John the Beloved

A short revelation reports a question, an answer, and a grant: a disciple asks for power over death so as to keep bringing souls, and is told he shall tarry. The Book of Mormon records three men asking the same thing and being told they had asked what he asked.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. Everything below is what D&C 7 itself says; nothing is imported from the excluded section headnotes, so the revelation’s occasion, date, and stated form are not described here. The revelation is narrated in a first-person voice that is not the Lord’s — “And the Lord said unto me: John, my beloved” (D&C 7:1) — and this page reports that voice as the text gives it without identifying its speaker beyond the name the text uses.

Account

The exchange

The whole section is a reported dialogue. The Lord’s question: “John, my beloved, what desirest thou? For if you shall ask what you will, it shall be granted unto you” (D&C 7:1). The request: “Lord, give unto me power over death, that I may live and bring souls unto thee” (D&C 7:2). The grant, with its stated ground: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, because thou desirest this thou shalt tarry until I come in my glory, and shalt prophesy before nations, kindreds, tongues and people” (D&C 7:3).

The revelation then reports a second exchange, and quotes it:

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () The revelation attributes a sentence to the Lord, addressed to Peter; the sentence stands word-for-word in the Gospel of John: - D&C 7:4: “And for this cause the Lord said unto Peter: If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? For he desired of me that he might bring souls unto me, but thou desiredst that thou mightest speedily come unto me in my kingdom.” - John 21:22: “Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.”

Thirteen words identical, in the same speaker’s mouth and to the same named hearer. The question stands at three corpus verses — these two and John 21:23, where it is repeated in a correction of a rumour. The Johannine verse follows the question with “follow thou me”; the revelation follows it with an explanation of the two desires the Gospel does not supply. **This record is Ruled at the 2026-08-10 editorial review: stays asserted_by: wiki — a parallel account of the scene, not a citation of a named text.

The reason the revelation gives for the grant is stated as a comparison of two desires, both approved: “I say unto thee, Peter, this was a good desire; but my beloved has desired that he might do more, or a greater work yet among men than what he has before done” (D&C 7:5). The office granted is described: “I will make him as flaming fire and a ministering angel; he shall minister for those who shall be heirs of salvation who dwell on the earth” (D&C 7:6). A third figure is then named and included: “And I will make thee to minister for him and for thy brother James; and unto you three I will give this power and the keys of this ministry until I come” (D&C 7:7). The close refuses to rank the two: “ye shall both have according to your desires, for ye both joy in that which ye have desired” (D&C 7:8).

The same desire, in the Book of Mormon

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. () The Book of Mormon records three of the risen Lord’s Nephite disciples receiving a grant he ties by name to this one: “ye have desired the thing which John, my beloved, who was with me in my ministry, before that I was lifted up by the Jews, desired of me” (3 Nephi 28:6), and then “ye shall never taste of death; but ye shall live to behold all the doings of the Father unto the children of men, even until all things shall be fulfilled according to the will of the Father, when I shall come in my glory with the powers of heaven” (3 Nephi 28:7). Set beside the revelation’s “thou shalt tarry until I come in my glory” (D&C 7:3), the two grants share the terminus — the Lord’s coming in glory — the address “my beloved” for the same figure, and the ground, a desire to keep bringing souls. The Book of Mormon verse makes the identification of the desire itself (“the thing which John, my beloved… desired of me”), which is a textual fact. What is offered to weigh is the further step: that the exchange narrated in D&C 7:1–3 is the occasion 3 Nephi refers to. Neither text says so; the shared wording is limited to “my beloved” and “come in my glory,” and the wiki does not settle it. The Nephite side of the account is treated on The Three Nephites, which reports this revelation as a parallel it does not develop; that page’s D&C material is extended by this one rather than duplicated.

Significance

Two things in this short section are checkable and worth separating. The first is a quotation: the revelation reproduces a sentence of the Gospel of John word for word, in the same speaker’s mouth and to the same named hearer, and adds an explanation the Gospel does not carry (D&C 7:4–5). That is a textual fact.

The second is not a quotation but a convergence. Three texts in the frozen corpus treat a tarrying granted on a desire to bring souls — this revelation, the Gospel’s report of a saying about a disciple who might tarry (John 21:22–23), and the Nephite account that names John’s desire as the precedent for three others (3 Nephi 28:6–7). They agree on the shape and largely disagree on the words. The wiki registers the one pairing that rests on shared wording and offers the other as a reading to weigh.

Key references

D&C 7:1–3 — the question, the request for power over death, and the grant to tarry
D&C 7:4–5 — the saying to Peter, and the two desires compared
D&C 7:6–8 — “flaming fire and a ministering angel”; the three and the keys of this ministry
John 21:22–23 — “If I will that he tarry till I come”
3 Nephi 28:6–7 — the three Nephites’ desire named against John’s

The Three Nephites · The Twelve Disciples · The Call to the Labor · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants section 7 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from John 21 and 3 Nephi 28.

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. Two connection records are registered here — one [textual] (the saying to Peter — ruled at the 2026-08-10 editorial review: stays asserted_by: wiki, a parallel account of the scene rather than a citation of a named text) and one ⚖️ interpretive (the shared grant), which carries asserted_by: wiki. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing. The revelation names John, Peter, and James in its verse text; it gives no surnames, dates, or places, and none are supplied. Traditions about the beloved disciple beyond what the frozen texts say are external, real-world material outside this wiki’s scope.