The White Stone

A short section answers questions rather than delivering a discourse — what the Savior will look like, whose time is whose, where angels live — and in the middle of the answers it cites a verse of the Apocalypse by chapter and verse and then rewrites its closing clause.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. D&C 130 is recorded in a first-person human voice — “I answer, Yes.” (D&C 130:5), “I prophesy, in the name of the Lord God” (D&C 130:12) — and the verse text does not name that speaker. This page names no speaker for it. One verse states its own date inside the verse text and is quoted as verse text (D&C 130:13). The occasion and place of the recording are outside this wiki’s source text. Verses 18–23 of this section are hosted on Light and Truth and are not re-treated here; this page hosts verses 1–17.

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

The form: answers, not a discourse

These verses are unusual in the collection for their register. One of them states the form outright, opening with a question and then supplying the reply as a separate sentence: “In answer to the question—Is not the reckoning of God’s time, angel’s time, prophet’s time, and man’s time, according to the planet on which they reside?” (D&C 130:4), answered “I answer, Yes.” (D&C 130:5). Another is a flat correction of how a named verse has been read (D&C 130:3). Two more are first-person reports of what a voice said on a stated occasion (D&C 130:13, 130:14–15). The section is closer in kind to D&C 77, the question-and-answer section on the Apocalypse, than to the first-person divine addresses that make up most of the book.

Seeing him as he is

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 130:1: “When the Savior shall appear we shall see him as he is. We shall see that he is a man like ourselves.” - 1 John 3:2: “but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

Seven consecutive words match without variation — “we shall see him as he is” (D&C 130:1, 1 John 3:2). The run stands at exactly three distinct frozen verses in the corpus: 1 John 3:2, Moroni 7:48, and D&C 130:1. The two older carriers state the sentence the same way round — the seeing is the ground of a likeness predicated of us: “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2), “that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (Moroni 7:48). This verse keeps the clause and reverses which side the likeness is asserted of: what is seen is “that he is a man like ourselves” (D&C 130:1). That inversion is a textual fact about the three verses; what it means is a separate question this page does not settle. The phrase “a man like ourselves” stands at exactly one frozen verse in the corpus, this one.

The next verse extends the same claim from body to company, and coins a term for it: “And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.” (D&C 130:2). “sociality” stands at exactly one frozen verse in the corpus, this one. “eternal glory” stands at three — this verse, 2 Timothy 2:10, and 1 Peter 5:10 — and in both older carriers the glory is something men are called to or obtain, not something a described state is “coupled with”.

A verse named, and a reading of it refused

[Textual] — paraphrase. () - D&C 130:3: “John 14:23—The appearing of the Father and the Son, in that verse, is a personal appearance; and the idea that the Father and the Son dwell in a man’s heart is an old sectarian notion, and is false.” - John 14:23: “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”

This is the one place in the section that names a source, and it names it exactly: book, chapter, and verse, printed as the first three characters of the sentence. What follows is not a quotation of that verse but a ruling on how to read it — the coming and abiding of the two persons is “a personal appearance” and not an indwelling of the heart (D&C 130:3). The element the citation points at is identifiable and singular: the gospel verse’s own clause “we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (John 14:23), which stands at exactly one frozen verse in the corpus. The wiki reports the citation and the reading as textual facts of this verse. Whether the reading is right is a question about the gospel verse that this page does not answer for it, and the words this verse calls “an old sectarian notion” (D&C 130:3) name no party the frozen text identifies.

Whose time, and where angels live

The answer given at D&C 130:5 attaches a limit to the affirmative: “But there are no angels who minister to this earth but those who do belong or have belonged to it.” (D&C 130:5). Two verses then state where angels are not and where they are: “The angels do not reside on a planet like this earth;” (D&C 130:6); “But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord.” (D&C 130:7).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 130:7: “But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future” - Revelation 15:2: “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.”

“sea of glass” stands at exactly four distinct frozen verses in the corpus: Revelation 4:6, Revelation 15:2, D&C 77:1, and D&C 130:7. Of the two visionary carriers only Revelation 15:2 joins the sea to fire, which is the pairing this verse carries, and it is paired here for that reason; the other reads “a sea of glass like unto crystal” (Revelation 4:6). Divergences: the vision sees the sea and names who stands on it, and this verse makes it the material of “a globe” and names who resides there (D&C 130:7); the vision’s “mingled with fire” — a phrase standing at exactly one frozen verse in the corpus — reads simply “and fire” here. The corpus’s fourth carrier supplies a gloss neither vision does, and it is a different one from this verse’s: asked what the sea of glass is, it answers “It is the earth, in its sanctified, immortal, and eternal state.” (D&C 77:1), which is treated on The Revelation of John Explained. Two glosses of one figure stand in the same book; both are reported, neither is ranked.

One term at three scales

Three consecutive verses apply a single term to three different things, in ascending order of narrowness. To a place: “The place where God resides is a great Urim and Thummim.” (D&C 130:8). To a planet: “This earth, in its sanctified and immortal state, will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon” (D&C 130:9), the same verse closing “and this earth will be Christ’s.” (D&C 130:9). And then to an object given to one person, at which point the section reaches for the Apocalypse.

“Urim and Thummim” stands at thirteen distinct frozen verses in the corpus, three of them here. The phrase “made like unto crystal” (D&C 130:9) shares its last three words with the corpus’s other sea-of-glass verse, “a sea of glass like unto crystal” (Revelation 4:6) — “like unto crystal” stands at exactly those two frozen verses — so the figure the previous verse applied to the dwelling of angels is applied here to the earth, in the vision’s other wording.

[Textual] — paraphrase. () - D&C 130:10: “Then the white stone mentioned in Revelation 2:17, will become a Urim and Thummim to each individual who receives one, whereby things pertaining to a higher order of kingdoms will be made known;” - Revelation 2:17: “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”

The verse names its source by book, chapter, and verse at the point of use, and names the element it is taking from it. What it then does with the element is not in the vision: the stone “will become a Urim and Thummim to each individual who receives one” (D&C 130:10), a term the vision’s verse does not carry and a function it does not describe. “white stone” stands at exactly three distinct frozen verses in the corpus: Revelation 2:17, D&C 130:10, and D&C 130:11. The vision attaches the gift to overcoming and pairs it with “the hidden manna” — a phrase standing at exactly one frozen verse in the corpus, that one — where this verse attaches it to a kingdom and drops the manna entirely.

[Textual] — near-verbatim quotation. () - D&C 130:11: “And a white stone is given to each of those who come into the celestial kingdom, whereon is a new name written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it. The new name is the key word.” - Revelation 2:17: “and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”

Thirteen consecutive words align, and the whole divergence inside them is one word: the vision’s “saving” reads “save” (D&C 130:11). Counted as printed the run breaks there, the longest unbroken stretch being eight words, “a new name written, which no man knoweth” (D&C 130:11, Revelation 2:17). “a new name written” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus, these two. The forms sort the corpus cleanly: “no man knoweth saving” stands at exactly one frozen verse, Revelation 2:17; “no man knoweth save” at four — 3 Nephi 8:16, D&C 6:24, D&C 15:3, D&C 16:3 — plus this verse, none of which is about a stone. Outside the shared run the two verses diverge on who receives: the vision gives the stone to “him that overcometh” (Revelation 2:17), this verse “to each of those who come into the celestial kingdom” (D&C 130:11). And this verse adds a sentence with no counterpart anywhere in the corpus: “The new name is the key word.” (D&C 130:11) — “the key word” stands at exactly one frozen verse, this one. This is the second of two records on the same vision verse; the preceding one carries the naming, this one the wording.

Two prophecies, and one of them limited by its own speaker

The section’s last six verses are first-person prophetic reports, and their most reportable feature is how carefully the second is fenced.

The first is stated flatly and located: “I prophesy, in the name of the Lord God, that the commencement of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in South Carolina.” (D&C 130:12), with a cause offered as probable rather than certain and the occasion dated inside the verse: “It may probably arise through the slave question. This a voice declared to me, while I was praying earnestly on the subject, December 25th, 1832.” (D&C 130:13). “South Carolina” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus, this one and D&C 87:1, which is treated on The Prophecy on Wars; the relation between the two verses belongs to that page and is cited here, not registered.

The second is reported as speech received and then explicitly left undecided. The words are given: “Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter.” (D&C 130:15). Then the recording voice states its own inability to read them: “I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millennium or to some previous appearing, or whether I should die and thus see his face.” (D&C 130:16), and offers a belief rather than a prophecy: “I believe the coming of the Son of Man will not be any sooner than that time.” (D&C 130:17).

That is the only place in the section where a stated verb of certainty gives way to a stated verb of opinion, and the text marks the change itself: “I prophesy” at D&C 130:12 against “I believe” at D&C 130:17. The words “trouble me no more” stand at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus, this one and D&C 59:22.

Significance

Two things are worth stating plainly about these seventeen verses.

The first is the register. Most of the Doctrine and Covenants speaks in a first-person divine voice; this material answers questions, corrects a reading, and reports what a voice said, in a human first person that at one point declares itself unable to interpret what it received (D&C 130:16). A reader who arrives here from the sections that open in the divine first person — as at “Verily, thus saith the Lord” (D&C 86:1) — meets a different kind of text, and the wiki reports the difference rather than smoothing it.

The second is what happens at D&C 130:10–11. The section names a verse of the Apocalypse, takes its stone, and reproduces ten of its words with one substitution — and then adds a function (“a Urim and Thummim”, D&C 130:10) and a gloss (“The new name is the key word.”, D&C 130:11) that the named verse does not contain. Both halves of that are checkable, and both are reported: the borrowing is exact, and the extension is not in the source. What the extension means, and by what authority it is made, are questions this page leaves with the reader.

Key references

D&C 130:1–2 — seeing him as he is; sociality coupled with eternal glory
D&C 130:3 — a verse of John named, and a reading of it refused
D&C 130:4–7 — the reckoning of time; where angels reside; the globe like a sea of glass
D&C 130:8–11 — the term applied to a place, a planet, and a stone; the new name
D&C 130:12–17 — the two prophecies, and the limit the second is given
Revelation 2:17, John 14:23, 1 John 3:2, Revelation 15:2 — the passages this section names or tracks
D&C 130:18–23 — the remainder of the section, hosted on Light and Truth

Light and Truth · Degrees of Glory · The Revelation of John Explained · The Prophecy on Wars · The Resurrection · The Order of Revelation · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants section 130, verses 1–17 (verse text only; headnotes excluded); verses 18–23 belong to Light and Truth. Cross-references quoted from Revelation 2, Revelation 15, John 14, and 1 John 3. Revelation 4, Moroni 7, 2 Timothy 2, 1 Peter 5, 3 Nephi 8, D&C 6, D&C 15, D&C 16, D&C 59, D&C 77, and D&C 87 are cited inside disclosures 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. Five connection records are registered here, all [textual]. Distribution figures are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.