people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom” (D&C 136:31). That is hard doctrine. Peter made it even more rigorous. Peter didn’t want us to take any credit upon ourselves for the suffering we endure because of our own mistakes. He was willing to see us take credit for the suffering we endure because of discipleship, but not because of our own stupidity or our own sin (1 Peter 2:20). Then Moroni reminded us, “For ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith” (Ether 12:6). That’s the rigorous path of discipleship. https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/neal-a-maxwell/small-moment/

Scot

In another talk Elder Maxwell explores further:

As we confront our own lesser trials and tribulations, we too can plead with the Father, just as Jesus did, that we “might not … shrink”—meaning to retreat or to recoil (D&C 19:18). Not shrinking is much more important than surviving! Moreover, partaking of a bitter cup without becoming bitter is likewise part of the emulation of Jesus.

Continuing, we too may experience moments of mortal aloneness. These moments are nothing compared to what Jesus experienced. Nevertheless, since our prayers may occasionally contain some “whys,” we too may experience God’s initial silence (see Matt. 27:46).

Certain mortal “whys” are not really questions at all but are expressions of resentment. Other “whys” imply that the trial might be all right later on but not now, as if faith in the Lord excluded faith in His timing. Some “why me” questions, asked amid stress, would be much better as “what” questions, such as, “What is required of me now?” or, to paraphrase Moroni’s words, “If I am sufficiently humble, which personal weakness could now become a strength?” (see Ether 12:27).

Maurine

President Brigham Young spoke of what evoked the “why” from Jesus, saying that during the axis of agony which was Gethsemane and Calvary, the Father at some point withdrew both His presence and His Spirit from Jesus (see Journal of Discourses 3:205–6). Thereby Jesus’ personal triumph was complete and His empathy perfected. Having “descended below all things,” He comprehends, perfectly and personally, the full range of human suffering! (D&C 88:6; see D&C 122:8). A spiritual sung in yesteryear has an especially moving and insightful line: “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus” (see also Alma 7:11–12). Truly, Jesus was exquisitely “acquainted with grief,” as no one else (Isa. 53:3). https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1997/10/apply-the-atoning-blood-of-christ?lang=eng

Scot

It was your grief he was acquainted with, your sufferings, your challenges. He knows the flaws with which you wrestle, because He felt them, and is perfectly empathetic.

Martin Harris, would lose his farm to pay the printer’s debt, but our sense in this section is that his suffering was so small compared to the Savior’s agony in our behalf. Our sufferings here can be consecrated to our good, if they help us to better understand the Savior’s love. And our sufferings for sin can be swallowed up in His sacrifice.

Maurine

That’s all for today. We are Scot and Maurine Proctor and this has been Meridian Magazine’s Come Follow Me podcast. Next week we will study Doctrine and Covenants, Sections 20-21. Don’t forget that the transcripts are at latterdaysaintmag.com. That is also where you can find Meridian Magazine, updated daily for Latter-day Saints. Here are articles to inspire, educate, and lift your day. Get your daily dose. Thanks to Paul Cardall for the music that accompanies this podcast and for Michaela Proctor Hutchins, our producer.