Endless Punishment

One revelation takes two phrases already standing in scripture — endless torment, eternal damnation — and explains them by redefining the adjective rather than the noun. It then attaches the explanation to a first-person account of suffering.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. The recipient of D&C 19 is addressed as “thee” and “you” and is not named in the verse text; this page does not name him, and does not import a name from the excluded section headnotes. The revelation’s occasion, date, and place are likewise outside this wiki’s source text.

Account

The two written phrases

The revelation’s argument begins by quoting what is already written, twice, without naming where: “it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment” (D&C 19:6); “Again, it is written eternal damnation; wherefore it is more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name’s glory” (D&C 19:7). Both phrases do stand in the frozen corpus.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 19:6: “Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment.” - Jacob 6:10: “And according to the power of justice, for justice cannot be denied, ye must go away into that lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever, which lake of fire and brimstone is endless torment.”

The revelation quotes the phrase as written scripture and does not say where; the wiki reports where it stands rather than asserting which instance is meant. “endless torment” stands at eight corpus verses: these two, 2 Nephi 9:19, 2 Nephi 9:26, 2 Nephi 28:23, Mosiah 3:25, Moroni 8:21, and D&C 19:6 itself. Jacob’s is the instance paired here because it states the phrase as a flat predication (“is endless torment”) rather than inside a longer clause; the pairing is the wiki’s, and the other six carriers are disclosed rather than ranked.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 19:7: “Again, it is written eternal damnation; wherefore it is more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name’s glory.” - Mark 3:29: “But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.”

“eternal damnation” stands at exactly three corpus verses: these two and D&C 29:44. The Markan verse is therefore the phrase’s only carrier in the corpus outside the Doctrine and Covenants — a fact worth stating precisely because the revelation appeals to the phrase as already written. The revelation names no source, so the pairing is the wiki’s. (Terminal punctuation: Mark 3:29 closes with a colon in the frozen text; the quotation above ends at the phrase and carries no mark of its own.)

The explanation

The revelation’s move is to make the adjective a name rather than a duration: “I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name” (D&C 19:10). Two one-line verses then state the substitution: “Eternal punishment is God’s punishment” (D&C 19:11); “Endless punishment is God’s punishment” (D&C 19:12). The stated reason the harder phrasing was used at all is given as effect rather than duration — “that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men” (D&C 19:7) — and the explanation is framed as a disclosure: “I will explain unto you this mystery, for it is meet unto you to know even as mine apostles” (D&C 19:8).

The name-formula is not unique to this section.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 19:10: “For, behold, the mystery of godliness, how great is it! For, behold, I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name. Wherefore—” - Moses 1:3: “And God spake unto Moses, saying: Behold, I am the Lord God Almighty, and Endless is my name; for I am without beginning of days or end of years; and is not this endless?”

The four-word formula stands at exactly these two corpus verses. Both attach it to a first-person divine self-naming and both gloss it in the same verse — Moses 1:3 by duration (“without beginning of days or end of years”), the revelation by ownership (the punishment “is given from my hand” — D&C 19:10). The two glosses are not the same move, and this page does not merge them.

The suffering

The revelation grounds the demand to repent in a first-person account of suffering: “I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent” (D&C 19:16); “But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I” (D&C 19:17).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The revelation describes in the first person what king Benjamin’s angel had foretold in the third: - D&C 19:18: “Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—” - Mosiah 3:7: “And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people.”

The shared element is the figure — blood from every pore — not a shared run of words: the revelation reads “to bleed at every pore,” the angel’s prophecy “blood cometh from every pore” (Mosiah 3:7). Each of the two wordings stands at exactly one frozen verse in the corpus, these. The grammatical persons differ throughout (first person for third), and the tenses run opposite ways: the angel speaks of what “shall” happen, the revelation of what the speaker “hath” undergone. The revelation adds the cup — “would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink” (D&C 19:18) — which the Mosiah verse does not carry.

The Redeemer’s self-naming, and the commands

The section opens on a title-string the corpus carries elsewhere.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 19:1: “I am Alpha and Omega, Christ the Lord; yea, even I am he, the beginning and the end, the Redeemer of the world.” - 3 Nephi 9:18: “I am the light and the life of the world. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.”

Both are first-person self-namings by the same title pair. Divergence: the revelation interposes “Christ the Lord; yea, even I am he” between the two halves and closes on “the Redeemer of the world” (both D&C 19:1) where 3 Nephi opens on “the light and the life of the world.” “I am Alpha and Omega” stands at thirteen corpus verses; besides these two, at Revelation 1:8, Revelation 1:11, Revelation 21:6, Revelation 22:13, and at D&C 38:1, 45:7, 63:60, 68:35, 84:120, 112:34, and 132:66.

The section’s last movement is a list of commands to its unnamed recipient, several of them concerning property: “thou shalt not covet thine own property, but impart it freely to the printing of the Book of Mormon, which contains the truth and the word of God” (D&C 19:26); “Impart a portion of thy property, yea, even part of thy lands, and all save the support of thy family” (D&C 19:34); “Pay the debt thou hast contracted with the printer. Release thyself from bondage” (D&C 19:35). The Book of Mormon is named here by title — one of eighteen frozen verses in the corpus that name it, and the earliest by section number within the Doctrine and Covenants after D&C 1:29.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The stated purpose of the printing, against Nephi’s stated purpose for his own words: - D&C 19:27: “Which is my word to the Gentile, that soon it may go to the Jew, of whom the Lamanites are a remnant, that they may believe the gospel, and look not for a Messiah to come who has already come.” - 2 Nephi 25:18: “…and unto the convincing of them that they need not look forward any more for a Messiah to come, for there should not any come, save it should be a false Messiah which should deceive the people…”

Both attach the clause to a book of words sent to convince a people that the Messiah they await has already come. Divergences: Nephi reads “look forward any more for a Messiah to come,” the revelation “look not for a Messiah to come”; Nephi’s warning continues into a false Messiah, the revelation’s into a completed coming (“who has already come”). The run “a Messiah to come” stands at exactly these two corpus verses.

Significance

The revelation performs an unusual operation on scripture it does not cite: it grants that the phrases are written, denies the reading the phrases invite, and supplies a different one — the adjective names the punisher, not the length of the punishment (D&C 19:6–12). A reader can verify the first half of that operation directly, because both phrases are in the frozen corpus and this page gives their full distribution. The second half — whether the redefinition is what those earlier passages meant — is a question of interpretation that the revelation settles for itself and that this wiki does not settle for the earlier texts. The two are kept apart here deliberately: what is written is a textual fact; what it means, on this page, is the revelation’s own claim, reported as the revelation’s.

Key references

D&C 19:1–5 — “I am Alpha and Omega”; the judgment and the woes
D&C 19:6–12 — “it is written endless torment”; “Endless is my name”; the two one-line definitions
D&C 19:15–20 — the command to repent; the suffering “for all”; the bitter cup
D&C 19:26–35 — the printing of the Book of Mormon; the property commands
Jacob 6:10, Mark 3:29 — the two phrases the revelation quotes as written
Mosiah 3:7 — “blood cometh from every pore”
Moses 1:3 — “Endless is my name”

Atonement · Messiah · Unchangeable God · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants section 19 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from Jacob 6, Mark 3, Moses 1, Mosiah 3, 3 Nephi 9, and 2 Nephi 25; the further carriers of “endless torment” and “I am Alpha and Omega” are cited, not quoted, inside their 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. Six connection records are registered here, all [textual] and all asserted_by: wiki — the revelation says “it is written” twice but names no book, chapter, or verse, so the wiki does not mint an attributed-quotation record on that basis; the two written-phrase pairings were ruled at the 2026-08-10 editorial review: they stay asserted_by: wiki, the citation language pointing at no locatable frozen verse (logged in the verification log’s open uncertainties). Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing. The recipient of this revelation is not named in its verse text and is not named here.