This revelation announced guidelines for what members of the should use in the of the Lord’s Supper to represent the blood of Christ. JS’s history explained that he dictated the revelation during a visit from and to his home in in August 1830: “As neither his wife nor mine had been as yet confirmed, it was proposed that we should confirm them, and partake together of the sacrament, before he and his wife should leave us.— In order to prepare for this; I set out to go to procure some wine for the occasion, but had gone only a short distance when I was met by a heavenly messenger, and received the following revelation.” The revelation told JS to use only new wine made by members of the church.

Both the dating and the text of this revelation present challenges. The earliest extant copy, in Revelation Book 1 (the version featured here), dated it broadly to the year 1830, and placed it between revelations dated July and September 1830. Despite Whitmer’s placement, however, the versions published in 1833 in The Evening and the Morning Star and the Book of Commandments specified 4 September 1830 as the date. The versions published in the 1835 Evening and Morning Star reprint and in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants included two additional paragraphs and dated the entire revelation to September 1830, removing the precise date mentioned in the earlier publications. In his later history, however, JS said that the first paragraph of the 1835 text “was written at this time [early August 1830], and the remainder in the September following.” JS, then, affirmed that the first part should be dated August 1830 and the remainder September 1830, in which case the date of 4 September 1830 found in the earlier printed versions may have reflected the date of dictation of the second portion.

Early manuscripts, including the copy featured here, contain only the first portion of the combined revelation as published in 1835. Although an earlier manuscript may have existed for the September portion, the earliest extant text for the expanded version of the revelation is the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. For the annotated treatment of the expanded version, see the volume of the Documents series that covers 1835.