I Will Pour out My Spirit upon Them
Background and Reflections on Doctrine and Covenants 44
On February 14, 1831, the missionaries in Missouri gathered and decided to send someone back to Kirtland to visit the branches they organized along the way. Parley P. Pratt was chosen and traveled about 1,000 miles back to Kirtland, Ohio. (See Conkling, A Joseph Smith Chronology, p. 22) We learn more about the background for Doctrine and Covenants 44 in Lyndon W. Cook’s The Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith:
Date. February 1831.
Place. Kirtland, Geauga County, Ohio.
Historical Note. Section 44 calls for a conference of the Church to be held in Ohio. This gathering, which occurred in Kirtland and is known as the fourth conference of the Church, was the first of its kind to be held in Ohio. The minutes of the first day of this conference, dated 3 June 1831, are found in the “Far West Record.” At this conference Joseph Smith and others were ordained to the High Priesthood.
The revelation also mentions the law of consecration and the responsibility of caring for the poor.
Publication Note. Section 44 was first published as chapter 46 in the Book of Commandments in 1833.
The LDS Come Follow Me manual skips right over D&C 44, so I imagine that there is something very important in this revelation:
Behold, thus saith the Lord unto you my servants, it is expedient in me that the elders of my church should be called together, from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, by letter or some other way.
And it shall come to pass, that inasmuch as they are faithful, and exercise faith in me, I will pour out my Spirit upon them in the day that they assemble themselves together.
And it shall come to pass that they shall go forth into the regions round about, and preach repentance unto the people.
And many shall be converted, insomuch that ye shall obtain power to organize yourselves according to the laws of man;
That your enemies may not have power over you; that you may be preserved in all things; that you may be enabled to keep my laws; that every bond may be broken wherewith the enemy seeketh to destroy my people.
Behold, I say unto you, that ye must visit the poor and the needy and administer to their relief, that they may be kept until all things may be done according to my law which ye have received. Amen. (D&C 44:1-6)
The Lord continued to gather His people to Kirtland, Ohio, to bless and protect them, like a mother hen that cares for her chickens. The Lord not only promised to bless and protect His Saints in Kirtland, but to pour out Him Spirit upon during their gathering them if they were faithful. This gathering and outpouring of the Spirit of the Lord prepared the Saints to go forth to preach repentance.
This pattern reminds me very much of my own missionary experiences in southern Italy. One experience in particular stands out to me as our “Kirtland experience” in Bari. In the late 90s, many of the Saints in southern Italy gathered together in Bari to form the first stake of the Church in Puglia. The Lord poured out His Spirit so powerfully that everyone there was supercharged to share the Gospel and to preach repentance. I’ve attended many great meetings in which the Spirit of the Lord was present, but that particular meeting was Pentecostal in magnitude, perhaps something like what the Lord promised for the early Saints in Kirtland. Many were converted on the spot, and many more were converted as a result of the preaching of the members and missionaries shortly thereafter.
The Lord blessed His Church to obtain power to organize according to the laws of man, or the laws of the United States of America. This is significant because the Lord was preparing His people to live His laws even while abiding by Constitutional law. The Lord was enabling His people to obey His higher laws. This was also done because the enemies of Christ and his Church lurked in the darkness and plotted against Joseph Smith and the early Saints. The Church already had real enemies who were trying to destroy the Lord’s people, but the Lord’s wisdom greatly excels the cunning of the devil.
Once again, the Lord’s concern for the poor and the needy is evident in these passages. The Lord gathered all of His Saints, and He would not leave the weaker behind. He commanded the stronger Saints to visit the poor and the needy and administer to their relief. This commandment wasn’t given merely to temporarily relieve the afflictions of the poor and the needy, but to prepare a Zion people for which poverty would be eliminated. It is therefore puzzling and sad that even after a couple of centuries, the poor among us continue to languish. In the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Brighamite Church, we are the Lord’s Church in name only, because the poor have not been succored and poverty has not been eliminated. We are further from being a Zion community now than we were in 1831, and surely the Lord is not pleased.
I will pour out my Spirit] A promise that was fulfilled during the Conference.
-5. One of the purposes of the Conference was to call Elders and send them forth to do missionary work in the neighborhood of Kirtland, in order that the Church might become so strong, numerically, as to be able to claim the protection of the law (v. 4). Then the enemies would have no power, that is, legal power, to destroy the work. (v. 5).
- see above
- see above
My Law] Refers to the law given for the temporal salvation of the Saints. See Sec. 40:30-36.
General Notes
“The grand principle upon which the Gospel of life and salvation is founded and on which Zion is to be built, is brotherly love and good will to man. This was the theme of the angels of God in announcing the birth of the Savior. Hitherto, under the old systems, it has been, ‘Every man for himself’ *** but the principle which the Lord proposes is that we should square our lives by a higher and holier one, namely, ‘Everyone for the whole, and God for us all’” (Erastus Snow, Jour. of Dis. Vol. XVII., p. 75).
The Conference which convented in accordance with this Revelation was attended by about two thousand souls. And the Church was only fourteen months old! On that occasion the Saints again had wonderful manifestations of the divine power, and “the man of sin,” the Prophet tells us, was also revealed. Several Elders were ordained High Priests - the first ordination to that position in the Melchizedek Priesthood in this dispensation. “The Spirit of the Lord,” the record says, “fell upon Joseph in an unusual manner, and he prophesied that John the Revelator was then among the Ten Tribes of Israel that had been led away by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, to prepare them for their return from their long dispersion, to again possess the land of their fathers.” Lyman Wight, who was among those ordained High Priests, prophesied concerning the coming of Christ, and said that some of his brethren would suffer martyrdom. “He saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the Father. He said that God would do a work in these last days that tongue cannot express and the mind is not capable to conceive. The glory of the Lord shone around” (History of the Church, Vol. I. p. 176). (pp. 249-250)
This is true. I look forward to learning more about the miracles in Kirtland that are recorded in the book The Savior in Kirtland: Personal Accounts of Divine Manifestations.
