Brigham Young sent
missionaries to South Africa as early as 1853.
Although the Church existed in that country for 125 years before the
1978 revelation, at no time was the gospel taken directly to the black
people. Except for a few isolated
individuals, no blacks were members there before 1978.
One of the first
blacks to accept the gospel in Africa was William Paul Daniels, who came in
contact with the missionaries in 1913.
An elder in the Dutch Reformed Church, he was impressed with the
missionaries and their message. He
traveled to Utah, where in 1915 he was baptized. He received a blessing from President Joseph
F. Smith that if he remained faithful he would in this life or the next,
receive the priesthood. Hundreds of
South African Saints heard his emotional testimony of the power of that
blessing. He died in 1936. His daughter, Alice Okkers of Cape Town,
participated in the temple ordinances for her parents.
In the 1940’s and
1950’s a few people in West Africa began to obtain literature about the Church
as they or their friends traveled in America or Europe. Some wrote to the address on the back of the
pamphlets requesting more literature and asking that missionaries be sent to
Africa to teach them. They received
literature but were told: “the time is
not yet. You must wait.” And so many
waited-for years.
Some Africans in
Nigeria and Ghana, on learning about the Church, organized themselves into
local churches, a common practice in their cultures. When letters bearing the name of the Church began
arriving at Church headquarters in Salt Lake City, the Brethren became
concerned. It is estimated that by 1978,
twenty congregations totaling some two thousand people in Nigeria alone bore
the name “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Glen G, Fisher,
president of the mission in South Africa, was appointed to be the first
official Church representative to visit these people. He stopped in Nigeria on his way home to
Canada in 1960. President Fisher
reported to the First Presidency that he found the “Saints” in Africa to be
sincere and devout in their convictions about the restored Gospel. He recommended sending missionaries to
baptize the faithful and establish the Church among them.
The First Presidency
called Lamar Willimas and others to open a mission in Nigeria. For six years the Church attempted to obtain
visas for these missionaries to Nigeria, but when the Nigerian civil war broke
out in 1966 the plans were abandoned.
For many weeks
before receiving the revelation on 1
June 1978, President Kimball spent much time discussing the issue with his
counselors and the Twelve. He also spent
many hours in private prayer about this vital matter. In a missionary meeting at an area conference
in Johannesburg in October 1978, President Kimball related:
I prayed with much fervency. I knew something was before us that was
extremely important to many of the children of God. I knew that we could receive the revelations
of the Lord only by being worthy and ready for them and ready to accept them
and put them in to place. Day after day
I went alone and with great solemnity and seriousness in the upper rooms of the
temple, and there I offered my soul and offered my efforts to go forward with
the program. I wanted to do what he
wanted. I talked about it to him and
said, “Lord, I want only what is right. We are not making any plans to be
spectacularly moving. We want only the
thing that thou dost want, and we want it when you want it and not until.”
(Teachings of
Spencer W. Kimball).
Of the circumstances
and power of this revelation, Elder Bruce R. McConkie observed. “On this occasion, because of the importuning
and the faith, and because the hour and the time had arrived, the Lord in his
providences poured out the Holy Ghost upon the First Presidency and the Twelve
in a miraculous and marvelous manner, beyond anything that any then present had
ever experienced. (All are Alike Unto
God,” Church Educational system Symposium. BYU 18 August 1978, Charge to
Religious Educators, 2ded. Salt Lake City:
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1978 pp, 152-
Presidents Spencer
W. Kimball and Ezra Taft Benson and eleven other prophets, seers and revelators
were participants in this great event.
It is my impression that not only did that revelation come with great
power in the temple, but that that same power was guiding and blessing people,
half a world away-a people who had been so patient and so faithful for so long
with so little gospel light.
Before this
revelation the Church did not formally exist among the blacks of Africa. In many respects, this divine directive was
the restoration of the gospel for the black people in Africa.
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