The Joseph Smith Papers: D&C 88 Manuscript

D&C 88 is known by modern scholars as the "Olive Leaf Revelation," a message of peace from the Lord to his Elders on the Earth. D&C 88 is also one of the longest revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, although it is surprisingly mostly unedited from its original transcription. John Whitmer, the man who first wrote down the revelation, also made a majority of the corrections to the original vision, and these changes" are mainly grammatical in nature. An "&" is added between words in one section, for example, and "ye" is changed to "you."

I remember learning last semester from Dr. Underwood that the revelatory process in Latter-Day Saint tradition is often not a perfect verbal translation from the Lord to His servants. Rather, Joseph Smith often prayed, received impressions in his mind, and then tried to articulate them to scribes who could then write those thoughts down. Joseph Smith was not well-educated, so many of the original transcribed revelations had to be checked for grammatical errors, and occasionally, greater revisions would be made to what was written. Here, for example, we see occasional punctuation marks, verse number additions, and spelling changes from John Whitmer, Joseph Smith, and W.W. Phelps, although, interestingly enough, the second part of this revelation is only corrected by Joseph Smith.

This revelation, given by the Lord to the Elders of the church in two parts (December 27 and 28, 1832 and later on Jan 3 1833 in Kirtland to the priesthood from High Elders to Deacons), is an interesting section because of its length and also because of the minor corrections contained therein. With the exception of the occasional addition of the word "and," and William W. Phelps' addition of verse markers, this revelation appears to have come straight from the Lord to the mind of Joseph Smith and then to the scribe without difficulty. This, indeed, must be one of the rarer revelations where the Lord spoke to Joseph in such a way that he was simply able to retell the Lord's words to John Whitmer. I've never really realized that D&C 88 was such an important revelation that the Lord found it necessary to almost dictate his words to Joseph.

I understand the reasoning behind this now. This is an important two-part revelation because the Lord is addressing not only the Elders here but the whole of the Latter-Day church. He discusses the importance of missionary work, the signs of the Second Coming, and instructions on greetings for members of the School of the Prophets. A lot of things in this revelation correlate to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, which means that the Lord is preparing His people for the Second Coming, and He wants us to be clear about what is eventually going to happen to the world: it will be judged, the Resurrection will take place, and the righteous will rest with Him in the Celestial Kingdom.

I'm grateful for this revelation, and I know that it came from the Lord.