D&C 93: The Glory of God and Four Fathers Who Fell Short

The power at the cabin went out Tuesday around seven, in the middle of a thunderstorm that came down off the ridge faster than the forecast said it would. Melissa found a box of tea lights in the drawer under the microwave, Lily read the guest book out loud by headlamp, and Ben spent forty minutes trying to hold the beam in his hand. When the lights came back at 7:52 Lily said "finally" and Ben cried, because somebody took the headlamp.

I read D&C 93 this morning before anyone was up.

It's fifty-three verses and it feels like two documents stapled together. The first thirty-some are about Christ and light and what truth is. The last dozen name four men and tell them their houses are a mess.

What does "the glory of God is intelligence" mean?

For years I heard verse 36 as a compliment to people who do well in school, and then one morning I noticed the verse shuts that door itself.

The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. (D&C 93:36)

The "in other words" is doing the work there, since intelligence gets translated into light and truth, and verse 24 has already told us what truth is: "knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come." Not things as we'd like them. Verse 25 says anything more or less than that comes from the wicked one, which is a stricter test than most of us apply to our own memories.

In verse 28 the glory sits inside a sentence with conditions. The one who keeps the commandments "receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things." Until. It comes in pieces, over time, to people who are keeping something.

The one people stretch is verse 29. "Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be." I've heard whole theories of what a person is made of built on it, and the chapter gives it one verse. I don't know what to add to that, so I won't.

Why did Christ have to receive grace for grace?

Verses 12 through 14 say it three times running, and I'd read past all three. He "received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace," and "continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness." Then verse 14 gives a reason for a title: he "was called the Son of God, because he received not of the fulness at the first."

I would have guessed the title came from whose child he was. The chapter says it came from the receiving, one step after another. John 1:16 has the same phrase, and the chapter keeps pointing back to John's record, which verse 6 says isn't all revealed yet.

Then it turns toward the reader. In verse 20, keep the commandments and "you shall receive grace for grace." Same unit, same pace. Nobody in this chapter gets a fullness on the first day, including the one who ends up with all of it.

What do the four rebukes in verses 41 to 50 actually say?

The setup is verse 40: "But I have commanded you to bring up your children in light and truth." Then it goes man by man.

Frederick Williams gets "You have not taught your children light and truth, according to the commandments" (v. 42). Sidney Rigdon "in some things" has not kept the commandments concerning his children (v. 44). Joseph Smith is called a friend in verse 45 and told in verse 47 that he "must needs stand rebuked." Newel Whitney, a bishop, is to see that his family is "more diligent and concerned at home" (v. 50).

What caught me this time was the order for Joseph, where the friendship and the inheritance come first, and the rebuke comes in the next breath, which is not how most of us deliver a correction. And verse 48 spreads some of it around: "Your family must needs repent and forsake some things, and give more earnest heed unto your sayings." The children have something to do too.

My post on D&C 90 covered a revelation from a couple of months before this one, in which Joseph, Sidney and Frederick were handed plenty of work already. Verses 51 through 53 do the same thing again. Sidney is told to get going and make haste, Joseph and Frederick are told to make haste too, and all of them are told to get on with the translation. Having your house named doesn't excuse you from the rest of the assignment.

The man in Orem who read it out loud to me

Around 2009 I was assigned to home teach Dale Sorensen, in our ward in Orem. He was a retired high school principal in his sixties who knew more about people than I did at thirty, and everyone in the ward knew him as the man who could make any teenager sit up straight. His own three sons, as far as I could tell, called him on Christmas and one other day. He drove a gray Oldsmobile older than my marriage, wore a tie to home teaching, and kept the car so clean that I stopped eating in mine before I picked him up.

I never asked him about the sons.

One February evening, after I'd given the message I was supposed to give, he took his scriptures off the shelf and turned to this chapter and read verses 41 through 50 aloud, flat and fast, the way you'd read the terms on a rental agreement. Then he closed the book. What struck him every time, he said, was that the Lord put it in writing. "Four men's names," he said. "In a revelation. And then he told the lot of them to hurry."

That wasn't quite right, since Newel Whitney never gets a word about hurrying, but I wasn't going to say so to a man who had once made a whole football team apologize to a substitute teacher. I had nothing to say, and I think he knew it, because he got up and refilled my glass of water.

He died in 2021. When his daughter brought his scriptures to the funeral they fell open to verse 43, where there's one line under "set in order your own house," drawn with a ruler.

Is verse 40 about family scripture time?

Verse 40 names no method and just says to bring up your children in light and truth. I wouldn't read a nightly schedule into it, and I wouldn't read it as nothing but good intentions either. Verse 39 says the wicked one takes light and truth away "through disobedience, from the children of men, and because of the tradition of their fathers," so part of what the verse covers is whatever gets handed down without anybody deciding to hand it down.

The children of Amulon in Mosiah 25 are the nearest case I know. Verse 12 says they "would no longer be called by the names of their fathers." A tradition can be refused by the next generation without anyone's permission.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "intelligence was not created" mean in D&C 93:29?

The verse says "Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be," right after saying man was in the beginning with God. The chapter never says what intelligence is made of. I'd take it as a limit on what can be manufactured and stop there.

Who were Frederick G. Williams, Sidney Rigdon and Newel K. Whitney?

All three were leaders in Kirtland in 1833, and verse 50 calls Newel Whitney a bishop. Frederick and Sidney were counselors to Joseph, and all four are in the chapter for the same reason, which is that their households needed attention.

Is the commandment in verse 40 only for parents?

Verse 49 says "What I say unto one I say unto all," so I wouldn't keep it inside the four men. But the commandment is addressed to people raising children, and the rebukes that follow are about households.

Why does the chapter talk about John so much?

Verses 6 through 18 are John's testimony of Christ, and the chapter says twice that the fullness of his record is still to come (vv. 6, 18). Why a revelation to these four starts there, I couldn't tell you. If you have a better answer, I'd like to hear it.

What I don't like about the chapter is verse 42, which says of Frederick the wicked one has power over him, "and this is the cause of your affliction." I've sat in rooms where a sentence like that got passed around as a formula, with parents who had done everything they knew to do hearing it as a verdict on a child who left. Verse 31 puts condemnation on the one who will "receive not the light," and verse 48 asks the family to listen too, so the chapter doesn't actually say parents cause everything. Verse 38 starts every child out innocent and verse 39 says what takes that away. Neither one describes a parent who did the work and still lost the argument at seventeen. I wish the chapter did, and I don't like how often verse 42 gets read as if it had.

— D.