D&C 104: A Steward Here Is Appointed by Somebody

Next to D&C 104:14 in my old paperback set there's a pencil note that says "everything is on loan." I wrote it the winter after I got home from Brazil, in a Gospel Doctrine class in Bountiful, when the verse was read out as the point of the whole chapter. "I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine." I've heard that same summary a good many times since, from manuals and from friends and from the pulpit, and I still can't make it fit the chapter. Verse 14 is true and it's in there, but it's one verse out of eighty-six.

The other eighty-five are about lots and treasurers.

Is everything I own a stewardship?

The summary has real support. Verse 13 says the Lord should "make every man accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings," and verse 56 draws the conclusion in one sentence.

And if the properties are mine, then ye are stewards; otherwise ye are no stewards.

What the summary skips is how a person becomes a steward in this chapter. Verse 11 says "appoint every man his stewardship," and the verb is appoint, which means somebody else does the appointing. Verse 12 says why: so "that every man may give an account unto me of the stewardship which is appointed unto him." Verse 21 comes right after Rigdon's lot and says "let all things be done according to the counsel of the order, and united consent or voice of the order." I'd say that covers the assignments around it, though the verse itself only says all things. The treasurer is the one case where the chapter spells out what happens if the person turns out badly. He "shall be removed out of his place, and another shall be appointed in his stead" (verse 77).

So the stewards in this chapter are named people with named properties, put there by an order and answerable to it. Whether the idea stretches to a person's whole life is a fair question, but the chapter doesn't stretch it. It's describing a treasury, a council and a list of lots.

What did the people in verses 20 to 46 actually get?

Mostly lots, and the few buildings on them are the ones you'd expect in a small town. Sidney Rigdon gets the place where he lives and the lot of the tannery "for his support while he is laboring in my vineyard" (verse 20). Martin Harris gets a lot that John Johnson had taken in exchange for an older inheritance, and he's told in verse 26 to "devote his moneys for the proclaiming of my words." Oliver Cowdery gets the lot for the printing office, lot number one. Newel K. Whitney gets his houses, the mercantile establishment, the lot on the corner south of it, and "the lot on which the ashery is situated" (verse 39).

Joseph Smith gets "the lot which is laid off for the building of my house, which is forty rods long and twelve wide" (verse 43), plus the inheritance where his father lives, and forty rods by twelve works out to 660 feet by 198.

The promise attached to these assignments is worded almost the same way each time. Johnson's is "inasmuch as he is faithful" (verse 35), and so is Joseph's (verse 46). Rigdon's is different. His is "inasmuch as he will be humble before me" (verse 23). I don't know why, and I'm not going to build anything on it. I only noticed that a chapter this much like an inventory changed the wording for one man.

These are parcels in Kirtland, handed out to a church whose people in Missouri had been "driven out" (verse 51), which is where the tower they started and then debated in D&C 101 comes from.

How did the two treasuries work?

The first treasury is sacred in the plainest sense, and the Saints are told to "prepare for yourselves a place for a treasury, and consecrate it unto my name" (verse 60), to put a keeper over it, and to put a seal on it. What goes in is "the avails of the sacred things" (verse 64), and the reason is verse 58: "to print my words, the fulness of my scriptures." Verse 62 says no man "shall call it his own, or any part of it."

The second treasury has its own treasurer and its own seal (verse 67). Whatever a man earns from his stewardship goes in "as fast as you receive moneys, by hundreds, or by fifties, or by twenties, or by tens, or by fives" (verse 68), and the smallest sum the revelation bothers to name is five dollars (verse 69). Money comes out the other way when a man tells the treasurer, "I have need of this to help me in my stewardship," and names a sum. Verse 73 says the treasurer "shall give unto him the sum which he requires."

But so long as he is in full fellowship, and is faithful and wise in his stewardship, this shall be his token unto the treasurer that the treasurer shall not withhold.

Read verses 72 to 75 for the treasurer's duties and you won't find him weighing a request. He pays. Any weighing comes afterward, in front of the council, if it becomes "manifest before the council of the order plainly that he is an unfaithful and an unwise steward" (verse 74). Verses 76 and 77 then put the treasurer under that same council. The council in that verse is the kind of body I went through in D&C 102, where half the council is assigned to the accused.

What is the "this once" in the last verses?

Verse 78 says "it is my will that you shall pay all your debts." Verses 80 and 81 promise to "soften the hearts of those to whom you are in debt," and the Saints are told to "write speedily to New York." Then come verses 83 through 86, where "this once" shows up three times in those four. They're to be delivered "this once" from bondage (verse 83), to pledge the properties "this once" (verse 85), and given "this privilege, this once" (verse 86).

Verse 84 lets them take money "by hundreds, or thousands" until they have enough to get free. The verse says "loan," and I take it to mean taking a loan, not making one. Nothing in the text turns the one-time permission into a standing one. The last line is the promise that "the master will not suffer his house to be broken up."

Frequently Asked Questions

Is D&C 104 the same as the law of consecration?

This chapter is about one order's property and debts in Kirtland in the spring of 1834. Church teaching on consecration is wider than that, so go to the Church's own materials on it before you take my word on how the two fit together.

Does the Church still run a united order?

Not that I've been told. The chapter describes an order with a treasurer, a council and a sealed storehouse, and I don't find any of those in my ward, so I wouldn't say the two are the same thing.

Was Joseph's stewardship smaller than everyone else's?

It looks small next to a store with a corner lot and an ashery. Verse 46 says "I will multiply blessings upon the house of my servant Joseph Smith, Jun.," and I wouldn't rank the lots. They're different jobs, and the text never says why the sizes differ.

Why does a chapter about lots and treasurers open with a curse?

Verse 4 says some servants "have broken the covenant through covetousness, and with feigned words." Verse 7 gives the reason for the severity: "that the innocent among you may not be condemned with the unjust; and that the guilty among you may not escape." I follow the reason. It doesn't make the opening easier to read.

I still don't like verse 18. The chapter has spent seventeen verses on a covenant, a rebuke and the plain statement that the earth has "enough and to spare," and then a man who takes of the abundance and imparts "not his portion" is described lifting up his eyes in hell. I can see where it comes from, since the whole order is built on the rich not keeping what the poor need. I'd still rather the next verse were the lots.

— D.