I Lived to See It

Sanford Porter, my 4th Great Maternal Grandfather

“Sanford is a strange boy. I cannot make him out.”
These were the words of his father upon Sanford’s nagging questions about God, the soul of man, the Bible, and the Afterlife.

When his father died, Sanford’s questions became even more intense.

An inveterate searcher of the Bible, yet finding no satisfactory answers, Sanford considered himself “very near, if not quite, an atheist or infidel”.

Troubled by questions for years, it got to where he paced the barn by day and the house by night. Finally, he could not eat or sleep, yet was not tired or hungry, and for three days he talked to no one and no one talked to him. He spread his arms out, raised his hands, and cried aloud, “O God, if there be a God, show me the way, the right way.”
Then he heard a Voice: “There is a God, and he has known the desires of your heart this number of years. I will instruct you three times this night the way that is right.”

He lay down to sleep, and when he closed his eyes an angel in a long white robe with a red sash appeared and bid him, “Come”. Sanford was shown the Spirit World, and the order of Heaven. He was able to ask his questions and receive answers:
Was Jesus Christ the Son of God: Yes, temporally and spiritually.
Is the Bible true? Many things are lost, but true enough for salvation if read by the Spirit.
If a child dies in infancy are they doomed to hell? “No, emphatically no!”
Are there any churches that are right? “No. But the time is shortly ripe for it to come again. You may not live to see it, but your children certainly will.” This was in 1816.

About 15 years later, a couple of missionaries came to his home to tell of a new profession. They were Lyman Wight and John Corrill. For three days and nights, almost without sleep, he studied the Book of Mormon with them, and asked his many questions.

On the morning of the third day, he said, “If you have told me the truth—and I have not the least doubt of it—your church is the right church, and the only one on the face of the whole earth.” Shortly thereafter, he and his wife were baptized into the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In his journal, Sanford wrote:

“I had a vision, and I know I had a vision,” though "they (promulgators of priestcraft) called me a liar, a blasphemer, a dreamer."

“We were in a dark chamber and could find no window or door that would admit light—groping in darkness—terrible darkness. There is still darkness on the earth and in the minds of men, but nothing to compare with the gross darkness that existed before the advent of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel had diffused light and warmth upon the earth, and to some extent all men are partakers of it.

“I have lived to see it!”