Today I am sharing another testimony borne by an "Old Nauvooer" in the Salt Lake City 20th ward around the turn of the 20th century, a nearly forgotten testimony from someone who knew Joseph Smith in the flesh and could see clearly the fruits of the prophet:
"There was a coal miner from Wales who had been converted and migrated to Nauvoo. At the time he bore his testimony he was about eighty-five years of age. He related that when he was a young married man with a child or two, he and a companion had been employed to work in an abandoned coal mine, removing small pockets of coal. One day as they were working a slab of stone fell from the ceiling and smashed their oil lamps, leaving them in total darkness perhaps a mile from the entrance to the mine. Only slightly injured by the falling stone, the two sought their way out of the mine by feeling with their feet the small iron rails on which the mine cars rolled. But there were frequent side tunnels and as they came to these switches, they tried to remember which of the side tunnels they must follow. Sometimes at such an intersection they would feel the walls of the tunnel, searching for a familiar marker which might indicate where they were.
"Several times they made wrong turns: when they came to the end of a side tunnel, they had to retrace their steps back to the main tunnel and try again. At last, after much anguish of spirit and prayers to God, they chose another turn and after the tunnel itself had made a turn, they saw far ahead of them a glimmer of light. With hurried pace they soon were at the portal and saw below them the beautiful green valley where they lived.
"Then this aged man made a comparison. He had been a member of one of the Protestant churches, had become disillusioned when he read his Bible and found his church neither preached nor practiced many things which characterized the early church. He compared his searching for a truly Christian church to the time he was groping in the mine trying to find his way out into his home valley.
"Then two Mormon missionaries came to his village and held a meeting on the public square as they could not use the local chapel. He and his wife heard the message, accepted the gospel, and migrated to Nauvoo. They attended meetings in the grove and heard Joseph Smith explain the restored gospel. He labored on the temple, and he and his wife received their endowments and were sealed for eternity. The religious and spiritual teachings of Joseph Smith's restoration had produced a world as strikingly wonderful and soul-satisfying as the sunlit valley they saw from the entrance of the mine. He had experienced a spiritual rebirth.
"He now knew the true nature of God, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. He had learned who he was—a spirit begotten by his Heavenly Father, and now clothed temporarily in a mortal tabernacle, bequeathed to him by his earthly father and mother. He understood his relationship to the eternities, to his earthly parents, and also his heirship to his Eternal Father. He had learned the doctrine of free agency, which had enabled him to throw off the shackles of predestinarianism and salvation by election. Priesthood had come to mean a power granted by God whereby he could become a blessing to himself, his wife, his family, the Church, and all mankind. And so he enumerated what the gospel light revealed through 'Brother Joseph' had done for him.
"He had received a testimony of who was to succeed Joseph Smith by a miracle in the grove when he saw and heard Brigham Young preach and his voice sounded as the voice of Joseph Smith. So he had followed Brigham Young and the Twelve into the Salt Lake Valley. Here he had built a house of his own on land which he owned—something he never could have done in Wales—and had raised a good family of faithful Latter-day Saint children and had many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As with David of old he could exclaim, 'My cup runneth over'" (T. Edgar Lyon, "Recollections of 'Old Nauvooers' Memories from Oral History", BYU Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, grammar modernized).
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