In this connection we will not pass by unnoticed God’s mighty power in raising up the great prophet Moses, as a deliverer of His chosen people from under the hand of Pharoah, the oppressor and king of Egypt. In this case, His power was manifested in overruling Pharoah’s midwives even unto disobedience of their wicked king in preserving the male children of the promised seed of Abraham, as found in the 1st chapter of Exodus:
“But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.” [That is, the Hebrew children, for they were the ones the king sought to destroy.]
“Therefore, God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.
“And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses.
“And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.”
Where is the mother that will not join in saying that King Pharoah was an oppressor, a tyrant and a murderer? Yet God’s ways are so kind, good merciful and wise that we are led to praise His holy name forever. God raised up a Moses, whose mother kept him hid three months, after which she put him in an ark of bulrushes, while his sister acted as a spy and watched over him at a distance. King Pharoah’s daughter to her bath drew near; [p.25] the babe’s cries inclined her heart to the young Hebrew, the spy was at hand, the real mother was procured, who received pay for minding her own child. Moses finally became the adopted son of the king’s daughter, whom she named Moses, because she drew him out of the water, as found in the 2nd chapter of Exodus. The life and history of Moses is well known to every Bible student, as the deliverer of ancient Israel, and I ask, is it more marvelous to accept a modern Moses in the person of Joseph Smith, the Prophet whom God raised up in our day?
Again, if the selection by Jesus of Peter the fisherman to be the chief apostle had taken place in our day, it would probably have seemed as surprising as the choosing of Joseph Smith for his work. The fellow apostles of Peter were all unlearned, except Paul.
It is just as easy for our Lord to accomplish His purposes now through the agency of unlearned men as it was anciently. God has established a Church through the agency of this young man, which has caused the wisdom of the wise to perish.
The story of Joseph Smith’s first vision is a very simple and beautiful one. It will be remembered he was but a boy fourteen years of age when this event occurred. He had been, previously, in a disturbed state of mind concerning religion. In the neighborhood where he dwelt there had been great excitement, on account of a religious revival. At the meetings he attended he learned that the various sects were very much opposed to each other. In the midst of this tumult and war of words and opinions, Joseph felt grieved and asked himself, “What is to be done? Who of all these are right? And how shall I know?”
One day Joseph read in the first chapter of James as follows: