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S4E17 · Lesser Known Heroes from Church History - Eliza Dana Gibbs Part 1
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Standard of Truth · Season 4 · Episode 17 · 1:02:25

Lesser Known Heroes from Church History - Eliza Dana Gibbs Part 1

Eliza Dana nearly became an atheist because she couldn't accept that a loving Jesus would send almost everyone to hell forever.

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The question ·
Dear Becky and Angie, will you please ask your husband to talk more about the women in the church history?
Stephanie (listener)

After seven failed takes at the intro, Richard revives the 'unsung heroes' series because Stephanie asked the hosts' wives to get them talking about women in church history. Stephanie also shares that she is a gay member of the church who has found hope, and Gerrit thanks her for her faith. Gerrit then begins the story of Eliza Dana, a devout Presbyterian whose horror at eternal punishment drove her to the edge of atheism, until a vision during a long illness gave her hope. Years later a young missionary taught her, and despite her brother's warning that it would kill their mother, Eliza and her sister Mary were baptized. They set out for Nauvoo, but news of Joseph's death reached them on the way, and soon after they arrived Mary died, leaving a toddler whom Eliza and her husband William raised as their own.

Who comes upEliza Dana GibbsMary DanaWilliam GibbsGeorge DanaEliza AnneOrson PrattJohn E. PageJoseph Smith
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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the life and teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the Church with faith, expertise and humor.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I have tried multiple times to start this podcast, and I've failed over and over and over again. I, a few moments ago, began to speak, and I think that I had glossolalia. I'm not entirely sure.
Richard Yes, we were at a snake handler sermon.
Gerrit A West Virginia.
Richard A West Virginia snake handler, and it was, you were full four square.
Gerrit I was, I don't know what was going on, but. Stroke, a stroke was going on. I smelled toast. I am joined by my friend who speaks much more clearly than me. It's unfortunate that he didn't get the PhD in history, but he's still, you know, pining away for that PhD in business. My friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Well, hello, Gerrit. This is take seven of us trying to start this.
Gerrit It was really bad, right?
Richard It was, it was, I'm concerned for you as my friend.
Gerrit Do we need to go to a doctor? That was weird. I hit record, and the next thing that came out of my mouth was, yeah, it was, like, oh, did you serve a Swahili-speaking mission? No, nope, I don't know what that was.
Richard Well, so Gerrit, back in 2022, we did, I think it was 2022, possibly 2023. It could have been last week, I don't know.
Gerrit Everything kind of runs together.
Richard It does. So we did Unsung Heroes from Church History. And it seemed like that was gonna be a series of people that we were gonna be talking about. We did one, and we haven't done one since.
Gerrit Well, I mean, in fairness, we kind of, you know, we kind of did one about Willard Richards with his guns.
Richard We did, we did. We did talk about Moroni. I feel he's unsung.
Gerrit Relatively unsung. Like, no one's heard of Moroni listening to this podcast.
Richard So we did get an email that talked, that asked a question about women in church history. And so we're gonna dust off unsung heroes from church history, and we're gonna do that again. But before we do, Genriff, we're gonna hit the Phebe Draper Palmer Brown mailbag. This first email comes to us from David. Now there's two images. I'll put the link to the images in the description of the podcast so you can see them because the images themselves are very funny. So this comes to us from David. I enjoyed the bonus episode today, and of course it brought back a few images into my brain that had been quickly brought into virtual reality. The first is a highly accurate description of what I anticipate the bus ride will look like for the tours this summer. And what he has here is he has a bunch of people on the bus with a lot of money and then Gerrit and I with a basket like you would get in a church service going around and having people put the money in the basket.
Richard The only thing that is not correct is that both of us are wearing a white shirt and Gerrit does not wear a white shirt.
Gerrit I will wear them.
Richard You have one.
Gerrit I mean, like when I gave my son the priesthood.
Richard Yes. And there's a reason behind this, right? I actually think it's a very good reason.
Gerrit Honestly, I actually, I generally don't wear a white shirt and I'm not saying this is the right way to do it, but I don't because I've just kind of found that there's two things. One, I'm teaching the history of the church all the time to students, and I'm teaching it sometimes in church, and so I'm talking about the history of the church all the time. And so I don't ever want those students to misunderstand who I am in their life, right? Because I'm talking to them, I'm bearing testimony to them, I'm talking about the church, but I have less keys than I do to the church building. I mean, I have no keys at all. And so I kind of started wearing a blue shirt or whatever, pink shirt, just because I found it was easier for students to kind of understand that there's a difference between their ecclesiastical authorities, their bishops, their stake presidents, and someone who's talking about the church.
Gerrit And then also, and maybe this is a little bit more selfish reason, yeah, I mean, all of this is-
Richard Well, the missionaries are catching up with you now. My son wears a blue shirt primarily.
Gerrit But I think maybe that's more in line with the missionaries in the sense that I also want... I want people to hear what I have to say when it's related to, say, Joseph Smith. And so part of the reason why I wear a colored shirt to church is I want... I don't want anyone to not listen to what I have to say because they think I'm only saying it because I'm running for a high counselor.
Richard You're running for pope, right?
Gerrit I'm running for pope. Yeah. That they're like, maybe when the smokes burn next time, it'll be Gerrit. And they're bringing the logs into the fire and to do it. And so I know that that shouldn't maybe be a concern. But I feel like I've actually had several people comment to me about that. And so that's the reason why Richard makes the comment that I wouldn't be wearing a white shirt and tie. I mean, look, if it was my funeral, probably, my funeral.
Richard Your funeral. Yes. So he goes on to say, clearly one of you needs to work on a goatee Brigham Young beard. One of the pictures here.
Gerrit I'm not allowed to.
Richard Yes, yes, and now that I work in Utah County, I'm also not allowed. As for the Dirkmaat scholarship, first of all, many, many, many submissions will be reaching out to folks this week via email.
Gerrit We're going to draw names out of a hat at this point. There are lots of very, very deserving people and we don't have the ability or discernment to, again, no white shirt.
Richard Yes, so we'll start reaching out to people this week. We're very excited about that. As for the Dirkmaat scholarship, I'd love to apply, but the truths are hard to ignore. Number one, don't have enough money this year. Number two, my daughter is getting married June 20th, so I can't go this year anyway. Number three, where said daughter, if said daughter was not getting married this year, I probably would have enough money to go and...
Gerrit So he wouldn't be deserving of the scholarship?
Richard That's right. And been free in June, hoping no marriage isn't enough money in 2025. Well, here's hoping for that, David.
Gerrit I don't know that the scholarship will repeat itself, David, but I mean, I don't know that our kind listener is going to be doing that every year.
Richard Yes. Yes, it's very nice of them to do it this year though. And then he says, to that end, for those who want to go on the tour in the future, I think we could encourage the Litners to send their children out to hit the pavement on their behalf, selling premium subscriptions door to door for $14.99 a month.
Gerrit So more than they cost?
Richard Well, yeah, because, so, yes, selling the premium subscription for $14.99, every subscription sold earns the family $5 a month towards the cost of the future tour, as long as that subscription stays active, or in other words, $5 in most cases.
Gerrit So that's a shot David's taking, that people are only subscribers for one month before they cancel.
Richard Possibly. This is my way of getting revenge on the world for having to sell stupid family portrait packages door to door in high school to raise money for band uniforms that the school bought the year after I graduated. And there's another image here that is very, very funny of an older couple opening the door and a young, probably 10 to 14 year old boy with a clipboard with Standard of Truth selling it door to door. Very funny. So to conclude, I'd love to make a case to get a Dirkmaat scholarship this year, but I just can't do it. I hope you all have a great time and hope to see you in 2025. So it was very funny. So I'll have the link to those images. The images are very funny. David, thank you. Thank you very much. All right. So this next email comes to us from Stephanie. On May 11th, 2023, episode entitled, did Joseph Smith really use a seer stone? You said you would be doing a succession crisis nine-parter sometime after the next eclipse.
Richard And then she marks the exact time that we talked about it.
Gerrit Stephanie, it had to be an eclipse that was a full eclipse over Utah.
Richard We were very clear.
Gerrit No, we were 60% eclipse here. Unless we have totality, we can't be held to anything.
Richard That happened. Well, the eclipse did anyway. Lest you think you're getting away with, I said after Gerrit next said, we're going to try to push for that sometime April 7th, 2024.
Gerrit Did I say that?
Richard Look, I don't know. She seems to have done a lot of work here. I'm going to go ahead and say that you did.
Gerrit Well, Stephanie.
Richard Well, so.
Gerrit This is not going to be the only time I've disappointed you, Stephanie. I can only assume every time you listen.
Richard We're going to try to push that for April 7th, 2024. The podcast that dropped today, The Angel Gabriel and a Good Old Fashioned Feet Dusting, doesn't mention anything about it. So I thought I'd send a reminder. A reminder also, just prior to the eclipse statement, you read an email of someone accusing you two of being honest. How's that for passive aggressive? Well, Stephanie, you should teach a class on that. That's well done. There are mothers-in-law everywhere that could learn a thing or two from BYU.
Gerrit Yeah, that was probably the best part of Elder Kieran's talk. Oh, that was so funny. Where he's like, behind every man calls an apostle, there's a very surprised mother-in-law.
Richard Astonished. He says astonished. And her being passed away does not make her any less astonished.
Gerrit She's in the next life, still stunned.
Richard I had a friend of mine, a friend of mine is a first counselor and a bishopric. He texted me the same thing, but for a bishopric, yeah, similar level of astonishment. Richard, you sounded much better today. I'm glad you were healing. Also, you seem to talk a lot about having to drive three hours round trip to record these shows. Well, I really enjoyed being in the audience for the live podcast. Thank you, Stephanie, for coming. So if you are interested in doing a private audience podcast, I'm happy to pick you up and your lovely wife up in Leighton and drive you down to Utah County for the recording. Now, so here's the thing though, Stephanie, as a litner to the podcast, you know that for that three hours, I will say approximately seven to 13 words as I do on the podcast.
Gerrit But he may take a fit of laughing that will carry him to an early grave.
Richard That's true. Don't think this is a private car chauffeur as one you can totally sit in the front seat. Also expect a bit of rumble ride as my tires need to be balanced. Dear Becky and Angie, will you please ask your husband to talk more about the women in the church history? Surely, there is more to the women's contribution than the plural marriage ride. There is, Stephanie. Today, we'll be talking about a woman who was in a plural marriage though. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your families with us, your testimonies, your research and your sports picks. It's hard to put into words how much your podcast helps this openly gay, single adult temple worker. People in the gay community often try to shake my testimony based on things they don't like from church history and encourage me to live a lifestyle contrary to the laws that God has set forth. This can make for a lonely life. Your podcast helps me feel like I know much more than they do and that I have a few podcast friends who are rooting for me, and this thorn of the flesh that may never be removed in this life, I absolutely know you are doing the work, and I am reaping the benefits.
Richard And so, I hope you absolutely know how grateful I am. If you want to let other gay members of the church know that they are not alone, please feel free. We don't have much of a voice or outreach, but we are here, fighting the loneliness and finding, or at least looking for the happiness which is affixed. Stephanie.
Gerrit Well, that's a beautiful, beautiful email, Stephanie. I can only say thank you for listening, and I'm sorry that we've been so dishonest about what we're going to talk about all the time. But I am grateful for your faith. I am grateful for it, and I'm grateful for all of the listeners who struggle with different aspects of this often very difficult mortal life and place their faith in God and just push forward. I obviously had a lot of different areas I could have gone to talk about some of the great women in church history, but I felt like what Stephanie wanted was for me to get someone that maybe a lot of people don't know about.
Gerrit Now the moment I say those words, every single member of their family history circle is going to email the podcast. So I'll say, a lot of you don't know Eliza Gibbs, that's who I'm going to talk about. And already, before the podcast has even dropped, 20 of her extended family members have already emailed. They're emailing right now. Oh, well, lots of people know about Eliza Gibbs. How is it that you don't know about them? I'm occasionally asked to speak at sons or daughters of the Utah Pioneers events. And at every one of them, wonderful people, I mean, these are great people honoring the heritage of our pioneers and for almost all of them, it's their great-great-great-grandmother, their great-great-grandfather. And so there's a lot of history on the micro level that's being done. But at every one of these I've ever done, I've probably done maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15 in the last five, 10 years.
Gerrit And there's always someone who will come up to me and bring up essentially the most obscure fact about a relatively obscure person that I couldn't possibly have known, which is usually very interesting, but expecting me to know it. Do you know when his second daughter got married? No. Well, I didn't think you would. It was in 1849. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's awesome. I'm glad that that happened.
Richard Well, I feel like that's every question you ask me about anything on this podcast. Like when what was the church established? Oh, I feel like I want to say 16.
Gerrit If you weren't listening to our latest premium content drop, first of all, we've had a couple of people ask about the premium, so we should just reiterate it. They are other podcasts, Condemned to Repeat It, Holy Places from Our Past, also known as Crinkling Leaves and Joseph Smith and the Restoration, which we drop also once a week. We kind of vary what we're doing. American history, religious history, history of some of the sacred sites, and then of course Joseph Smith's history. And the idea behind it is it's a way to support the podcast, as David demonstrated, maybe not having your child go door to door selling subscriptions.
Richard We're not discouraging it.
Gerrit Richard wants you to send your child door to door.
Richard Well, look, we'll set up an affiliate model where, yeah, absolutely.
Gerrit It's going to be us and then also solar panels. We thought maybe we could do both and maybe some pest control.
Richard And home security systems. The thing is, though, is that you're going to sell it for $14.99. We'll keep all of the money and we'll just credit you, like he says, right?
Gerrit I see, yeah.
Richard If you credit only toward the tour.
Gerrit But we cancel. If that person cancels, you lose all of it.
Richard Yes. And on a related note, the tour just doubled in price.
Gerrit But the premium content, for those of you who are wondering, it's a way of supporting the podcast. Obviously, there are many, many, many expenses involved in hosting and putting this up and really even just in the equipment alone to get it done. And so, it's a way for people who at least tolerate us and aren't trying to drive us off the air immediately to demonstrate their support by subscribing. And then that way, we can use that as operational budgets, we can keep this podcast free. Now, I know what you're thinking as you listen. This podcast is so bad that you've got to find a number lower than free for me to continue listening. So that's what we're going to work towards. At some point, we're going to work towards a reverse subscription model where we pay people to listen to us. Is that?
Richard Yeah, I think that would be very effective.
Gerrit Yeah. See, you don't have your business PhD yet. So anyway, on the premium content, just the very last one that dropped, we were talking about an aspect of the Revolutionary War, and Richard may or may not have been unaware of the timeline for...
Richard Sure, sure. The Napoleonic Wars, 1803-ish to 1815-ish, 1804.
Gerrit 1815 is just very good.
Richard So a decent number of years after the Revolutionary War.
Gerrit Right.
Richard Right. Unaware.
Gerrit Well, you know that now though.
Richard Sure. But that, but all I'm saying is when someone asks you a random marriage date of someone that no one's ever heard of, I'm like that with, you know, the Revolutionary War, Civil War, the Church.
Gerrit Like, so who was the first president of the United States? I don't know, some guy?
Richard I'm, I'm the everyman, Gerrit. I'm the guy that's working so hard.
Gerrit Well, the sister from church history that I wanted to talk a little bit about today is a woman by the name of Eliza Dana. Eliza Dana has a very interesting conversion story. She's going to join the church relatively late. Now, the nice part is she leaves us an autobiography where later in life she, she outlines this, her life story as well as her growth and her faith. And she's probably again outside of the, you know, the, the family who are already emailing. Probably not very well known because she's not married to a prophet or an apostle, right? She's not leading the women's suffrage movement, but she's a great example of faith and endurance and, and simply making the decision to follow the prophet even when there, there just didn't seem like there was a whole lot of hope.
Gerrit One of my, one of my favorite parts of her life is the way that she talks about her initial conversion to, to Christianity. He says, she says, when somewhere about 20 years old, I joined the Methodist Church. So she, she was born in, in New York. And so she lived in upstate New York. And I joined the Methodist Church. My mother was also a Methodist, but I did not remain one long, not more than two or three years. So what is she struggling with? This is a very interesting thing. In many ways, it's kind of a reflection of Brigham Young. Brigham Young says something very similar. The doctrine of eternal punishment was too horrible to contemplate. Still, I thought that the Bible taught it.
Gerrit It was very interesting. Of course, she's doing a reflection here after she's already a member. And so she's saying, before I found the church, I had a faith crisis in Christianity. Why? Well, we've talked about before. We've referenced it, although it's been a while. We probably need to do a refresher on Arminianism and Calvinism. Right now, Josh just threw his phone.
Richard Well, he likes Arminianism.
Gerrit I said the word Calvinism. Josh's reaction to Calvinism is the same reaction Richard has when I say William Howe from The Revolutionary War on the Premium podcast. She has this existential problem because of her faith. Methodism is this Arminian belief, meaning that while most of the Christian world believe that very, very, very few people were saved and that God chose the very few people that he was going to give the gift of faith to and save, John Wesley and Charles Wesley and Methodists taught that Jesus had literally died for everyone, that Jesus desperately wanted to save everyone. Now the problem with that belief is almost no one is saved because whether you're a Calvinist or an Arminian, both sides of Protestantism, if you don't have faith in Jesus Christ, you aren't saved.
Gerrit And so while in the initial rush towards the beauty of Methodism, that Jesus died for everyone. There's comfort because you no longer believe in this God who basically created almost everyone, wanting them to burn in hell forever. But the very self-same aspect of your faith, that the most important thing is Jesus extending mercy to everyone, is the same thing that makes you take the next step on that journey. And Brigham Young took the same step as a Methodist.
Richard So did I tell you the real I saw of the Presbyterian preacher, it was very funny. So he was doing it lightheartedly, but he said, brothers and sisters, it's so great to be here. And he said, isn't it funny? He's like, everyone that I know that's Baptist, they come up and they call me brother. Hey, brother, all the Baptists, they call me brother. As a Presbyterian, I'm like, we'll see.
Gerrit Pointing to the fact that Presbyterians are highly Calvinistic, depending on which Presbyterian you're working at, but traditionally the Presbyterian Church is a Calvinist Orthodox Church in the sense that people are saved because God chooses to give them the gift of faith, not because they did anything good, but because God chose them. And he didn't choose, he doesn't choose good people, he just chooses people before he ever created them. And that's how salvation for Calvinist Protestants can really be nothing of yourself. You didn't do anything. No one deserves to be saved. Everyone deserves to go to hell. And one of the more rough aspects of Calvinist doctrine is the logical conclusion that if Jesus already knew who he was going to give the gift of faith to, then of course Jesus didn't die for everyone on the cross, because if he did, then that would mean Jesus is a failure, because he didn't save everyone.
Gerrit He saved only the people that God intended to save by giving them the gift of faith. And so therefore, this belief called limited atonement is something where, I believe we read a Charles Wesley hymn a few podcasts back, where Charles Wesley called it a doctrine of Satan, denying the actual atoning power of Jesus. So those two sides of Protestantism, they still battle even today. But it's actually very interesting as I read 19th century journals of people who are Methodists. This quandary that they find themselves in is actually a fairly common thing. What caused you to become a Methodist? Believing that Jesus' atonement truly is for everyone, that every single person can be saved.
Gerrit But then coming to the reality that almost nobody is. I mean, look, as a Christian, every Christian will at some point ask the question of, if God is good, why is everything so terrible? And this is just kind of an extension of that. If Jesus desperately wants to save everybody, then why is everyone burning in hell? And so she says this, that the doctrine of eternal punishment was too horrible to contemplate. Still I thought the Bible taught it. And thus, like a great many others, that one principle came very near to causing me to reject the Bible entirely and turn an infidel. This is such a big faith crisis for her that she is not even sure if God actually exists. Because if God exists, why are so many people burning in hell?
Richard I think that that happens for many Latter-day Saints, actually. When they have a faith crisis here that, when they go look for Christianity in other places, that version of it is not anything that is palatable to them. And so they have a struggle here with perhaps something that they heard or isn't contextualized or whatever.
Gerrit But you can say polygamy, it's okay.
Richard When I say anything, what I meant was polygamy. So when they hear of polygamy, maybe they've never heard of it, and then they hear about it.
Gerrit So they're an adult member of the church living in Utah, and someone said, hey, you know, church used to practice polygamy.
Richard What? But there are issues that people have, and then you talked about this a lot. You've actually been on quite a kick on this the last four years.
Gerrit When you're a one-trick pony, you do that trick all the time.
Richard But the radical nature of the thing that we believe creates such logical foundations for us in Christianity, that when you leave because of a particular thing, it's hard to find a home for many people in other places. She's experiencing this before the knowledge of the gospel, and many actual Christians struggle with this very point.
Gerrit Yeah, and as Richard's pointed out before on the podcast, if you leave the church, are you going to stop believing that God and Jesus are separate beings? I mean, because not a whole lot of places you can go, and it's not Trinitarian theology. If you leave the church, are you going to stop believing that you have a Heavenly Mother? Because go try pitching Heavenly Mother to your local Presbyterian. He won't even say, we'll see about whether or not you're a brother. He'll let you know real quick that you aren't. So, it just shows, you know, she's in kind of the same place that Joseph Smith was in. Now, a little bit later, but there are religious questions that she can't answer. She's trying to be religious. She's grabbed a hold of the idea of the atonement.
Gerrit But you know, it's the sign of a thinking woman that as soon as you come to terms with the belief that Jesus desperately wants to save everyone, to ask the very next question, so why doesn't he? And that question is devastating for Eliza. She nearly becomes an atheist over it. She says, the idea of an eternal sleep of annihilation filled my mind with despair. So then she's thinking, okay, well, if there's no God, then that means when I die, I don't exist anymore. Well, that's a pretty rough concept too. So I'm pressed between believing that God is sending almost everyone to an eternal punishment, or that I won't exist anymore. But that's kind of a rock in a hard place, honestly, right?
Gerrit And she goes on to say, I banished the thought from my heart, and I prayed almost unceasingly, night and day, for the Lord to give me a testimony that there was a God and a hereafter. While I was in this unhappy state of mind, I was taken sick. The doctor and all of my friends pronounced me in the consumption. So, consumption is a 19th century term, which they, look, any diagnosis you receive from a 19th century doctor is going to be at least somewhat wrong. Remember they have no idea what bacteria or viruses are. They literally have no idea, as late as the late 19th century, they have no idea at all what causes disease. Eliza would have been living in a time where people believe that either disease is caused because you have too much blood in your body.
Gerrit They call that hypertension. I realize people die a lot today from hypertension. No, no, they believed all disease was caused by having too much blood in the body. So, guess what you do if you have too much blood in the body?
Richard I think George Washington saw, right?
Gerrit Yeah, yeah, George Washington found out as they bled him to death when he died. That's how George Washington died.
Richard George Washington again, prior to Napoleon.
Gerrit I love it, you know what?
Richard The more you know.
Gerrit Yeah, Richard, da, da, da. We need that sound effect of the more you know. Yeah, yeah, the star shooting across. Yeah, the star shooting across. Richard and I grew up watching. Yeah, watching free over-the-air television because we lived in Idaho. Three channels. Yeah, well, we had three channels and I mean, at least the way they described cable TV in Shelley, Idaho, was that it would be something that we would get sometime after flying cars. Like, well, they couldn't possibly run a cable all the way out here to where the potato farms are. It's like there's a transatlantic cable that crosses the entire ocean, but we couldn't get one out here. No, no, we couldn't. So we only had so much to work with. But so she gets very sick. In this unhappy state of mind, I was taken sick. The doctor and all my friends pronounced me in the consumption, which I was then going to define, usually what that is as a way of describing tuberculosis.
Gerrit And tuberculosis is, you know, this lung disease, which has varying levels of its severity. But usually when someone's talking about consumption, that's what they're referencing. Of course, I thought my days were numbered. One night between sundown and dark, I was laying on the bed in my bedroom and pondering on my condition, thinking that I would soon have to prove the realities of future existence. So she's thinking, I'm about to die, so I guess that'll answer the question of whether or not there's a god real quick. While I was in that condition, when all in a moment, I was enshrouded in a clear white light and was enwrapped in a heavenly vision. A glimpse of the beauties of eternity were presented to my view, and a personage so lovely that description fails to convey the idea of the celestial beauty.
Gerrit The person was so clear and transparent and the feature so perfect and angelic, clothed in a pure white robe, such as I've seen in latter days. She appeared a little distance from me at first and seemed to glide rather than to walk as she approached me. She came within a few steps of me, and she looked at me, and she smiled such a sweet heavenly smile. And passed on. Immediately, the scene vanished, but left me so serene and happy that I seemed as though I was in a new state of existence. Every doubt and fear in God, in regard to God, and a hereafter was entirely obliterated. And a heavenly calm and peace seemed to pervade my whole system. Still, I thought I was surely going to die, but death had now lost all of its terrors.
Gerrit I interpreted the vision as a sure premonition of my death, and withal to dispel my fears in regard to the future, but instead of dying, I began to recover. And when I became sensible that I was really getting well, I was quite disappointed, for I had anticipated with a great amount of satisfaction the happy change. So she has a visionary experience. This is another great aspect of her experience. God speaks to all peoples, and he does it by the whisperings of the Spirit, even if they don't have the gift of the Holy Ghost. He does it by visions and signs. He does it by dreams. Now, I don't mean to say that your friend who told you that they happened to find their own personal seer stone and a stream behind their house is now receiving revelation for the Church. I'm not saying that. Especially as members of the Church, while we're entitled to personal revelation, God's made it very clear that revelation for the Church doesn't go through Gerrit Dirkmaat.
Gerrit In fact, I'm pretty sure no revelation at all goes through Gerrit Dirkmaat, let alone for the Church. But God loves everyone. And sometimes Latter-day Saints are accused of, oh, you just think you're the only one to have any truth about God. Actually, all of our prophets say the opposite. We have prophet after prophet saying that there's truth in all religions. Now that starts to make Christians feel uncomfortable, because, well, I mean, you mean all Christians, right? No, we mean Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists. All right, that's enough. I already knew you Mormons weren't Christians. I'm not gonna call you brother. We'll see. No, not even we'll see. When you do it with a Latter-day Saint, it's like, okay, well, what part of the depths of hell would you like to burn in? Let's see if I can get you a maitre d to take you where the demons are. But she has this powerful experience. Just God is mindful of her. Just think about that. She's not a member. She's not going to be a member for a while.
Gerrit And God is mindful of her to the point where God sends her this vision. It's going to be a while before she actually joins the church. And she has quite a few trials. I'm not going to read all of it, but she has a pretty tough time. Talk about bad timing. I was about to say she has a pretty tough time, and I was about to explain that there was a rebellion in Canada. I don't want to make our Canadian investors feel like that was similar.
Richard What does a Canadian rebellion look like?
Gerrit Oh, it was pretty violent, honestly. There was an attempt to overthrow the Canadian government. And of course, some of them fled to America, and it caused a whole kerfuffle.
Richard I was at a Canadian tire once, and a person had a damaged item that they were trying to return, and the person said that they wouldn't return it. And the person said, well, that doesn't make me very happy, but thank you for your time. And then they left. That's what I imagined that Canadian uprising was a lot like.
Gerrit So you think that they were like...
Richard Well, I don't care for this at all.
Gerrit I, for one, am less pleased about the affairs of things. Well, would you put down your arms? Of course I will. I mean, that's the only polite thing to do. Of course I will. Yeah, I mean, it's...
Richard And then you have someone from Montreal smoking a cigarette.
Gerrit Which is your ancestor.
Richard Of course, of course.
Gerrit You're like, hey, guys, I just don't want the fat because I like wine. I mean, I don't know. I've lost Richard. So this is how they're going to end up with learning about the gospel. It's going to be years later. Probably it's like seven years later because she doesn't exactly sure. She says when I was about 20. So it's roughly maybe six, seven years later. In the latter part of the winter of the year of 1837, a young man or a boy rather, for he was not more than 17 or 18 years of age, came from Canada to my father's house and wanted to hire out. But being in the winter, father had very little hired help to do. But the Lord opened my father's heart to hire him. And in that same evening, he let us know that he was a Mormon.
Gerrit He was the first Mormon or Latter-day Saint. Did she listen to it personally?
Richard Okay, yeah, well, the taxi cab driver.
Gerrit Yeah, the taxi cab driver in Peru knows. He was the first Mormon or Latter-day Saint that I had seen. Of course, I knew nothing about their faith, but as soon as he began to preach his doctrine, I perceived that it was Bible doctrine. And as he progressed in explaining his faith, I also discovered that the principles he taught were the same that I had adopted. This is the best part. So he's trying to preach. Now, he's 17, so he's just a kid. He's there, you know, hired out working, and he's sharing the gospel. He's trying to talk. Now, I've told the story on this podcast many, many moons ago about a time that I was trying to share the gospel in Wisconsin on my mission when I was with a member on a team up. And as I was... First of all, the person led us in the door, which already, this is the greatest day that's ever happened to a Wisconsin missionary, right?
Gerrit Like, so did they... Where did they yell at you to get off of their property? Was it on the porch or were you walking up the walk? No, he led us inside. All right, Elder, don't lie. We all gotta try to go to the temple. Not in this mission, but at some point we go home. No, so he led us in, and this person was actually seemed pretty interested. And we start teaching, and so I'm teaching the Joseph Smith story. I'm in the middle of teaching the First Vision story, in the middle of it, right? I saw a pillar of light. I'm in the middle of it, and the member that I'm with, very loudly and disgustedly. I imagine with the same level of disgust that everyone listening to the podcast listens to the podcast. It was that kind of disgust where he goes, he just goes, he goes, elder, just stop, just stop, just stop it.
Gerrit Like he was mad at me for teaching the Joseph Smith principle. He turns back to this guy who literally knows nothing. He just wanted a free Bible, right? And we're giving him the message. He turns back to this investigator, if you could call him that, and goes, look, patriarchal blessings, that's all you need to know. That's it. Patriarchal blessings. And of course the guy's like, what are you talking about? Patriarchal blessings. You get a patriarchal blessing, and it tells you everything that's going to happen in your life. And that's how you know the church is true. He then asked us to leave.
Richard Line upon line a little bit.
Gerrit Well, you know, a little milk before me.
Richard Yeah, a little bit.
Gerrit Patriarchal blessings are important.
Richard Big fan.
Gerrit Yeah, they are good. Also, it may be important that they find out that Joseph Smith saw God first.
Richard Yeah, I would argue, while important, maybe not all you need to know. Maybe you need to know one or two additional things.
Gerrit That Jesus is your Savior?
Richard That seems like one of the things.
Gerrit One of the things. The church's, the authority has been restored to the earth.
Richard Yeah, but I feel like that's kind of covered in the patriarchal blessing, when you receive it a little bit, right? By the authority and all that.
Gerrit He also did explain to the guy that it tells you what tribe you're from.
Richard Oh, that had to go over well.
Gerrit But it didn't explain tribe of Israel. So he just said what tribe you're from. So the guy thought he meant Native American tribe.
Richard Sure, was he Native American?
Gerrit He wasn't. I'm kind of glad that he wasn't because I feel like we were already basically committing an offense to God and man by what we were teaching at that point. And I didn't want to also make an offense to a persecuted minority group as well. That's tremendous. Well, that's what admission in Wisconsin is like. I've been prepping my son, because he'll probably go there. At any rate, she does the same thing, but not about patriarchal blessings to this kid trying to teach. He's trying to teach. She interrupts him, and she just goes, stop. It's useless to preach this doctrine to me, for I already believe it.
Richard That's the opposite of your...
Gerrit So I'm told that people in other missions met people who were totally embracing of everything that was said, and said, I've always believed this. I want to get baptized.
Richard Maggie Van Lingen in my mission.
Gerrit Okay, so you even have a name of a person.
Richard Oh, she's the absolute best, yeah. She's the greatest.
Gerrit Well, we read that email from someone in your mission, and I think it's calling to mind your...
Richard I was serving in her steak when that happened.
Gerrit Really?
Richard Well, I was there for a long time.
Gerrit Well, this person probably knows that person then.
Richard Perhaps. I mean, she then moved after she was baptized. She eventually moved into LA County, which is what you want to do.
Gerrit Everyone's trying to get into LA County.
Richard Well, I mean, she lived in Sun City. It's a retirement community. It was full of very, very old people with like two subdivisions of non-retired people. So, you know, she wanted to go where the action was.
Gerrit It seems like you could get a good early bird special though.
Richard At Coco's, yeah. You want to get a coconut cream pie, you get a chicken fried steak, and you're done by 4.30, they send you on your way.
Gerrit That sounds great. Anyway, so she has this missionary, this young boy, preach to her, and she goes on to explain how she stops, and she says, I had always been a great Bible reader as a child, and we know that already from her conversion experience. Having read the New Testament seven times through, and the Old Testament once. Here's how you know Eliza Dana is not a liar, because someone who's trying to burnish their credentials, like I read the whole Bible like 17, 18 times. She's like, I read the New Testament seven times, seven times.
Richard Made it through Numbers once.
Gerrit If you've had to read Deuteronomy more than once, that's pretty rough, right? It is rough. Yeah. Anyway, so she explains that she's been this great reader of the Bible. But for some time previous, I had perused the scriptures with a new zeal for knowledge, and had prayed earnestly to be directed to the truth. The Lord heard and answered my prayers. He enlightened my mind, and he led me to an understanding of those principles, which I afterward learned were taught by the Latter-day Saints. So between this young Latter-day Saint and myself, there existed no chance for an argument. As for Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, I knew nothing except what he told us, so I had nothing to say about them. The name of this young man was Elijah Austin. I don't think he stayed with us for longer than a month. He left for home for fear that he would be pressed into the Queen's service, because of this rebellion that's going on. And as soon as he learned that it was safe for him to return, he went home.
Gerrit So there you have it, folks, a little bit of draft dodging and sharing the Gospel. It can be a win-win situation. It really can be. Although he was with us for such a short time, mutual attachment sprang up between him and my sister Mary and myself. He seemed much more like a brother than an acquaintance of just a few weeks. We didn't understand it then, but we were quite puzzled as to the cause. So this is a funny thing that her and her sister, this young teenage kid who's younger than them or roughly their age comes and stays with them and they feel this unnatural connection to him. I feel like he's like a member of our family, but he was a guy working out in the fields in the wintertime for a week. How do we feel this way? She says, in later years we learn that it was the spirit of truth and of God that united and cemented our hearts as one.
Gerrit He came to our house when we were living in Nauvoo. Then she said, I haven't seen or heard from them since. They do meet them again. She goes on to explain that in 1837 there was quite a company of saints that came over from Canada and stopped in Hammond until spring en route for elders John E. Page and James Blakeslee who were among the number. They held a meeting in the schoolhouse opposite Brother Charles. He and his wife and Sister Mary and myself attended the meetings. Charles and his wife soon believed and were baptized. Mary and I embraced the Gospel a few days later. This was about the first of April. The week before we were baptized, Brother George and Mr. Copeland, who had taught school the previous winter in the aforesaid house, came over to my father's. Mr. Copeland, to bid us goodbye, as he was going to start from home, they both exerted all of their influence that they could to change our minds and induce us to give up the idea.
Gerrit They told us we would be dispossessed, that our friends would be ashamed of us. When George saw that such arguments had no weight, he told us that it would kill our mother. She surely would not survive the disgrace of our baptism. So her brother, George, enlists this other local guy to come and essentially rail on them and say, what are you doing? You can't become one of these Mormons. And when they made all the arguments that they could possibly make, and then said, by the way, you're going to be cut out of Father's will? We're not even going to treat you as a family member anymore? You are nothing to us if you join these Mormons? When that didn't work, George decided he would go even a little lower and said, your mom's sick, this is going to kill her.
Gerrit You're going to kill your mom going after these deluded, fanatic Mormons. I don't know how exactly he said it, but I'm guessing something like that with maybe a few expletives. So when her mother stopped at the house, George and George's wife and also her mother were all, as she said, bitter opposers. I believe that George thought, as he said, that it would kill mother. This is how, so this is a pretty big crisis in her life. Look, she's already gone through a couple of religious crises in her life, and she has to decide. She's making a decision to essentially abandon the majority of her family. And so many early Latter-day Saints had to do that. They were completely thrown out by the people who should have loved them no matter what.
Gerrit And Eliza has to make that decision. Do I really believe? I told George that if our joining the Mormons would kill Mother, then she would have to die. Because I was fully convinced that the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the truth, and that it was my duty to embrace it, and that I should do so, and I would leave Mother in the hands of God. My father did not belong to any church, so he didn't oppose us. And she talks about how her brother James also wasn't sure, but he wasn't opposing. But there she makes her stance, that she's willing to be completely cut off, at least from half of her family.
Richard Gerrit, I think, I mean, this comes because of the request from Stephanie in her email, and I think, I had a discussion with my son, I may have even mentioned on the podcast several months ago, probably actually about a year ago now, forget how long he's been out. He had a companion who was a convert. No one else in his family was a convert. As you're describing this, I know I was talking to my mom, she listens to the podcast, she's a convert, a Jewish convert to the church. She faced much of this. As I was talking to my son about his companion and some of the frustration he had with his companion, I was trying to help him to try to understand what it must be like to be him, his companion. My son, it's the opposite. The peer pressure is if you don't go out on a mission. But for my son's companion, he had everybody trying to hold him back.
Richard And for many of us who are surrounded in our families and our friends and all of our interactions by Latter-day Saints, I think sometimes it's hard for us to put ourselves in the spot here and think about what that must have been like. That must have been impossible.
Gerrit Right, and it's a similar thing that, you know, it calls to mind another great, you know, woman of Latter-day Saint history, and that's Phoebe Woodruff, who similarly, her family essentially, you know, says, well, you're dead to us if you join the Mormons. And it's such a, it's such a acrimonious thing that Phoebe actually decides to leave without telling them. She just writes them a note and walks off when they're gone because she doesn't, she knows she can't win the argument, and she doesn't want to be dissuaded from doing what she knows is right. And so she just says goodbye in a note. Now she will see her family again later, but here you have Eliza making this stance that she's going to make. And she's going to get baptized. She says, Nothing but a sense of duty would have influenced me to cause my mother trouble.
Gerrit I had always obeyed Mother, and it caused me grievous pain, sore grief for me to cause her pain. Both my sister and myself dearly loved our mother. We went forth into the waters of baptism with aching hearts. Think about that. How many people go to get baptized rejoicing that they found the truth, and Eliza and Mary are getting baptized in tears because they know how upset their mother is that they're getting baptized. And yet they're still getting baptized. Close on the banks of the Chippewa Bay, in which we were immersed, stood a large house in which several families of the saints had taken up a temporary residence. There we went to receive our confirmation. Elder Johnny Page officiated in the ordinances, as soon as I was confirmed, the comforter in very truth rested upon me, so much that would have not have disturbed me if the whole world had been arrayed against me. My trouble and anxiety in regard to mother and all else was swallowed up in heavenly peace.
Gerrit And this faith gets tested pretty quickly because her mother does take a bigger turn for the worse. And I was fearful that my brother's prediction would be verified that she would die. She was confined to her bed for two or three weeks, but the Lord raised her up for a better end. When she began to recover, she began searching the Bible for a way to confound our faith. So, okay, mom's healthy again, but only healthy enough to try to make sure that she can disprove this Mormon nonsense. But instead of that, she converted herself to the truth. And the ensuing summer, she obeyed the gospel herself. So she's going to talk a little bit more about what's going on in their family's lives. And eventually, they're planning to try to move to Nauvoo to gather with the rest of the saints. In April of 1844, Eliza's going to marry a man by the name of William Gibbs.
Gerrit So Eliza Dana Gibbs is her full name at this point. And they are all going to start off for Nauvoo. We got within 180 miles of Nauvoo. The roads were so fearfully bad that we stopped and waited four weeks for them to improve. Okay, so they're on their way there. They're going to the city of Joseph. They're going to go meet Joseph Smith the prophet. And like the Latter-day Saints who are fleeing Illinois into Iowa find out, springtime is a rough time in Iowa and Illinois if you're trying to use a dirt road, because it becomes a muck and a mire with all the rain that you just simply can't even move. While they're stopped there waiting, they receive word that Joseph Smith has been murdered.
Gerrit And notwithstanding, she said that none of us had seen him, it cast such a gloom over our minds that it seemed to blight all of our future prospects. When we arrived at Nauvoo, it wasn't the Nauvoo we anticipated. All was gloom and madness. As time passed, sorrow and distress seemed to mark us for their particular victims. She then gets very, very sick and talks about how she thinks she's going to die, probably of the ague or the malaria that many Latter-day Saints get when they first move to the swamp that is Nauvoo. But I was raised up through the administration of Apostle Orson Pratt. I was in excruciating agony with a fever in my head. It felt as though I lay near a scorching hot fire. But before Brother Pratt lifted his hands from my head, that pain was gone, the fever was gone, and returned no more.
Gerrit Now, while she had this miraculous healing, it is still going to end in tragedy for her. Because her sister, her sister Mary, who went into the church with her, who defied Mother with her, who was all in as being a part of the faith with her, her sister Mary doesn't recover. She's near death for three weeks, and finally dies. Mary, after she died, they had a small baby. And the baby dies as well, so she loses her little niece. And then they also have a small child who's named Eliza Anne. So I'm guessing that Mary named her daughter Eliza after her beloved sister, Eliza Gibbs, right? And so Eliza herself is just married.
Gerrit I mean, she's just barely got married before they moved to Nauvoo. They don't have any kids yet. And she takes up this toddler, Eliza Anne, and her and her husband, William, will raise Eliza Anne as their own daughter for the remainder of their lives. This aspect of her life is going to be one that will severely test her as she's going to experience multiple trials surrounding her children. I don't want to give Eliza Dana Gibbs the short shrift. And so we are going to continue a discussion of her and her faith and her testimony on our next podcast. Thank you so much for listening.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.
Richard Bye-bye.

Quote board

Make a share card from any line

Stroke, a stroke was going on. I smelled toast.

GerritBanter

I'm running for pope. Yeah. That they're like, maybe when the smokes burn next time, it'll be Gerrit.

GerritBanter

She's in the next life, still stunned.

GerritBanter

At some point, we're going to work towards a reverse subscription model where we pay people to listen to us.

GerritBanter

As a Presbyterian, I'm like, we'll see.

RichardBanter

But you know, it's the sign of a thinking woman that as soon as you come to terms with the belief that Jesus desperately wants to save everyone, to ask the very next question, so why doesn't he?

GerritInsight

God speaks to all peoples, and he does it by the whisperings of the Spirit, even if they don't have the gift of the Holy Ghost.

GerritInsight

Patriarchal blessings, that's all you need to know.

GerritBanter

And the person said, well, that doesn't make me very happy, but thank you for your time. And then they left. That's what I imagined that Canadian uprising was a lot like.

RichardBanter

How many people go to get baptized rejoicing that they found the truth, and Eliza and Mary are getting baptized in tears because they know how upset their mother is that they're getting baptized. And yet they're still getting baptized.

GerritInsight

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
Latter-day Saints think they're the only ones God speaks to.
If you leave the Church you can take its beliefs with you to another church.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Eliza Dana nearly lost her faith in God because she couldn't believe a loving Jesus would send almost everyone to hell. The restored gospel answered that question.

God was mindful of Eliza long before she met a missionary, sending her a vision that removed her fear of death.

Eliza and Mary chose baptism even when told it would kill their mother; they were baptized in tears, and their mother later joined too.

To Stephanie and every member facing loneliness: you are not alone, and your faith matters.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Take sevenGerrit's glossolalia at a West Virginia snake handler sermon, or a stroke; he smelled toast (0:38).
Unsung heroes from church historyRevived after one episode, plus Willard Richards and his guns, and Moroni, who's relatively unsung (1:56).
Gerrit doesn't wear a white shirtOnly for priesthood ordinations and his funeral; he's not running for high council or pope (3:41).
Selling premium door to doorDavid's revenge for selling portrait packages: kids sell subscriptions at $14.99 to earn $5 toward the tour, and Richard adds solar panels and pest control (7:51, 17:16).
Episodes promised, never madeStephanie times the promise of a nine-part succession crisis series after the eclipse; Utah only got 60 percent, so it doesn't count (8:31).
The tour just doubled in priceRichard's announcement (17:43).
Richard and history datesHe learned on the premium show that the Napoleonic Wars came after the Revolutionary War (19:09).
CalvinismSaying the word makes producer Josh throw his phone (22:23).
IdahoThree TV channels in Shelley, where cable would come after flying cars (32:54).
Patriarchal blessings, that's all you need to knowGerrit's Wisconsin mission member who cut off the First Vision lesson (41:00).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Arminianism versus Calvinism and why Methodists like Eliza and Brigham Young wrestled with hell (22:23).
The Canadian rebellions of 1837 and the Latter-day Saints who came south (38:16).
John E. Page's 1838 company of Canadian Saints and the converts they made in New York (49:11).
Phoebe Woodruff's farewell note to her family, another convert who left family behind (54:30).
Eliza Dana Gibbs's full autobiography, continued in Part 2 (1:00:59).
SOT Litner · S4E17.