Journal of Discourses: Treasure Trove of Doctrine

The Journal of Discourses is not some shady, unreliable source of doctrine.

  After all, what's not to like about the equivalent of vintage General Conference talks from more than a century and a half ago?
 Put in context with an early, doctrinally evolving church, the "J.D." is not something to be shunned, or ignored, but rather embraced.
Sure, there are some speculative and opinion kinds of doctrines found within its 26 volumes, but then there was no Correlation Committee back in the 1800s either!
 Talks were often impromptu in the 1800s. I doubt most speakers of the era even had a written text. (Imagine how your own Sacrament meeting talk might go if did not have written notes, or notes on your smart phone!)
 The Journal of Discourses are generally under-rated and yet offer glimpses of pioneer life in Utah and reveal what doctrines the church leaders and members at the time of the mid-19th Century were wrestling with.

I've even noticed that in the past 10 years, occasionally, an official church manual has quoted from the Journal of Discourses.
Now to be accurate, all the J.D. is are re-prints of talks by church leaders as originally published in the Deseret News.
  (A game played in many past church manuals would be that instead of listing the more easily found Journal of Discourses as a reference, the actual/original Deseret News reference would be cited instead, as if that was more accurate ... when it was the same thing.)
  Scribes, or clerks, (like George D. Watt), tried to write down the talks of leaders, like Brigham Young, and they were printed in the Deseret News for a wider, regional church audience to read.
The 26 volumes of Journal of Discourses compiled many of those talks. It was Brother Watt who received clearance from the First Presidency to publish the Journals, mainly as a way to provide him income, but also to send these talks overseas, to church members in Great Britain.
  I've read all 26 volumes of the Journal of Discourses.
  I've also made my own index of each volume, since the official index for the Journal of Discourses is very lacking.
  Sure, I came across some "there is life on the moon" kind of things talked about therein, but if you've read the Standard Works and 
have some solid doctrinal foundation, then the J.D. would do nothing but expand your gospel understanding.
I've compared many of the key Journal of Discourse talks, particularly those by Brigham Young, with the Deseret News and found no disagreement between the two.
However, I once in a while noticed that Brigham Young would come back a week later in the Deseret News and state he thought he was misquoted, or didn't make a point clear the talk prior and then he would briefly try to clarify or correct it.
 Those "corrections/clarifications" are NOT included in the Journal of Discourses, however.

  Some on social media have taken potshots at the J.D., in the summer of 2026, comparing them to the Apocrypha. That is an inaccurate comparison. I've read and studied both and the Apocrypha is extremely poor in both doctrine and history.

 The J.D. is a good supplemental history source, a good look at the lives of Latter-day Saints in the second half of the 19th Century.

Some on social media have made claims that many of the talks were exaggerated in their prophetic nature by the scribes. I've found no evidence of that. If it did happen, it was rare. 

As stated earlier, Brigham Young read what the Deseret News published, He was a busy man, but the Deseret News was the only media around for decades in Utah Territory. (And, the newspaper's original motto, was "truth and liberty.")

  President Young's clarifications I found occasionally in the Deseret News, a week or so after some discourses, proves he was paying attention to what the scribes wrote. If a scribe was embellishing talks, I think President Young would have noticed and even had them removed.

   Some on social media also preach that studying the Journal of Discourses will downgrade your integrity of Brigham Young. Again, I found the opposite. In one line of a sermon, President Young might be explaining some deep doctrine and in the next he's talking about farming, the lifeblood of pioneer life back then.

  I've concluded that when President Young delved into some strange doctrines, he knew what he meant, but that meaning didn't always come across clearly in his discourses. (Again, today's General Authorities have weeks to prepare General Conference talks; some even have script writers/advisors; and they have days after a discourse was given to still make changes before the permanent printed/on-line version of their talk is set.)

  Brigham Young, like any man, had his own opinions and he was only a prophet when acting as such. Move him into the 20th or 21st Century and I'm certain he would not speak off the cuff, or speculate as much.

(You also should not try to bury your own history, but learn from it, though you need to learn to read the J.D. in the context of the 1800s...)

  Today's church leaders have also found it wise to not speculate like their 19th Century counterparts did in the Deseret News/Journal of Discourses.

  Yes, some critics of the Church might use strange ideas from the J.D. against the Latter-day Saints, but the J.D. has more solid doctrine therein than oddball ideas.

  But anyone who takes a shot at the accuracy of the Journal of Discourses is also taking a swing at the accuracy of the Deseret News.
  No newspaper, even today, is free from errors, but even the opinion pages in newspapers spur thought and reflection.

  (I worked at the Deseret News for 32 years and had access to its archives and so I know the newspaper's history -- and I spent my extra time for two decades scouring in the newspaper's vaults.)
  So, keep reading the Ensign and General Conference talks, today's counterpart for the old Journal of Discourses.
  Yet, if you have the time, you will not regret reading the Journal of Discourses, for the doctrinal rewards they offer.

  Yet, note that the J.D. are a place for advanced doctrine, not a place for gospel beginners. A Latter-day Saint ideally needs to know basic church doctrine and have at least some years in the church under their belt, BEFORE that launch into the Journal of Discourses.

   The J.D. printed books are a lot easier reading than the cumbersome newspaper microfilm reading too!
  Note that while virtually all of the past 3 or so decades of the Deseret News are on-line and searchable by Google, the Journal of Discourse's era of the Deseret News issues are not -- and may never be.
 (That's probably because Google-searchable would make some of the off-the-wall segments of the Journal of Discourses too easily found by church critics. Also, old Deseret News of the early 20th Century used to contain lists of excommunicated members and some church leaders have indicated they don't want their descendants finding an ancestor's name on those lists. Hence the blackout on old Deseret News editions.)

NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.

Journal Keeping: A Hit And Miss Practice! A 'Diary' Is Better!

I don't know how many hundreds of times I've heard it said in the LDS Church: "Keep a journal!"
The huge problem here -- that practice rarely works.
That's because we are victims of habit and only writing in a journal occasionally means one of two things: you either never write in it, or your rarely write in it.
Even when you do write in it, it is usually so far after some event or experience that you can't recall all the details.
The solution?
Do what I've done for more than 40 years -- keep a diary.
Now I don't mean those pocket size store bought diaries. I mean a full looseleaf size tablet or binder.

                                                   One of my typical Diary/journals


Write in it every day and you miss nothing. Some days it might be a few lines, others many lines or a half page or so.
That way it becomes a habit and your actually do it, like brushing your teeth -- I write in my diary/journal (what it really is) 99 percent of the time on that exact day. The other 1 percent I still catch up and thus it captures 100 percent of my life.
If I want to know what happened 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years ago, I can find it in my diary/journal.
My handwriting was gotten worse over the years, but besides leaving accounts of my good and bad experiences in life for posterity, writing it down helps me cope with adversity better and helps me know where I've been.
These diary/journals have also settled arguments over events over the years and even fill in gaps in my memory.
If I re-read most entries, even those 40 years ago, the accounts usually help me recall that exact day.
I don't have a photographic mind, but these diary/journals do spark and enhance what memory I do have.
So, try it, or you'll leave what my Great-Aunt Iris left my mother, a 200 page "journal" with just two pages written on-- because there was no established habit for her to keep writing in it.
All those blank pages .....

NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.