| 481 take when he please, and pay as seemeth him good: wherefore as ye are agents, and ye are on the Lord's errand; and what ever ye do according to the will of the Lord, is the Lord's business, and he has set you to provide for his saints in these last days, that they may obtain an inheritance in the land of Zion; and behold I the Lord declare unto you, and my words are sure and shall not fail, that they shall obtain it; but all things must come to pass in their time; wherefore be not weary in well doing, for ye are laying the foundations of a great work.-And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.
Behold the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind; and the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days; and the rebellious shall be cut off out of the land of Zion, and shall be sent away and shall not inherit the land: for verily I say that the rebellious are not of the blood of Ephraim, wherefore they shall be plucked out. Behold I the Lord have made my church in these last days, like unto a judge sitting on a hill, or in a high place, to judge the nations: for it shall come to pass, that the inhabitants of Zion shall judge all things pertaining to Zion: and liars, and hypocrits [hypocrites] shall be proved by them, and they who are not apostles and prophets shall be known.
And even the bishop, who is a judge, and his counsellors [counselors], if they are not faithful in their stewardships, shall be condemned, and others shall be planted in their stead: for behold I say unto you that Zion shall flourish, and the glory of the Lord shall be upon her, and she shall be an ensign unto the people: and there shall be unto her out of every nation under heaven. And the day shall come, when the nations of the earth shall tremble because of her, and shall fear because of her terrible ones; the Lord hath spoken it: Amen.
On the 12th of September, I removed with my family to the township of Hiram, and commenced living with John Johnson. Hiram was in Portage county and about thirty miles south easterly from Kirtland. From this time until the forepart of October, I did little more than to prepare to re-commence the translation of the bible. About this time Ezra Booth came out as an apostate. He came into the church upon seeing a person healed of an infirmity of many years standing. He had been a Methodist priest for some time previous to his embracing the fulness [fullness] of the gospel, as developed in the Book of Mormon, and upon his admission into the church, he was ordained an elder; as will be seen by the foregoing revelations. He went up to Missouri as a companion to elder Morley; but when he actually learned that faith, humility, patience, and tribulation, were before blessing; and that God brought low before he exalted; that instead of "the savior's granting him power to smite men, and make them believe" (as he said he wanted God to do him;) he found he must become all things to all men, that he might peradventure save some, and that too by all diligence, by perils, by sea and land; as was the case in the days of Jesus, which appears in the 6th chapter of St. John's Gospel he said, "verily, verily I say unto you, ye seek me not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled." So it was with Booth, and when he was disappointed by his own evil heart, he turned away and as said before, became an apostate, and wrote a series of letters which by their coloring, falsity, and vain calculations to overthrow the work of the Lord exposed his weakne s [weakness] wickedness and folly, and left him a monument of his own shame, for the world to wonder at.
A conference was held, in which brother W. W. Phelps was instructed to stop at Cincinnati on his way to Missouri, and purchase a press and type, for the purpose of establishing and publishing a monthly paper at Independence, Jackson county, Missouri, to be called the "Evening and Morning Star." The first Sunday in October, Orson Hyde, a clerk in brothers Sidney Gilbert and Newel K. Whitney's store, in Kirtland, was baptized and became a member of the church. As he was soon after designated as one of the chosen men of the Lord, to bear his word to the nations, I feel a desire to notice him as he was and as he is.-He was, in his own words, left in his infancy, an orphan with none to look upon him with a father's eye, and feel for him with a mother's heart. The hand that wiped his infant tears was still; the breast that gave him suck was cold, and slumbered in the arms of death. He was thrust abroad upon the cold and friendless bosom of an unfeeling world, so that for twenty long years, he saw no one in whose veins flowed a drop of kindred blood, and consequently grew up as a wild and uncultivated plant of nature, and now had come into the new and everlasting covenant, to be renewed and receive grace for grace, and put himself under the fatherly care of Him whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light; and who rewardeth his sons and daughters, who serve him faithfully to the end, with eternal life.
To continue, in his own figure, he now stood before the world to feed the fowls of the Lord, in the same manner that he had done in early life, to feed the poultry of the gentlemen with whom he had resided; for says he when I
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