What's happening
Two brothers asked the same question, and God gave them the same answer — word for word. That fact is itself the lesson of Section 16.
Peter Whitmer Jr. was the youngest of Peter Whitmer Sr.'s sons in the Fayette household that took in Joseph and Oliver in June 1829 and gave them room to finish the Book of Mormon. When his older brother John asked the Lord his duty, he received Section 15. When Peter Jr. asked, he received Section 16 — and the two revelations are identical in every word but the name. Hearken, my servant Peter... I will tell you that which no man knoweth save me and thee alone... the thing which will be of the most worth unto you will be to declare repentance unto this people, that you may bring souls unto me, that you may rest with them in the kingdom of my Father. (For the verse-by-verse treatment, see the notes on Section 15, which apply here in full.)
It would be easy to read the duplication as mere economy — the Lord reusing language for a second petitioner. But the repetition is doing something, and it is worth pausing on. The Lord did not give Peter a lesser word because John had asked first, nor a different word to make Peter feel singular. He gave him the same word, because the answer to "what is of most worth?" is genuinely the same for both men — and, by extension, for everyone. The most valuable thing a soul can do does not change from person to person. Whether you are John or Peter, gifted or ordinary, first or second to ask, the answer is: bring souls unto me, and rest with them. Section 16 is the Lord declaring, by the very act of repeating Himself, that the work of most worth is universal.
The same word, and yet personal (the meaning of the repetition)
And I will tell you that which no man knoweth save me and thee alone. — D&C 16:3
Here is the paradox that keeps Section 16 from being a mere copy. The Lord tells Peter the same thing He told John — and yet He frames it as that which no man knoweth save me and thee alone. The counsel is shared; the knowing is private. God had listened to Peter's own secret desires, just as He had listened to John's, and He meets each brother as if he were the only one. The identical wording does not flatten the two men into one; it reveals that the Lord can give the very same gift to two souls and have it land in each as something intimately, personally his.
This is a small but profound correction to a common worry — that to be told the same gospel as everyone else is to be treated generically, as a face in a crowd. Section 16 says otherwise. The Lord knows Peter's heart alone, and out of that personal knowledge gives him the same calling He gives all His servants. The universality of the message and the intimacy of the relationship are not in tension. God deals with each of us by name, and tells each of us, by name, the same beautiful thing: bring souls unto me.
The most worth (verse 6)
...the thing which will be of the most worth unto you will be to declare repentance unto this people, that you may bring souls unto me, that you may rest with them in the kingdom of my Father. — D&C 16:6
The climax is identical to John's, and its truth does not wear thin by being repeated — it deepens. The most worthwhile thing Peter could do with his life was to help bring others to Christ, with the reward of resting with them in the Father's kingdom. The Hebrew sense of rest (see the note on Section 15) is the settled repose of arrival, a homecoming shared with the souls one has reached. To two brothers, the Lord promises the same homecoming and the same company.
And Peter Whitmer Jr. lived the verse to its end. Where his brothers David and John would eventually leave the Church (though never denying their witness), Peter Jr. stayed. He became one of the Eight Witnesses; he answered a call to carry the gospel to the Lamanites on the western frontier; and he died young, in 1836, still in the faith. The word given twice in that Fayette farmhouse — bring souls unto me, that you may rest with them — became, for Peter, the actual shape of a short and faithful life. The revelation that reads like a copy was, for the brother who kept it, a destiny.
How the section is built
Section 16 is built as a deliberate echo, and its architecture is the architecture of Section 15 laid over a second name. The same two strokes — I know you alone (vv. 1–5) and here is what matters most (v. 6) — fall in the same order. The only variable is the name at the head, Peter for John. That near-total identity is the structural sermon: change the name, and everything the Lord says to one faithful seeker He says to the next. The form teaches that the gospel's central call is not customized down to nothing; it is one call, addressed personally to each.
How this sits in the documentary record
Where this lands
Section 16 is, on its face, a duplicate — and that is exactly why it preaches. We sometimes fear that the gospel given to everyone cannot also be meant uniquely for us; that to share a Savior, a scripture, and a calling with millions is to be lost in the crowd. The Lord's word to Peter Whitmer Jr. answers that fear by being, deliberately, the same word He gave Peter's brother — and by introducing it as that which no man knoweth save me and thee alone. The calling is shared; the knowing is personal. You are not generic to God because the gospel He gives you is the same one He gives your neighbor. He knows you alone, and tells you, by name, the same true thing.
And the same thing is worth hearing twice: the thing which will be of the most worth unto you is to bring souls to Christ and to rest with them at the last. Two brothers were told it in one June; their paths later diverged, but the calling never changed, and the one who kept it to the end found in it the meaning of his life. Whatever your name, the Lord says it to you too.