How frustrating it must have been, how impotent Joseph F. Smith must have felt, as person after person close to his heart had died. Surely he had prayed for them to be spared time after time.
It is no wonder that President Joseph F. Smith received the revelation in Section 138 and that he saw it at the time he did. He had personally been put in a state of preparedness to receive it and the world had come to a place where it might have maximum impact.
It must have been comforting to realize that spirits retain the likeness of their mortal body and that they anxiously await the day of their resurrection.
This topic is very timely for President Ballard as his wife passed away earlier this week.
Somehow I missed that the talk was written before his wife died. I wonder if he knew she would soon be going. Maybe it was just the 100th anniversary that prompted this.
When he was President of the Church, he visited Nauvoo in 1906 and reflected on a memory he had when he was just five years old. He said: “This is the exact spot where I stood when [Joseph, my uncle, and my father, Hyrum] came riding up on their way to Carthage. Without getting off his horse father leaned over in his saddle and picked me up off the ground. He kissed me good-bye and put me down again and I saw him ride away.”
Joseph F. was called to serve a mission in the Hawaiian Islands in 1854 when he was 15 years old. This mission, which lasted more than three years, was the beginning of a life of service in the Church.
Upon his return to Utah, Joseph F. married in 1859. For the next few years, his life was filled with work, family duties, and two additional missions. On July 1, 1866, at the age of 27, Joseph F. had his life forever changed when he was ordained an Apostle by Brigham Young. In October the following year, he filled a vacancy in the Council of the Twelve. He served as a counselor to Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Lorenzo Snow before becoming President himself in 1901.
He was ordained an apostle without being a member of the quorum of the 12.
Joseph F. and his wife Julina welcomed their first child, Mercy Josephine, into the family. She was only two and a half years old when she passed away. Shortly after, Joseph F. recorded: “It is one month yesterday since my … darling Josephine died. O! that I could have saved her to grow up to womanhood. I miss her every day and I am lonely. … God forgive my weakness if it is wrong to love my little ones as I love them.”
During his lifetime, President Smith lost his father, his mother, one brother, two sisters, two wives, and thirteen children. He was well acquainted with sorrow and losing loved ones.
When his son Albert Jesse died, Joseph F. wrote to his sister Martha Ann that he had pled with the Lord to save him and asked, “Why is it so? O. God why had it to be?”
Despite his prayers at that time, Joseph F. received no answer on this matter. He told Martha Ann that “the heavens [seemed like] brass over our heads” on the subject of death and the spirit world. Nevertheless, his faith in the Lord’s eternal promises were firm and steadfast.
During the year, President Smith also lost three more precious family members. Elder Hyrum Mack Smith of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, his firstborn son and my grandfather, died suddenly of a ruptured appendix.
President Smith wrote: “I am speechless—[numb] with grief! … My heart is broken; and flutters for life! … O! I loved him! … I will love him forever more. And so it is and ever will be with all my sons and daughters, but he is my first born son, the first to bring me the joy and hope of an endless, honorable name among men. … From the depths of my soul I thank God for him! But … O! I needed him! We all needed him! He was most useful to the Church. … And now, … O! what can I do! … O! God help me!”
The next month, President Smith’s son-in-law, Alonzo Kesler, died in a tragic accident. President Smith noted in his journal, “This most terrible and heart-rending fatal accident, has again cast a pall of gloom over all my family.”
Seven months later, in September 1918, President Smith’s daughter-in-law and my grandmother, Ida Bowman Smith, died after giving birth to her fifth child, my uncle Hyrum.
And so it was on October 3, 1918, having experienced intense sorrow over the millions who had died in the world through war and disease as well as the deaths of his own family members, President Smith received the heavenly revelation known as “the vision of the redemption of the dead.”
The revelation he received on October 3 comforted his heart and provided answers to many of his questions. We too can be comforted and learn more about our own future when we and our loved ones die and go to the spirit world by studying this revelation and pondering its significance in the way we live our lives each day.
Among the many things President Smith saw was the Savior’s visit to the faithful in the spirit world after His own death on the cross.
On this special 100th anniversary, I invite you to thoroughly and thoughtfully read this revelation. As you do so, may the Lord bless you to more fully understand and appreciate God’s love and His plan of salvation and happiness for His children.
An invitation with a promise. The essence of apostolic testimony.
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