John on Patmos.
In the ninety-sixth year of the Christian era, this man was on the Isle of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea. Patmos was the Roman Siberia. To that desolate place the Empire banished its criminals, compelling them to work in the mines. John was an exile for the Truth's sake. But the Lord had not forgotten His servant, though men had rejected him and cast him out. The Heavens were opened, and he was shown many things pertaining to the future. He foresaw the apostasy of the Christian world, its departure from "the faith once delivered to the saints", the "falling away" foretold by the Apostle Paul (2 Thes. 2:3). But John also looked forward to a time when that faith would be restored, and when the hour of God's judgment would come. The dead, small and great, would stand before the Great White Throne, and be "judged out of the things written in the books", every man according to his works. (Rev. 20:11-13.)
Joseph Smith.
To the Latter-day Saints, these are the days of that predicted restoration, and Joseph Smith was the divinely appointed agent for bringing back the Everlasting Gospel. Who was this Joseph Smith? He was a farmer's boy, born among the mountains of Vermont, December 23, 1805, but living with his parents in the back-woods of western New York, when his career as a prophet began. He had been much exercised upon the subject of his soul's salvation, a religious revival having recently occurred in his neighborhood. The ministers of the various sects united in calling upon the people to repent; each one urging them to join his particular congregation, and disputing among themselves upon points of doctrine and authority. The situation bewildered the boy, who was an honest seeker after light, anxious to know the true Church, in order that he might join it. One day while reading the Scriptures, he chanced upon the following passage:
"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." (James 1:5.)
Profoundly impressed by these sacred words, he resolved to test the promise by asking from God the wisdom of which he stood in need. With that object in view, he retired to the woods near his father's home, and knelt in prayer. No sooner had he begun to pray, than he was seized upon by a power which filled his soul with horror and paralyzed his tongue so that he could no longer speak. So terrible was the visitation, that he almost gave way to despair. But he continued praying; for there are two ways of offering prayer—"orally and in secret." He had been praying orally, but could not now supplicate in that manner, being unable to move his lips. Yet he continued to pray—with "the soul's sincere desire"; and just at the moment when he feared that he must abandon himself to destruction, he saw, directly over his head, a light more brilliant than noonday. In the midst of a pillar of glory he beheld two beings in human form, One of whom, pointing to the Other, said: "This is my beloved Son, hear Him".
As soon as the Light appeared, the boy found himself delivered from the fettering power of the Evil One. When he could again command utterance, he inquired of his glorious visitants which of all the religious denominations was right—which one was the true Church of Christ? To his astonishment he was told that none of them was right; that they had all gone out of the way, and were teaching for doctrine the commandments of men. The Lord did not recognize any of them, but was about to restore the Gospel and the Priesthood and establish his Church once more in the midst of mankind.
This was Joseph Smith's first vision and revelation. It came in the spring of 1820, when he was a few months over fourteen years of age. The greater part of this wonderful manifestation was the part that did not speak, the silent revealing of God as a personage; a truth plainly taught in the Scriptures (Gen. 1:26, 27; Phil. 2:5-8; Col. 1:13-15; Heb. 1-3), but ignored or denied by modern Christianity.
Three years later the youth received a visitation from an Angel, who gave his name as Moroni, the same who is represented by the statue on the Salt Lake Temple. This Angel announced himself as the last of a line of prophets who had ministered to an ancient people called Nephites, a branch of the house of Israel—not the Lost Tribes, as is often asserted, but a portion of the tribe of Joseph. They had crossed over from Jerusalem about the year 600 B. C., and, with a remnant of the tribe of Judah, which joined them later, had inhabited the Americas down to about the beginning of the fourth Christian century. At that time the civilized though degenerate nation was destroyed by a savage faction known as Lamanites, ancestors of the American Indians.