Mr. Durant of Salt Lake City, "That Mormon"Rich, Ben. E. (Benjamin Erastus)
Religion
Mr. Durant of Salt Lake City, "That Mormon"
Rich, Ben. E. (Benjamin Erastus)
Latter Day Saints -- Fiction; Salt Lake City (Utah) -- Fiction
"After I had retired into the place where I had previously designed
to go, having looked around me and finding myself alone, I kneeled
down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had
scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power
which entirely overcame me, and had such astonishing influence
over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick
darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if
I were doomed to sudden destruction. But exerting all my powers to
call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which
had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to
sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction, not to an
imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the
unseen world, who had such a marvelous power as I had never before
felt in any being. Just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a
pillar of light exactly over my head above the brightness of the
sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no sooner
appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me
bound. When the light rested upon me, I saw two personages, whose
brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in
the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said
(pointing to the other), 'THIS IS MY BELOVED SON, HEAR HIM.'
"My object in going to enquire of the Lord, was to know which
of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No
sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be
able to speak, than I asked the personages who stood above me in
the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it
had never entered into my heart that all were wrong), and which
I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for
they were all wrong, and the personage who addressed me said that
all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those
professors were all corrupt. They draw near to me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me; they teach for doctrine the
commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the
power thereof.
"He again forbade me to join with any of them; and many other
things did he say unto me which I cannot write at this time. When I
came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back, looking up
into heaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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