Keywords

Brigham Young, Doctrine and Covenants 136

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Two and one-half years after Brigham Young assumed the primary leadership role for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and nearly a year after the first Saints left Nauvoo, Illinois, to begin the journey west, the responsibility of leading the Church had taken a physical toll on him. By January 1847 he had lost so much weight that his clothes no longer fit. The reason was that the Latter-day Saints had literally and figuratively become stuck in the mud. Worn out and needing wisdom on how to extricate the Church and move the work forward, Brigham received the answers he desperately needed when the Lord revealed his “Word and Will,” a revelation later canonized as Doctrine and Covenants section 136.