Just reading the latest John Whitmer Association journal. In it is an excellent article on the Cutlerites.
For the second time in the last few months I came across the idea that the church wanted to get the Nauvoo temple finished before they left because if it did not it would be under condemnation.
the specific verses are in Doctrine and Covenants section 124:
31 But I command you, all ye my saints, to build a house unto me; and I grant unto you a sufficient time to build a house unto me; and during this time your baptisms shall be acceptable unto me.
32 But behold, at the end of this appointment your baptisms for your dead shall not be acceptable unto me; and if you do not these things at the end of the appointment ye shall be rejected as a church, with your dead, saith the Lord your God.
33 For verily I say unto you, that after you have had sufficient time to build a house to me, wherein the ordinance of baptizing for the dead belongeth, and for which the same was instituted from before the foundation of the world, your baptisms for your dead cannot be acceptable unto me;
I focus on the bold because I have seen two instances where this comment is used to justify various ideas. For Cutler and Strang the fact they did not get the church built meant that the LDS church was condemned thus their strains were approved.
In the LDS faith it meant that the church continued working at finishing the and dedicating the temple right until the end.
For me that seems like a very strange leap of logic to say that the Saints failed, as the Cutlerites, and I believe Lyman Whight and James Strang also argued (I will reference these later when I can find them). It seems like an excuse and nothing more. One thing I have seen from the revelations we have is that the Lord is not a god of absolute demands of his mortal children. In fact he appears to accept the “good effort” often enough.
In fact that whole of our faith is built on the idea that we are fallible creatures in need of salvation from our perfect older brother to make up for us. So I could hardly see God faulting Saints under extreme pressure to get out of Nauvoo from taking right to the bitter end to finish the work on his house. The fact they even got it finished speaks of an acceptable offering.
For me the faith that I have in God predicated on the understanding that we all fall short of his glory allow us to not live up to his ideal. Certainly I do not.
