Life of David W. Patten, the First Apostolic MartyrWilson, Lycurgus A. (Lycurgus Arnold)
History
Life of David W. Patten, the First Apostolic Martyr
Wilson, Lycurgus A. (Lycurgus Arnold)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- Apostles -- Biography; Patten, David W., 1799-1838
The message fairly caused his heart to leap for joy. He seemed
conscious of the light which was about to burst upon him. He knew by
intuition that his life's darkness was over, and that henceforward he
should walk in the light of eternal truth. He arose in the meeting that
day--for it was on a Sunday he received the intelligence--and told the
assembly that he had at last got word of the Church of Christ.
Impatient to be off, he mounted his old grey mare the next morning
and started alone through the woods on a journey of three hundred
miles. That part of the country in those days was little more than a
wilderness. The roads by which the settlers had come from their eastern
homes ran, in the main, east and west, so that David's way to the
south led him over hills, through valleys and across rivers by paths
almost unknown to the white man; but nature was in her glory, the birds
made melody the day through, and, more than all else, his own heart,
swelling with gratitude, kept time to the music of the spheres, for God
had again spoken from the heavens, the questionings of his soul since
boyhood had been answered, and those paths, rough though they were,
led to the realization of his highest hopes this side of eternity.
That otherwise lonely journey was filled with peace and happiness
unspeakable.
Arrived at the home of his brother, at Fairplay, he found him, before
an infidel, now a devoted Christian and substantially as the history of
the rise of the Church was related to him we shall repeat it here:
"In a little town six hundred miles to the east, in the State of New
York, a young man named Joseph Smith, while praying in the woods twelve
years ago, received a visit from God the Father and His Son Jesus
Christ. Three years later, an angel, calling himself Moroni, appeared
to this youth and explained that he was a resurrected being who had
formerly lived on this continent in the flesh. Telling the boy Joseph
of a sacred record hidden in a hill near by, the angel met him on the
hillside where the precious charge lay concealed in a stone box, and
after repeated admonitions during the four subsequent years, delivered
to him some gold plates and an instrument called a Urim and Thummim,
with which to translate the inspired hieroglyphics.
"After much delay and a great deal of persecution, the youth succeeded
in reproducing from the gold plates the record known as the Book of
Mormon, now published to the world these three years.
"Two years and two months ago, having received authority under the
hands of John the Baptist, as also from Peter, James and John, the
ancient apostles, this modern Prophet, in accordance with directions
from the Lord, organized the true Church of Christ, at Fayette, Seneca
County, in the State of New York.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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