Author: Godfrey, Kenneth W.
The Council of Fifty, a council formed in Nauvoo in 1844, provided a pattern of political government under priesthood and revelation. It was, to its members, the nucleus or focus of God’s latter-day kingdom.
Old Testament prophecy speaks of a stone “cut out of the mountain without hands” that will roll forth to fill the whole earth (Dan. 2:44–45). Joseph Smith and his associates believed that the “little stone” represented in part a political kingdom similar to the other kingdoms referred to by Daniel. Joseph Smith taught that in this, the dispensation of the fulness of times, “all things” would be set in place for Christ’s return, including the basic principles and organization for a system that would govern the earth during the Millennium (JD 1:202-203; 2:189; 17:156-57).
On April 7, 1842, Joseph Smith received a revelation giving the formal name of the “Living Constitution”-or, as it came to be known by the number of its members, the Council of Fifty-and indicating that the nucleus of a government of God would be organized. Two years later, in the spring of 1844, after a small group of faithful Church leaders and members had received their temple Endowment, the Prophet formally established the Council of Fifty.
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