Brigham Young's February 1874 Revelation on the United Order

In February 1874, President Brigham Young was calling the Latter-day Saints to re-establish the United Order — the covenant system of consecrating labor, time, and means practiced in the early days of the Church. On February 1, 1874, preaching during a tour of northern Utah settlements, Brigham Young gave what was for him a rarity: a written, dialogic revelation — the voice of the Lord phrased as "Thus saith the Lord" — recorded word for word by Thomas C. Haddon. Haddon titled his record "The word of the Lord that was reveald to his People, by his servant the Prophet sear and Reverlator, President Brigham Young, Febuary 1874":

"Thus saith the Lord: It is my will that this people should enter into a holy United Order, by concentrating their labor, their time, and their means together for the interest of my Kingdom, and for their own mutual benefit. And I the Lord will bless them abundantly, they shall get along with less labor, and less means, and become a great deal richer, and happier, and be enabled to do a great deal more good. And if not, the curse of the Lord will be upon them, for we have got as far as we can get in our present position, for the time is fully come that we should enter into this Holy Order."

Brigham Young produced only three written dialogic revelations in his life: the "Word and Will of the Lord" of January 14, 1847, now canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 136; a January 1846 revelation given on behalf of Reuben Miller; and this February 1874 United Order revelation. He explained in 1867 why he so rarely wrote such texts: when the word of the Lord is written "under the declaration, 'Thus saith the Lord,'" those who disobey it are accountable in a way they are not for ordinary counsel — so he generally chose to preach the Lord's will rather than reduce it to a canon-like text.

Six months after the February revelation, Brigham Young spoke in the same voice to the United Order in Lehi, Utah: "Thus saith the Lord unto my servant Brigham, Call ye, call ye, upon the inhabitants of Zion, to organize themselves in the Order of Enoch... You can accommodate yourselves by calling this a new revelation, if you choose; it is no new revelation, but it is the express word and will of God to this people."

For more than a century the February 1874 record lay unrecognized among the Church History Library's holdings, until historian Christopher C. Blythe — researching nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint dreams and visions — located the Haddon manuscript and published it as "Brigham Young's Newly Located February 1874 Revelation" (BYU Studies Quarterly 58, no. 2). The rediscovery corrected a common caricature: the "Yankee guesser" who claimed he was no visionary was, in fact, a man who saw visions, dreamed dreams, and at least three times in his life reduced the word of the Lord to writing.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in Christopher C. Blythe, "Brigham Young's Newly Located February 1874 Revelation," BYU Studies Quarterly 58, no. 2 (2019)):

The word of the Lord that was reveald to his People, by his servant the Prophet sear and Reverlator, President Brigham Young, Febuary 1874. Thus saith the Lord: It is my will that this people should enter into a holy United Order, by concentrating their labor, their time, and their means together for the interest of my Kingdom, and for their own mutual benefit. And I the Lord will bless them abundantly, they shall get along with less labor, and less means, and become a great deal richer, and happier, and be enabled to do a great deal more good. And if not, the curse of the Lord will be upon them, for we have got as far as we can get in our present position, for the time is fully come that we should enter into this Holy Order.