Sign-Seeking

Six verses reverse the order a reader might expect between evidence and belief, and then state what happens to a person who asks for the evidence first. The reversal is stated twice in the same wording, which is the strongest indication the text gives that it is the point.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. The section speaks in a first-person divine voice. Dates, places, and occasions are not in this wiki’s source text and are not stated; in particular, who among the hearers is meant by “those among you who seek signs” (D&C 63:8) is not named in the verse text and is not named here.

Account

The rule, and its reversal

The passage opens on an outcome rather than a prohibition: “he that seeketh signs shall see signs, but not unto salvation” (D&C 63:7) — the sign is granted and its usefulness withdrawn in the same sentence. The clause “he that seeketh signs” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus — this one.

The rule is then stated as an ordering.

[Textual] — paraphrase / allusion. () - D&C 63:9: “But, behold, faith cometh not by signs, but signs follow those that believe.” - Romans 10:17: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

Divergences reported: the epistle states what faith comes by; the revelation states what it does not come by, and supplies the reverse direction instead (“signs follow those that believe”, D&C 63:9) rather than naming an alternative source as the epistle does (“by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”, Romans 10:17). Registered as allusion rather than shared phrasing: the shared verbatim run is “faith cometh”, two words, and the two verses share a construction rather than a passage. That run stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus — these two — which is what makes the correspondence worth registering at all.

The ordering is then restated twice more, with the source of signs named: “signs come by faith, not by the will of men, nor as they please, but by the will of God” (D&C 63:10); “signs come by faith, unto mighty works, for without faith no man pleaseth God” (D&C 63:11). The same verse states the one case in which signs are given to those who lack faith, and it is not a concession: “unto such he showeth no signs, only in wrath unto their condemnation” (D&C 63:11).

The distinction the passage rests on

The section’s verdict does not fall on wanting signs but on what they are wanted for: “I, the Lord, am not pleased with those among you who have sought after signs and wonders for faith, and not for the good of men unto my glory” (D&C 63:12). Two purposes are named and one is condemned — signs sought for faith against signs given for the good of men. The phrase “sought after signs” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus, this one; “signs and wonders” stands at twenty-six, spread across all five frozen corpora.

The passage also notes that the practice is not new: “there are those among you who seek signs, and there have been such even from the beginning” (D&C 63:8) — a claim about the past stated without naming any instance. The Book of Mormon supplies figures who ask for signs in so many words, and both are treated on their own pages (Korihor, Sherem); because this verse names no one, the wiki does not connect them to it, and no register record is minted from the resemblance.

The section closes the passage by connecting sign-seeking to what it says the church actually contains: “Nevertheless, I give commandments, and many have turned away from my commandments and have not kept them” (D&C 63:13), and the verses that follow turn to conduct. The one that names looking upon a woman (D&C 63:16) is treated as a disclosure on The Law of the Church and is not restated here; that page’s ruling — that this verse is disclosed rather than paired — is carried forward unchanged.

Significance

The passage’s shape is worth stating plainly: it never forbids signs, and it never denies that they occur. It grants that the sign-seeker gets his sign (D&C 63:7), it affirms that signs accompany believers (D&C 63:9), and it locates the fault entirely in the sequence — evidence sought before belief rather than following it.

Whether that ordering is defensible, and how a reader outside the text would test it, are questions the passage does not take up. What the wiki reports is that the text states the ordering three times in five verses, in three different formulations, which is as clear an emphasis as this section gives to anything.

Key references

D&C 63:7 — the sign granted and its use withdrawn
D&C 63:8 — the claim that sign-seekers have been there from the beginning
D&C 63:9–11 — the ordering, stated three times
D&C 63:12 — the distinction: signs for faith against signs for the good of men

Korihor · Sherem · Gifts of the Spirit · Discerning the Spirits · The Day of Transfiguration · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants section 63, verses 7–13 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Romans 10 quoted alongside it.

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. One connection record is registered on this page, [textual] and submitted asserted_by: wiki. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by script at the time of writing on the stated basis.