The Book of the Law of God

A revelation about record-keeping that turns, without warning, into a prophecy about a man it does not name — and then closes by citing chapter and verse of an Old Testament register to explain what happens to those left out of one.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. The section opens in a third-person register of duties and shifts at verse 6 to a quoted voice; the page marks the shift rather than smoothing it. Dates, places, and occasions are not in this wiki’s source text and are not stated. The section prophesies of a man it does not name, and this page does not name him.

Account

A clerk, and what the record is for

The section opens as a job description: “It is the duty of the Lord’s clerk, whom he has appointed, to keep a history, and a general church record of all things that transpire in Zion, and of all those who consecrate properties, and receive inheritances legally from the bishop” (D&C 85:1). What is recorded goes beyond transactions — “also their manner of life, their faith, and works; and also of the apostates who apostatize after receiving their inheritances” (D&C 85:2).

The next three verses state the register’s exclusions, and they are unusually complete. Those who do not receive their inheritance by consecration should not “have their names enrolled with the people of God” (D&C 85:3); “Neither is their genealogy to be kept, or to be had where it may be found on any of the records or history of the church.” (D&C 85:4); and the exclusion extends across generations: “Their names shall not be found, neither the names of the fathers, nor the names of the children written in the book of the law of God” (D&C 85:5).

The phrase “book of the law of God” stands at four distinct frozen verses in the corpus — two of them in this section (D&C 85:5, 85:7), and two in the Old Testament: Joshua 24:26, “And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God”, and Nehemiah 8:18, “he read in the book of the law of God”. Neither of those verses stands nearer to the revelation than the other — in both the book is read from or written in, not enrolled in — so they are disclosed here rather than paired as a connection.

The voice changes, and a prophecy follows

At verse 6 the section stops describing duties and begins quoting: “Yea, thus saith the still small voice, which whispereth through and pierceth all things, and often times it maketh my bones to quake while it maketh manifest, saying:” (D&C 85:6). Everything after the colon is presented as the quoted voice’s words, and this page keeps that frame.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 85:6: “Yea, thus saith the still small voice, which whispereth through and pierceth all things, and often times it maketh my bones to quake while it maketh manifest, saying:” - 1 Kings 19:12: “And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.”

Divergences reported: the article — “the still small voice” in the revelation against “a still small voice” in the narrative — and, more substantively, the grammatical role. In the narrative the voice is the last item in a sequence of phenomena and does nothing in its own verse; in the revelation it is the subject of four verbs (“whispereth”, “pierceth”, “maketh… quake”, “maketh manifest”, D&C 85:6) and is the speaker of everything that follows. The run “still small voice” stands at three distinct frozen verses in the corpus: these two and 1 Nephi 17:45, “he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling” — disclosed, not paired, because the narrative verse is the one in which the voice is named as a thing rather than as a mode of speaking.

The quoted voice then prophesies of two unnamed men in consecutive verses, and the wiki reports both without supplying identities the text withholds. The first: “I, the Lord God, will send one mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words… to set in order the house of God, and to arrange by lot the inheritances of the saints whose names are found… enrolled in the book of the law of God” (D&C 85:7). The phrase “one mighty and strong” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus — this one. The second: “that man, who was called of God and appointed, that putteth forth his hand to steady the ark of God, shall fall by the shaft of death, like as a tree that is smitten by the vivid shaft of lightning” (D&C 85:8).

Neither man is named, and the section itself marks the limits of the speaker’s claim in the next-but-one verse: “These things I say not of myself; therefore, as the Lord speaketh, he will also fulfil.” (D&C 85:10). Who either figure is, and whether either prophecy has been fulfilled, are external questions outside this wiki’s scope.

The consequence, and the citation

The consequence of exclusion is stated in words the corpus uses often — those not “found written in the book of remembrance… shall be cut asunder, and their portion shall be appointed them among unbelievers, where are wailing and gnashing of teeth” (D&C 85:9). The phrase “wailing and gnashing of teeth” stands at eight distinct frozen verses in the corpus — Alma 40:13, D&C 19:5, D&C 85:9, D&C 101:91, D&C 133:73, Matthew 13:42, Matthew 13:50, and Moses 1:22 — and no one of them stands nearer to this verse than the rest; it is disclosed rather than paired.

The section then closes on something rare in this corpus: a citation given by book, chapter, and verse number.

[Textual] — paraphrase / allusion. () - D&C 85:12: “Therefore, it shall be done unto them as unto the children of the priest, as will be found recorded in the second chapter and sixty-first and second verses of Ezra.” - Ezra 2:62: “These sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but they were not found: therefore were they, as polluted, put from the priesthood.”

The revelation cites rather than quotes: it names the book, the chapter, and both verses, and states that the same thing will be done to those it has excluded, without reproducing any of the cited words. What the cited verses contain is a register and a failure to appear in it — the first names three priestly families (Ezra 2:61) and the second states the outcome, “they were not found: therefore were they, as polluted, put from the priesthood” (Ezra 2:62). Registered as allusion because there is no shared verbatim run at all; what the two texts share is a procedure and an outcome, and the connection is asserted by the revelation itself rather than inferred by the wiki. Because the revelation names its source by book, chapter, and verse, this record was minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review. The record pairs verse 62 because that is the verse stating the consequence the revelation invokes; Ezra 2:61, also named in the citation, is registered as its own source-minted pair at the same merge under the enumeration-carry ruling.

[Textual] — paraphrase / allusion. () The citation enumerates two verses — “recorded in the second chapter and sixty-first and second verses of Ezra” (D&C 85:12) — and the enumeration’s first verse carries its own record: - Ezra 2:61: “And of the children of the priests: the children of Habaiah, the children of Koz, the children of Barzillai; which took a wife of the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name:”

The sentence the revelation points at runs across both verses: the children of the priests named here are the ones who “sought their register” in the verse that follows (Ezra 2:62). The record was minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review.

Significance

The section’s subject is a list, and the list is treated as consequential in a way a modern reader may not expect: to be absent from it is not a clerical matter but the substance of the penalty, extended to fathers and children and reaching to “the day of vengeance and burning” (D&C 85:3). Both the reward and the punishment in the section’s second half are stated in terms of whether a name is found written (D&C 85:7, 85:9, 85:11).

The section is also the clearest instance in this cluster of a feature worth naming: the corpus’s habit of grounding a present ruling in a numbered verse of an older register rather than in an argument. The citation at verse 12 does the work a reason would otherwise do.

Key references

D&C 85:1–2 — the clerk’s duty, and what the record includes
D&C 85:3–5 — the exclusions, extended to fathers and children
D&C 85:6 — the shift to a quoted voice
D&C 85:7–8 — one mighty and strong; the man who steadies the ark
D&C 85:9–11 — the consequence, and the disclaimer at verse 10
D&C 85:12 — the citation of Ezra by chapter and verse

Consecration and Stewardship · The Law of Tithing · The Order of the Church · Record Transmission & Plates · The Gathering to Zion · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants section 85 throughout (verse text only; headnotes excluded). 1 Kings 19 and Ezra 2 quoted alongside it; Joshua 24, Nehemiah 8, and 1 Nephi 17 quoted inside 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. Three connection records are registered on this page, all [textual]. The Ezra citation was minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review, its enumerated companion verse is registered as its own source-minted pair, and the third record carries 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.