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The Women of Mormondom. Edward W. Tullidge
Читать онлайн.Название The Women of Mormondom
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isbn 4064066247850
Автор произведения Edward W. Tullidge
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
"In two or three weeks from our arrival in the neighborhood with the news, we had baptized one hundred and twenty-seven souls; and this number soon increased to one thousand. The disciples were filled with joy and gladness; while rage and lying was abundantly manifested by gainsayers. Faith was strong, joy was great, and persecution heavy.
"We proceeded to ordain Sidney Rigdon, Isaac Morley, John Murdock, Lyman Wight, Edward Partridge, and many others to the ministry; and leaving them to take care of the churches, and to minister the gospel, we took leave of the saints, and continued our journey."
Thus was fulfilled the vision of "Mother Whitney." Kirtland had heard the "word of the Lord." The angel that spoke from the cloud, at midnight, in Kirtland, was endowed with the gift of prophesy. The "daughter of the voice" which followed Israel down through the ages was potent still—was still an oracle to the children of the covenant.
Footnotes:
1. She died in the early persecution of the church, and when Parley was in prison for the gospel's sake her spirit visited and comforted him.
CHAPTER VIII.
WAR OF THE INVISIBLE POWERS—THEIR MASTER—JEHOVAH'S MEDIUM.
"You have prayed me here! Now what do you want of me?"
The Master had come!
But who was he?
Whence came he?
Good or evil?
Whose prayers had been answered?
—
There was in Kirtland a controversy between the powers of good and evil, for the mastery. Powers good and evil it would seem to an ordinary discernment. Certainly powers representing two sources.
This was the prime manifestation of the new dispensation. This contention of the invisibles for a foothold among mortals.
A Mormon iliad! for such it is! It is the epic of two worlds, in which the invisibles, with mortals, take their respective parts.
And now it is the dispensation of the fullness of times! Now all the powers visible and invisible contend for the mastery of the earth in the stupendous drama of the last days. This is what Mormonism means.
It is a war of the powers above and below to decide who shall give the next civilization to earth; which power shall incarnate that supreme civilization with its spirit and genius.
Similar how exactly this has been repeated since Moses and the magicians of Egypt, and Daniel and the magicians of Babylon, contended.
One had risen up in the august name of Jehovah. Mormonism represents the powers invisible of the Hebrew God.
Shall Jehovah reign in the coming time? Shall he be the Lord God omnipotent? This, in its entirety, is the Mormon problem.
Joseph is the prophet of that stupendous question, to be decided in this grand controversy of the two worlds—this controversy of mortals and immortals!
There are lords many and gods many, but to the prophet and his people there is but one God—Jehovah is his name.
A Mormon iliad, nothing else; and a war of the invisibles—a war of spiritual empires.
That war was once in Kirtland, when the first temple of a new civilization rose, to proclaim the supreme name of the God of Israel.
No sooner had the Church of Latter-day Saints been established in the West than remarkable spiritual manifestations appeared. This was exactly in accordance with the faith and expectations of the disciples; for the promise to them was that these signs should follow the believer.
But there was a power that the saints could not understand. That it was a power from the invisible world all readily discerned.
An influence both strange and potent! The power which was not comprehended was greater, for the time, in its manifestations, than the spirit which the disciples better understood.
These spiritual manifestations occurred remarkably at the house of Elder Whitney, where the saints met often to speak one to the other, and to pray for the power.
The power had come!
It was in the house which had been overshadowed by the magic cloud at midnight, out of which the angel had prophesied of the coming of the word of the Lord.
The Lord had come!
His word was given. But which Lord? and whose word? That was the question in that hour of spiritual controversy.
Similar manifestations were also had in other branches of the church; and they were given at those meetings called "testimony meetings." At these the saints testified one to the other of the "great work of God in the last days," and magnified the gifts of the spirit. But there were two kinds of gifts and two kinds of spirits.
Some of these manifestations were very similar to those of "modern spiritualism." Especially was this the case with what are styled physical manifestations.
Others read revelations from their hands; holding them up as a book before them. From this book they read passages of new scriptures. Books of new revelations had been unsealed.
In letters of light and letters of gold, writing appeared to their vision, on the hands of these "mediums."
What was singular and confounding to the elders was that many, who could neither read nor write, while under "the influence," uttered beautiful language extemporaneously. At this these "mediums" of the Mormon Church (twenty years before our "modern mediums" were known), would exclaim concerning the "power of God" manifested through them; challenging the elders, after the spirit had gone out of them, with their own natural inability to utter such wonderful sayings, and do such marvelous things.
As might be expected the majority of these "mediums" were among the sisters. In modern spiritual parlance, they were more "inspirational." Indeed for the manifestation of both powers the sisters have always been the "best mediums" (adopting the descriptive epithet now so popular and suggestive).
And this manifestation of the "two powers" in the church followed the preaching of the Mormon gospel all over the world, especially in America and Great Britain. It was God's spell and the spell of some other spiritual genius.
Where the one power was most manifested, there it was always found that the power from the "other source" was about equally displayed.
So abounding and counterbalancing were these two powers in nearly all the branches of the church in the early rise of Mormonism, in America and Great Britain, that spiritual manifestations became regarded very generally as fire that could burn as well as bless and build up the work of God.
An early hymn of the dispensation told that "the great prince of darkness was mustering his forces;" that a battle was coming "between the two kingdoms;" that the armies were "gathering round," and that they would "soon in close battle be found."
To this is to be attributed the decline of spiritual gifts in a later period in the Mormon Church, for the "spirits" were poured out so abundantly that the saints began to fear visions, and angels, and prophesy, and the "speaking in tongues."
Thus the sisters, who ever are the "best mediums" of spiritual gifts in the church, have, in latter years, been shorn of their glory. But the gifts still remain with them; and the prophesy is that some day, when there is sufficient wisdom combined with faith, more than the primitive power will be displayed, and the angels will daily walk