The pluck and luck of the Irish Saints: A brief history of the Church in Ireland
The following is excerpted from LDS Living. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
On an island divided by political and religious borders, about 8,000 plucky Irish Latter-day Saints have discovered a way to find unity through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The message of the Restoration first came to Ireland in the spring of 1840, a decade after the organization of the Church. In May, the first missionary to arrive was Reuben Hedlock, who spent three days in Belfast before moving on to Paisley, Scotland. While in Belfast, Hedlock made a few contacts, observed the budding though divided city, and described its segregated populace as he passed through the sorrowful streets of Northern Ireland: “This is a fine flourishing town, containing about 54,000 inhabitants. Here I met … the rich enjoying their abundance and the poor in rags begging for a morsel of food to sustain life. I had never before witnessed such scenes of suffering.” He queried, “Has the Gospel of Jesus Christ lost its power … so that one part of the human family must drag out a miserable existence, and die in wretchedness and want, while the other can live in pride and plenty all their days?”
A Prophecy Fulfilled
By this time, Apostle John Taylor had a branch of the Church established in Liverpool, where one out of seven of the city’s inhabitants were from Ireland. Two of the migrant Irish converts in Great Britain during this era were James McGuffie and William Black, who sailed with Elder Taylor for Ireland July 27, 1840 as missionaries. Because McGuffie had contacts in the northern town of Newry, the three elders went there first. Arriving the following day, McGuffie immediately made arrangements at the local courthouse for a “bell-man” to ring out the message of Elder Taylor’s forthcoming sermon in Sessions Hall that very night. Notwithstanding little time to advertise, that first Latter-day Saint public sermon in Ireland drew a crowd of more than 600, who came to hear the Latter-day Saint apostle expound the doctrines of the Restoration.
The following evening, Elder Taylor again preached in Sessions Hall, though few attended. Therefore, apparently they were planning on leaving town the following day. Later that night, Elder Taylor had a vision in which he saw a man who asked him to stay in Newry because he would like to hear Elder Taylor preach. The next morning, as the three missionaries were leaving town, the man from Elder Taylor’s dream, Thomas Tate, whom Elder Taylor had first met in Liverpool, prophesying that Tate would be the first person baptized in Ireland, approached them and asked them to remain.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
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