Semi-Annual Conference.
The Forty-Eighth Semi-Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints convened in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City,
October 6th, 1878, at 10 a.m., as per previous adjournment.
Second Day.
Monday Morning, Oct. 7, 10 a.m.
Elder Orson Pratt read a portion of a revelation given to Joseph Smith, the prophet, on the 6th day of April, 1830, being the same day the Church of Christ was organized in this dispensation. This revelation contains a message of salvation that was to be carried to all the inhabitants of the earth, and the inevitable consequences that would follow their acceptance or rejection of the same were that whoever believes and receives the testimony of the servants of God in these days will be saved, and whoever rejects their testimony will be damned.
He then spoke of the testimony of the witnesses to the truth of the Book of Mormon. Twelve men bore witness to what their eyes saw and what their ears heard. The angel of God appeared to three of them, and not only presented the plates before them, permitting them to handle them, but told them that God had enabled his servant Joseph Smith to translate from these plates the Book of Mormon, and commanded them to bear this testimony before the world. Out of the twelve witnesses, eleven had gone the way of all flesh, and only one was now living, whose name was David Whitmer. He then rehearsed a very interesting conversation that he and Elder Joseph F. Smith had recently held with David Whitmer, who bore the same testimony which is contained in the Book of Mormon, and which the speaker had heard him bear 48 years ago. The Book of Mormon had been translated into ten different languages, and the testimony of those twelve witnesses will stand in the day of judgment against all those nations where this work is introduced and they reject it. The message of life and salvation which those witnesses testified to is the same that our Elders have carried and proclaimed for the last forty years among many nations of the earth.
He closed his remarks by blessing the congregation in all their temporal and spiritual labors.
[Deseret News, Oct. 9, 1878]
[transcribed and proofread by David Grow, Aug. 2006]