ly for so saying, I was led to say in my
heart: Why persecute me for telling the truth? I have actually
seen a vision, and who am I that I can withstand God, or why
does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen?
For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it,
and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it, at least I knew
that by so doing I would offend God, and come under
condemnation.

"I had now got my mind satisfied so far as the sectarian world
was concerned; that it was not my duty to join with any of them,
but to continue as I was until further directed. I had found the
testimony of James to be true, that a man who lacked wisdom
might ask of God, and obtain, and not be upbraided."[1523]

In this wise was ushered in the Dispensation of the Fulness of
Times.[1524] The darkness of the long night of apostasy was dispelled;
the glory of the heavens once more illumined the world; the silence of
centuries was broken; the voice of God was heard again upon the earth.
In the spring of A.D. 1820 there was one mortal, a boy not quite fifteen
years old, who knew as well as that he lived, that the current human
conception of Deity as an incorporeal essence of something possessing
neither definite shape nor tangible substance was as devoid of truth in
respect to both the Father and the Son as its statement in formulated
creeds was incomprehensible. The boy Joseph knew that both the Eternal
Father and His glorified Son, Jesus Christ, were in form and stature,
perfect Men; and that in Their physical likeness mankind had been
created in the flesh.[1525] He knew further that the Father and the Son
were individual Personages, each distinct from the other--a truth fully
attested by the Lord Jesus during His mortal existence, but which had
been obscured if not buried by the sophistries of human unbelief. He
realized that the unity of the Godhead was a oneness of perfection in
purpose, plan, and action, as the scriptures declare it to be, and not
an impossible union of personalities, as generations of false teachers
had tried to impress. This resplendent theophany confirmed the fact of a
universal apostasy, with the inevitable corollary--that the Church of
Christ was nowhere existent upon the earth. It effectively dissipated
the delusion that direct revelation from the heavens had forever ceased;
and affirmatively proved the actuality of personal communi