REPORTED BY DAVID W. EVANS.
I wish you all a happy new year, and I
hope that we may live to see a good many,
and that we may keep the commandments
of God, obey His laws and have His appro-
bation and blessing upon us as a people.
We have assembled here on this,—the first
day of the week, and the first day of the
year 1871; and this leads my mind to re-
flect upon the age and generation in which
we live, and the great events of the latter
days,—events which involve the interests
and destiny of all the inhabitants of the
earth,—both Zion and Babylon, Jew and
Gentile, Jerusalem, America and the
whole world. All nations are interested
in the events which are approaching us, and
which await this generation; for whether
the world believe it or not, they are of vast
interest to them all. There have been cer-
tain times looked forward to in the world's
history, in which it was believed that some-
thing remarkable would occur, and there
have been several of these periods during
the last fifty years. I do not know that
anything was predicted at an early day
with regard to 1830; but I recollect, when a
boy at school, of reading a certain verse
about a great eclipse of the sun
"In eighteen hundred and thirty one,
Will be a great eclipse upon the sun."
I heard about this fifteen years before it took
place, it having been foretold by the as-
tronomers, by the principles and laws of
the science of astronomy. On that day I
was passing through a forest of pinewood,
at Farmington, Connecticut, going to see
my father, whom I had not seen for some
time. It was nearly as dark as night, and
when I got through, into the open fields,
there was what is termed a poor house, the
only house erected within several miles in
that region of country. A poor man had
died there and they were drawing his body
on an ox sled and were going to bury him.
I noticed this as I passed along, and thought
of what I had read; but nothing of any par-
ticular interest occured that year except
the eclipse of the sun. But in 1830 some-
thing occured of great interest to all the
inhabitants of the earth: that was the es-
tablishment of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints.
Many persons have looked forward to
the year 1860 with great interest; and this
has been the case with many of the Latter-
day Saints. What took place in that year?
The dissolution of the American Union,
for in that year the South took a stand
agains[t] the North, and the North against the
South, in fullfillment of a certain revela-
tion given by Joseph Smith, thirty years
before it took place. Joseph Smith pre-
dicted that there would be a great rebel-
lion in the United States,—the South and
the North warring against each other, and
that this rebellion would commence in
South Carolina, and would end in the death
and misery of many souls; and that in
process of time,—after many days, the
slaves would rise against their masters, and
that one nation would call for aid upon
another, for war would be poured upon
the whole earth. I wrote this revelation
twenty-five years before the rebellion took
place; others also wrote it, and it was pub-
lished to the world before there was any
prospect of the fearful events it pre-
dicted coming to pass.
Joseph Smith once said in a speech at
Nauvoo, to a company, that whosoever
lived to see the two sixes come together in
[18]66 would see the American continent del-
uged in blood. This was many years be-
fore there was any prospect of a rebellion.
The history of [18]60 and of [18]66 is before the
world, and I do not wish to spend time in
referring to it.
We have got by [18]30, [18]60, [18]66 and [18]70, and
we are now living at a period when every
year is big with events of interest to the
inhabitants of the earth: and they will con-
tinue from this time until the coming of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Many men have
set times for the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ, among whom, living in our own
day, we may mention Mr. Miller. He set
times and days for the appearing of the
Messiah, and has said that He would sure-
ly come on such a day. Now if Mr. Mil-
ler had been acquainted with the prophecies
contained in the Bible, and with the spirit
by which the scriptures were written, he
would have known very clearly that
Christ would not come until certain events
had taken place. He would have been
aware that the Messiah would not make
His appearance until an angel of God had
delivered the everlasting gospel from the
heavens to be preached to the nations of the
earth; until the honest and meek of the
earth are gathered out from every sect,
party and denomination under the whole
heavens; until the Zion of God had gone up
into the mountains of Israel and there es-
tablished Zion, and lifted up a standard to
the people. Mr. Miller and all who have
believed like him, had they understood the
scriptures and possessed the spirit of truth,
would have known that Christ would not
come until the Jews had returned to their
own land and had rebuilt the city of Jerusa-
lem and the temple there; they would have
known that all these and many other pro-
phecies must have been fulfilled as a pre-
