WILLINGNESS TO OBEY

 

There is a rather sad story in Doctrine and Covenants involving a man called James Covill who was a minister for forty years.

In short, James Covill came to Joseph Smith, like many others, wanting a revelation from God as to what God wanted him to do. By this action alone, he affirmed he believed Joseph to be a servant of God. In fact, he believed so strongly that he made a covenant with God that he would obey whatever he was told to do.

Unfortunately, James Covill had done this before ‘many times’ but because of pride and cares of the world he never followed through but kept pursuing a path that would give him acceptance of the world (v 9).

Herein enters the Saviour’s mercy. He gives James Covill another chance. In fact, he calls it ‘his deliverance’ from his lack of weakness to obey (v 10). He tells him to be baptized and move to Ohio to build up the Church there. In return, the Lord promised him ‘a blessing such as is not known among the children of men’, twice (vs 10,15).

James Covill rejected the revelation given and returned to his former principles and people. One wonders what kind of a blessing he missed out on. Whatever it was, it was conditional. President Harold B. Lee related this to us in his conference talk of October 1972:

“I sat in a class in Sunday School in my own ward one day, and the teacher was the son of a patriarch. He said he used to take down the blessings of his father, and he noticed that his father gave what he called ‘iffy’ blessings. He would give a blessing, but it was predicated on…..’if you will cease doing that’. And he said, ‘I watched these men to whom my father gave the ‘iffy’ blessings, and I saw that many of them did not heed the warning that my father as a patriarch had given them, and the blessings were never received because they did not comply’.”

President Lee continued saying that he took notice of warnings that Joseph had given through revelations to men like “Thomas B. Marsh, Martin Harris, some of the Whitmer brothers, William E. McLellin, warnings which, had they heeded, some would not have fallen by the wayside…and some had to be dropped from the membership of the Church.”  (Ensign Jan 1973, p 107-8)

The Saviour explained that James Covill “received the word with gladness, but straightway Satan tempted him; and the fear of persecution and the cares of the world caused him to reject the word” (D&C 40:2).

If only James Covill had remembered this and had pondered its warning and its promise: “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10).

Rejecting blessings is bad enough but rejecting deliverance at the Lord’s hand is worse. One shudders to think what his outcome was when you read this: “Wherefore he broke my covenant, and it remaineth with me to do with him as seemeth me good” ( D&C 40:3).

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Time to Ponder by Greg Collins)