The Lions of the Lord: A Tale of the Old WestWilson, Harry Leon
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The Lions of the Lord: A Tale of the Old West
Wilson, Harry Leon
Historical fiction; Latter Day Saint pioneers -- Fiction; Western stories
“Let each company provide itself with all the teams, wagons,
provisions, and all other necessaries for the journey.
“Let every man use all of his influence and property to remove this
people to the place where the Lord shall locate a stake of Zion, and
let them share equally in taking the poor, the widows, and the
fatherless, so that their cries come not up into the ears of the Lord
against His people.
“And if ye do this with a pure heart, with all faithfulness, ye shall
be blessed in your flocks and in your herds and in your fields and in
your families. For I am the Lord your God, even the God of your
fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob. I am He who led the
children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, and my arm is stretched
out in these last days to save my people of Israel.
“Fear not thine enemies, for they are in my hands, and I will do my
pleasure with them.
“My people must be tried in all things, that they may be worthy to
receive the glory that I have in store for them, even the glory of
Zion; and he that will not receive chastisement is not worthy of my
Kingdom. So no more at present. Amen and Amen!”
This was what he had longed for each winter night when he had seen the
sun go down,—the word of the Lord to follow that sun on over the rim
into the pathless wilderness, infested by savage tribes and ravenous
beasts, abounding in terrors unknown. There was an adventure worth
while in the sight of God. It had never ceased to thrill him since he
first heard it broached,—the mad plan of a handful of persecuted
believers, setting out from civilisation to found Zion in the
wilderness,—to go forth a thousand miles from Christendom with nothing
but stout arms and a very living faith in the God of Israel, and in
Joseph Smith as his prophet, meeting death in famine, plagues, and
fevers, freezing in the snows of the mountains, thirsting to death on
the burning deserts, being devoured by ravening beasts or tortured to
death by the sinful Lamanites; but persisting through it all with
dauntless courage to a final triumph so glorious that the very Gods
would be compelled to applaud the spectacle of their devoted heroism.
And now he was face to face with the awful, the glorious, the divinely
ordained fact. It was like standing before the Throne of Grace itself.
Out over that western skyline was a spot, now hidden and defended by
all the powers of Satan, where the Ten Tribes would be restored, where
Zion would be rebuilt, where Christ would reign personally on earth a
thousand years, and from whence the earth would be renewed and receive
again its paradisiac glory. The thought overwhelmed.
“If we could only start at once!” he said to Bishop Wright, who had
read the revelation with him. But the canny Bishop’s religious zeal was
henceforth to be tempered by the wisdom of the children of darkness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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