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Show Page 48 hand, to find the meeting in progress and himself greeted in amazement. No one had had any word of him since he had left Missouri - but some among them had prophesied that he would arrive in time. The occasion was momentous, for Orson found that he had been chosen to serve as one of a new priesthood quorum - the Council of the Twelve Apostles. Orson Pratt was ordained a member of the original council April 26, 1835, by Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer. Nearly six years before, a revelation to the Three Witnesses had outlined the calling and responsibility of the Twelve, special "disciples" who were to "go into all the world." Orson and the other apostles suddenly saw their world expand beyond the American republic to inconceivable multitudes in foreign nations, their calling an international evangelism in fulfillment of the prophecy found in Matthew 24:14, that the gospel should be preached in all nations, "and then shall the end come." A revelation of March 28, 1835, had given the Twelve equal authority with the First Presidency, which consisted of Joseph Smith, his father and brother, Hyrum, and Oliver Cowdery. Orson Pratt, at twenty-three, was the third youngest member of the quorum, now urged by the Prophet to press eastward on a world mission. Paradoxically, each of the Twelve had accompanied Zion's Camp westward the preceding year. Orson considered the manner of his arrival in Kirtland to be a "miraculous manifestation of the Spirit of God," but the news that he was to stand in the stead of a modern Peter, Luke, or Paul, buried him in anxiety. But it was all in fulfillment of a "great saying" Joseph Smith had made to Orson when he first joined the Church - the Prophet had apparently told him early on that, in spite of his youth, he should one day be one of the Apostles. Of this Orson wrote: "I looked upon the Twelve Apostles who lived in ancient Havs with a great deal of reverence - as being almost |