“I am one that was present”

Just back from the 2017 Christmas concert of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Orchestra at Temple Square, and the Bells on Temple Square.  The special guests this year were Sutton Foster and Hugh Bonneville.  We had a very good time, and it was made even better by find ourselves, purely coincidentally, seated by very good friends.

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Walking around and through Temple Square and listening to the Christmas music, I’m grateful that my reaction to the holiday isn’t contempt, cynicism, and militant disdain for believers.  Really.  I am.

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A note on a relatively little known event in Church history:

For several years . . . the Twelve, led by Brigham Young, directed the affairs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  No First Presidency was organized.  But this was to be only a temporary situation.

In October 1860, during a speech at the Bowery in Salt Lake City, Elder Orson Hyde of the Council of the Twelve remembered a meeting held by the apostles in February 1848 at Pottawattamie County, Iowa, where a small branch of the westward-moving Church was residing for the winter.  “We were in prayer and council,” he said,

communing together; and what took place on that occasion?  The voice of God came from on high, and spake to the Council.  Every latent feeling was aroused, and every heart melted.  What did it say unto us?  “Let my servant Brigham step forth and receive the full power of the presiding priesthood in my Church and kingdom.”  This was the voice of the Almighty unto us at Council Bluffs. . . .  I am one that was present, and there are others here that were also present on that occasion, and did hear and feel the voice from heaven, and we were filled with the power of God. . . .  We said nothing about the matter in those times, but kept it still.

Subsequently, however, when his remarks were being prepared for publication, Elder Hyde added a note regarding something that he said he had omitted in his address:

Men, women, and children came running together where we were, and asked us what was the matter.  They said that their houses shook, and the ground trembled, and they did not know but that there was an earthquake.  We told them that there was nothing the matter—not to be alarmed; the Lord was only whispering to us a little, and that he was probably not very far off.  We felt no shaking of the earth or of the house, but were filled with the exceeding power and goodness of God.[1]

At the next general conference of the Church, at Kanesville, Iowa, on 6 April 1848, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was reconstituted, and Brigham Young was sustained as president of the Church.

[1] JD 8:234.

Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah