The Doctrine and Covenants

What The Doctrine and Covenants is

The Doctrine and Covenants is one of the four books of scripture — the standard works — of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, alongside the King James Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price. It is a collection of revelations, most received through Joseph Smith in the 1820s, 1830s, and early 1840s, together with a small number of later additions and two Official Declarations. The current edition contains 138 numbered sections plus the two declarations. Where the other standard works are ancient or presented as ancient, the Doctrine and Covenants is the modern-revelation volume, and Latter-day Saints understand it as remaining open to further additions.

It was first published in 1835, expanding and replacing the 1833 Book of Commandments, and has grown through subsequent editions as additional revelations were canonized. The book is distinctive to the Restoration tradition and is not part of the Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant Bible. Its sections range widely in subject and length — some are a few verses of personal counsel, others are extended doctrinal discourses on the afterlife, priesthood, or the organization of the Church. Most are dated and tied to a specific historical occasion, which gives the volume its characteristic grounded, documentary feel.

Why Latter-day Saints turn to it for doctrine and governance

The single biggest practical difference between the Doctrine and Covenants and the other standard works is immediacy. The revelations are dated, addressed, and occasioned — section 25 is directed to Emma Smith, section 121 was received while Joseph Smith was imprisoned in Liberty Jail, section 89 (the Word of Wisdom) responds to a specific question about health and conduct. Because the circumstances are known, readers can see exactly what question a revelation was answering, which makes the doctrine feel anchored rather than abstract.

It is also the volume that most directly shapes how the Church runs. Much of its content is organizational — how the priesthood is structured, how councils operate, how leaders are called, how the Church gathers and cares for its members. For Latter-day Saints, that makes the Doctrine and Covenants both a doctrinal text and a kind of constitutional one, the place where the offices and patterns of the modern Church are established. Many of the teachings members consider most distinctive — on the premortal life, the degrees of glory, eternal families, and the destiny of the human soul — are stated most fully here.

Modern revelation in its own voice — scripture addressed to real people and moments

The defining feature of the Doctrine and Covenants is that most of it is presented as revelation received in the 19th century and recorded as it came, rather than a translated ancient record or a compiled history. Each section typically carries a header giving the date, the place, and the circumstance — a question asked, a crisis faced, a decision pending — and then renders the revelation itself, often in the first person as the voice of the Lord. Section 76 records a shared vision of the afterlife. Section 88 is called "the olive leaf" and ranges across light, law, and the resurrection. Section 121, written from a jail cell, turns suffering into one of the volume's most quoted passages on leadership and the use of authority.

This sounds like a small thing. In practice it shapes the whole reading experience. Because the revelations are tied to identifiable moments, the doctrine arrives already embedded in a situation — you are not handed an abstract proposition but watching a specific question answered. For Latter-day Saints that immediacy is part of the volume's power: the same God who spoke to ancient prophets is presented as speaking to a named people in a documented time and place. For any reader, it makes the text unusually concrete, and it is why the section headings and historical context matter so much to getting the most out of it.

Distinctive doctrine and Church governance, gathered in one place

If you want to understand what is distinctive about Latter-day Saint belief and practice, the Doctrine and Covenants is the densest single source. The teaching on the three degrees of glory — celestial, terrestrial, and telestial — is laid out in section 76. The structure and offices of the priesthood are established across several sections. The Word of Wisdom, the health code familiar even to outside observers, is section 89. Sections 130 and 131 record short, pointed statements on the nature of God, eternal marriage, and the conditions of exaltation. The organization of councils, the law of consecration, the work of redeeming the dead, and the gathering of the Church all have their primary scriptural footing here.

The other half of the book is governance. The Doctrine and Covenants is where the modern Church's administrative pattern is set down — how revelation flows through called leaders, how quorums are formed, how decisions are made by common consent, how the Church is to handle its members, its property, and its mission. For Latter-day Saints this dual character is the point: the book is at once a doctrinal compendium and the founding charter of an institution, and the two are not separable. Reading it is the most direct way to see how the tradition understands both what it believes and how it is meant to operate.

The Official Declarations and the open canon

Appended after the 138 sections are two Official Declarations, documents the Church canonized as part of the volume. Official Declaration 1 (1890), the Manifesto issued by President Wilford Woodruff, announced the end of the practice of plural marriage. Official Declaration 2 (1978) announced the revelation extending priesthood ordination and temple ordinances to all worthy male members of the Church without regard to race. Both are presented in the text with their dates and context, and both mark turning points in the tradition's history that the volume records as part of its own ongoing story.

Their presence points to something structural about the book: among the standard works, the Doctrine and Covenants is understood to remain open. Latter-day Saints hold that revelation continues and that the canon can still grow — the most recent sections and declarations were added in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the tradition does not regard the volume as closed. That openness is part of what distinguishes the Doctrine and Covenants from a finished ancient text. It is scripture that the tradition believes is, in principle, still being written.

Pricing

Where The Doctrine and Covenants falls behind

Historical context required. Many sections respond to specific 19th-century events, people, and places, and a reader without that background will miss what a revelation is answering. The official section headings supply a lot of it, but the bare text alone leaves much on the table — a study companion or the Come, Follow Me schedule fills the gap.

Not a narrative. The book is arranged roughly in the order revelations were received, not as a continuous story, so it does not carry a reader along the way the Bible's histories or the Book of Mormon do. It rewards study in portions more than straight-through reading, and newcomers expecting a plot can find the structure disorienting at first.

Topical, not systematic. Doctrine is distributed across sections by chronology rather than gathered by subject, so building a complete picture of any one teaching — priesthood, the afterlife, eternal marriage — means cross-referencing several sections. The footnotes and Topical Guide help, but the assembly is on the reader.

Period diction. The revelations are recorded in 19th-century revelatory English — the language of thee and thou and divine decree — which takes adjustment for readers accustomed to modern-English scripture. It is far from impenetrable, but it is a register, and a few passages read slowly until the ear settles.

Doctrine and Covenants vs. the Book of Mormon vs. the Pearl of Great Price

These three, with the King James Bible, make up the standard works of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and each does a different job within the canon. Different strengths. The Book of Mormon is the narrative and devotional core — presented as an ancient record of peoples in the Americas and their dealings with God, it reads as scripture in the familiar sense, with stories, sermons, and a sustained witness of Jesus Christ, and it is the volume most often handed to someone encountering the tradition for the first time.

The Doctrine and Covenants is the modern-revelation and governance volume — contemporary in voice, organized by occasion rather than story, and the densest single source for distinctive Restoration doctrine and for how the Church is structured and run. Where the Book of Mormon is meant to be read, the Doctrine and Covenants is often consulted, section by section, for what it establishes. The Pearl of Great Price is the shortest of the four — a compact collection of the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith–Matthew, Joseph Smith–History, and the Articles of Faith, supplying foundational texts on the Creation, the premortal life, and the tradition's own founding account.

Most Latter-day Saints study all four together, often in a single bound Quad and on a shared yearly schedule. They are complements within one canon, not competitors — the Doctrine and Covenants is simply the part that speaks in the present tense.

Alternatives to The Doctrine and Covenants