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.