Doctrine and Covenants

Week 30: Joseph Smith’s vision of the celestial kingdom; Joseph F. Smith’s vision of the spirit world

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

Lesson 30 notes

Lesson 30 slideshow (on‑screen version)

Lesson 30 slideshow (printable version)

Joseph Smith, Journal, 21 January 1836 (pp. 136–37); recorded by Warren Parrish. Read the original entry in Joseph’s journal that was canonized in 1976 and became Doctrine and Covenants Section 137 in 1981.
Joseph F. Smith, “Status of Children in the Resurrection,” Improvement Era 21, no. 7 (May 1918): 567–74. In this address given in the Salt Lake Temple (given only eight months before his vision in D&C 138), President Smith taught about the status of the spirits of children who die and how they will be resurrected.
George S. Tate, “‘The Great World of the Spirits of the Dead’: Death, the Great War, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic as Context for Doctrine and Covenants 138,” BYU Studies 46, no. 1 (2007): 4–40. Tate gives the historical background and context in which Joseph F. Smith received his vision of the redemption of the dead.
Mary Jane Woodger, “From Obscurity to Scripture: Joseph F. Smith’s Vision of the Redemption of the Dead,” in You Shall Have My Word: Exploring the Text of the Doctrine and Covenants, ed. Scott C. Esplin, Richard O. Cowan, and Rachel Cope (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center and Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012), 234–54.