The Prophecy on Wars

Eight verses that name a place on a map and a nation by its own name — and then close on an instruction that has nothing to do with either.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. D&C 87 is eight verses and opens with an attribution inside its own verse text — “Verily, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass” (D&C 87:1). It names no recipient, and this page names none. The occasion, date and place of the revelation are outside this wiki’s source text.

Out of scope, and this section is where the line matters most. This section names entities in the world outside the text: a rebellion of South Carolina, the Southern States and the Northern States, and Great Britain (D&C 87:1; 87:3). Whether any historical war corresponds to what these verses describe is an external, real-world question outside this wiki’s scope, in both directions — the wiki neither claims fulfilment nor argues against it. What follows is limited and exact: what the eight verses say, in what order, and which of their phrases stand elsewhere in the frozen corpus.

Standing disclosure — KJV-overlap material. This page reports verbal correspondence with the King James text as textual fact, including where the correspondence follows the KJV’s English translation. What that correspondence implies about the origin of the Doctrine and Covenants text — in any direction — is an external question outside this wiki’s scope.

Account

What the eight verses say

The section moves outward in a single widening motion, and the motion is the most notable thing about its structure. It begins at a named place — “beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina” (D&C 87:1) — and each subsequent verse enlarges the field. War is “poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place” (D&C 87:2). The named states divide and call on other nations, “and then war shall be poured out upon all nations” (D&C 87:3). Two further groups rise, described but not named as nations at all — “slaves shall rise up against their masters” (D&C 87:4) and “the remnants who are left of the land will marshal themselves” (D&C 87:5). Then the field becomes the earth itself, and the agents stop being armies: “with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God” (D&C 87:6).

The verse that follows gives the sequence a terminus stated as a purpose, and the purpose is a cessation rather than a victory: “That the cry of the saints, and of the blood of the saints, shall cease to come up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, from the earth, to be avenged of their enemies.” (D&C 87:7).

The instruction

The last verse turns from the prophecy to its hearers and gives one instruction, and it is the only imperative in the section.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 87:8: “Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly, saith the Lord. Amen.” - D&C 45:32: “But my disciples shall stand in holy places, and shall not be moved; but among the wicked, men shall lift up their voices and curse God and die.”

An intra-collection record: both verses are in the Doctrine and Covenants, and the pairing puts the higher section first. What is a description in the earlier section — the disciples shall stand — becomes a command in this one. “holy places” stands at nine distinct frozen verses in the corpus: Psalms 68:35, Ezekiel 7:24, Ezekiel 21:2, Hebrews 9:24, D&C 45:32, D&C 87:8, D&C 101:22, D&C 101:64, and D&C 124:39. The narrower “in holy places” stands at exactly three, all of them in this collection — D&C 45:32, D&C 87:8, and D&C 101:22 — the whole carrier set of the phrase; the collection’s other two carriers of the term read “upon holy places” (D&C 101:64) and “most holy places” (D&C 124:39), each standing at one frozen verse, neither placing anyone standing in one. Of the three pairings the carrier set allows, this one is registered because these two verses share two elements and no other pair shares more than one: the standing in holy places, and the not-moved clause, which D&C 101:22 does not carry. The run “stand in holy places” stands at exactly two, D&C 45:32 and D&C 101:22 — a distribution already reported on The Gathering to Zion, which treats that pair as a term-fact rather than a connection; that pair and the pair D&C 87:8 with D&C 101:22 are disclosed here, not registered. What this record registers is the imperative form, “stand ye in holy places” (D&C 87:8), which stands at one frozen verse in the corpus.

Nowhere does the section say what a holy place is or where one is. That absence is a fact about this section, not an omission of this page.

The borrowed language

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 87:6: “until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations;” - Jeremiah 30:11: “though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee”

“full end of all nations” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus, these two (D&C 87:6 and Jeremiah 30:11). The divergence is not verbal but logical, and it is worth stating exactly: the prophecy’s sentence exists to draw a contrast — a full end of all nations, but expressly not of Jacob — and the revelation carries the phrase with no such exception attached. A near carrier in the same prophetic book reads “a full end of all the nations” (Jeremiah 46:28) and, again, makes the same exception; it is disclosed here and not registered.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () - D&C 87:6: “until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations” - Isaiah 10:22: “yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness.”

“consumption decreed” stands at exactly three distinct frozen verses in the corpus: Isaiah 10:22, its rendering in the record at 2 Nephi 20:22, and D&C 87:6. The two-word term is identical in all three. What the term is said to do differs sharply between the prophecy and the revelation: in the prophecy it “shall overflow with righteousness” (Isaiah 10:22) and stands beside a promise that a remnant shall return; in the revelation it makes a full end of nations and stands beside no remnant at all.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 87:7: “shall cease to come up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, from the earth, to be avenged of their enemies.” - James 5:4: “and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.”

Seven consecutive words match as printed; counted case-insensitively and with the two verses’ divergent trailing marks set aside — the letter prints “sabaoth” lower-case — the shared run is eight words, “into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth”. “Lord of Sabaoth” stands at six distinct frozen verses in the corpus, counted case-insensitively: Romans 9:29, James 5:4, D&C 87:7, D&C 88:2, D&C 95:7, and D&C 98:2; the count folds a case difference the page discloses here. Of those six, only two attach cries entering the ears to the title, and they are the two paired above. The divergence of direction is exact and is the point of the pairing: in the letter the cries have entered, and in the revelation the aim is that they shall cease to come up.

Significance

The section is the shortest sustained prophecy in this cluster and the only one that names a place a map could find. That fact sets the boundary this page has already drawn: the correspondence of the text to any actual war is out of scope, and the wiki maps the text’s internal world.

What can be said inside that boundary is about shape. The section widens continuously — one state, then two blocs, then other nations, then groups not described as nations, then the earth and its inhabitants under famine, plague, earthquake and lightning (D&C 87:1–6). And at the widest point it stops describing and gives a single instruction that mentions no nation, no war, and no place that can be located: stand in holy places, and be not moved (D&C 87:8). The section that begins with the most locatable content in the cluster ends with the least locatable, and the reader is left holding an instruction whose terms the section never defines.

Key references

D&C 87:1–3 — the named place and nations; war poured out
D&C 87:4–5 — the two groups that rise
D&C 87:6–7 — the consumption decreed; the cry of the saints
D&C 87:8 — the instruction
Isaiah 10:22, Jeremiah 30:11, James 5:4 — the passages the section’s language tracks
D&C 45:32 — the same standing, described rather than commanded

The Signs of the Coming · The Voice of Warning · The Day of the Lord · The Gathering to Zion · Isaiah · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants section 87 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from Isaiah 10, Jeremiah 30, James 5, and D&C 45. Jeremiah 46:28, 2 Nephi 20:22, Romans 9:29, and D&C 88:2 / 95:7 / 98:2 / 101:22 / 101:64 / 124:39, together with Psalms 68:35, Ezekiel 7:24, Ezekiel 21:2 and Hebrews 9:24, are cited inside disclosures and censuses rather than registered as connections of this page.

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. Four connection records are registered here, all [textual] and all asserted_by: wiki; one is intra-collection, joining this section to D&C 45. External, real-world questions about any war this section describes are out of scope. Distribution figures are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.