6. Jeremiah iii: 15-19. 7. II Esdras xiii. 8. Amos ix: 8, 9. 9. Jeremiah iii: 14, 15. 10. Isaiah ii. 11. Rev. xvii: 4, 5. 12. Chapter xii. 13. Doc. and Cov. Sec. cxxxiii. 14. Acts i: 9-11. 15. Matt. xvi: 27. 16. I Thess. iv: 13-17. 17. II Thess. 1: 7-10. 18. Rev. xx: 1-7. 19. Matt. xxiv: 14. 20. Mal. iii: 1-4. 21. Jude 14-15. 22. Doc. and Cov. Sec. xiii. 23. Doc. and Cov. lxxxviii: 78, 92. 24. Doc. and Cov. lxv. CHAPTER XXVI. TESTIMONY TO THE INSPIRATION AND DIVINE CALLING OF JOSEPH SMITH DERIVED FROM THE COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE WORK HE INTRODUCED--CONTINUED. At once intimately connected with the coming of the Lord Jesus, and fatal to all claims of a divine commission on the part of Joseph Smith had he omitted it from the New Dispensation, is the mission of Elijah. This, too, is the subject of one of Malachi's prophecies. "Behold," that prophet represents the Lord as saying, "I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he will turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." [1] According to the testimony of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, on the 3rd of April, 1836, Elijah appeared to them in the Kirtland Temple and fulfilled this prophecy. "Therefore," said he, on that occasion, "the keys of this dispensation are committed into your hands, and by this ye may know that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors." [2] The nature of Elijah's mission, the manner in which the hearts of the fathers would be turned to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, has been and is a mystery to Christendom; and only by a revelation from God could it be made plain. The mission of Elijah related to the salvation of the dead; and the introduction of that doctrine was the beginning of a revolution in the theology of Christendom. Up to that time--1836--I may say it was universally believed by Christians that the souls of men who died without conversion to the Christian religion were everlastingly lost. As I have said elsewhere, [3] it was believed that the application of the gospel of Jesus Christ was limited to this life; and those who failed, through whatever cause, to obtain the benefits of the means of salvation it affords, are forever barred from such benefits. "If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be;" [4] and they argued from this that in whatever state a man died so he remained. If he died in a state of justification his salvation was assured; but if not, then justification, and consequently salvation, were forever beyond his hope.