Gems for the Young Folks: Fourth Book of the Faith-Promoting Series. Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-Day Saints.Various
Religion
Gems for the Young Folks: Fourth Book of the Faith-Promoting Series. Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-Day Saints.
Various
Latter Day Saints
Such a chain of testimonies, and an interweaving of evidences,
accompanied with that perception and comprehension which the Holy Ghost
alone can give, none can realize but those who have received that
Spirit and revelations unto themselves. Such persons know just how it
is.
I was disturbed, apparently in the midst of my vision, by my wife's
calling to me, when the vision left me, and I felt just like a hungry
man who is called or snatched suddenly away from a feast. But the joy
and peace with which my spirit was filled remained with me, and I
glorified God.
Things went on much as usual, till something like a year afterwards,
when I had a singular dream, which, as it had a bearing on my future
life, I will relate:
I dreamed that I had been called to preach the gospel, and the first
time I thus officiated, it was in a school-house, in an adjoining
town, with which I was well acquainted. I saw all the members of the
congregation, which was small, and, when I awoke, I could distinctly
remember the position each person occupied in the room.
This so impressed my mind that I told my wife of it, and said I
believed it would be realized; but she scouted the idea. What was I, a
working man, to do with preaching? Well, at other times, it would have
appeared equally foolish to myself, but it had been given to me that
her mother, living at the place, knew by a dream the same thing, and I
told this to my wife. At last she promised that, if it turned out to be
the case, she would believe the dream to be true.
In a day or so, we paid her mother a visit, and found that she had
dreamed, that night, that I was coming to preach in the town where she
lived, and we learned, from her friends, that she had been entreating
one of her relatives to carry her to my residence, that she might tell
me of it.
Although the truth of the dream was thus proved to me, I little thought
what doctrines I was to preach, and in connection with what people or
church. But I was to have greater evidence of the truth of my dream, as
will be seen hereafter.
Five years more passed, and I was still unconnected with any religious
party. At this time, what were called "protracted meetings," or
religious services, continued for days, and sometimes weeks, were very
popular in America.
In common with the "Universalists," I felt unfavorable to the meetings,
but such magnificent reports of their results--the wholesale
"conversion of souls," led me to attend one. I humbled myself, and
determined to divest my mind of all prejudice, and put myself at least
in a position to receive all the good that could be obtained.
Before going, I covenanted with the Lord, that if He would reveal His
mind and will unto me, whatever sacrifice or duty He might require at
my hands, I would do it. Little did I think of the way my truthfulness
would be tried, or possibly I might have shunned such a contract.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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