TODAY IN CHURCH HISTORY: 05 August

[Hemidakota]

1830 - About this time, Newel Knight and his wife paid the Prophet Joseph and Emma a visit at their home in Harmony, Pennsylvania. Since neither Sister Knight nor Emma had been confirmed members of the Church, it was proposed to do so before the Knight’s left for home. In preparation for the service and the partaking of the Sacrament, the Prophet Joseph set out to procure some wine for the occasion, “but had gone only a short distance when I was met by a heavenly messenger, and received the following revelation” (History of the Church, 1:106). The revelation is recorded as Doctrine and Covenants 27 and includes the direction “it mattereth not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink when ye partake of the sacrament, if it so be that ye do it with an eye single to my glory.”

1844 - Sidney Rigdon meets with the leading brethren in Nauvoo, Elders Parley P. Pratt, Willard Richards, John Taylor, George A. Smith, Amasa Lyman, and Bishop Whitney, in council. Sidney Rigdon tried to use fear tactics in his argument that a guardian needed to be appointed at the head of the Church to save it from falling apart. A public meeting is planned for August 8th to decide on the leadership issue facing the Church after the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph. Brigham Young, and the Apostles traveling with him, are returning from their missions in the east. They boarded the steamer St. Croix at Galena, Illinois, for the final part of their journey down the Mississippi River towards Nauvoo.

1861 - The first missionaries arrive in the Netherlands.

1922 - Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles is born in Logan, Utah.

1953 - Ground is broken for a temple in Switzerland by President David O. McKay. It will be the first temple on the European continent.

1983 - The first Apia Samoa Temple is dedicated by President Gordon B. Hinckley of the First Presidency. It would later be destroyed by fire on 9 July 2003.