A String of Pearls: Second Book of the Faith-Promoting Series. Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day SaintsVarious
Religion
A String of Pearls: Second Book of the Faith-Promoting Series. Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints
Various
Latter Day Saint churches; Sunday school literature
The incident and attendant circumstances, as nearly as I can
recollect, were as follows, and I am sure I give the same in a manner
substantially as related to me:
Brother A--first heard the gospel when a youth, in his native
country--England. He was soon convinced of its truth, was baptized at
the age of eighteen, and immediately after his baptism was ordained
an Elder, and sent forth to preach the gospel. He was an unlettered,
unsophisticated, bashful youth, one of the last, it would have been
thought, to be selected to preach the gospel.
He started forth and arrived at a strange village, where, at a late
hour, and after some interesting adventures, he was taken in by a
kind-hearted man and his wife, who made him very comfortable.
On the next day he conversed with them upon the gospel.
They thought it remarkable to see such a boy as he was, out as a
missionary of a new religion, became interested, and asked him to hold
a meeting in their house.
He had never preached in public, but he said he would do the best
he could. The appointment was spread, and the house was full at the
appointed hour. The young Elder astonished himself at the ease with
which he preached a long discourse on the first principles of the
gospel.
Among those who had come to meeting was a hardened infidel, who was a
very cunning reasoner, and who had made it a practice for many years
to argue against the divinity of the scriptures. Nothing pleased him
more than to draw some minister into a debate, and then to present some
of his "unanswerable" arguments against the Bible. He had vanquished
every minister in the village, and every itinerant preacher who had
held meetings there for years, whom he could succeed in drawing into a
debate.
When the young missionary had ceased preaching, some of the audience
commenced to ask him questions. Presently the infidel, evidently
thinking to easily vanquish so weak an adversary, commenced with his
usual routine of questions, and at length asked:
"So you believe the flood actually drowned all the animals in the world
except those in the ark?"
"Yes, sir," answered the Elder.
"We know that, not very long after the flood, many kinds of animals
were found in various parts of the world at a great distance from
where the ark landed, and even upon islands of the sea, far from the
mainland, and under such circumstances as would render the theory of
transportation by human means an absurdity. Now, how did those animals
come to exist in the different and distant islands and continents?"
This question was the infidel's "trump card." At the right juncture in
his debates he always asked it, and had never yet met with a minister,
or any other Bible believer, who could satisfactorily answer it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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