Twelve (1817)
See DHC, 4:93–4 and note (*), extract from Minutes of Iowa High Council held on 6 March
1840 at Elijah Fordham’s home in Montrose, Iowa: “The law of consecration could not be kept here,
and that it was the will of the Lord that we should desist from trying to keep it; and if persisted in, it
would produce a perfect defeat of its object, and that he assumed the whole responsibility of not
keeping it until proposed by himself.”
Court testimony given in 1875 by Ann Eliza Webb, 19th wife of Brigham Young during the
divorce case: “In the early days of the church, the duty was strongly enjoined of consecrati[ng] all the
possessions to the Lord; and this was not to be a figurative, but a real consecration; in which all the
possessions were to be catalogued [sic] and consecrated in legal form, and the transaction
authenticated by witnesses. The custodial of this property was to be a ‘Trustee in Trust,’ the
community into which the faithful Saint thus entered was to be called ‘The United Order of Enoch,’
and the property was to be held for the benefit of this community.
“The Saints did not take kindly to the Order, and it existed in theory merely. ...The Tithing
System is a direct outgrowth of ‘Enoch.’ When Joseph saw that the people did not take kindly to his
community plan, he found it necessary to adopt some other means of raising a permanent fund for
the church, and Orson Pratt proposed that every member should every year be obliged to pay one
tenth of his income, out of which the church should be supported. This plan met with the approval of
the officers, and it has been continued ever since.” (Ann Eliza Young, Wife No. 19 [Hartford: Dustin,
Gilman & Co., 1876] 582–5 as found in Jeffery Ogden Johnson, “Determining and Defining ‘Wife’: The
Brigham Young Households,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 20.3 [Fall 1987]: 57–70.”)
(^14) D&C, sections 20, 84, 107; Hebrews 10:11.
(^15) See BOM, Jacob 4:14.
(^16) Compare BOM, Alma 12:9.
References on caring for the poor and needy include: BOM, Mosiah 4:26–7; D&C, 38:16, 35;
42:34, 37; 44:6; 51:5; 52:40; 72:12; 83:5–6; 104:16, 18; 109:55; 124:75.
(^17) “Joseph Smith Jr. arrived into a family of religious zealots at a time and place drenched
in religious fervor, if not frenzy, with practices of divination, magic, astrology, alchemy, and
mysticism commonplace occurrences” (Robert Vincent Remini, Joseph Smith [New York: Penguin
Books Ltd, 2002] 17.)
“The world that Joseph Smith lived in, in upstate New York, the so-called Burned-Over
District, [was] where all of these new religions were popping up.” (Michael Coe, “The World Into
Which Mormonism Was Born,” as seen on “The Mormons,” A Frontline and American Experience Co-
Production, PBS, 1997–2007 WGBH Educational Foundation, 30 Apr. 2007. See also web page 12 Apr.
2011 http://www.pbs.org/mormons/themes/birth.html.) See also ch. 1, n. 36.
(^18) JSH 1:7.
(^19) JSH 1:14.
(^20) PGP, Articles of Faith 1:11. See also D&C, 134:2–5.
(^21) “Human beings will have this opportunity during the Millennial period...at which time Eternal
Beings from other planets will be among us to help us learn how to properly live the gospel of Jesus
Christ. Living this gospel is what it means to pray in the True Order of Prayer. ...Our common sense begins
to tell us that the True Order of Prayer, or the correct way to pray, is through our actions. Thus, this proper
prayer is given by the demonstrated actions of the participants without the participants saying a word.”
(SNS, 176.)
(^22) “In time, mortals began to voice their minds as to the conditions of their lives through
prayer by conversing with their imagined, unknown and unseen gods. True prophets correctly
understand that these gods of man’s vain imagination are Satan, Lucifer, or the devil (meaning their
own flesh). With this in mind, Joseph interpolated this part of human nature into the form and
presentation of the endowment with the following dialogue:
ADAM: Oh God, hear the words of my mouth. Oh God, hear the words of my mouth. Oh
God, hear the words of my mouth. (As Adam prays, Lucifer approaches from behind out of the shadows.)