DOCTRINE & COVENANTS
104-106
Doctrine & Covenants 104:9
“Buffetings of Satan”
One has been given into Satan’s hands
without the protective power of the
priesthood.
Doctrine & Covenants 104:17
“Doctrine of the Devil”
The precepts of men would have you believe that by
limiting the population of the world, we can have peace
and plenty.
That is the doctrine of the devil.
Small numbers do not insure peace; only righteousness
does.
A major reason why there is famine in some parts of the
world is because evil men have used the vehicle of
government to abridge the freedom that men need to
produce abundantly.
True to form, many of the people who desire to frustrate
God’s purposes of giving mortal tabernacles to his spirit
children through worldwide birth control are the very
same people who support the kinds of government that
perpetuate famine. They advocate an evil to cure the
results of the wickedness they support (Ezra Taft Benson,
Conference Report, April, 1969, 12).
Doctrine & Covenants 104:47-53
“Separate the United Order in Zion from the Order in
Kirtland”
“The Lord… commanded that there should be a separation of the
United Order in Zion from the Order in Kirtland,” explained Joseph
Fielding Smith.
“Each was to act henceforth independently of the other. Distance
was too great between these places for unity of purpose in all things.
Each order was to be organized in the names of the brethren residing
in each place, and to do business in their own names. This separation
and dissolving of the former order came about also because of the
transgression and covetousness on the part of some” (Church History
and Modern Revelation, 1:489).
Doctrine & Covenants 104:58
“Even to Print My Words”
Lack of financial support from the Saints,
persecution, and pressing temporal concerns
prevented the new translation of the Bible
from being printed during the Prophet’s
lifetime.
Doctrine & Covenants 104:78
“You shall pay all your debts”
Those who were called to positions of trust
similar to that of members of the United Firm
assumed the debts and obligations entered
into by their predecessors. Brigham Young
accepted responsibility for the Prophet
Joseph Smith’s debts.
“Joseph was doing business in Kirtland,” Brigham
explained, “and it seemed as though all creation was upon
him, to hamper him in every way, and they drove him from
his business, and it left him so that some of his debts had to
be settled afterwards; and I am thankful to say that they
were settled up; still further, we have sent East to New
York, to Ohio, and to every place where I had any idea that
Joseph had ever done business, and inquired if there was a
man left to whom Joseph Smith, Jun., the Prophet, owed a
dollar, or a sixpence. If there was we would pay it. But I
have not been able to find one. I have advertised this
through every neighborhood and place where he formerly
lived, consequently I have a right to conclude that all his
debts were settled” (Journal of Discourses, 18:242).
Doctrine & Covenants 104:78-80
“I know of no situation where happiness and peace of mind
have increased with the amassing of property beyond the
reasonable wants and needs of the family” (President
Kimball, Conference Report, Oct. 1979, 120).
Elder Franklin D. Richards taught five principles for freeing
oneself from debt:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Live within your income.
Prepare and use short and long-term budgets.
Regularly save a part of your income.
Use your credit wisely, if it is necessary to use it at all.
Preserve and utilize your assets through appropriate tax and
estate planning.
President Heber J. Grant said,
“If there is any one thing that will bring peace
and contentment into the human heart, and
into the family, it is to live within our means,
and if there is any one thing that is grinding,
and discouraging and disheartening it is to
have debts and obligations that one cannot
meet; (Relief Society Magazine, May 1932,
302)” (Conference Report, April, 1979, 56).
How to Get Out of Debt!
President J. Reuben Clark Jr., on debt said:
“May I say something about interest? Interest
never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to
the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it
never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels; it
takes no pleasure; it is never laid off work nor
discharged from employment; it never works on
reduced hours; it never has short crops nor
droughts; it never pays taxes; it buys no food; it
wears no clothes; it is un-housed and without home
and so has no repairs, no replacements, no
shingling, plumbing, painting, or white-washing; it
has neither wife, children, father, mother, nor
kinfolk to watch over and care for; it has no
expense of living; it has neither weddings nor births
nor deaths; it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard
and soulless as a granite cliff.
Once in debt, interest is your companion
every minute of the day and night; you
cannot shun it or slip away for it; you
cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to
entreaties, demands, nor orders; and
whenever you get in its way or cross its
course or fail to meet its demands, it
crushes you (Improvement Era, vol. 41,
June 1938, 328).
DEBT
The time has come to get our houses in order!
(Gordon B. Hinckley)
“The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the
lender” (Proverbs 22:77).
“Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth
another hath fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8).
And I would that ye should remember, that whosoever among you
borroweth of his neighbor should return the thing that he borroweth,
according as he doth agree, or else thou shalt commit sin; and
perhaps thou shalt cause thy neighbor to commit sin also” (Mosiah
4:28).
The American Barr Association has indicated that 89 percent of all
divorces can be traced to quarrels and accusations over money.
Others have estimated that 75 percent of all divorces result from
clashes over finances.
Professional counselors indicate that four out of five families are
strapped with serious money problems.
These Marriage tragedies are not caused by lack of money, but rather
by the mismanagement of personal finances (Elder Marvin J.
Ashton).
In the home, money management between husband and wife should
be on a partnership basis, with both parties having a voice in decision
and policy making (Elder Marvin J. Ashton).
Elder Dallin H. Oaks said:
“The possession of wealth or the acquisition
of significant income is not a mark of
heavenly favor, and their absence is not
evidence of heavenly disfavor.”
“Those who brood over the prosperity or
seeming happiness of the wicked put to much
emphasis on material things.”
Spencer W. Kimball said:
“Well-meaning relatives have broken up many
a home. Numerous divorces are attributable to
the interference of parents who thought they
were only protecting their loved children. Live
in your own home even though it be but a
modest cottage or a tent. Live your own life”
(“John and Mary, Beginning Life Together,”
New Era, June 1975, 4).
Doctrine & Covenants 105
“Zion”
Doctrine & Covenants 105:15
“Destruction in Missouri during the Civil War”
“Between the ‘jayhawkers’ of Kansas and the ‘bushwhackers’ of
Missouri some whole counties were plundered, some were desolated
by fire and sword, and some were almost depopulated”
(Comprehensive History of the Church, 1:547).
“Missionaries joined the dark passions of the south to the
rough turbulence of the west. Violent feelings, violent
words, and violent deeds came naturally to them” (Castel,
William Clark Quatrill, 2-2).
“If Missouri in the preceding generation had sown to the
wind, when the Latter-day Saints were the victims of their
cruel lawlessness, Missouri in the Civil War period reaped
the whirlwind,” noted B.H. Roberts.
“The measure they had meted out to the saints was surely
meted out to them again, pressed down and running over
more than a hundred fold was measure increased into her…
Especially western Missouri, suffered more than any other
state of the Union. In other states the war lasted at most
but four years; but counting her western border warfare in
the struggle for Kansas, the war was waged in western
Missouri from 1855 to 1865, ten years; and for many years
after the close of the Civil War, a guerilla warfare was
intermittently carried on by bands of outlaws harbored in
western Missouri – especially in Jackson, Ray, Caldwell
and Clay counties – that terrorized the community and
shocked the world by daring and atrocity of their crimes –
including bank robberies in open day, express train
wrecking and robberies, and murders…
Doctrine & Covenants 105
“The Quorum of the Twelve”
On 14 February 1835 the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was organized
for the first time in this dispensation.
Doctrine & Covenants 105:19
“Zion’s Camp”
The prophet Joseph Smith told the brethren of Zion’s Camp:
“Brethren, some of you are angry with me, because you did not fight in
Missouri; but let me tell you, God did not want you to fight. He could not
organize His Kingdom with twelve men to open the Gospel door to the
nations of the earth, and with seventy men under their direction to follow
in their tracks, unless He took them from a body of men who had offered
their lives, and who had made as great a sacrifice as did Abraham” (History
of the Church, 2:182).