The Word Sent to the Shakers

A revelation addressed at a named group answers them point by point — on marriage, on meat, on the form the returning Christ will take — and hands its messengers a script it attributes to Peter.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. D&C 49 is a first-person divine address that names both its messengers and its audience inside its verse text (D&C 49:1); this page names them on that basis and imports nothing from the excluded section headnotes. The revelation’s occasion, date, and place are outside this wiki’s source text, and the wiki describes no group’s actual beliefs — only what the revelation says about them.

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

Named messengers, named audience

The opening verse names three men and the group they are sent to: “Hearken unto my word, my servants Sidney, and Parley, and Leman; for behold, verily I say unto you, that I give unto you a commandment that you shall go and preach my gospel which ye have received, even as ye have received it, unto the Shakers” (D&C 49:1). Two are then re-sent by name and the third given a different instruction: “I send you, my servants Sidney and Parley, to preach the gospel unto them” (D&C 49:3); “my servant Leman shall be ordained unto this work, that he may reason with them, not according to that which he has received of them, but according to that which shall be taught him by you my servants” (D&C 49:4). The revelation’s assessment of the audience is stated in one verse and is partial rather than flat: “they desire to know the truth in part, but not all, for they are not right before me and must needs repent” (D&C 49:2).

The script, attributed to a named apostle

The revelation tells the messengers what to say and attributes the words to a named person before quoting them: “say unto them, like unto mine apostle of old, whose name was Peter” (D&C 49:11). Three verses of instruction follow.

[Textual] — near-verbatim quotation. () - D&C 49:13: “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, according to the holy commandment, for the remission of sins” - Acts 2:38: “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins”

The account names Peter as the speaker of these words, and the revelation names Peter as the person whose manner it is following — so both ends carry the same attribution independently. Divergences: the account’s “every one of you” is dropped, and the revelation interposes “according to the holy commandment” between the name and the remission clause. This record was minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 49:14: “And whoso doeth this shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, by the laying on of the hands of the elders of the church.” - Acts 2:38: “and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”

The revelation adds the means, which the account’s verse does not state at this point: “by the laying on of the hands of the elders of the church” (D&C 49:14). Minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review.

Marriage and meat, in the words of a letter

Two consecutive prohibitions of the revelation answer two items that stand side by side in one verse of a letter to Timothy.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 49:15: “that whoso forbiddeth to marry is not ordained of God, for marriage is ordained of God unto man” - 1 Timothy 4:3: “Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving”

The letter names both practices in one clause as marks of a departure it is warning against; the revelation splits them across two verses and turns each into a test of ordination. The second half of the letter’s clause returns three verses later, with the polarity of the verb reversed: “whoso forbiddeth to abstain from meats, that man should not eat the same, is not ordained of God” (D&C 49:18) — the letter warns against those commanding abstinence, the revelation against those forbidding it. That is a real difference in what is being prohibited, and this page reports it rather than smoothing it.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () - D&C 49:16: “Wherefore, it is lawful that he should have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh” - Matthew 19:5: “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh”

The six-word run “they twain shall be one flesh” stands at exactly three frozen verses in the corpus: these two and Mark 10:8. The phrase “one flesh” alone stands at ten: Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5, Matthew 19:6, Mark 10:8, 1 Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians 5:31, Moses 3:24, Abraham 5:18, Mosiah 23:7, and D&C 49:16. The revelation attaches a numeral none of the others carries — “one wife” (D&C 49:16) — and gives a reason likewise unique to it: “all this that the earth might answer the end of its creation” (D&C 49:16).

The form of the coming, and its signs

The revelation states a negative about the returning Christ that has no parallel in the frozen corpus: “the Son of Man cometh not in the form of a woman, neither of a man traveling on the earth” (D&C 49:22). It states the timing as unknown even to the speaker’s messengers — “but the hour and the day no man knoweth, neither the angels in heaven, nor shall they know until he comes” (D&C 49:7) — and then lists signs in a single long verse built from three prophecies.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 49:23: “looking forth for the heavens to be shaken, and the earth to tremble and to reel to and fro as a drunken man” - Isaiah 24:20: “The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage”

“a drunken man” for “a drunkard,” and the prophecy’s second comparison (“removed like a cottage”) has no counterpart in the revelation. “reel to and fro” stands at exactly five frozen verses in the corpus: D&C 45:48, D&C 49:23, D&C 88:87, Isaiah 24:20, and Psalms 107:27. The carrier inside this cluster reads “the earth shall tremble and reel to and fro as a drunken man” (D&C 88:87), matching this revelation’s “drunken man” rather than the prophecy’s “drunkard”.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 49:23: “and for the valleys to be exalted, and for the mountains to be made low, and for the rough places to become smooth” - Isaiah 40:4: “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain”

Three of the prophecy’s four clauses recur in order, with the nouns pluralised. The revelation reads “smooth” where the prophecy reads “plain,” and drops the prophecy’s crooked-made-straight clause entirely.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 49:24: “But before the great day of the Lord shall come, Jacob shall flourish in the wilderness, and the Lamanites shall blossom as the rose.” - Isaiah 35:1: “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.”

The prophecy makes a place blossom; the revelation makes a people blossom and keeps the wilderness in the sentence as the location of a different verb (“Jacob shall flourish in the wilderness” — D&C 49:24). The four-word run stands at exactly these two frozen verses in the corpus.

[Textual] — near-verbatim quotation. () - D&C 49:26: “repent of all your sins; ask and ye shall receive; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” - 3 Nephi 14:7: “Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

The revelation compresses the sermon’s three-part formula to two parts and alters the first: “ask and ye shall receive” (D&C 49:26) for “Ask, and it shall be given unto you” (3 Nephi 14:7), with the seek-and-find clause dropped. The same formula stands at Matthew 7:7 in the Galilean rendering; the pairing above is with the Bountiful rendering, and the other carrier is disclosed rather than ranked.

Significance

What makes the section unusual in this cluster is that it is answering. Most of the doctrinal revelations state a thing; this one takes a named group’s positions in turn — a restriction on marriage, a restriction on meat, an expectation about the form of Christ’s return — and rules on each, having first said the group “desire to know the truth in part, but not all” (D&C 49:2). The wiki reports what the revelation says the positions are and does not assert, from its own knowledge, what any group outside the text actually held; that is an external, real-world question of the same kind the wiki declines elsewhere. What can be checked here is internal and exact: the revelation’s script for its messengers is attributed to a named apostle at D&C 49:11 and does track that apostle’s recorded words, with the divergences tabled above.

Key references

D&C 49:1–4 — the three named messengers; the named audience; the assessment
D&C 49:11–14 — the script attributed to Peter
D&C 49:15–21 — marriage, meat, and the rebuke of possession above another
D&C 49:22–24 — the form of the coming; the signs
Acts 2:38 — the apostle’s recorded words
1 Timothy 4:3, Matthew 19:5 — the letter’s paired prohibitions; “they twain shall be one flesh”
Isaiah 24:20, Isaiah 35:1, Isaiah 40:4 — the three prophecies behind the signs verse

Baptism · Chastity and Marriage · The Missionary Charge · Servants Named in the Calls · Doctrine of Christ · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants section 49 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from Acts 2, 1 Timothy 4, Matthew 19, Isaiah 24, Isaiah 35, Isaiah 40, and 3 Nephi 14. The further carriers of “one flesh” and Matthew 7:7 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. Eight connection records are registered here, all [textual]. Two — the script the revelation attributes to a named apostle — were minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review; the other six are asserted_by: wiki. Distribution figures are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.