Episode 119: D&C 22 – Section 38
God commands Joseph to bring his people from Fayette, NY to Ohio, despite it being around 20F/-6C and windy outside. Marie and Bryce have an attack of empathy after Joseph’s followers are commanded to leave all their worldly possessions behind so they can live as sharecroppers on a rich guys’ land. God decides to withhold anything good from his followers just in case they might one day become prideful and need to be exterminated. 14 drinks, or about 2 beers, which frankly, isn’t nearly enough for this sobfest.
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My Book of Mormon 
August 1, 2016 at 12:37 am
Ah shucks, Marie. That’s cool, you can be my fan-girl, if I can be your fan-boy? And Bryce is pretty OK, too, I guess. 🙂
The question of how to handle spoilers is kind of tough with the D&C. This isn’t like the Book of Mormon, where practically everything we know about the story is right there in the book (except the Brother of Jared’s name, but that’s all I can think of), and we got around to it all in good time. The D&C needs its historical context to be appreciated, but some of the most interesting details are nowhere to be read within the scriptural covers.
It’s not really much of a spoiler to say that years later Joseph Smith would declare himself a king (albeit in secret), because we won’t get to read about that later, and it just became relevant now, so why not mention it? But the death of Joseph Smith will certainly be touched on within the D&C, so yeah, the juicy details can wait, for anyone who doesn’t want to get spoiled.
Another spoiler (that’s not really a spoiler) is that, no, Ohio will not be designated as Zion. Even though this section heavily implies that Ohio will be the promised land, it does not actually state that’s the case. But Zion will be specifically identified in an upcoming section, and surprise, it won’t be in Utah, either. Way to predict the future, God!
Verses 32-33 hint at an endowment of power from on high that will be given to the saints in Ohio, after which missionaries will be sent out (not that they weren’t being sent out already, but whatever.) Whether Joseph (or Sidney) meant such a thing at the time, this would later be read as a reference to the Kirtland Temple, which we’ll certainly hear more about. There could be other sections later on that talk about this idea, but this sounds like the main scriptural basis for the requirement that all Mormon missionaries experience the temple “endowment” ceremony before they’re sent out to their mission fields. The temple ceremony is supposed to endow them with the spiritual power they need to be missionaries.
Probably the only other verse in this section that gets any play in the current church is the last part of 27: “I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine.” That one gets trotted out a lot whenever people question authority, and decide they don’t want to conform to everything the church says. More innocuously, it’s also used simply to get people to stop fighting when they’re having a spat.