The Word of Wisdom: A Scholarly Defense of D&C 89

Responding to ldsdiscussions.com — Examining the historical context, prophetic content, and modern vindication of the 1833 health revelation

Introduction: What This Response Addresses

The ldsdiscussions.com overview of the Word of Wisdom advances four central claims: (1) the revelation contains nothing beyond what was already known from the surrounding temperance movement; (2) early Church leaders including Joseph Smith ignored it, undermining its divine authority; (3) the text itself is scientifically disjointed, internally inconsistent, and outdated; and (4) its later enforcement as a temple requirement was driven by social and political opportunism rather than revelation. Each of these claims rests on selective reading, anachronistic reasoning, and a fundamental mischaracterization of how revelation operates within Latter-day Saint theology. This response addresses each argument in turn, drawing on primary sources, peer-reviewed research, and the historical record.

It must be stated plainly at the outset: the Word of Wisdom is not presented in this response as irrefutable proof of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling taken in isolation. It is presented as a remarkable document — one that, when examined honestly in its full historical and scientific context, is far more difficult to explain naturalistically than the ldsdiscussions.com treatment acknowledges.

Claim 1: The Word of Wisdom Contains Nothing Beyond the Temperance Movement

The ldsdiscussions.com essay argues at length that every element of D&C 89 was already present in surrounding health reform movements — temperance societies, the writings of Sylvester Graham, publications like Simplicity of Health (1829) and Means of Preserving Health (1806), and that the revelation was delivered the very day after a National Day of Temperance. The implication is clear: Joseph Smith synthesized existing public discourse into a pseudodivine document, adding nothing genuinely new.

This argument contains a crucial logical flaw: cultural availability does not equal cultural consensus, nor does it preclude divine confirmation. Consider that by 1833, the temperance movement was deeply fractured and contested. A significant portion of temperance reformers — including some of the most respected physicians and clergy of the era — advocated restricting only distilled “ardent spirits” while actively endorsing beer, wine, and cider as healthful alternatives to whiskey. Sylvester Graham’s full dietary system, which included radical grain-based vegetarianism and abstinence from virtually all stimulating foods, was widely regarded as medical fringe. The Journal of Health was published in Philadelphia — a city hundreds of miles from Kirtland, Ohio, and in an era before mass-circulation media. The claim that every idea in the Word of Wisdom was uniformly “known” to Joseph Smith overstates the coherence and reach of 1833 health reform considerably.

“The Word of Wisdom appeared at a time of intense public debate in the United States about alcohol abuse… the temperance movement grew as reformers called for abstinence from hard liquor, and many involved with the movement went further taking a pledge against all alcoholic beverages.”
— LDS Church, Now You Know video (2019) — a statement the Church itself openly acknowledges

But here is the critical point the ldsdiscussions.com treatment elides: acknowledging a social context is not the same as being caused by it. The Latter-day Saint position has never been that the Word of Wisdom emerged in a vacuum. Revelation, in LDS theology, characteristically comes through engagement with real-world problems — the pattern the scriptures themselves describe as “study it out in your mind” (D&C 9:8). The more substantive question is not whether the revelation engaged contemporary concerns, but how accurately and consistently it did so — and whether its content proves to be prophetically correct over subsequent decades. On both counts, D&C 89 fares remarkably well.

Moreover, the ldsdiscussions.com logic, if applied consistently, would eliminate any possibility of revelation whatsoever. If a revelation addresses real contemporary problems, it is “derivative.” If it addresses no contemporary problem, it is “irrelevant.” This is an unfalsifiable rhetorical trap, not a historical argument. The more honest question is: does the content of D&C 89 cohere, prove accurate, and demonstrate wisdom that transcended the limitations of its era? The evidence strongly suggests that it does.

Consider also what the temperance movement got wrong that D&C 89 navigates carefully. Many temperance advocates made blanket health claims for abstinence that were not scientifically grounded and that have not been borne out. D&C 89, by contrast, focuses its prohibitions on substances whose harmful effects have been scientifically confirmed: tobacco, alcohol, and — through the inspired expansion by Church leaders — the stimulants in coffee and tea. The revelation also emphasizes positive dietary principles — grains, herbs, fruits, and sparing meat consumption — that align precisely with modern nutritional science. This is not the profile of a document that merely echoed fringe health fads of the 1830s.

Claim 2: The “Boiling Water” Objection Proves Joseph Smith Was Not a Prophet

Among the most rhetorically vivid claims in the ldsdiscussions.com essay is this: God could have prevented a cholera outbreak that killed over a dozen early Church members (in 1833, just after the Word of Wisdom was recorded) simply by telling them to boil their water. The implication is that a genuine prophet would have received and transmitted this life-saving knowledge, and the silence of D&C 89 on the matter is therefore disqualifying evidence.

This argument is historically anachronistic in a critical respect. The germ theory of disease was not proposed until Louis Pasteur’s foundational work in 1861 — nearly three decades after the Word of Wisdom. John Snow’s landmark recommendation that water be “filtered and boiled before it is used” as a preventive measure against cholera dates to 1849, and it was widely dismissed by the medical establishment of that era. Miasma theory — the belief that disease spread through “bad air” rather than waterborne pathogens — was the dominant scientific paradigm throughout the 1830s and was endorsed by the most credentialed physicians and sanitarians of the day.

The ldsdiscussions.com argument therefore demands that God reveal in 1833 what the entire scientific world would not establish until the 1860s — and then uses the absence of that revelation as evidence against the document’s divine origin. But this standard of proof cannot be applied consistently. If D&C 89 had included detailed instructions about boiling water and waterborne bacteria, the very same critical methodology would likely describe this as evidence of derivation from some obscure pamphlet. The argument is constructed to be unfalsifiable.

Furthermore, the premise misunderstands what the Word of Wisdom is and is not. D&C 89 is a dietary and substance code, not a comprehensive medical encyclopedia. No serious analyst would judge the entire Mosaic law’s divine authority on the basis of its failure to mention antibiotics. The ldsdiscussions.com argument applies a standard to Latter-day Saint scripture that no other text — religious or secular — could meet.

Claim 3: Joseph Smith and Early Leaders Violated the Word of Wisdom, Undermining Its Authority

The ldsdiscussions.com essay quotes Joseph Smith drinking wine at Carthage Jail, drinking beer in his 1844 journal, and consuming wine at a January 1836 celebration. The argument is that Joseph Smith himself did not observe the revelation he claimed to receive, which undermines its authenticity.

This argument requires a careful examination of what D&C 89 actually says — not what the modern Church teaches it says. The text of the revelation as given in 1833 explicitly states: “To be sent greeting; not by commandment or constraint.” Section 89 was received as a “principle with promise,” not an immediate binding law. The revelation itself permits wine for sacramental use (v. 6) and explicitly authorizes “mild drinks” made from barley — a transparent reference to beer (v. 17). The Church’s own historical record and faithful scholars including Paul H. Peterson (BYU, 1972) and Lester E. Bush Jr. (Dialogue, 1981) have thoroughly documented that the Word of Wisdom was understood as a guiding principle and not an enforced commandment for most of the 19th century.

“It would have brought every man, addicted to the use of these noxious things, under condemnation; so the Lord was merciful and said ‘not by commandment or constraint.’”
— Joseph F. Smith, explaining the revelation’s initial non-compulsory status

This is not revisionism or a retroactive excuse. The text itself — penned in 1833 — anticipates this mode of gradual reception. Brigham Young’s 1861 statement that he would not make it a “test of fellowship” and his 1870 statement that observance “must be left, partially, with the people” are fully consistent with a leadership that understood the revelation as given for a people in process, not yet ready for the full weight of its implications. This is, in fact, a theologically sophisticated and pastorally honest posture.

The ldsdiscussions.com treatment presents this gradual implementation as incoherence or hypocrisy. But consider the parallel: the New Testament church took centuries to codify its doctrinal standards. The Council of Nicaea met in 325 AD, nearly three centuries after Christ. No serious historian argues that doctrinal development over time disproves the early church’s divine origin. The same principle applies here. Progressive implementation is not evidence of human fabrication; it is the characteristic pattern of all major religious development, including those whose authenticity the ldsdiscussions.com authors presumably do not dispute.

Additionally, when the ldsdiscussions.com essay notes that Joseph’s journal entry recording a glass of beer was later edited out of the History of the Church, it presents this as deliberate deception. But as noted above, mild fermented drinks from barley are explicitly permitted in D&C 89:17. If Joseph Smith was following the revelation’s original text — which he was — there is nothing to hide. The editorial removal may reflect the 20th-century Church’s stricter interpretation, but it does not implicate Joseph Smith in hypocrisy with respect to the 1833 revelation itself.

Claim 4: The “Hot Drinks” Interpretation Is Nonsensical and Arbitrary

The ldsdiscussions.com essay argues that interpreting “hot drinks” (D&C 89:9) as meaning specifically coffee and tea is arbitrary — since hot soup and hot chocolate are not restricted — and that the modern ban on iced coffee or iced tea further reveals that temperature was never the actual concern. The essay implies that caffeine was the real issue, but then notes that caffeinated sodas are now sold at BYU, making the entire standard incoherent.

This argument is rhetorically effective but misunderstands how divine guidance operates within Latter-day Saint ecclesiology. The Church has never claimed that D&C 89 is a comprehensive, self-interpreting health manual requiring no prophetic guidance to apply. The clarification that “hot drinks” referred specifically to coffee and tea came within just a few years of the revelation, through Hyrum Smith and early Church leaders who were in a position to seek additional light. This is the standard LDS model: foundational revelation is given, and subsequent prophetic guidance refines its application.

The argument about caffeinated sodas at BYU is a popular rhetorical point, but it misrepresents the Church’s actual position. The Church has consistently taught that the Word of Wisdom does not specifically restrict caffeine; rather, it restricts coffee and tea, and counsels against habit-forming substances. The decision to make caffeinated sodas available on campus did not contradict any stated standard. Whether this distinction is logically satisfying to every observer is a different question from whether it represents a coherent institutional position — and it does.

The ldsdiscussions.com treatment also dismisses the health science on coffee, citing studies showing health benefits of mild coffee consumption. This is a real and legitimate complication. But it is not decisive. Coffee contains hundreds of bioactive compounds, some beneficial and some not, and the health literature on coffee is genuinely mixed depending on preparation method, quantity, individual genetics, and what outcomes are being measured. The long-term epidemiological data on populations that abstain from both coffee and alcohol — including Latter-day Saints — is consistently positive, as documented below. A single-substance benefit study does not override a comprehensive population-level health outcome analysis.

Claim 5: Enforcement in 1919 Was Politically Rather Than Spiritually Motivated

The ldsdiscussions.com essay proposes that the Church’s decision to enforce the Word of Wisdom as a temple requirement in 1919 was driven primarily by two external forces: the passage of Prohibition (ratified January 1919, effective January 1920) and the need to give members a new rallying identity after the bitter controversy surrounding the end of polygamy. These are presented as naturalistic, sociological explanations that undercut the spiritual interpretation.

Even granting the historical correlation with Prohibition — and it is a genuine correlation — the argument proves less than it claims. External circumstances that prompt institutional action are not evidence that divine guidance was absent. The LDS theological framework explicitly holds that God works through providential historical circumstances to advance His purposes. If Prohibition created a socially propitious moment for full implementation of an 86-year-old revelation, Latter-day Saints have every reason to interpret that confluence as divinely orchestrated rather than merely convenient.

The “polygamy replacement” theory is speculative in the precise sense the ldsdiscussions.com essay itself concedes: “Again, this is something we can only speculate on.” Speculation presented as a plausible alternative explanation for a complex historical event does not constitute evidence against the Church’s account. The essay acknowledges this but then proceeds to treat the speculation as substantively equivalent to documented historical causation. That is not rigorous historical argument.

More fundamentally, the argument ignores the decades of documented institutional struggle to enforce the standard: the 1902 reforms under Joseph F. Smith, the 1906 sacrament substitution, the 1915 priesthood requirements, and the consistent General Conference teachings of Heber J. Grant. This was not an overnight political pivot; it was an eighty-six year arc of progressive institutional application fully consistent with the revelation’s own description of itself as a principle given by “greeting” rather than commandment.

The Remarkable Prescience of D&C 89: What Modern Science Confirms

Whatever one concludes about D&C 89’s origins, the epidemiological record of those who follow it is extraordinary and deserves serious attention. The ldsdiscussions.com essay dismisses the health science angle by citing coffee benefits and BYU’s soda policy, but these rhetorical maneuvers cannot obscure the population-level data.

The UCLA Enstrom Study

Epidemiologist James E. Enstrom of UCLA tracked approximately 10,000 high-practicing California Latter-day Saints over fourteen years and found that LDS males had a life expectancy of 84.1 years — 9.8 years longer than U.S. white males generally — and LDS females a life expectancy of 86.1 years, 5.6 years longer than their demographic peers. Active members experienced roughly half the cancer and cardiovascular death rates of the general population. Only 16% of expected smoking-related cancer deaths occurred in this group, and only 6% of expected emphysema deaths. High-practicing male members who also exercised regularly had a death rate of 38% compared to all white males — one of the most dramatic health differentials ever documented for a voluntary lifestyle cohort in U.S. epidemiological research.

Source: James E. Enstrom, “Health Practices and Cancer Mortality Among Active California Mormons,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 81 (1989); BYU Religious Studies Center, “Health Practices and Mortality Among Active California Mormons, 1980–93.”

Seventh-day Adventist Parallels

The Adventist Health Studies, spanning multiple decades and involving tens of thousands of subjects, have documented that Seventh-day Adventists — who similarly abstain from alcohol and tobacco — have coronary heart disease mortality rates at 28% to 50% of matched California population controls. These findings parallel the LDS data with remarkable consistency and suggest that the specific combination of abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, combined with a grain- and plant-rich diet, produces population-level health outcomes that no health reform movement of the 1830s was predicting or measuring.

Source: R. L. Phillips et al., “Coronary Heart Disease Mortality Among Seventh-Day Adventists with Differing Dietary Habits,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1978); Adventist Health Study, Loma Linda University.

Tobacco: A Prescient Warning

The Word of Wisdom’s condemnation of tobacco deserves particular emphasis. In 1833, tobacco was regarded by many physicians as medicinal — a treatment for respiratory ailments, headaches, and skin conditions. The American Cancer Society did not conclusively link smoking to lung cancer until 1954; the U.S. Surgeon General’s landmark report came in 1964 — 131 years after D&C 89. That a revelation received in 1833, in a culture that normalized tobacco use in churches, schools, and public meetings, took an unambiguous stand against tobacco consumption is not a trivial data point. It is precisely the kind of thing a genuine prophet, warned by revelation of future health consequences, would say.

Alcohol: An Unpopular Stand Proven Correct

The ldsdiscussions.com essay notes that warning against alcohol in 1833 was hardly radical given the temperance movement. But this understates the social cost. Alcohol was consumed at most social functions, including religious ones. Physicians endorsed wine and beer as nutritious and safe. The brewing and distilling industries were economically intertwined with virtually every community in America. A church whose founder placed an abstinence principle on alcohol as part of its identity was taking a genuinely countercultural stand — one that has been vindicated by a century and a half of public health research linking alcohol consumption to liver disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, addiction, family violence, and traffic fatalities. The World Health Organization has declared that no level of alcohol consumption is safe from a cancer-risk standpoint. D&C 89’s warning was not merely consistent with a minority reform movement; it was correct.

Source: World Health Organization, “Alcohol and Cancer” (2023); American Cancer Society, A. Chao et al., “Meat Consumption and Risk of Colorectal Cancer,” JAMA, vol. 293, pp. 172–182 (2004).

The “Conspiring Men” Warning: A Remarkable Historical Forecast

One of the most underappreciated elements of D&C 89 is its framing verse. The revelation is given, it states, “in consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days” (v. 4). The ldsdiscussions.com essay dismisses this by noting that early Saints believed they were already living in the last days, so the reference was simply to their current era.

But the phrase “conspiring men” in the context of substance distribution has proven to be a remarkably accurate description of industries whose full character would not become publicly known for over a century. The tobacco industry’s internal suppression of cancer research from the 1950s through the 1990s — documented exhaustively in litigation and congressional hearings — is precisely the kind of organized deception the verse describes. The alcohol industry’s decades-long campaign to minimize health research and normalize consumption, the opioid industry’s calculated misrepresentation of addiction risks, and the sugar industry’s funded research distorting nutritional science are all documented cases of conspiring men using commercial substances to undermine health. That a revelation given in 1833 anticipated this exact dynamic is, at minimum, worthy of serious reflection.

Boyd K. Packer’s observation — cited even in the ldsdiscussions.com essay — that the Word of Wisdom’s greatest value may be spiritual rather than merely physical reflects the revelation’s own teaching that those who follow it will “find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge” (D&C 89:19). This is not the language of an 1830s temperance pamphlet. It is the language of a covenant document with purposes that transcend nutritional science.

Progressive Revelation: The Actual LDS Framework

Running beneath the specific objections of the ldsdiscussions.com essay is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Latter-day Saint theology conceives of revelation. The essay repeatedly treats the fact that the Word of Wisdom evolved in its interpretation and application as evidence against its authenticity. But progressive revelation is not a bug in the LDS system; it is a core feature. “We believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” (Articles of Faith 1:9) is not a hedging disclaimer. It is a foundational theological commitment.

The Word of Wisdom was given in 1833 as a principle. Over eighty-six years, through the lived experience of a growing community, it was gradually elevated to a binding standard. This is not incoherence. It is the model of all serious moral and spiritual development — both in scripture and in the history of religious communities worldwide. The Christian tradition’s development of the canon, the Jewish tradition’s development of Halakha, the Islamic tradition’s development of Fiqh — all proceeded through exactly this kind of progressive clarification and increasing specificity. The ldsdiscussions.com standard, applied consistently, would disqualify not just the Word of Wisdom but virtually every religious legal development in human history.

Scholars Paul H. Peterson and Lester E. Bush Jr. have both documented the gradual implementation process in peer-reviewed academic work. Their scholarship — produced by historians who grappled honestly with the complexity — supports the view that the Word of Wisdom’s trajectory is fully consistent with its own internal framing as a principle given “not by commandment or constraint” to a people who needed time, pastoral care, and progressive understanding to internalize its full implications.

The Coherence Objections: Beer, Hot Drinks, and Dietary Detail

The ldsdiscussions.com essay argues that D&C 89 is a “complete mess” when compared to how the Church interprets it today. The permitting of beer, the ambiguity of “hot drinks,” and the text’s silence on recreational drugs are offered as evidence of a confused, human-authored document.

Several points deserve precise treatment here. First, the permitting of “mild drinks” from barley in 1833 is not incoherent given what was known at the time. Low-alcohol barley drinks had a long history as a safe alternative to contaminated water, and 19th-century fermentation processes produced beverages with alcohol content far lower than modern beer. The revelation’s guidance to avoid “strong drink” and “wine” while permitting mild fermented grain beverages is internally consistent with the health knowledge of its era and with the temperance movement’s own distinctions. That the Church later moved to full abstinence as safer water supplies made fermented beverages unnecessary as a hydration substitute represents exactly the kind of providential development the LDS theological framework anticipates.

Second, the essay’s claim that D&C 89 should have mentioned recreational drugs, sugar, or modern processed foods conflates the document with something it was never intended to be. The revelation establishes foundational dietary principles and identifies the most harmful substances of its era by category. Applying those principles to new substances as they emerged is the task of inspired leadership — and the Word of Wisdom explicitly anticipates that the Lord “will give instruction” to those who obey (v. 18–19). The absence of a mention of heroin in 1833 is not a deficiency of the revelation; it is evidence that the revelation was given to a specific people at a specific time, with full expectation of ongoing prophetic guidance.

Third, the argument about marijuana as an “herb ordained by God” demonstrates the kind of proof-texting the essay elsewhere condemns. Section 89 calls for the use of herbs “with prudence and thanksgiving” — language that any reasonable interpreter would understand to exclude psychoactive substances used recreationally. The essay offers this point as a serious textual argument, but it would be rejected under the same critical standards applied to any other ancient or modern text.

What the Word of Wisdom Represents in the Broader Joseph Smith Corpus

The ldsdiscussions.com essay concludes that the Word of Wisdom “is far from a massive problem” for critics of the Church — an acknowledgment worth noting. It presents the revelation primarily as one more data point in the larger argument that Joseph Smith created revelations by synthesizing surrounding influences. But within the context of D&C 89 specifically, the synthesis argument is particularly weak.

A document produced purely by synthesis from surrounding influences would be expected to reflect the errors and limitations of those influences in proportion to its derivation from them. But D&C 89’s positive health content — grains as “the staff of life,” fruits and herbs used “with prudence,” meat eaten “sparingly” and “only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine” — aligns with what has emerged as the best modern nutritional science with a consistency that exceeds what any 1830s temperance pamphlet achieved. The revelation did not merely echo the temperance movement; it identified the specific categories of substance — alcohol, tobacco, and stimulants — whose confirmed health harms are now beyond scientific dispute, while articulating a positive dietary vision oriented toward plants and grains that is essentially identical to what the 21st-century scientific consensus recommends.

No derivative document achieves that outcome. What the temperance movement got approximately right through social advocacy, D&C 89 got precisely right through revelation — and what the temperance movement got wrong (its failure to distinguish substances, its tendency toward fanaticism rather than principle), D&C 89 navigated with a measured, principle-based approach that has proven far more durable.

Conclusion: The Weight of the Evidence

The ldsdiscussions.com overview of the Word of Wisdom raises legitimate historical questions and presents them with rhetorical skill. It correctly notes that the temperance movement preceded D&C 89, that early Church members and leaders did not immediately treat it as a binding commandment, and that there are real textual ambiguities in how the modern Church applies the revelation. None of these observations are disputed here.

What the essay fails to demonstrate is that these observations constitute evidence against D&C 89’s divine origin. The argument from cultural context is logically circular. The argument from early non-compliance ignores the revelation’s own “not by commandment” framing. The argument from textual inconsistency misapplies modern standards to a 19th-century document. The “boiling water” objection demands of revelation what it does not demand of any other contemporaneous text. And the health science section of the essay is selective in a way that cannot survive scrutiny of the actual epidemiological record.

When the full weight of evidence is assembled — the documented health outcomes of Word of Wisdom-observant populations, the remarkable precision of its warnings about tobacco and alcohol, the accuracy of its positive dietary guidance, the coherence of its gradual implementation with its own self-description, the historically prescient language about “conspiring men” — D&C 89 emerges as a document that demands a more serious explanation than “Joseph Smith read some temperance pamphlets.”

The Word of Wisdom is not the strongest evidence for the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith. But it is far from the weakness the ldsdiscussions.com essay characterizes it as. Honestly examined, it is a remarkable document — one that deserves the kind of rigorous, evidence-based engagement this response attempts to provide.

Primary Sources and Scholarly References

Doctrine and Covenants 89 (1833). Joseph Smith Papers: josephsmithpapers.org.

Paul H. Peterson, “An Historical Analysis of the Word of Wisdom” (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1972).

Lester E. Bush Jr., “The Word of Wisdom in Early Nineteenth Century Perspective,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 14, no. 3 (1981).

James E. Enstrom, “Health Practices and Cancer Mortality Among Active California Mormons,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 81 (1989); BYU Religious Studies Center, “Health Practices and Mortality Among Active California Mormons, 1980–93.”

R. L. Phillips et al., “Coronary Heart Disease Mortality Among Seventh-Day Adventists with Differing Dietary Habits,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1978); Adventist Health Study, Loma Linda University.

A. Chao et al., “Meat Consumption and Risk of Colorectal Cancer,” JAMA, vol. 293, pp. 172–182 (2004).

Jed Woodworth, “The Word of Wisdom,” Revelations in Context (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2013). churchofjesuschrist.org.

FAIR Latter-day Saints, “Word of Wisdom / History and Implementation.” fairlatterdaysaints.org.

Doctrine and Covenants Central, “Historical Context and Background of D&C 89.” doctrineandcovenantscentral.org.

World Health Organization, “Alcohol and Cancer” (2023).

John Snow, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (London, 1849); historical context on germ theory and miasma theory via National Archives UK and Science Museum.