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November 1836

In November 1836, a Latter-day Saint named Ira Ames went to Joseph Smith with a question. Ira had joined the Church in June 1832 in New York, and by the end of 1836 was living in Kirtland, Ohio.[1] He now, however, wanted to know whether he should stay in Kirtland or join the Saints in Missouri. In November 1836 he sold his home and approached Joseph Smith for counsel. “Clerking in the store did not agree with me,” Ira recalled, “and I was in bad health,” and, having just sold his home, he wondered if he should make the move.[2] Joseph, however, told him he “did not want [Ira] to go until the Church went,” a response that surprised Ira.[3]

Undeterred, Ira took the matter to the Kirtland high council. He was informed, however, that the council “could make nothing of it” and “finally decided to refer the matter to Joseph for him to get a revelation upon it.”[4] Reflecting on this decision with perhaps a bit of bemusement, Ira couldn’t help but recall, “Such babes were we in those days.” In response to this new request, the Prophet pronounced “the word of the Lord” for Ira in a revelation. The revelation affirmed Joseph’s earlier counsel for Ira not to remove to Missouri until “the residue” of the membership of the Church in Kirtland should make the trip.[5] Ira complied with this revelation, waiting until April 1838 to finally make his way to Missouri, settling in Far West.[6]

There is no original record of this November 1836 revelation from Joseph Smith to Ira Ames. Ira did, however, preserve the text of the revelation in an unpublished manuscript history and journal that was begun in or around 1858 and passed down from father to son in the Ames family until its eventual acquisition by the Church. It is unknown if Ira copied an earlier version of the revelation or preserved it from memory. There is no particular reason to doubt this brief revelation came from the Prophet, but without an extant contemporary copy among Joseph Smith’s papers, it would appear more prudent to include this text in the appendix as a revelation attributed to the Prophet.

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Verily, thus saith the Lord unto my servant Ira Ames—it is not my will that you should go up to the land of Missouri until the residue of my church go.

Notes

[1] See “Ames, Ira” (biographical entry), The Joseph Smith Papers.

[2] Ira Ames, autobiography and journal, [12], 1858, MS 6055, CHL.

[3] Ames, autobiography and journal, [12].

[4] Ames, autobiography and journal, [13].

[5] Ames, autobiography and journal, [13].

[6] Ames, autobiography and journal, [13–14].