The discourse is contained in a blank book measuring 6 × 4 × ⅜ inches (15 × 10 × 1 cm). The text block originally consisted of fifty-six leaves, with two leaves of endpaper at the front and at the back of the volume. The book has a tight-back, quarter binding with cow leather. At some point the first leaf of the text block and the two leaves of endpaper at the beginning of the volume were excised from the volume. Ink is visible on the stub of the first leaf of the text block, indicating that at least the recto of that leaf contained text. The wear on the stubs suggests that the pages were cut from the volume while it was still in use. inscribed “Book of Revelations | W Woodruff” on the front cover of the volume.

The volume was initially owned by Asahel Woodruff, who began using it as a diary or genealogical record sometime around December 1837. He died in October 1838, and his brother took possession of his “private letters, Journals, writing papers [and] Account Books” on 13 December 1838. Presumably this volume was among Asahel’s papers. Wilford Woodruff began copying into the volume in summer 1839. The volume was perhaps transferred with Woodruff’s other papers and journals to the Church Historian’s Office (now CHL) by 1858, but in 1860 Woodruff used the volume to record bids to provide grain for the soldiers stationed at Camp Floyd that year. The volume appears in a church inventory produced in 1878. At some point after 1878, the record was given to his wife Sarah Brown Woodruff and was then passed down through the family until it was donated to church historian and recorder Joseph Fielding Smith sometime in the mid-twentieth century. Smith apparently retained the volume among his papers, and it likely became part of the First Presidency’s papers when Smith became church president in 1970, as happened with other historical records in his possession. In 2010 the First Presidency transferred custody of Woodruff’s “Book of Revelations” to the CHL.