D&C 94: The Two Houses That Were Told to Wait

For years I carried a number around in my head and kept it filed under the wrong chapter. Fifty-five by sixty-five. I could have told you it was the inner court of the Kirtland Temple, and I'd have been right, because D&C 95:15 gives those dimensions. But I'd also stored it under D&C 94, which in my mind was the early, shorter draft of the same instruction, a rehearsal for the temple. The matching numbers in verse 4 never made me look twice.

Then this morning I looked at the dates. The date line on 95 is June 1, 1833 and the one on 94 is August 2, which was yesterday, so the numbering runs the wrong way for anybody expecting 94 to be the warm-up. And the first lot on the south is for a house for the presidency, the second lot on the south is for a house for printing, and neither of them is the temple.

What does D&C 94 actually tell them to build?

Verse 1 sets the frame, and the Saints are to begin "laying out and preparing a beginning and foundation of the city of the stake of Zion, here in the land of Kirtland, beginning at my house." I read "my house" as the temple, the point everything else gets measured from, though the verse doesn't say so in as many words. Verse 2 adds that it "must be done according to the pattern which I have given unto you," and then the chapter turns to two particular buildings.

The first is on the first lot on the south, "for the work of the presidency, in obtaining revelations" (verse 3). Notice what the building is for. A grain bin is for getting grain in, and this one is for getting revelations in, with the presidency doing the receiving. Verse 4 gives the size, fifty-five by sixty-five feet in the inner court, and verse 5 adds a lower court and a higher court. The second building, on the second lot, is for "the work of the printing of the translation of my scriptures, and all things whatsoever I shall command you" (verse 10), with the same dimensions and the same two courts in verse 11.

After that the chapter hands out land. Hyrum Smith receives his inheritance "on the third lot" (verse 13), and the text attaches no assignment to it at all. Reynolds Cahoon and Jared Carter get the first and second lots on the north, "that they may do the work which I have appointed unto them, to be a committee to build mine houses" (verses 14 and 15). Three men, three lots and a committee of two. I don't know what Hyrum was supposed to do with his, and I'd read the chapter a dozen times before I noticed the verse never says. It doesn't even say which side of the street.

I did the arithmetic on the size, because I wanted to know what fifty-five by sixty-five feels like. It comes to 3,575 square feet for the inner court of each building. My shop is the old detached garage at twenty-four by thirty, 720 square feet all told, so one of these courts is very nearly five shops laid out side by side. That's a big room for a presidency and a printer's crew, and a big room for a handful of families in Kirtland to pay for with their own hands, which is part of why I don't find it hard to believe the thing waited.

The word pattern shows up four times and doesn't always point the same direction. In verse 2 it has already been given, while in verses 5 and 6, and again in verse 12, it "shall be given unto you hereafter" or "as it shall be given." My reading is that the first is the layout of the city and the later ones are the inside of the buildings. The chapter doesn't label it. What the text does fix is the footprint, with a lower court and a higher one, and what it leaves open is what goes in them and in what order.

If you've read the tabernacle chapters, the contrast is sharp. Moses is shown a pattern and the tabernacle gets built, and in Exodus 39 he looks over the finished work and "they had done it as the Lord had commanded" (verse 43). That's a pattern delivered, followed and inspected. Section 94 is a pattern delivered halfway.

Why does verse 16 tell them to wait?

Here is the verse the whole chapter has been leaning toward:

These two houses are not to be built until I give unto you a commandment concerning them.

D&C 94:16

And the next verse is the end of the revelation: "And now I give unto you no more at this time. Amen."

So 94 can't be read as a building plan, since the hold is written into the same revelation as the lots and the committee. As far as I've been able to find, the two houses were never built as described and the commandment verse 16 waits for isn't recorded. The temple took years and nearly everything the Saints had. Section 95, two months earlier, had told them they'd sinned "a very grievous sin" by not considering the commandment about building the Lord's house (verse 3), and by that August they'd started on the foundation. Then in the fall came Missouri, and the attention of the Kirtland Saints went there. None of that is in section 94, so I won't call it the reason. It's what the next few months looked like.

What got me, once I'd noticed the hold, was how odd the order is. The Saints had just been scolded for being slow on one building, and the next thing they hear is two more buildings, with a lot for each and a committee named to build them, followed by an instruction to wait.

Ray frames houses for Brent, the contractor who lives down the street from us, and a few years ago he took a custom job and held his crew's calendar for it, six weeks, which meant turning down a deck and a basement finish. The owner paused after the foundation went in and nobody said stop or go. Ray told me later that the waiting wasn't what he minded, since waiting is part of the trade. What he minded was that for six weeks he didn't know what he was waiting for, and the house was never framed. He said that if somebody had called him on day one and said this might not happen, don't count on it, he'd have said fine and gone and found the deck.

Cahoon and Carter had it better than Ray in one respect, because the hold was stated in the same revelation that named them and handed out the lots, so they knew from the start what kind of job they had. In the other respect they had it the same. The condition is a commandment about those two houses, and there's no date on it.

What is an unclean thing doing in a building nobody built?

Verses 8 and 9 come as a pair, and they're about the first building:

And ye shall not suffer any unclean thing to come in unto it; and my glory shall be there, and my presence shall be there. But if there shall come into it any unclean thing, my glory shall not be there; and my presence shall not come into it.

D&C 94:8-9

The text doesn't define "unclean thing" here and I won't supply a definition the verse didn't. A parallel in D&C 124:24 speaks of a house whose governor does "not suffer any pollution to come upon it," and says "It shall be holy, or the Lord your God will not dwell therein." Same structure, same worry about who keeps the door.

The printing house gets nearly the same language in verse 12, "to be holy, undefiled, according to the pattern in all things." I find that the stranger of the two. A print shop has ink on the floor and paper dust in the air and a crew who'd like to be done by five, and the revelation calls it holy and undefiled. I'd have expected that word for the presidency's building and something more workmanlike for the shop.

Both houses are also to be dedicated "from the foundation thereof" (verses 6 and 12). From the foundation, before there are walls or a floor to keep clean, which makes dedication here something that starts with the first stone and not something that happens at the end with a ribbon.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is D&C 94 about the Kirtland Temple?

No, though I mixed the two up for years because the temple is the subject of D&C 95, which was given about two months earlier, and the sizes in 95:15 are the same as the ones in 94:4 and 94:11. Section 94 starts "beginning at my house" and then moves on to two other houses on two other lots.

What does "no more at this time" mean in verse 17?

I take it at face value. The revelation says it's incomplete, the pattern for the courts and the commandment to build both belong to a later time, and it stops there.

Were the two buildings ever built?

As far as I can tell they weren't, at least not as described, since verse 16 says they weren't to be built until a further commandment came, and I haven't found that commandment recorded. If you've read something that says they went up as written, I'd like to know where, because I'd read it.

Who were Reynolds Cahoon and Jared Carter?

The chapter names them as a committee to build the houses and gives each a lot on the north, and that's all the text says about them. For more than that you'll need a history, and I'd start with the Church's own published ones.

— D.