Doctrine • Zion • Discernment
What the First Presidency Actually Said About the One Mighty and Strong
Reading the 1905 statement in full, and taking every condition it sets
A reader wrote to say he appreciated one thing above all else about my presentation. Not the argument. Not the scriptures. He appreciated that I was not claiming to be the one mighty and strong myself. He said he had watched a dozen men make that claim and he was tired of it.
That note stayed with me, because he put his finger on the real problem with this verse.
A master’s thesis at Brigham Young University catalogued some eighteen principal claimants to the title. Eighteen men who read Doctrine and Covenants 85:7, looked in the mirror, and saw a scepter of power. It is the same impulse that sends men to Jerusalem every year announcing that they are one of the two witnesses. The police there have a routine for it.
I am not one of those men. I have no calling, no authority, and no claim on this. I am a reader of scripture who has published what he found.
The Document
After my presentation with Latter-day Media, a viewer pointed me to the 1905 statement of the First Presidency on these verses. He was not arguing with me. He thought it was worth my time, and he was right. I had not read it. I knew the concepts, but I had never sat down with the document itself.
I want to say clearly that I am grateful he sent it. When people bring me sources, whether they support what I have written or oppose it, they are doing me a service. That is how this is supposed to work.
The statement was issued by President Joseph F. Smith, President John R. Winder, and President Anthon H. Lund. It appeared in the Deseret News on November 13, 1905, and was reprinted in the Improvement Era in October 1907. It was issued to be received as authoritative, and it remains the Church’s official reading of these verses.
The Church's Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual summarizes this statement in its section on Doctrine and Covenants 85, and you can read that here. The manual gives the substance but not the whole document. The complete text, which is what I have worked from throughout this article, is available here.
I have now read it several times. It is a better document than my critics realize, and it helps my position more than it hurts it.
Where I Agree Without Reservation
The First Presidency wrote that statement to shut down two errors, and I have spent years arguing against both of them.
The first error is the claim that the Church has gone astray and needs correcting. The First Presidency called this out directly. They wrote that the Church is completely organized, that God’s house is a house of order and law, and that there is no place for anarchy in it. They said the Saints should expect nothing of God’s appointing that is erratic, or irregular, or that would overthrow the established order of things.
I believe every word of that.
There is nothing wrong with the Church. It has not fallen. It is not off course. President Oaks is the prophet, seer, and revelator, and the Quorum of the Twelve stands where it has always stood. During the COVID years I watched people take this verse and aim it at President Nelson, saying he had fallen and the one mighty and strong was needed to fix what was broken. That was false then and the same argument is false now.
The one mighty and strong does not come to correct the prophet. He comes to build Zion under the prophet’s direction.
The second error is self-appointment. The First Presidency observed that a man with ordinary modesty would restrain himself from announcing that such honors were to be conferred on him, and that even if he suspected it, he would wait for the Lord to make it known to the Church. Every claimant in that thesis failed that test. Every one of them announced himself.
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The Judgment That Was Withheld
Here is where the document becomes interesting.
The First Presidency identified Edward Partridge as the man warned in verse 8, and I have no quarrel with that. He was the bishop appointed to divide the inheritances. He had opposed the Prophet. He had been reproved by revelation. The shoe fits.
But then they wrote something that most people who cite this statement never quote. They wrote that in the face of the Lord’s plain declaration that Edward Partridge’s sins were forgiven him, they did not feel his early death was the fulfillment of the threatened judgment.
Read that carefully. The First Presidency of the Church stated that the judgment described in verse 8 was never executed. Bishop Partridge repented. He was tarred and feathered in the public square and bore it with dignity. He offered himself as a ransom for the Church. The Lord said He was well pleased with him.
The man did not fall like a tree struck by lightning. The First Presidency said so.
Their conclusion was that the occasion for sending a replacement had therefore passed away and the incident was closed. That is their primary reading, and I want to be honest that it is their primary reading, not mine.
The Door They Left Open
They did not stop there. They anticipated that some Latter-day Saints would still hold this prophecy to be future, and they told those Saints exactly what a future fulfillment would require.
They wrote that he will be a future bishop of the Church, with the Saints in Zion in Jackson County, Missouri, when the Lord establishes them in that land. That he will be blessed with the spirit and power of his calling. That he will be called and appointed of God as Aaron was and as Edward Partridge was. That he will be designated by the inspiration of the Lord and sustained by the whole Church. That his coming will not be a wild or erratic movement, and not the assumption of authority by a self-appointed egotist.
I am one of those who holds this prophecy to be future. So I take the terms they set.
Zion Has Not Been Established
The reason I read this as future is simple. The work described in verse 7 has not been done by anyone.
And it shall come to pass that I, the Lord God, will send one mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth, to set in order the house of God, and to arrange by lot the inheritances of the saints whose names are found, and the names of their fathers, and of their children, enrolled in the book of the law of God. (Doctrine and Covenants 85:7)
The plat of the city of Zion was never laid out as Joseph Smith drew it. The temple in Independence was never built. The twenty-four buildings of that temple complex do not exist. No family has received an inheritance by lot. The law of consecration is not being lived by anyone I know, including me.
The Saints were driven out of Jackson County. They lost it.
Section 85 tells us why they were at risk of losing it. The verses before verse 7 are a warning about people who came to Zion and did not receive their inheritance by consecration through the bishop. Their names were not to be enrolled. Neither the names of their fathers nor their children. That warning was aimed at a whole body of Saints who were not committed to the work in front of them.
Zion’s Camp shows the same pattern. The Lord asked for five hundred of the strength of His house. When five hundred could not be had, the number dropped to three hundred, and then to one hundred.
Therefore, if you cannot obtain five hundred, seek diligently that peradventure you may obtain three hundred. And if ye cannot obtain three hundred, seek diligently that peradventure ye may obtain one hundred. (Doctrine and Covenants 103:32–33)
About two hundred men came.
They did not understand what the temple meant. They did not understand what Zion required. And Zion was not built.
Scripture does this constantly. A warning is delivered to a people in their moment, it applies to them fully, and it reaches past them to an event they will not live to see. Isaiah wrote to Judah and to us. The First Presidency was right to connect verse 8 to Edward Partridge, because it was speaking to him. That does not exhaust it.
The Conditions I Accept
The First Presidency said that if this prophecy points to the future, the man will be a bishop, called and sustained through the order of the Church. I accept that. Section 85 opens by describing saints who receive their inheritances legally from the bishop. Verse 7 sends the one mighty and strong to arrange those same inheritances. The office and the assignment match. I am not describing a new station outside Church government. I am describing the one Edward Partridge held.
And let my servant Edward Partridge stand in the office to which I have appointed him, and divide unto the saints their inheritance, even as I have commanded. (Doctrine and Covenants 57:7)
And whoso standeth in this mission is appointed to be a judge in Israel, like as it was in ancient days, to divide the lands of the heritage of God unto his children. (Doctrine and Covenants 58:17)
So every condition they set, I take.
Called of God through the proper authorities. Sustained by the Church. Nothing erratic. Nothing self-appointed. Nothing that overthrows the order God established. A man who comes to build, under the direction of the prophet, in the office scripture assigns to this work.
A Word About Language
The same misunderstanding attaches to another verse I teach, and I want to head it off here.
The word Christ is not a name. It is the Greek Christos, translating the Hebrew Mashiach. Both mean anointed one. Prophets were anointed. Priests were anointed. Kings were anointed. David called Saul the Lord’s anointed while Saul was hunting him. Every endowed member of the Church has been anointed.
Jesus of Nazareth is THE Christ, THE Anointed One. He alone performed the Atonement. He alone conquered death. He alone offers exaltation. No one else has done this, no one else can, and nothing I have written changes that by one comma.
When I say Donald Trump is the anointed one described in Revelation 12:10, I am speaking of a title of commission, not of identity. A servant anointed for a temporal work, the way Cyrus was anointed to rebuild the temple and send the Jews home. Cyrus saved no one. He performed a saving function under God’s power.
Trump is a servant. Christ is the Master.
What I Am Not Claiming
I am not claiming the Church has fallen.
I am not claiming the prophet has erred.
I am not claiming this title for myself.
I am not claiming that the Church has endorsed anything in my book. It has not. This is my reading of scripture and nothing more. No one is under any obligation to accept it, and I will think no less of anyone who does not.
I am not claiming this is settled. By the terms the First Presidency laid down, nothing is settled until the Lord designates the man to the proper authorities and the Church sustains him. That has not happened. Until it does, this remains what I have said it is from the beginning. A reading, offered for your examination, to be tested against the scriptures and against the Spirit.
Belief precedes revelation. Read section 85 in full. Read the 1905 statement in full. Then take it to the Lord.
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