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Show Page 30 And if you are faithful, behold, I am with you until I come - And verily, verily, I say unto you, I come quickly. I am your Lord and your Redeemer. Even so. Amen. 6 As Orson pondered this message from on high, it seemed to him a flood of millenarian light. The implications of it he would search throughout his life. To begin with, his own divine sonship is affirmed, bespeaking the theme of God's relationship with man, a theme which would dominate many of his own writings. God speaks of himself as the outpouring of light in darkness, in the words of the first chapter of John, a solemn vindication of Orson's dark hours of prayer, inviting comprehension,along with a reasurrance of divine fatherhood. Where Parley had been admonished to be "meek and lowly of heart," the bashful Orson found himself prodded to shout the message with trumpet tones, for "the time is soon at hand that I shall come in a cloud." The apocalyptic 8 emphasis of this revelation, drawing its imagery from another "Revelation," deeply impressed Orson, and he believed thereafter that the coming of the Lord was indeed imminent. Orson's voice was to be raised to that millennial strain both long and loud. For three weeks, Orson tarried with the Prophet while his brother, Parley, headed west with the first mission to the Indian frontier, passing through the Western Reserve with the aim of converting his former pastor, Sidney Rigdon. The Indian mission, for the Mormons, represented the beginning of Israel's gathering, a necessary pre-millennial condition, given the Book of Mormon assertion of the Israelitish descent of the American 9 natives. The missionary fervor struck Orson, too, but,unlike his brother, he had no preaching experience. Encouraged by the revelation, he received the Holy Ghost and ordination to the office of elder at the hands of the Prophet Joseph Smith on December 1, 1830. At nineteen, Orson was sent as an authoritative minister to the environs of Colesville, Broome |
