Church History Gems: Joseph Smith Was Called to Open the Last Dispensation

Gems on Church History
Joseph Smith Was Called to Open the Last Dispensation
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“Let us not be ashamed of the divine mission of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Let us teach with great faith and power the reality of the Apostasy and of the need for the Restoration. Let us not shy away from teaching the simple truth of the reality of the First Vision and of all that the Lord did by and through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

“President Brigham Young (1801-77) declared: ‘It was decreed in the councils of eternity, long before the foundations of the earth were laid, that [Joseph Smith] should be the man, in the last dispensation of this world, to bring forth the word of God to the people and receive the fullness of the keys and power of the Priesthood of the Son of God. The Lord had his eye upon him, and upon his father, and upon his father’s father, and upon their progenitors clear back to Abraham, and from Abraham to the flood, from the flood to Enoch and from Enoch to Adam. He has watched that family and that blood as it has circulated from its fountain to the birth of that man. [Joseph Smith] was foreordained in eternity to preside over this last dispensation.’ (Deseret News, Oct. 26, 1859, 266.)”

Topic: Joseph Smith, foreordination

(Joseph B. Wirthlin, “The Restoration and Faith,” Ensign, Jan. 2006, 36)