Answers to Questions, between circa 4 and circa 20 March 1832 [D&C 77]

To confirm or solemnize. In the early 1830s, revelations often adopted biblical usage of the term seal; for example, “sealed up the testimony” referred to proselytizing and testifying of the gospel as a warning of the approaching end-time. The term was also...

These 144,000 were the servants of God who had been “sealed . . . in their foreheads.” (Revelation 7:3–8.)  

An ecclesiastical office. The Book of Mormon used the term high priest to denote one appointed to lead the church. However, the Book of Mormon also discussed an order of high priests who were called to teach the commandments of God and serve as leaders in...

The conferral of power and authority; to appoint, decree, or set apart. Church members, primarily adults, were ordained to ecclesiastical offices and other responsibilities by the laying on of hands by those with the proper authority. Ordinations to priesthood...

The greater or higher of two orders of priesthood in the church. Also known as “the holy priesthood, after the order of the Son of God,” “the high priesthood,” and “the high and holy priesthood.” This priesthood held the “right of presidency,” the responsibility...

Philo Dibble, who claimed he was present when JS and Sidney Rigdon experienced their 16 February 1832 vision of the afterlife, implied to a congregation in Payson, Utah, in 1877 that in the course of that vision, JS and Rigdon saw the “hundred and forty four thousand [that] should stand on the earth in the last days as Saviors of men.” (Payson Ward, General Minutes, vol. 5, 7 Jan. 1877; see also Vision, 16 Feb. 1832, p. XXX herein [D&C 76].)
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Seven angels stood before God after the seventh seal had been opened and each subsequently blew a trumpet. (Revelation 8:1–12; 9:1, 13; 10:7.)  

Archbishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland composed an influential and widely referenced biblical chronology in 1658 that dated the creation of Adam to 4004 BC, meaning that the opening of the seventh thousand years would not occur until around the year 2000. Some of JS’s followers, however, apparently believed that the opening of the seventh thousand years would be much sooner. William W. Phelps, for example, contended in the August 1832 issue of The Evening and the Morning Star that Adam was created 4,159 years before Christ, which meant that there remained only “NINE years” until “the begining of the seven thousandth year, or sabbath of creation.” (Ussher, Annals of the World, 1; “Present Age of the World,” The Evening and the Morning Star, Aug. 1832, [5]–[6].)
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This chapter of Revelation covers the sounding of the trumpets of the fifth and sixth angels. It describes John’s vision of the pestilences and wars that occurred at the sounding of these trumpets.  

The “little book” was held by an angel who came down from heaven and placed his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the earth. John was told to take the book and to eat it. “It shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.” (Revelation 10:1–2, 8–10.)  

A religious rite. JS taught that ordinances were covenants between man and God, in which believers could affirm faith, gain spiritual knowledge, and seek blessings. Some ordinances were considered requisite for salvation. The manner in which ordinances were...

As directed by early revelations, church members “gathered” in communities. A revelation dated September 1830, for instance, instructed elders “to bring to pass the gathering of mine elect” who would “be gathered in unto one place, upon the face of this land...

An 1829 revelation stated that John the Revelator did not die but was physically transformed so that he could remain on earth until the second coming of Jesus Christ. At a conference in June 1831, JS reportedly “prophecied that John the Revelator was then among the ten tribes of Israel who had been lead away by Salmanaser King of israel [Assyria], to prepare them for their return, from their Long dispersion, to again possess the land of their father’s.” (Account of John, Apr. 1829–C, in JSP, D1:XXX [D&C 7]; Whitmer, History, 27, in JSP, H2:39.)
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