Commissions Revoked and Changed

The revelations of this range do not only send men out. Several of them cancel an earlier sending, swap one companion for another, or report that a call came to nothing. This page gathers those, because the pattern is easy to miss when the sections are read one at a time.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. What a revelation says about an earlier commandment is a textual fact and is reported here; whether any of these journeys was made, and what became of the men, is outside this wiki’s source text. Dates, places, and occasions are not in the source text and are not stated.

Account

The revoking verses

One section states the principle and then applies it four times in six verses. The principle: D&C 56:4: “Wherefore I, the Lord, command and revoke, as it seemeth me good; and all this to be answered upon the heads of the rebellious, saith the Lord.”

The applications follow immediately, and each one names the men affected.

D&C 56:5: “Wherefore, I revoke the commandment which was given unto my servants Thomas B. Marsh and Ezra Thayre, and give a new commandment unto my servant Thomas, that he shall take up his journey speedily to the land of Missouri, and my servant Selah J. Griffin shall also go with him.”
D&C 56:6: “For behold, I revoke the commandment which was given unto my servants Selah J. Griffin and Newel Knight, in consequence of the stiffneckedness of my people which are in Thompson, and their rebellions.”
D&C 56:7: “Wherefore, let my servant Newel Knight remain with them; and as many as will go may go, that are contrite before me, and be led by him to the land which I have appointed.”
The fourth is conditional and attaches to one man: D&C 56:8: “And again, verily I say unto you, that my servant Ezra Thayre must repent of his pride, and of his selfishness, and obey the former commandment which I have given him concerning the place upon which he lives.” — with the alternative stated plainly at 56:9–10: he “shall be appointed still to go to the land of Missouri” (D&C 56:9), or “shall receive the money which he has paid, and shall leave the place, and shall be cut off out of my church, saith the Lord God of hosts” (D&C 56:10).

Read together, the four re-arrange three pairings out of two: one man is separated from his original companion and given a new one; the man he leaves behind is left where he is; and the fourth is held to an earlier commandment he had not obeyed. The stated grounds are not the same in each case — one names the stiffneckedness of a people, another the pride and selfishness of a man, and the first names no ground at all.

A second revocation stands in a different section and is stated as a substitution rather than a cancellation of a pairing: D&C 75:6: “Therefore, verily I say unto my servant William E. McLellin, I revoke the commission which I gave unto him to go unto the eastern countries;” — D&C 75:7: “And I give unto him a new commission and a new commandment, in the which I, the Lord, chasten him for the murmurings of his heart;” — D&C 75:8: “And he sinned; nevertheless, I forgive him and say unto him again, Go ye into the south countries.” The earlier commission being revoked can be read in the frozen text: D&C 66:7: “Go unto the eastern lands, bear testimony in every place, unto every people and in their synagogues, reasoning with the people.” Two revelations to the same named man, the second undoing the first — a textual fact both sections state in their own words.

The call that came to nothing

The cluster contains one whole section, three verses long, reporting the failure of a call. It is the shortest section in the range.

D&C 40:1: “Behold, verily I say unto you, that the heart of my servant James Covel was right before me, for he covenanted with me that he would obey my word.” — D&C 40:2: “And he received the word with gladness, but straightway Satan tempted him; and the fear of persecution and the cares of the world caused him to reject the word.” — D&C 40:3: “Wherefore he broke my covenant, and it remaineth with me to do with him as seemeth me good. Amen.”

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. The preceding section, D&C 39, is addressed to “my servant James” (D&C 39:7) and puts a condition on him — “the days of thy deliverance are come, if thou wilt hearken to my voice” (D&C 39:10) — and promises, on that condition, “I have prepared thee for a greater work” (D&C 39:11). Section 40 reports of a James Covel that the word was received with gladness and then rejected. The two sections read naturally as a call and its outcome. But the verse text nowhere identifies the James of section 39 with the James Covel of section 40, and no surname appears in section 39. The reading is offered for the reader to weigh; the wiki does not assert the identification, and the caution is the same one that governs every bare first name in this range (see Servants Named in the Calls).

Calls held back, not revoked

Two further sections hold a commission in place rather than cancelling it, and both state a reason.

D&C 30:1–4 withdraws no assignment but suspends an inquiry: a man named David is told “you have feared man and have not relied on me for strength as you ought” (D&C 30:1), that “your mind has been on the things of the earth more than on the things of me” (D&C 30:2), and consequently “you are left to inquire for yourself at my hand, and ponder upon the things which you have received” (D&C 30:3). His home is fixed “at your father’s house, until I give unto you further commandments” (D&C 30:4) — a ministry retained but placed under a stated limit.

D&C 99:6 delays a sending on a domestic ground: “And now, verily I say unto you, that it is not expedient that you should go until your children are provided for, and sent up kindly unto the bishop of Zion.” The same section had opened with an unqualified sending, D&C 99:1; the qualification arrives five verses later, in the same revelation.

Clauses in these sections worth checking against the corpus

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () The lamentation put into the mouths of the rich in the day of visitation: - D&C 56:16: “…and this shall be your lamentation in the day of visitation, and of judgment, and of indignation: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and my soul is not saved!” - Jeremiah 8:20: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

The run “the harvest is past” stands at exactly two frozen verses — these two. Divergences: the prophet’s is a first-person plural of a whole people, the revelation’s a first-person singular of an individual soul, and the revelation frames it as a lamentation still to come rather than one already spoken.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - 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.” - Matthew 18:6: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Divergences: the gospel supplies the millstone and the neck, which the revelation omits entirely, and specifies the offended as little ones who believe; the revelation leaves the offense unspecified beyond the demonstrative “this offense” (D&C 54:5). “Drowned in the depth of the sea” stands at three frozen verses — these two and D&C 121:22, which restores the millstone.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The condition stated at the head of the same section: - D&C 56:2: “And he that will not take up his cross and follow me, and keep my commandments, the same shall not be saved.” - Matthew 16:24: “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

The run “take up his cross” stands at four frozen verses — this one, Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, and Luke 9:23, the last adding “daily” (Luke 9:23). Divergences: the gospel states the requirement positively, as an invitation with a self-denial clause; the revelation states it negatively, adds the keeping of commandments as a third term, and attaches a consequence — that such a one “shall not be saved” (D&C 56:2) — which the gospel verse does not carry.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The verse that grounds the rebuke to the silent elders: - D&C 60:4: “For I, the Lord, rule in the heavens above, and among the armies of the earth; and in the day when I shall make up my jewels, all men shall know what it is that bespeaketh the power of God.” - Malachi 3:17: “And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.”

The run “make up my jewels” stands at four frozen verses — these two, D&C 101:3, and 3 Nephi 24:17, where the prophet’s words are given to the Nephites. Divergences: the prophet’s day is a day of sparing, and the jewels are the people themselves; the revelation’s is a day of universal recognition, and it says nothing about who or what the jewels are.

Significance

Read as a group, these sections show a text willing to say that an earlier instruction no longer stands, and to say so by name. Section 56 states the principle outright — that the same voice commands and revokes as it sees good — and then applies it in four consecutive verses to four named men. Section 75 revokes a commission recorded nine sections earlier, and both the revoking verse and the revoked one are in the frozen text, so a reader can set them side by side. Section 40 does something rarer still: it reports, in three verses, that a call was received and then broken, and it leaves the outcome open.

What the wiki does not do is explain any of it. The sections give grounds in some cases — stiffneckedness, pride, selfishness, the fear of persecution — and no ground at all in others. Whether the journeys were taken, and what became of the men named, is outside this wiki’s source text.

Key references

D&C 30:1–4 — a ministry retained under a stated limit
D&C 39:7–11 with D&C 40:1–3 — a conditional call; a covenant reported broken
D&C 54:5 — the offense and the depth of the sea
D&C 56:4–10 — the revoking principle and its four applications
D&C 66:7 with D&C 75:6–8 — a commission given, then revoked and replaced
D&C 60:2–4 — the elders who would not open their mouths
D&C 99:1, 99:6 — a sending, then its domestic qualification

Servants Named in the Calls · The Missionary Charge · The Call to the Labor · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 30, 39, 40, 54, 56, 60, 66, 75, 99 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from Jeremiah 8, Matthew 16, Matthew 18, and Malachi 3; other references are cited, not quoted, inside distribution disclosures.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary. Four connection records are registered here, all [textual] and all asserted_by: wiki. One interpretive reading is offered and marked — the reading of sections 39 and 40 as a call and its outcome — and it is not asserted; the wiki makes no identification between a bare first name in one section and a full name in another. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.