Word of Wisdom was not observed in Brigham Young's time the same way that it is in the church

today. Did Brigham Young elevate the Word of Wisdom to commandment status in 1851?

It is for us to stop the tide of physical degeneracy.

If the old fogies take a little tobacco, a little whiskey, or a little tea and coffee,

we wish you boys to let it alone. And we should point out at that time they were using wine in the sacrament.

Some of the brethren would like to have me preach upon it and make it a test of fellowship.

I do not think that I shall do so.

If you must use tobacco, put a small portion in your mouth when no person sees you.

But then as they get more established, now they're in a better psychological space.

Some even told me that they would starve if they did not make whiskey.

I said to them, make it and be damned.

Hello, Scott.

Hello, Casey.

We're back and we're continuing our path through the history of the Word of Wisdom.

And this has been really fun, first of all.

But second of all, I'm starting to understand why this was our most requested topic.

Because we were supposed to start recording like an hour ago, and we've been sitting here arguing back and forth on various questions.

And you mentioned you have a son that's in the mission field.

Yes.

And he gets asked about this quite a bit.

So what are people asking our missionaries when it comes to this subject?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, especially when it comes to like coffee and tea and stuff like that. Like people will push back and say, well, that's healthy, you know, but energy drinks are not, are energy drinks against your word of wisdom? And what about sugar? Sugar's bad for you, right? How come that's not in your word of wisdom, but other things are? And he's out there fighting a good fight. Yeah, talk to him this morning about that. And he says,

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