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“The Price of Faith? The Fire of Covenant!”

“The Price of Faith? The Fire of Covenant!”

Last updated on: October 27, 2026 at 6:45 pm by Dan Peterson

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“The Price of Faith? The Fire of Covenant!” 2026-10-27T18:45:01-06:00 Dan Peterson

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A sunset view toward the west from atop Mt. Pisgah, Iowa (taken with my cellphone), near the grave of my ancestor Joseph Knight, Sr.

This week’s installment of our on-going series of Becoming Brigham mini-documentaries is an emotional one and a personal favorite of mine: “The Price of Faith? The Fire of Covenant! — Becoming Brigham Episode 40”

Amid sickness and the failing plans of a mass exodus, faith and covenants are put to the test on a massive scale. Brigham Young and the Saints discover the deep relationships between faith, truth, and covenants.

Why did the Saints strike a deal with the same U.S. government that they blamed for Joseph Smith’s death and their expulsion from Missouri?

What kept thousands from abandoning the journey when scurvy and starvation turned Winter Quarters into a place of mass death?

How did temple covenants become a practical force that held a scattered, desperate people together?

The Saints could not reach the Rocky Mountains in 1846 as hoped, so instead they established way stations such as Garden Grove and Mount Pisgah in Iowa. There they plowed hundreds of acres, planted crops for later companies, and buried hundreds who died from hardship.

Our hosts discuss the decision to cross the Missouri River before the spring runoff, the negotiations with the U.S. government for the Mormon Battalion during the Mexican-American War, and the grim realities of Winter Quarters, where scurvy killed hundreds and the Saints faced their “Valley Forge.” This episode emphasizes temple covenants, and Brigham Young’s leadership in rallying an exhausted people.

“Eyes Westward,” a statue of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young that is located down by the riverbank in Nauvoo, Illinois, depicts them looking over the Mississippi toward the Rocky Mountains (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

This latest installment of our still-unfolding Becoming Brigham series continues the epic story of the exodus from Nauvoo that began with the previous installment, “Mud! Down Payment on an Exodus?— Becoming Brigham Episode 39.” I hope that you’ll give these discussions a few minutes of your attention sometime this week.

Why did the carefully planned 1846 dash to the Rockies become a year-long ordeal across Iowa?

How did Brigham Young keep a freezing, starving camp of thousands moving when he himself was so ill he could barely stand?

How did the Saints’ temple covenants sustain them when weather, mobs, and other hardships made every mile feel like failure?

This episode explores the Latter-day Saints’ forced departure from Nauvoo in February of 1846, when the first wagons crossed the Mississippi to a camp at Sugar Creek amid freezing weather, deep snow, and widespread illness, and then progress across Iowa crawled at roughly two miles a day. Our hosts examine the leadership vacuum after Joseph Smith’s death, the Saints’ decision to follow the Quorum of the Twelve, Joseph’s earlier talk of a westward move to the Rocky Mountains, Brigham’s dream and map research, and the tension between finishing the Nauvoo Temple and preparing to leave. Historian Richard E. Bennett describes the scale of the migration (roughly 10,000–12,000 people), the desperate shortage of wagons, food, and money, with cascading obstacles of mud, rain, sickness, poverty, all of which forced repeated changes to the plan and tested the covenants the Saints had made in the temple.

The Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple stands directly adjacent to the old pioneer cemetery there. (LDS.org)

William Clayton’s great anthem Come, Come Ye Saints was written by the English-born convert and pioneer William Clayton on 15 April 1846, in the midst of the very privations out on the Great Plains that we discuss in Becoming Brigham.

I hope that, having watched these two episodes and listened to Camrey Bagley Fox’s remarkable interview with Professor Richard Bennett, which is featured in them, you will hear Brother Clayton’s lyrics afresh — and, even more importantly, that the flame of the covenants that we too have made will kindle anew in our own souls. Listen to a rendition of Come, Come, Ye Saints by the Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square:

1. Come, come, ye Saints, no toil nor labor fear
But with joy wend your way
Though hard to you this journey may appear
Grace shall be as your day

‘Tis better far for us to strive
Our useless cares from us to drive
Do this, and joy your hearts will swell
All is well! All is well!

2. Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?

‘Tis not so, all is right

Why should we think to earn a great reward

If we now shun the fight?

Gird up your loins, fresh courage take

Our God will never us forsake

And soon we’ll have this tale to tel

All is well! All is well!

3. We’ll find the place which God for us prepared

Far away in the West

Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid

There the Saints will be blessed

We’ll make the air with music ring

Shout praises to our God and King

Above the rest these words we’ll tell

All is well! All is well!

4. And should we die before our journey’s through

Happy day! All is well

We then are free from toil and sorrow, too

With the just we shall dwell!

But if our lives are spared again

To see the Saints their rest obtain

Oh, how we’ll make this chorus swell

All is well! All is well!

Happy day! All is well!

All is well!

The Cody Wyoming Temple (aka Barad-dûr), as envisioned by its fiercest opponents. (Provenance of image unknown. If there is an objection to its use here, please contact me at [email protected].)

The desperate citizens of Cody, Wyoming, foresaw the enormous damage that the Cody Wyoming Temple would wreak upon them and their town. Nonetheless, the megahuge and heartless corporation that wishes to be known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sought to impose it upon them over their powerless cries of protest. They knew that its vast bulk — the structure weighs in at an incredible 9,950 square feet — would block views of the sky above and the mountains round about, and that its huge spire would loom menacingly over their city.

Well, the temple has now been completed and dedicated — see “Elder Gilbert dedicates Cody Wyoming Temple, his first since becoming an Apostle: In what was once the last Western frontier, Elder Gilbert invites Church members to seek the Lord’s spiritual frontiers” — and it’s easy to see how eerily accurate (even perhaps understated) their dire prophecies were. Consider , for example, some of the photographs that accompany the story immediately below. Note how the temple towers ominously over the humble cottages and modest places of business that are clustered around its base. See for yourself how it blocks any and all views of the sky and how it makes seeing the surrounding Wyoming landscape absolutely impossible:

“‘The Lord’s hand was in preserving that property’: The story of the Cody Wyoming Temple site: Glenn and Erica Nielson, who donated the land, share what they’ve learned about God’s timing, answers to prayers and peacemaking”

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