On 11 November 1831, JS dictated this revelation assigning “” to accompany “” on an upcoming trip to . Sometime in late October or early November, Oliver Cowdery received the assignment to carry JS’s revelations to Missouri so they could be published at the was establishing there. John Whitmer later wrote that he was appointed by revelation to accompany Cowdery. This 11 November directive for Whitmer—who, according to a March 1831 revelation, was responsible for keeping “the Church Record & History continually”—to go to Missouri indicates that the records necessary to maintain a history of the church were to be kept there. While this revelation did not enumerate exactly which records should be preserved, it indicated that among them were the accounts of Saints who were “abroad in the Earth,” supplemented by records Whitmer himself was to obtain by traveling to different congregations. The revelation also reiterated the need for Whitmer to write in his history “all the important things which he shall observe & know concerning my Church.”

The original manuscript of the revelation is not extant. copied the revelation into Revelation Book 1, probably before his and ’s departure for on 20 November. When Whitmer copied the revelation, he dated it 11 October 1831, but he later changed the date to 11 November 1831. Whitmer copied the revelation between the testimony of the divine origin of JS’s revelations, written sometime around 2 November, and another revelation dated 11 November, suggesting that November and not October was the correct month. Although “11” is probably the correct day, an account in a later JS history raises some questions. According to that history, “The Book of Commandments and Revelations was to be dedicated, by prayer, to the service of Almighty God, by me; and after I had done this, I enquired of the Lord concerning these things, and received” the revelation. This dedication occurred at a conference held on 12 November. Since that conference focused on the publication of the revelations, it is plausible that the revelation was dictated then, although the minutes of the conference do not record such an event. Without additional evidence, 11 November remains the more probable date.