The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901Linn, William Alexander
History
The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901
Linn, William Alexander
Latter Day Saints -- History; Utah -- History
The Mormon leaders made this belief a part of their early doctrine.
Thus, in one of the first "revelations" given out by Smith, dated
Fayette, New York, September, 1830, Christ is represented as saying
that "the hour is nigh" when He would reveal Himself, and "dwell in
righteousness with men on earth a thousand years." In the November
following, another "revelation" declared that "the time is soon at hand
that I shall come in a cloud, with power and great glory." Soon
after Smith arrived in Kirtland a "revelation," dated February, 1831,
announced that "the great day of the Lord is nigh at hand." In January,
1833, Smith predicted that "there are those now living upon the earth
whose eyes shall not be closed in death until they shall see all these
things of which I have spoken" (the sweeping of the wicked from the
United States, and the return of the lost tribes to it). Smith declared
in 1843 that the Lord had promised that he should see the Son of Man
if he lived to be eighty-five (Sec. 130).* When Ferris was Secretary
of Utah Territory, in 1852-1853, he found that the Mormons were still
expecting the speedy coming of Christ, but had moved the date forward to
1870. All through Smith's autobiography and the Millennial Star will be
found mention of every portent that might be construed as an indication
of the coming disruption of this world. As late as December 6, 1856, an
editorial in the Millennial Star said, "The signs of the times clearly
indicate to every observing mind that the great day of the second advent
of Messiah is at hand."
* Speaking of W. W. Phelps's last years in Utah, Stenhouse says:
"Often did the old man, in public and in private, regale the Saints with
the assurance that he had the promise by revelation that he should not
taste of death until Jesus came." Phelps died on March 7, 1872.
As the devout Mohammedan* passes from earth to a heaven of material
bliss, so the Mormons are taught that the Saints, the sole survivors of
the day of judgment, will, with resurrected bodies, possess the purified
earth. The lengths to which Mormon preachers have dared to go in
illustrating this view find a good illustration in a sermon by arson
Pratt, printed in the Deseret News, Salt Lake City, of August 21, 1852.
Having promised that "farmers will have great farms upon the earth
when it is so changed," and foreseeing that some one might suggest a
difficulty in providing land enough to go round, he met that in this
way:--
* The similarity between Smith's early life and visions and
Mohammed's has been mentioned by more than one writer. Stenhouse
observes that Smith's mother "was to him what Cadijah was to Mohammed,"
and that "a Mohammedan writer, in a series of essays recently published
in London, treats of the prophecies concerning the Arabian Prophet, to
be found in the Old and New Testaments, precisely as Orson Pratt applied
them to the American Prophet."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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