Doctrine and Covenants

Week 17: The office of high priest; the United Firm

Sections 78, 80–83, 85, 92, 104

6 February 2025

Notes and slides will be posted after the class has been held.

• Max H. Parkin, “Joseph Smith and the United Firm: The Growth and Decline of the Church’s First Master Plan of Business and Finance, Ohio and Missouri, 1832–1834,” BYU Studies 46, no. 3 (2007): 5–66. Parkin sheds light on how the United Firm was organized and operated and the role it played in early Church history.

• David J. Whittaker, “Substituted Names in the Published Revelations of Joseph Smith,” BYU Studies 23, no. 1 (Winter 1983): 103–12. Whittaker explains Joseph Smith’s use of code names when he published the revelations related to the United Firm.

• D. Michael Quinn, “Jesse Gause: Joseph Smith’s Little-Known Counselor,” BYU Studies 23, no. 4 (Fall 1983): 487–93.

• Joseph Smith’s 27 November 1832 letter to William W. Phelps, an extract of which was canonized in 1876 as D&C 85.

• Bill Shepard, “‘To Set in Order the House of God’: The Search for the Elusive ‘One Mighty and Strong’,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 39, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 18–45. Shepard traces the various interpretations of and claimants to the “one mighty and strong” mentioned in D&C 85:7.

• First Presidency statement on the “One Mighty and Strong,” Improvement Era 10, no. 12 (October 1907): 929–43. This statement—written and signed by Presidents Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, and Anthon H. Lund—suggests two possible interpretations of D&C 85:7.