Transcript

Now, there is another precious artifact that you've been kind enough to bring to us. Tell us about this precious book. So this is the copy of the Book of Commandments, and I love this, President, because they went to great lengths from the get-go to put the revelation in the hands of the Church members, of the Saints. This is our first attempt to put the revelations received by the Prophet Joseph into printed book form. They had printed some of the early revelations. That was printed in Missouri. In Missouri, in Independence. And so you think almost of the audacity of us to haul a printing press out to the frontier at that time, independence, Missouri, and to start a printing press, a printing office there and print newspapers. And the Book of Commandments is our first attempt to really compile these revelations, 15 of which were received here in Harmony, and to get them into the hands of the Saints. That attempt somewhat failed because of the mobs and the destruction of the printing press. How many copies of the Book of Commandments would you say we know about? We know of 29 that exist today, so very rare. I'm told that they wanted to charge $0.25 or $0.30 a copy for those at that time. What's it worth now? Today, it would be in the millions. I'll give it back to you. So they are just so rare. And this one is exceptionally rare because it happens to be the copy of Oliver Cowdery. It has Oliver and Joseph's name written in it, and they used this as the copy in the printing office that was established in Kirtland, Ohio. Well, hold it right up again so our viewers can see a document that I'd never seen before. The title page there. It is so precious. So they're all unique, because in 1833, you just had the loose leaves, the gatherings, and so each of these individuals that had the gatherings of what was going to be the Book of Commandments took it and had them bound. And so it's incomplete. It cuts off, actually, in today's section 64 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Thank you. And then they--all these revelations eventually end up in the Doctrine and Covenants when that's published a couple of years later. Thank you very much, Brother Metcalf.

President Nelson Views Rare Copy of the Book of Commandments

Description
President Russell M. Nelson and Church historian Brandon Metcalf view a rare copy of the Book of Commandments, owned by Oliver Cowdery, that was created by collecting pages that weren’t destroyed by a mob.
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