CANTO EIGHT
1—Title: **The Lifted Ensign.** The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, organized April 6, 1830.
2—2357. **Shepherds Twain.** Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, the first and second Elders of the Church.
3—2366. **Giant of Untruth.** The parallel begun in the first stanza continues through the second.
4—2380. **Time Yet Was Young.** Here the main narrative reverts to the story of Enoch and his city, as revealed to Joseph the Seer, and embodied in the Book of Moses (6 and 7). In the poem that story continues as far as the line, "And Noah's righteous seed in me rejoice."
5—2389. **Sainted Commonweal.** The City of Enoch.
6—2400. **Chain * * * Sundered.** The people of Enoch, under the Law of Consecration, attained to such a superior condition that it was said of them: "And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind and dwelt in righteousness, and there was no poor among them." (Moses 7:18.)
7—2404. **Armageddon's Conflict.** The final struggle between the powers of Good and Evil, when Satan will be overthrown (D. and C. 88:112-115).
8—2409. **Terrestrial Radiance.** "Their place of habitation is that of the terrestrial order." They are "held in reserve to be ministering angels unto many planets," and "as yet have not entered into so great a fulness as those who are resurrected from the dead." Joseph Smith ("History of the Church," Vol. 4, pp. 209, 210).
9—2420. **The Captive Free.** Christ, during the interval between his crucifixion and resurrection, visited and preached to "the spirits in prison"—spirits disobedient in the days of Noah, and swept away by the Deluge (I Peter 3:19, 20; and 4:61; Key to Theology 14).
10—2424. **Climbing Robber-like.** According to the Bible, the people who built the Tower of Babel did so that its top might "reach unto heaven" (Gen. 11:4). Joseph Smith is said to have declared that the "heaven" they had in view was the City of Enoch, then suspended within sight of the earth. Endeavoring to get to Heaven by "another way," the builders of Babel were comparable to "thieves and robbers." Tradition asserts that the City of Enoch stood where the Gulf of Mexico now is.
11—2432. **Tri-Branching Tree.** Noah and his three sons, Japheth, Shem and Ham.
12—2464. **One Like Unto Him.** Joseph Smith was a man like unto Moses, who was like unto Christ. Moses led Israel out of temporal bondage, and Joseph began a work destined to deliver Israel from spiritual bondage. Thus Moses and Joseph were both typical of Him who redeemed the world from the bondage of sin and death.
13—2467. **A Two-Fold Type.** The social and spiritual condition of the Jewish saints and the Nephite disciples foretokened the Millennium. Joseph Smith had in view the realization of what Enoch had achieved, and what the primitive Christians endeavored to accomplish, in preparing a people for the presence of the Lord.
14—2473. **Sought Fulfillment.** Following these words is a description of social conditions at the time of the advent of "Mormonism."
15—2604. **The Trampled Terror.** A personification of the French Revolution.
16—2607. **Frowning Mass, Contemning Class.** The social problem of the Twentieth Century.
17—2630. **Time An Enoch Came.** Joseph Smith is likened unto Enoch, and even called by that name, in some of the early revelations (D. and C., 78, 92, 96, and 104). This may have been done to impress the fact that Joseph's work was similar to that of Enoch.
18—2656. **A Holy Hand.** John the Baptist, ordaining Joseph and Oliver to the Aaronic Priesthood, May 15, 1829 (D. and C. 13).
19—2661. **Panoply of Power.** The Priesthood. The main narrative here resumes from the point of digression.
20—2694. **Again The Woman Wonderful.** The Church of Christ in its Latter-day Restoration.
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