In Doctrine in Covenants 85, Joseph Smith writes to William Phelps about how to handle recent events in relation to the law of consecration.

Some Latter-Bet Saints had moved to Missouri to live according to the law of consecration, but without specific authorization to do so.

It was not a decision that one could decide on one's own, one needed to be called to move to Missouri and live the law.

Some, who were already in Missouri, weren't living up to the law of consecration,

like William McClellan, who refused to deed his land to the bishop, Edward Partridge.

The prophet laid out instructions for what to do according to what he called the still small voice.

My name is Joseph Stewart. I'm the public communication specialist at the Neely Maxwell Institute

for Religious Scholarship at BYU. And with Janice Johnson, a Willis Center research

associate at the Institute, we will be discussing each week's block of reading. From the Church

of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

come follow me curriculum. We aren't here to present a lesson, but rather to hit on a few key

themes from the scripture block that we believe will help fulfill the Maxwell Institute's

mission to inspire and fortify Latter-day Saints in their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus

Christ and to engage the world of religious ideas.

Hi, Janice. How are you? I'm good. Thanks. Glad to hear it. So in verse three, Joseph Smith speaks

about tithing. What do you think about that? Well, I think that sometimes this is a test of how careful a reader we are. We may read it and say,

oh, I know what this is. I know what tithing is and not think twice about it. But if we think about the date,

and this is, the date is 1832, November of 1832.

Tithing, as we know it, isn't revealed until we get to Section 119, which is in 1838.

And so I think that we actually have to think about this, what the Lord means.

I suspect that this means a general donation, the offerings that the Lord asks of each of us.

Of course, the word tithing itself reflects 10%, but tithe in the early church was used in a very

...