If the congregation will give their attention, I will read a portion of the word of God, given in these last days, dated March, 1829—a portion of revelation—through the Prophet, and Seer, and Revelator, Joseph Smith, in Harmony, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, a little over one year before the rise of this Church, commencing with the 10th verse:
"But this generation shall have my word through you; and in addition to your testimony, the testimony of three of my servants, whom I shall call and ordain,—unto whom I will show these things; and they shall go forth with my words that are given through you; yea, they shall know of a surety that these things are true, for from heaven will I declare it unto them. I will give them power that they may behold and view these things as they are, and to none else will I grant this power, to receive this same testimony among this generation, in this the beginning of the rising up and the coming forth of my Church out of the wilderness: clear as the moon, and fair as the sun, and terrible as any army with banners. And the testimony of three witnesses will I send forth of my word; and behold whosoever believeth on my word, them will I visit with the manifestation of my Spirit, and they shall be born of me, even of water and of the Spirit. And you must wait yet a little while, for ye are not yet ordained; and their testimony shall also go forth unto the condemnation of this generation, if they harden their hearts against them; for a desolating scourge shall go forth among the inhabitants of the earth, and shall continue to be poured out until the earth is empty, and the inhabitants thereof are consumed away and utterly destroyed by the brightness of my coming. Behold, I tell you these things, even as I also told the people of the destruction of Jerusalem, and my word shall be verified at this time as it hath hitherto been verified."
Fifty two years shall have passed to-morrow since the Lord permitted his holy angel to descend from heaven and commit into the care and charge of Joseph Smith, a young man, plates which had the appearance of gold, filled with engravings. He obtained these plates on the 22nd day of September in the year 1827, being then not quite twenty-two years of age. This young man was not learned, like those educated in colleges and theological institutions; indeed, he was a farmer's boy, unacquainted with the arguments, and the tenets, and the creeds, and the institutions of religion that existed around him, except what he had heard from time to time, in the neighborhood where his father resided; a young man not versed in the Scriptures any more than most of the common lads of that age. And we all know that there are but a very few among farmers that have the opportunity of informing their minds at so early a period—at the age of twenty-one—in regard to the doctrines and prophecies contained in the Scripture.
You may, some of you, wonder, perhaps, why the Lord should select an instrument of this kind; why he did not take a person more qualified by education, more experienced in the doctrines taught among the human family, more conversant with the Bible. You perhaps, may think in your own mind that if you had had the selection of the individual to begin the work of the establishment of the kingdom of God on the earth in the last days, and you had followed the best wisdom you had on the subject, that you certainly would have selected a person well trained and skilled in the different doctrines of the day. But the Lord does not see as man sees, his thoughts are not like our thoughts, neither are his ways like our ways. Hence he chose a man unconnected with any of the religious societies of the day—untaught in the Scriptures and doctrines of the different religious denominations—he selected a man of his own choice, as he had frequently done in former ages of the world.