Title: Adversity and the Priesthood Tagline: A cry, an answer that does not remove the trouble, and — three sections later — a duty that turns the suffering into a written record.

Breadcrumbs / Related: The Two Priesthoods, Opposition and Agency, The Redemption of Zion, Riches and Pride, Record as Instrument

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it — with a change of speaker inside a single section that the page marks where it happens. D&C 121:1–6 is a prayer, addressed to God in the second person: “O God, where art thou?” (D&C 121:1). From D&C 121:7 the voice changes and answers in the first person — “My son, peace be unto thy soul” (D&C 121:7) — and D&C 122 continues that answering voice. D&C 123 is different again: a plural first person addressing “brethren” — “we would suggest for your consideration” (D&C 123:1), “dearly beloved brethren” (D&C 123:17) — which the page attributes as counsel offered, not as a divine command. Neither the petitioner nor the addressed “my son” is named in the verse text, and this page does not name them; nothing is imported from the excluded headnotes.

Account

§ The cry

Six verses ask, and ask in the older form of the question: “How long shall thy hand be stayed” (D&C 121:2); “how long shall they suffer these wrongs and unlawful oppressions” (D&C 121:3). The petition asks for a specific, physical reversal of concealment — “let thy pavilion be taken up; let thy hiding place no longer be covered; let thine ear be inclined; let thine heart be softened” (D&C 121:4) — and, in the next verse, for something the answer will not grant: “in the fury of thine heart, with thy sword avenge us of our wrongs” (D&C 121:5).

§ The answer, and what it does not say

The answer’s first move is to bound the trouble rather than end it: “thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment” (D&C 121:7), conditioned at once — “And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high” (D&C 121:8). Its second move is a comparison with a named sufferer: “Thou art not yet as Job; thy friends do not contend against thee, neither charge thee with transgression, as they did Job” (D&C 121:10). The comparison is made by the text itself and is stated here as the text’s; the older book’s account of those friends begins at Job 2:11, and the wiki registers no connection for the comparison because D&C 121:10 quotes nothing from it — it names a person and a circumstance, not a passage.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () — D&C 121:16: “Cursed are all those that shall lift up the heel against mine anointed” — Psalms 41:9: “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.”

“heel against” stands at exactly three distinct frozen verses in the corpus, counted case-insensitively: Psalms 41:9, John 13:18 — which quotes the psalm — and this verse. The older two state the act as done, by an intimate, against the speaker; this verse states it as a class of persons and puts the object in the third person, “mine anointed”.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () — D&C 121:22: “It had been better for them that a millstone had been hanged about their necks, and they drowned in the depth of the sea.” — Matthew 18:6: “it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

The sentence is carried over entire and pluralised: “better for him”/“better for them”, “his neck”/“their necks”. “drowned in the depth of the sea” stands at exactly three distinct frozen verses in the corpus: Matthew 18:6, D&C 54:5, and this verse. Two further tellings of the same saying end differently — “cast into the sea” (Mark 9:42), and the same at Luke 17:2 — so the depth-of-the-sea wording is the one this verse follows.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () — D&C 121:22: “It had been better for them that a millstone had been hanged about their necks, and they drowned in the depth of the sea.” — D&C 54:5: “And wo to him by whom this offense cometh, for it had been better for him that he had been drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Intra-D&C pairing; the register lists the lower-numbered section as its second reference. The two share the pluperfect construction the older saying does not use — “it had been better” (D&C 121:22, D&C 54:5) against “it were better” (Matthew 18:6) — which makes this pair closer to each other in grammar than either is to the saying both are drawing on. The earlier verse drops the millstone; this one keeps it.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () — D&C 121:23: “a generation of vipers shall not escape the damnation of hell” — Matthew 23:33: “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”

Both halves of the older question recur, and the question becomes a statement: “how can ye escape” becomes “shall not escape”. “generation of vipers” stands at exactly five distinct frozen verses in the corpus: Matthew 3:7, Matthew 12:34, Matthew 23:33, Luke 3:7, and this verse — and of the five, only Matthew 23:33 and this one attach “the damnation of hell”. The other four address the hearers directly as vipers; this verse uses the phrase about a third party.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () — D&C 121:38: “he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God” — Acts 9:5: “And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”

The five-word idiom is carried over unchanged. “kick against the pricks” stands at exactly three distinct frozen verses in the corpus: Acts 9:5, Acts 26:14 — the same words in a second telling of the same event — and this verse. In both older verses the idiom is spoken to the man persecuting; here it is stated about him, and joined to two further clauses, “to persecute the saints, and to fight against God” (D&C 121:38), which state as consequences what the older verses state as the man’s situation.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () — D&C 121:40: “Hence many are called, but few are chosen.” — Matthew 22:14: “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Six words identical; the two verses differ only in their connective, “For” and “Hence”. “many are called, but few are chosen” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus: these — D&C 121:40 and Matthew 22:14. What is distinctive here is not the sentence but its placement — this section states it twice, once as a question at D&C 121:34, in a variant wording (“there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen?”), and once as this conclusion six verses later, with the intervening verses supplying the answer the older verse does not give.

§ The catalogue, and the sentence that ends it

D&C 122:5–7 is one long conditional: a list of what may happen, concluding in a single clause that reverses the whole list.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () — D&C 122:5: “if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea” — 2 Corinthians 11:26: “in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;”

“in perils” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus: these. The older verse lists eight perils in a bare series; this one lists three, each opened by “if thou art”, turning a catalogue of things suffered into a catalogue of things that may yet be. Two of the three are the older verse’s own — “in perils among false brethren” is identical, and “in perils of robbers” reads “in perils among robbers”.

The list ends with a comparison and a question: “The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?” (D&C 122:8).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () — D&C 122:8: “The Son of Man hath descended below them all.” — D&C 88:6: “He that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things”

Intra-D&C pairing; the register lists the lower-numbered section as its second reference. “descended below” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus: these. The earlier verse states the descent as below “all things” and gives a reason — comprehension of all things; this verse states it as below “them all”, where “them” is the list of afflictions just enumerated across the three preceding verses, and draws a conclusion the earlier verse does not: a question to the sufferer about his own standing.

§ The duty that follows

D&C 123 turns the same subject into a task, and the task is documentary: gather “a knowledge of all the facts, and sufferings and abuses” (D&C 123:1), the damages “both of character and personal injuries, as well as real property” (D&C 123:2), “the names of all persons that have had a hand in their oppressions” (D&C 123:3), and the published matter — “the libelous publications that are afloat” (D&C 123:4), “all that are in the magazines, and in the encyclopedias” (D&C 123:5) — by a committee appointed “to take statements and affidavits” (D&C 123:4). The reason given is that a record leaves no room for a plea of ignorance: “that the whole nation may be left without excuse” (D&C 123:6).

“waste and wear out our lives” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus, this section’s statement of what the work will cost: “that we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness” (D&C 123:13).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () — D&C 123:16: “that a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm” — James 3:4: “Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.”

“a very small helm” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus: these — D&C 123:16 and James 3:4. Both set the small helm against a great ship and against weather. The older verse uses the figure for the tongue’s power over a life; this one uses it for the value of small labours in a large cause, and states the application in the next verse — “let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power” (D&C 123:17).

Significance

The best-known sentences in this cluster are the ones about power, and they are stated as a diagnosis rather than a rule: “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion” (D&C 121:39). “unrighteous dominion” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus — that one. What follows is the section’s only sustained statement of method: no power “can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned” (D&C 121:41), with a sharpness clause that is immediately qualified — “Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy” (D&C 121:43).

Read across the three sections, what is striking is what the answer to the cry never does. The prayer asks for the pavilion lifted and the sword drawn (D&C 121:4–5). The answer grants neither. It bounds the time (D&C 121:7), states a use for the trouble — “all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good” (D&C 122:7) — and then, two sections later, gives the sufferers a job: write it all down (D&C 123:1–5). That the answer to a plea for rescue is a research assignment is a fact of the text’s arrangement, and readers may weigh what it means; the wiki reports the arrangement and stops there.

Key references

• D&C 121:1–6 — the prayer, and what it asks for
• D&C 121:7–25 — the answer; Job named; judgment on the accusers
• D&C 121:26–33 — what is promised to be revealed
• D&C 121:34–46 — unrighteous dominion; persuasion and long-suffering
• D&C 122:1–9 — the catalogue of perils; the Son of Man’s descent
• D&C 123:1–6 — the facts, the damages, the names, the publications
• D&C 123:7–17 — the duty owed; the small helm; the cheerful doing

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 121, 122, 123, 54, and 88 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from Psalms 41, Matthew 18, Matthew 22, Matthew 23, Acts 9, 2 Corinthians 11, and James 3. Job 2, John 13, Acts 26, Mark 9, and Luke 17 are cited inside disclosures rather than registered as connections of this page.

Nine connection records are registered here, all [textual]; two of the nine are intra-Doctrine-and-Covenants. None is submitted as an asserted_by: "source" candidate — the one place these sections name a source is D&C 121:10, which names Job but quotes no passage, and so is reported on the page without a register record. Distribution figures are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.