The Fairest Gem

From the journal of Wilford Woodruff.

While I was living in this cabin in the old barracks, we experienced a day of God’s power with the Prophet Joseph.  The large number of saints who had been driven out of Missouri were flocking into Commerce [afterwards named Nauvoo]; many were sick through the exposure they were subjected to.  Brother Joseph had waited on the sick until he was worn out and nearly sick himself.

On the morning of the 22nd of July, 1839, he arose and called upon the Lord in prayer, and the power of God rested upon him mightily – Jospeh the Prophet of God healed all around on this occasion.  He healed all in his house; then, in company with Sidney Rigdon and several of the Twelve he went among the sick and he commanded them in a loud voice, in the name of Jesus Christ, to come up and be made whole, and they were all healed.

When he had healed all that were sick on the east side of the river, they crossed the Mississippi to Montrose. They first went into Brigham Young’s house and healed him.  As they were passing by my door, Brother Joseph said:  “Brother Woodruff, follow me.”  When we entered the house of Brother Fordham, Brother Fordham had been dying for an hour, and we expected each minute to be his last.  Brother Joseph walked up to Brother Fordham, and took him by the right hand.  Brother Fordham’s eyes were glazed and he was speechless and unconscious.  Joseph said, “Brother Fordham, do you not know me?”  He again said, “Elijah, do you not know me?”  With a low whisper, Brother Fordham answered, “Yes!”

The Prophet then said, “Have you not faith to be healed?”  The answer was, “I am afraid it is too late.  If you had come sooner, I think I might have been.”  He had the appearance of a man waking from the sleep of death.  Joseph then said, “Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ?”  “I do, Brother Joseph.” was the response.  The the Prophet of God spoke with a loud voice: “Elijah, I command you, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, to arise and be made whole!”  The words of the Prophet were not like the words of man, but like the voice of God.  Elijah Fordham leaped from his bed like a man raised from the dead.  A healthy colour came to his face, and life was manifested in every act.  His feet were done up in Indian meal poultices.  He kicked them off his feet, and then called for his clothes and put them on.  He asked for a bowl of bread and milk and ate it; then put on his hat and followed us into the street.  THrough the blessing of God, Elijah Fordham lived up til 1880, in which year he died in Utah.

Phoebe W. Carter Woodruff, 1807-1885

Autobiography in Edward W. Tullidge, The Women of Mormondom, New York, 1877 pp. 399-400, 411- 414.

SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF PHOEBE W. CARTER WOODRUFF

[Phoebe W. Carter was born in Scarboro, in the state of Maine, March 8th, 1807. Her father was of English descent, connecting with America at about the close of the seventeenth century. Her mother, Sarah Fabyan, was of the same place, and three generations from England. . . . In the year 1834 she embraced the gospel, and, about a year after, left her parents and kindred and journeyed to Kirtland, a distance of one thousand miles--a lone maid, sustained only by a lofty faith and trust in Israel's God.]

My friends marveled at my course, as did I, but something within impelled me on. My mother’s grief at my leaving home was almost more than I could bear; and had it not been for the spirit within I should have faltered at the last. My mother told me she would rather see me buried than going thus alone out into the heartless world. “Phoebe,” she said, impressively, “will you come back to me if you find Mormonism false?” I answered, “yes, mother; I will, thrice.” These were my words, and she knew I would keep my promise. My answer relieved her trouble; but it cost us all much sorrow to part. When the time came for my departure I dared not trust myself to say farewell; so I wrote my good-byes to each, and leaving them on my table, ran downstairs and jumped into the carriage. Thus I left the beloved home of my childhood to link my life with the saints of God.

When I arrived in Kirtland I became acquainted with the Prophet, Joseph Smith, and received more evidence of his divine mission. There in Kirtland I formed the acquaintance of Elder Wilford Woodruff, to whom I was married in 1836. With him I went to the “islands of the sea,” and to England, on missions.

Of Joseph, my testimony is that he was one of the greatest prophets the Lord ever called; that he lived for the redemption of mankind, and died a martyr for the truth. The love of the Saints for him will never die.

It was after the martyrdom of Joseph that I accompanied my husband to England, in 1845. On our return the advance companies of the Saints had just left Nauvoo under President Young and others of the twelve. We followed immediately and journeyed to Winter Quarters.

The next year Wilford went with the pioneers to the mountains, while the care of the family devolved on me. After his return, and the reorganization of the First Presidency, I accompanied my husband on his mission to the Eastern States. In 1850 we arrived in the valley, and since that time Salt Lake City has been my home.

Of my husband I can truly say, I have found him a worthy man, with scarcely his equal on earth. He has built up a branch wherever he has labored. He has been faithful to God and his family every day of his life. My respect for him has increased with our years, and my desire for an eternal union with him will be the last wish of my mortal life. . . .

Only five feet six inches tall, and weighing barely 130 pounds at the time he became President of the Church, Lorenzo Snow was the last of the General Authorities to have been personally acquainted with the Prophet Joseph Smith. In a November 1900 discourse delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, President Snow told the Saints that he had often visited the Prophet Joseph and his family, dined at his table, had private interviews with him, and knew that he was an honorable, moral man who was greatly respected. He feelingly declared that “the Lord has shown me most clearly and completely that he was a Prophet of God.” ¹

One of Lorenzo Snow’s great contributions was his elucidation of the doctrine that man might one day become like God. As President of the Church he gave a discourse entitled “The Grand Destiny of Man.” He related how as a young man he had been inspired by one of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s sermons about the manifestations of God and Jesus Christ to him. Two and one-half years later, after a patriarchal blessing meeting, Joseph Smith, Sr., had promised Lorenzo that he could become as great as God himself. Two and one-half years after that, while Lorenzo listened to an explanation of the scriptures, the Lord inspired him to compose this couplet: “As man now is, God once was; As God now is, man may be.” President Snow stated, “Nothing was ever revealed more distinctly than that was to me.” ³ Shortly before Joseph Smith’s death, Lorenzo heard him teach the same doctrine. Thereafter Elder Snow made this doctrine one of the subjects of his own discourses.

3. “The Grand Destiny of Man,” Millennial Star, 22 Aug. 1901, p. 547; see also “The Grand Destiny of Man,” 15 Aug. 1901, pp. 541–42; LeRoi C. Snow, “Devotion to a Divine Inspiration,” Improvement Era, June 1919, p. 656.

Following a pattern set by the Prophet Joseph Smith, President Taylor often wrote and published the inspiration given to him. One such revelation was dictated on 13 October 1882, just a few days after general conference. For two years the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles had only ten members, and the vacancies had weighed heavily on the prophet’s mind. The revelation called George Teasdale and Heber J. Grant to the apostleship and physician Seymour B. Young to the First Council of the Seventy. It also called for increasing missionary work among various Indian tribes and for an increase in righteousness among priesthood bearers and all the Saints. ²²

An experience of Elder Heber J. Grant a few months later gives some background to this revelation. Heber reported that for the first few months of his apostleship he felt that he was not qualified to be a special witness of the Savior. While traveling on the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona in February 1883, helping establish the Church among the Indians, Elder Grant told his companions he wanted some time by himself and took a different route to their destination. He later recounted what happened as he rode:

“I seemed to see, and I seemed to hear, what to me is one of the most real things in all my life, I seemed to see a Council in heaven. I seemed to hear the words that were spoken. . . . The First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles had not been able to agree on two men to fill the vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve. . . . In this Council the Savior was present, my father [Jedediah M. Grant] was there, and the Prophet Joseph Smith was there. They discussed the question that a mistake had been made in not filling those two vacancies and that in all probability it would be another six months before the Quorum would be completed, and they discussed as to whom they wanted to occupy those positions, and decided that the way to remedy the mistake that had been made in not filling these vacancies was to send a revelation. It was given to me that the Prophet Joseph Smith and my father mentioned me and requested that I be called to that position. I sat there and wept for joy. . . .

“. . . From that day I have never been bothered, night or day, with the idea that I was not worthy to stand as an Apostle.” ²³ In Conference Report, Apr. 1941, pp. 4–5.

The Prophet Joseph Smith taught, in the King Follett Discourse, that “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” [Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 345].

The corollary to this statement is the Prophet Joseph’s instruction that “You have got to learn to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to another…” [Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 346].

So this leads us to the obvious conclusion that since God was once as we are now, and since we can achieve the same position in the eternities as God has now – of necessity, although God is eternal and his kingdoms have no end, they did have a beginning.  His Godhood began at some definable point in some sort of calculation of time, but will have no end.  This is the same for us – although our intelligences  are eternal and had no beginning – our attainment to Godhood will occur at a specific and definable juncture, while at the same time having no more end.

I’d like to throw in here my contention that although we may live in what we may consider our visible universe, there is not just one universe, but that there are likely an infinite number of universes beyond ours, beyond our grasp visibly, scientifically, and spiritually.

In any case, there was a time when our God, our Heavenly Father, began to be God.  This may seem heretical but it must be true.  And thus He began His dominion at some point in time, however that may be calculated.

W. W. Phelps, editor of The Times and Seasons in Nauvoo before and after the Prophet Joseph’s death, responded to correspondence he had received from William Smith, brother of the Prophet.  This is what he said:

“And that eternity [the one during which Christ's doings have been known], agreeable to the records found in the catacombs of Egypt, has been going on in this system [not this world] almost two thousand five hundred and fifty-five millions of years”

Bruce R. McConkie, in his series The Mortal Messiah, states that:  “The papyrus from which the Prophet Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham…also contained this expression relative to what apparently is the universe in which we live, which universe has been created by the Father through the instrumentality of the Son.” [The Mortal Messiah, Book 1, p.32-33]. McConkie says that “Joseph Smith and the early brethren in this dispensation knew much that we do not know” and “this matter of how long eternity has been going on in our portion of created things is one of these matters”.

From these statements it appears that Joseph Smith revealed that our universe, or system, was 2.555 billion years old.