Minutes of a District Conference.
Held in the Odd-Fellows’ Hall, Birmingham, on Sunday, Feb. 24, 1867.
…After which, Apostle Orson Pratt said—
To our friends this work is a strange work, and even to ourselves it is a wonder, and when compared with other dispensations, it is truly a marvelous work. When God sent Moses to gather Israel, he found them all located in one land, and even the distance to the land of promise was only eleven days’ journey, if taken in a direct course. Not so with this Latter-day Work, for the servants of God are sent into all the world, and they go and make converts in strange land; from thence they take them over three thousand miles across the sea, and about three thousand miles over the country; this they have been doing for about twenty years, and have succeeded in settling a tract of barren country, some 400 miles in length, with about 105 towns and villages, with a population of a hundred thousand souls. He then prophesied to the strangers, that should they live a few years longer, they would see the Saints return their former possessions in Missouri; and the nations and people who fight against Zion, would pass away as a dream or a night vision, and eventually the kingdoms of this world would be given into the hands of the Saints, for an everlasting possession.
[Deseret News, May 15, 1867]
[transcribed and proofread by David Grow, Sept. 2006]