Title: The Martyrdom Announcement Tagline: The one section in the book written about two of its readers’ contemporaries in the past tense — an announcement, not a revelation — which closes an argument by turning down the corner of a page in another book.

Breadcrumbs / Related: Joseph Smith, Ether the Prophet, Moroni, Coming Forth of Scripture, The Three Witnesses

What this page maps. D&C 135 is not a revelation and does not present itself as one. It is a report about deaths that have already happened, written in an announcing plural — “we announce the martyrdom” (D&C 135:1) — with no divine first person anywhere in its seven verses. This page attributes it exactly that way: as a signed announcement whose claims are the announcers’ claims, following the same treatment given to the minutes-voice material elsewhere in this corpus. The announcers are not named in the verse text and are not named here. What is verse text, and therefore quotable and citable, includes the section’s own dates and figures — “on the 27th of June, 1844, about five o’clock p.m.” (D&C 135:1), “of from 150 to 200 persons” (D&C 135:1) — and its own quotation marks, which the section supplies around the words it reports as spoken (D&C 135:4). Whether the events happened as reported is an external, real-world question outside this wiki’s scope; what the text says is reported here exactly.

Account

§ What the announcement states about itself

The section states its own purpose in its first clause — “To seal the testimony of this book and the Book of Mormon” (D&C 135:1) — and its own witnesses in the second verse: “John Taylor and Willard Richards, two of the Twelve, were the only persons in the room at the time” (D&C 135:2). Both are the announcement’s claims about its own evidentiary standing, and both are reported here as such. The section names Carthage three times (D&C 135:1, 135:4, 135:7); “Carthage” stands at exactly four distinct frozen verses in the corpus, those three and D&C 124:88, where it is a place a man is sent to preach.

§ The claims made for the man, and the older sentence one of them is built on

D&C 135:3 is the announcement’s central paragraph, and it is a series of superlatives: that he “has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it”, that he “left a fame and name that cannot be slain”, that “He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people” (D&C 135:3). These are the announcers’ assessments, stated as such, and this page does not adopt them.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () — D&C 135:3: “In life they were not divided, and in death they were not separated!” — 2 Samuel 1:23: “Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.”

“they were not divided” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus: these. Both are laments for two men who died together, and both use the same pairing of life and death. The verbs are exchanged between the halves: the older verse puts “not divided” with death, this one with life, and supplies a second verb, “not separated”, for death.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () — D&C 135:3: “he has brought forth the Book of Mormon, which he translated by the gift and power of God” — Omni 1:20: “and he did interpret the engravings by the gift and power of God”

Seven words run identical. “the gift and power of God” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus, Omni 1:20 and this verse; the third paragraph of the Book of Mormon title page also carries it — plate-original header text, which corpus verse counts exclude by definition, and which is not used as a register endpoint — so the header hit is disclosed here separately rather than counted. The older verse applies the phrase to a king interpreting an engraved stone; this one to the translation of the record itself.

§ The page that was turned down

The announcement’s most unusual move is at D&C 135:4: it stops narrating, states that a man opened another book and marked a place — “he read the following paragraph, near the close of the twelfth chapter of Ether, in the Book of Mormon, and turned down the leaf upon it” — and then prints the paragraph as its own next verse. Three consecutive verses of the Book of Mormon are reproduced at D&C 135:5.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () — D&C 135:5: “And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord that he would give unto the Gentiles grace, that they might have charity.” — Ether 12:36: “And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord that he would give unto the Gentiles grace, that they might have charity.”

Word-for-word and mark-for-mark identical across the whole verse. The chapter is named in the preceding verse (D&C 135:4) and the book with it. Minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () — D&C 135:5: “And it came to pass that the Lord said unto me: If they have not charity it mattereth not unto thee, thou hast been faithful” — Ether 12:37: “And it came to pass that the Lord said unto me: If they have not charity it mattereth not unto thee, thou hast been faithful”

Identical through the run shown, and identical in words to the end of the older verse; the two divergences are commas — “wherefore, thy garments shall be made clean” (Ether 12:37) prints without the comma here, and “because thou hast seen thy weakness thou shalt be made strong” (Ether 12:37) gains one. Minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () — D&C 135:5: “yea, and also unto my brethren whom I love, until we shall meet before the judgment-seat of Christ, where all men shall know that my garments are not spotted with your blood.” — Ether 12:38: “yea, and also unto my brethren whom I love, until we shall meet before the judgment-seat of Christ, where all men shall know that my garments are not spotted with your blood.”

Identical across the run, which carries both verses to their end. Two divergences stand earlier in the sentence: the frozen announcement prints an omission mark where the older verse names its writer — “And now I … bid farewell unto the Gentiles” (D&C 135:5) against “And now I, Moroni, bid farewell unto the Gentiles” (Ether 12:38) — and the announcement’s semicolon after “Gentiles” is a comma in the older verse. The omission mark stands in the frozen text and is reproduced as it stands. Minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review.

The section then adds one sentence of its own, in its own voice, immediately after the quotation: “The testators are now dead, and their testament is in force” (D&C 135:5) — an application of the quoted passage that the passage does not make for itself.

[Textual] — paraphrase / allusion. () — D&C 135:4: “I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer’s morning” — Isaiah 53:7: “he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.”

“lamb to the slaughter” stands at exactly three distinct frozen verses in the corpus: Isaiah 53:7, Mosiah 14:7 — which quotes the prophecy — and this verse. The quoted fragment here sits inside the announcement’s own quotation marks, as words reported to have been spoken; the frozen text’s marks are reproduced. Divergences from the prophecy: “is brought as a lamb” becomes “am going like a lamb” (D&C 135:4), first person and volitional, and the prophecy’s silence clause has no counterpart — the speaker here continues talking, at length. A second wording of the same figure, with the animals doubled, stands at Jeremiah 11:19.

[Textual] — paraphrase / allusion. () — D&C 135:7: “and their innocent blood, with the innocent blood of all the martyrs under the altar that John saw, will cry unto the Lord of Hosts till he avenges that blood on the earth” — Revelation 6:9: “I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:”

The announcement names the seer and the place — “the martyrs under the altar that John saw” (D&C 135:7) — and states, as continuing, what the older vision states as done: those under the altar “cried with a loud voice… dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10). Divergences: the older text’s occupants are “the souls of them that were slain” (Revelation 6:9), not “martyrs”; the crying is past there and future here. Ruled at the 2026-08-10 editorial review: stays asserted_by: wiki — John is named, but the shared wording is reworked description, not a verbatim run.

Significance

This section is the clearest test in the corpus of a rule this wiki applies everywhere: the difference between what a text says and what a text is. What D&C 135 says includes the highest claims made for any person in the book. What it is — on its own presentation — is an announcement written by unnamed people after the fact, printed inside a book of revelations without claiming to be one. Holding both of those at once is the whole discipline: the claims are reported exactly and attributed to the announcers, and the wiki neither adopts them nor argues with them.

The section’s own strategy is documentary, and it is worth naming because it is the same strategy the letters two sections earlier use. It does not argue that the deaths sealed the testimony; it prints the paragraph the dead man was reading, and lets the paragraph’s own words — “my garments are not spotted with your blood” (Ether 12:38) — carry the argument. A reader can open the older book at the named chapter and check the paragraph, which is precisely what the announcement invites.

Key references

• D&C 135:1–2 — the announcement, its stated purpose, and its witnesses
• D&C 135:3 — the claims made for the two men
• D&C 135:4–5 — the chapter named, the paragraph printed, the application added
• D&C 135:6–7 — the ages; the innocent blood; the close
• Ether 12:36–38 — the paragraph the announcement prints

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 135 and 124 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from Ether 12, Omni 1, 2 Samuel 1, Isaiah 53, and Revelation 6. Mosiah 14, Jeremiah 11, and the Book of Mormon title page are cited inside disclosures rather than registered as connections.

Seven connection records are registered here, all [textual]. Three — the Ether quotations the announcement cites by book and chapter — were minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review; the fourth candidate (the martyrs under the altar) stays asserted_by: wiki, John being named but the shared wording reworked rather than verbatim. Distribution figures are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.