| 758 signs that Jesus Christ said should be, like the sound of many waters, or of a great thunder, declare that it is eternal truth! and that your brother Joseph Smith was one of the Lord's anointed! That he now sits with God in the heavens, and laughs at the calamities that will speedily wrap the world in wo! and that he will mock when their fear seizes the last hope of a crude existence!
Joseph Smith was a Captain General and this world will be introduced to him as such, when the epitaph of its great men's greatness will be written within and without on the gates of the lower prisons, and entrance into outer darkness: "we were, and are not, and yet are!"
But I must not go to preaching to an apostle as I know you are, lest I enter into the rich treasure of knowledge too, and cause you to exclaim:-cast not thy precious jewels to strangers, lest greediness and covetousness seize them and they like the avaricious steward, with his goose that laid a golden egg a day, kill her in order to obtain the whole litter at once, and so destroy the fountain!
Mormonism is the wonder of this world, and the great leveling machine of creeds, constitutions, kingdoms, countries, divisions, notions, notorieties [notoriety's] and novelties; and praise it, talk about it, lie about it, exalt it, degrade it, blow at it, sneer at it, fear it, love it, hate it, persecute it, or laugh at it, still it is Mormonism, true as heaven, powerful as Jesus, eternal as element, going on conquering and to conquer!
Have the mightiest men on earth reared monuments of grandeur? of glory? of splendor? of fame? of utility? or of admirations?-Joseph Smith has exceeded all their wisdom and greatness. He has brought back the past and rolled up the future, whereby the past, present, and future, exhibit their images like the skies over the ocean.
Mormonism! O Mormonism! Nimrod, Homer, Pharoah, Cadmus, Alexander, Nebuchadnezzar, Holofornes, Herod, Bonaparte, and an immense retinue of other dignitaries, who have burst into being with pomp and glory, and made a trembling world wonder at their cruelty and cunning:-Where are the pillars, the records, and the approvals of heaven, of all your greatness?
"A heap of dust alone remains of thee,
'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be,"
while Mormonism, from an Abel, though dead, yet speaketh; from an Elijah though translated in a fiery chariot to heaven, yet, returns in glory with Moses, and blesses Jesus at the transfiguration on the mount! O Mormonism! Thy father is God, thy mother is the Queen of heaven, and so thy whole history, from eternity to eternity, is the laws, ordinances and truth of the "Gods"-embracing the simple plan of salvation, sanctification, death, resurrection, glorification and exaltation of man, from infancy to age, from age to eternity, from simplicity to sublimity: from faith, repentance, baptism, reception of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, to washing, anointing, holy conversation, baptism for the dead, to the presence of angels, the general assembly and church of the first born; to the unspeakable glory of seeing God and the Lamb, and to spirits of just men, made perfect, and to be ordained unto eternal life!
And again, we exclaim, O Mormonism! No wonder that Lucifer, son of the morning, the next heir to Jesus Christ, our eldest brother, should fight so hard against his brethren; he lost the glory, the honor, power, and dominion of a God: and the knowledge, spirit, authority and keys of the priesthood of the son of God.
Christ kept his first estate-Lucifer lost his by offering to save men in their sins on the honor of a God, or on his father's honor.-Christ hated sin, and loved righteousness, therefore he was anointed with holy oil in heaven, and crowned in the midst of brothers and sisters, while his mother stood with approving virtue, and smiled upon a Son that kept the faith as the heir of all things! In fact the Jews thought so much of his coronation among Gods and Goddesses; Kings and Queens of heaven, that they broke over all restraints and actually began to worship the "Queen of heaven," according to Jeremiah.
Well, now, Brother William, when the house of Israel begin to come into the glorious mysteries of the kingdom, and find that Jesus Christ, whose goings forth, as the prophets said, have been from of old, from eternity: and that eternity, agreeably 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: and to know at the same time, that deists, geologists and others are trying to prove that matter must have existed hundreds of thousands of years;-it almost tempts the flesh to fly to God, or muster faith like Enoch to be translated and see and know as we are seen and known!
O Mormonism! no wonder the earth groans with the blood of thy martyrs! But there is one sweet consolation: death hath power on a saint, but once! the righteous rise triumphant over death, hell, and the grave! The wicked, thanks be to God, have to go through the agonies of the grim monster, twice! and the "second
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