--- title: Times and Seasons description: Issues of 1844 to 1845. authors: - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints editors: - Ebenezer Robinson - Don Carlos Smith - Smith, Joseph, Jr. - Taylor, John collections: - periodicals tags: - newspaper - times-and-seasons - nauvoo - nineteenth-century periodical: Times and Seasons volume: 5 number: 7 published: 1844-04-01 publisher: E. Robinson and D. C. Smith; later John Taylor publisher_place: Commerce and Nauvoo, Illinois language: en type: article reference: "“A Revelation given in Kirtland, September, 1831,” *Times and Seasons* 5, no. 7 (April 1, 1844): 480–482." printed_title: A Revelation given in Kirtland, September, 1831. source: url: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1844-04-01_5_7 transcription: Text from the Centerplace.org transcription (https://www.centerplace.org/history/ts/v5n07.htm), with its page breaks; this Internet Archive scan is the reference copy (its OCR was used only as a witness for OCR repair) identifier: per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1844-04-01_5_7 start_page: 480 end_page: 482 curator_note: A Mormon newspaper published by the church in Nauvoo; included for historical study. Inclusion does not imply endorsement. rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1844 (Nauvoo, Illinois); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States source: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1844-04-01_5_7 publication_year: 1844 --- # A Revelation given in Kirtland, September, 1831 Behold, thus saith the Lord your God unto you, O ye elders of my church, hearken ye, and hear, and receive my will concerning you; for verily I say unto you, I will that ye should overcome the world: wherefore I will have compassion upon you. There are those among you who have sinned; but verily I say, for this once, for mine own glory, and for the salvation of souls, I have forgiven you your sins. I will be merciful unto you, for I have given unto you the kingdom; and the keys of the mysteries of the kingdom, shall not be taken from my servant Joseph Smith, jr. through the means I have appointed, while he liveth, inasmuch as he obeyeth mine ordinances. There are those who have sought ocasion [occasion] against him without cause; nevertheless he has sinned, but verily I say unto you, I the Lord forgiveth sins unto those who confess their sins before me, and ask forgiveness, who have not sinned unto death. My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another, and forgave not one another in their hearts, and for this evil they were afflicted, and sorely chastened: wherefore I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another, for he that forgiveth not his brother his tresspasses [trespasses], standeth condemned before the Lord, for there remaineth in him the greater sins. I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men; and ye ought to say in your hearts, let God judge between me and thee, and reward thee according to thy deeds. And he that repenteth not of his sins, and confesseth them not, then shall ye bring him before the church, and do with him as the scriptures saith unto you, either by commandment, or by revelation. And this ye shall do that God might be glorified, not because ye forgive not, having not compassion, but that ye may be justified in the eyes of the law, that ye may, not offend him who is your Lawgiver. Verily I say, for this cause ye shall do these things. Behold I the Lord was angry with him who was my servant Ezra Booth; and also my servant Isaac Morley; for they kept not the law, neither the comandment [commandment]; they sought evil in their hearts, and I the Lord withheld my Spirit. They condemned for evil, the thing in which there was no evil; nevertheless I have forgiven my servant Isaac Morley. And also my servant Edward Partridge, behold he hath sinned, and satan seeketh to destroy his soul; but when these things are made known unto them, they repent of the evil, and they shall be forgiven. And now verily I say, that it is expedient in me that my servant Sidney Gilbert, after a few weeks, should return upon his business, and to his agency in the land of Zion; and that which he hath seen and heard may be made known unto my disciples, that they perish not. And for this cause have I spoken these things. And again, I say unto you, that my servant Isaac Morely may not be tempted above that which he is able to bear, and council wrongly to your hurt, I gave commandment that this farm should be sold. I willeth not that my servant Frederick G. Williams should sell his farm, for I the Lord willeth to retain a strong hold in the land of Kirtland, for the space of five years, in the which I will not overthrow the wicked, that thereby I may save some; and after that day, I the Lord will not hold any guilty, that shall go, with an open heart, up to the land of Zion: For I the Lord requireth e [the] hearts of the children of men. Behold it is called to-day, (until the coming of the Son of Man) and verily it is a day of sacrifice, and a day for the tithing of my people; for he that is tithed shall not be burned (at his coming;) for after to-day cometh the burning: this is speaking after the manner of the Lord; for verily I say, to-morrow all the proud and they that do wickedly shall be as stubble: and I will burn them up, for I am the Lord of Hosts; and I will not spare any that remaineth in Babylon. Wherefore if ye believe me, ye will labor while it is called to-day. And it is not meet that my servants Newel K. Whitney and Sidney Gilbert should sell their store, and their possessions here, for this is not wisdom until the residue of the church, which remaineth in this place, shall go up to the land of Zion. Behold it is said in my laws, or forbidden to get into debt to thine enemies; but behold it is not said at any time, that the Lord should not take when he please, and pay as seemeth him good: wherefore as ye are agents, and ye are on the Lord's errand; and what ever ye do according to the will of the Lord, is the Lord's business, and he has set you to provide for his saints in these last days, that they may obtain an inheritance in the land of Zion; and behold I the Lord declare unto you, and my words are sure and shall not fail, that they shall obtain it; but all things must come to pass in their time; wherefore be not weary in well doing, for ye are laying the foundations of a great work.-And out of small things proceedeth that which is great. Behold the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind; and the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days; and the rebellious shall be cut off out of the land of Zion, and shall be sent away and shall not inherit the land: for verily I say that the rebellious are not of the blood of Ephraim, wherefore they shall be plucked out. Behold I the Lord have made my church in these last days, like unto a judge sitting on a hill, or in a high place, to judge the nations: for it shall come to pass, that the inhabitants of Zion shall judge all things pertaining to Zion: and liars, and hypocrits [hypocrites] shall be proved by them, and they who are not apostles and prophets shall be known. And even the bishop, who is a judge, and his counsellors [counselors], if they are not faithful in their stewardships, shall be condemned, and others shall be planted in their stead: for behold I say unto you that Zion shall flourish, and the glory of the Lord shall be upon her, and she shall be an ensign unto the people: and there shall be unto her out of every nation under heaven. And the day shall come, when the nations of the earth shall tremble because of her, and shall fear because of her terrible ones; the Lord hath spoken it: Amen. On the 12th of September, I removed with my family to the township of Hiram, and commenced living with John Johnson. Hiram was in Portage county and about thirty miles south easterly from Kirtland. From this time until the forepart of October, I did little more than to prepare to re-commence the translation of the bible. About this time Ezra Booth came out as an apostate. He came into the church upon seeing a person healed of an infirmity of many years standing. He had been a Methodist priest for some time previous to his embracing the fulness [fullness] of the gospel, as developed in the Book of Mormon, and upon his admission into the church, he was ordained an elder; as will be seen by the foregoing revelations. He went up to Missouri as a companion to elder Morley; but when he actually learned that faith, humility, patience, and tribulation, were before blessing; and that God brought low before he exalted; that instead of "the savior's granting him power to smite men, and make them believe" (as he said he wanted God to do him;) he found he must become all things to all men, that he might peradventure save some, and that too by all diligence, by perils, by sea and land; as was the case in the days of Jesus, which appears in the 6th chapter of St. John's Gospel he said, "verily, verily I say unto you, ye seek me not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled." So it was with Booth, and when he was disappointed by his own evil heart, he turned away and as said before, became an apostate, and wrote a series of letters which by their coloring, falsity, and vain calculations to overthrow the work of the Lord exposed his weakne s [weakness] wickedness and folly, and left him a monument of his own shame, for the world to wonder at. A conference was held, in which brother W. W. Phelps was instructed to stop at Cincinnati on his way to Missouri, and purchase a press and type, for the purpose of establishing and publishing a monthly paper at Independence, Jackson county, Missouri, to be called the "Evening and Morning Star." The first Sunday in October, Orson Hyde, a clerk in brothers Sidney Gilbert and Newel K. Whitney's store, in Kirtland, was baptized and became a member of the church. As he was soon after designated as one of the chosen men of the Lord, to bear his word to the nations, I feel a desire to notice him as he was and as he is.-He was, in his own words, left in his infancy, an orphan with none to look upon him with a father's eye, and feel for him with a mother's heart. The hand that wiped his infant tears was still; the breast that gave him suck was cold, and slumbered in the arms of death. He was thrust abroad upon the cold and friendless bosom of an unfeeling world, so that for twenty long years, he saw no one in whose veins flowed a drop of kindred blood, and consequently grew up as a wild and uncultivated plant of nature, and now had come into the new and everlasting covenant, to be renewed and receive grace for grace, and put himself under the fatherly care of Him whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light; and who rewardeth his sons and daughters, who serve him faithfully to the end, with eternal life. To continue, in his own figure, he now stood before the world to feed the fowls of the Lord, in the same manner that he had done in early life, to feed the poultry of the gentlemen with whom he had resided; for says he when I poured the corn upon the ground, the fowls all came together en-masse, but after the corn was exhausted, and the stream stayed, the fowls all turned away, going in different directions, each one singing his own song. So with religion, while God poured out the stream of revelation upon the ancient church, they were all united and ate the living bread, but when he withheld revelations in latter times, because of the unbelief of men, they turned and went their own course, and sung their own song, some a Methodist song, some a Baptist song, some a Presbyterian song, &c; but if they had revelation they would have sung one of the songs of Zion. His further history will come in, in place hereafter. In the fore part of October I received the following: