"I replied, that we believe the Bible, and they do not"

I want to share with you one of my many favorite comments from Joseph Smith contained in the history of the church;

“Thursday, 21. [of January 1836]-This morning, a minister from Connecticut, by the name of John W. Olived, called at my house and inquired of my father:

"Does the Prophet live here?"

My father replied he did not understand him. Mr. Olived asked the same question again and again, and received the same answer. He finally asked:

"Does Mr. Smith live here?" Father replied:

"O yes, sir, I understand you now."

Father then stepped into my room and informed me that a gentleman had called to see me. I went into the room where he was, and the first question he asked me, after passing a compliment was:

"How many members have you in your Church?"

I replied that we had between fifteen hundred and two thousand in this branch. He then asked:

"Wherein do you differ from other Christian denominations? "

I replied, that we believe the Bible, and they do not.

However, he affirmed that he believed the Bible.

I told him then to be baptized.

He replied that he did not realize it to be his duty. But when I laid before him the principles of the Gospel, viz: faith and repentance; baptism, for the remission of sins; and the laying on of hands, for the reception of the Holy Ghost, he manifested much surprise.

I observed that the hour for school had arrived, and I must attend. The man appeared astonished at our doctrine, but by no means hostile”

I laugh every time I read that account in the history of the church! I would love to know if Joseph was saying it with a hint of dry humor or if he was simply taking a hard line… obviously that statement was true, but what a shocking thing to have someone matter of factly tell you if you that other Christian denomination don't believe the Bible!

One of the things I loved about Joseph and Sidney is that all their sermons were based around the scriptures.

On an unrelated note;

I am afraid I played a dirty trick on you in my last blog post, if you have been following the Sidney Rigdon Tribute Series, I made the following statement in the last blog entry;

“If you are one of the ones that has been deeply engaged in the information on this blog leading up to and including the first three parts of the tribute to Rigdon, and you have chosen to swim in deep waters, then please realize that I want and encourage you to challenge me on anything you disagree with as you read the article. Please remember, it is a work in progress. I will be making periodic updates in it. I may post the final part of the tribute on another site so please be watching closely if you are interested in reading it.”

I had actually posted the last part of the article but I wanted to see how many of you were watching close enough to notice that the “g” on the end of “watching” had been hyperlinked.

The hyperlink takes you to the last article on Rigdon.

I have since noticed that on some computers, like my laptop, you cannot really tell it has been hyper linked....

The object lesson I wanted to demonstrate is that even when we are watching for the events of prophecy to take place, we can miss things.. because God works in mysterious ways and if he does not want people to see things until an appointed time…we won't.

If he could cover the eyes of the Seers in times past he can certainly put blindness over the Gentiles "until the fulness of the Gentiles come in".

We need to keep watching..

,,but we shouldn't be to surprizeed if we don't see everything that is happening around us just until the appointed time.