probably not long before his death
Elder Lyman Johnson, the first apostle called in this dispensation to serve in the Twelve, fell away in Kirtland, Ohio.
According to a Utah recollection of Brigham Young, Johnson made roughly the following comment at a meeting of the Twelve, his former colleagues, several years later in Nauvoo, Illinois:
If I could believe “Mormonism” as I did when I traveled with you and preached, if I possessed the world I would give it. I would give anything. I would suffer my right hand to be cut off, if I could believe it again. Then I was full of joy and gladness. My dreams were pleasant. When I awoke in the morning my spirit was cheerful. I was happy by day and by night, full of peace and joy and thanksgiving. But now it is darkness, pain, sorrow, misery in the extreme. I have never seen a happy moment. (Journal of Discourses 19:41)
I’ve heard and read similar statements from people in similar straits, and my heart goes out to them. I would love to be able to help them. I’m working on a massive project that, I hope, will someday be of benefit to some such sufferers, but I have little time for it, and its completion is years away. In the meantime, I try to do what I can.
Lyman Johnson, incidentally, drowned in a boating accident on the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, on 20 December 1859, at the age of forty-eight. He never returned to Mormonism. His brother Luke, however, also a member of the original modern Twelve who had left the Church, did return to fellowship and emigrated to Utah, where he served as a bishop and died as a member of the Church in good standing (though not as an apostle).
Posted from Victoria, British Columbia
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