Zera Pulsipher - Experience With The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Experience With The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Pulsipher family was introduced to the Latter Day Saint church while living in Onondaga County, New York, and Zera was baptized on 11 January 1832 by missionary Jared Carter. For the next two years he presided over the branch of the church in that county and served a number of missions to preach his new-found faith. During one of these missions he taught and baptized Wilford Woodruff. The Pulsiphers joined the bulk of the Saints in Kirtland, Ohio in 1835 where Zera was ordained as a First President of the Seventy by Joseph Smith, Jr. on 6 March 1838. After the highest leadership of the Church fled Kirtland in 1838, the remaining First Presidents of the Seventy (including Zera Pulsipher) organized the bulk of the remaining faithful adherents to travel to Far West, Missouri—the new Church headquarters. This group of over 500 Saints was known as the Kirtland Camp and was one of the earliest concerted efforts of mass Mormon migration.

Zera and his family followed the main body of the Church membership as they settled in Far West, Nauvoo, Winter Quarters, and Salt Lake City. He also helped settle Southern Utah in his later years. In each of these areas, Zera provided leadership including helping to locate the settlement of Garden Grove, Iowa; leading a company of 100 to Utah; serving as a city counselor in Salt Lake City for a number of years; and presiding over the settlement of Hebron, Utah 1863-1869.

Pulsipher abused the sealing authority by performing unauthorized marriages—most likely of a polygamous nature—and as a result was dropped from the presidency of the Seventy and was either excommunicated or disfellowshipped for a very brief period in the spring of 1862. He was brought before the First Presidency on 12 April 1862 and was rebaptized and ordained a high priest afterwards. Later on, he was ordained a patriarch. Zera died in Hebron, Utah in early 1872 as a member in full fellowship in the Church.

Read more about this topic:  Zera Pulsipher

Famous quotes containing the words experience, church, jesus, christ and/or saints:

    ... many of the so-called grievances of women are false. No man ever unfairly discriminated against me. If one tried to, I ... was equal to the emergency, and such experience really added a great deal to the zest of life.... women, as a habit, over- estimated their ability, and ... they were too untrained even to appreciate the magnitude of their undertaking.
    Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)

    To impose celibacy on such a large body as the clergy of the Catholic Church is not to forbid it to have wives but to order it to be content with the wives of others.
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

    And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
    Bible: New Testament, Mark 1:17,18.

    All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
    Bible: New Testament, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19.

    For all the saints who from their labors rest,
    Who, to the world their steadfast faith confessed,
    your name, O Jesus, be forever blessed
    Alleluia!
    William Walsham How (1823–1897)