The Word of Wisdom — A Health Law from 1833
Revealed before modern medicine confirmed it — and increasingly validated by science
In 1833 a revelation told members of the Church to avoid tobacco, alcohol, and harmful substances. The medical world didn't catch up for over a century. This is not cultural restriction. It is covenant.
Most people who encounter the Word of Wisdom for the first time see it as a peculiar list of rules — no coffee, no tea, no alcohol, no tobacco. It reads, at first glance, like the dietary laws of a religious subculture. Something to mark insiders and outsiders. A social code dressed up as revelation.
That reading misses the point entirely. The Word of Wisdom is a covenant with physical and spiritual dimensions, grounded in scripture, confirmed by modern science, and carrying specific promised blessings for those who keep it.
What the Word of Wisdom Is
The Word of Wisdom is a revelation given through the Prophet Joseph Smith on February 27, 1833, recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 89. It came in response to a practical problem — members were using tobacco during meetings — but the revelation it produced went far beyond the immediate question. God gave it, the text says, “in consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days” (D&C 89:4). That is an unusual phrase. It points forward — to an era of corporate marketing of addictive substances, to industries built on the sale of things that harm and enslave.
The Bible anticipates this principle. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians:
“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”
The body is not incidental to salvation. It is the temple of the Holy Ghost. What you do with it is a spiritual matter. The Word of Wisdom takes that principle from Paul and gives it concrete, actionable form.
What It Says
Section 89 is not a list of prohibitions. It is a positive vision of a healthy body and a warned mind, with specific prohibitions embedded in it.
“A Word of Wisdom, for the benefit of the council of high priests, assembled in Kirtland, and the church, and also the saints in Zion — To be sent greeting; not by commandment or constraint, but by revelation and the word of wisdom.”
The revelation addresses both what to avoid and what to use. The prohibitions: strong drinks (alcohol), tobacco, hot drinks (understood as coffee and tea). The positive counsel: wholesome herbs, fruit, grain (especially wheat), and meat used sparingly and with thanksgiving. The text is grounded, practical, and ecologically coherent.
Daniel's example in the Old Testament prefigures it. When Daniel refused the king's meat and wine — substances offered to idols — and asked instead for pulse and water, the result was health and wisdom that exceeded his peers (Daniel 1:8–17). The principle of declining substances that defile the body in favor of simpler, cleaner food is not a Joseph Smith novelty. It is biblical.
Biblical Precedents for Bodily Covenant
- Daniel 1:8–17 — Daniel refuses the king's food and drink; gains health and wisdom
- 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 — Body as temple of the Holy Ghost; stewardship required
- Proverbs 20:1 — “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise”
The Science Has Caught Up
In 1833, no medical consensus existed on the harm of tobacco or alcohol. The U.S. Surgeon General's first report linking smoking to cancer came in 1964 — 131 years after the Word of Wisdom. The scientific case against heavy alcohol consumption was contested well into the twentieth century. The revelation preceded the evidence by generations.
Today the evidence is settled. Tobacco causes lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen — the same category as asbestos and mustard gas. The link between excessive alcohol use and liver disease, neurological damage, and addiction is beyond scientific dispute. The Word of Wisdom named these as harmful in an era when they were socially celebrated and medically unremarkable.
Studies of Latter-day Saint health outcomes confirm the pattern. LDS members who keep the Word of Wisdom consistently show lower rates of cancer, heart disease, and metabolic illness than comparable non-LDS populations. The Church's health record, traceable in part to this covenant, is not a coincidence. It is a kept promise.
Coffee and tea are more complex medically — the research on both is genuinely mixed. The obedience principle here is not primarily scientific. It is covenantal. God said it. That is sufficient reason. The body of evidence on the items where the science is clearest — tobacco and alcohol — validates the pattern of revelation, which gives you reason to trust the rest.
More Than a Health Code — It Is a Covenant
The Word of Wisdom is a covenant in the same sense that the Mosaic dietary laws were covenant — not because the foods were inherently corrupt, but because God said “these are mine, and this is how you show it.” The Israelites didn't avoid shellfish because shellfish is poison. They avoided it because God said it was not for them, and obedience was the point. The sign of belonging, the act of faith, was in keeping the covenant even when you didn't fully understand why.
That is exactly how LDS members should understand the Word of Wisdom. Obedience to it is, among other things, a covenant act that says: my body belongs to God. I will not fill it with things He has warned against. And He, in turn, keeps His promises.
Keeping the Word of Wisdom is also a qualification for temple attendance — which means it is tied to access to the highest ordinances of the gospel. It is not optional housekeeping. It is a threshold covenant.
The Promised Blessings
The revelation does not just issue commands. It makes promises — and they are specific:
“And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones; and shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures; and shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint. And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass them by, as the children of Israel, and not slay them.”
Physical health. Wisdom. Hidden treasures of knowledge. The language of the angel passing by — a direct echo of Passover — places the Word of Wisdom within the grand covenant tradition of God protecting those who mark themselves as His.
These are not vague spiritual feelings. They are covenant blessings attached to covenant behavior. God is not asking His people to be healthy for their own sake only. He is asking them to be fit to receive revelation, to carry heavy spiritual responsibilities, and to live long enough to do the work He has prepared for them.
The Word of Wisdom is, finally, an act of trust. Trust that God knows more about your body than the culture does. Trust that obedience — even before the scientific evidence is in — is reasonable when the source is the Creator of the thing being cared for. And trust that the promised blessings, physical and spiritual alike, will come to those who keep their end of the covenant.