VIDEO: The true story of Dan Jones | with Brian Stutzman (SAINTS UNSCRIPTED)

The true story of Dan Jones | with Brian Stutzman – powered by Happy Scribe

Dan Jones received the last prophecy of Joseph Smith and he became interested in the church because of antiwaran literature.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Saints. Unscripted. We’re back with Brian Stuntman, and today we’re talking about a figure from church history that you’ve probably seen. On the first page of Preach. Is the first page or that we cover lesson one.

First page.

Lesson one. First page of Preach My Gospel. And it goes by the name of Dan Jones. So where do we start with Dan?

Dan Jones is a phenomenal missionary in the early Restoration. He was born in Wales and came over to the St. Louis area in the 1840s, and he was a riverboat captain, and he went by the name of Captain Dan Jones. And while he was in St. Louis, he started reading antimoreman stories in the local newspaper that originated with a man named Thomas Sharp, who was the editor of the Warsaw Signal. Warsaw being 18 miles south of NA Vu, that newspaper became an organ for antimarmon activity. It was a nemesis of NA Vu. Well, then Jones read this and said, this can’t possibly be true. And so when he had a chance to meet up with some Latter day Saints, he heard the gospel message, believed it, and was baptized in a frozen Mississippi in 1843. He quickly comes up to Navu a little while later and he meets Joseph Smith. And they became fast friends. So much so that he is with Joseph Smith. The night before the martyrdom in the Carthage jail, dan Jones had been called to serve a mission in Wales. And as they lay on the floor the night before the martyrdom in Carthage, gel it’s a hardwood floor, they start talking about death.

So as they lay on the Carthage floor, the prophet Joseph Smith rolls out his arm and asked Dan Jones to use it as a pillow, which certainly wouldn’t have been comfortable. There’s mobs outside. They hear gunshots. They talk about death.

And.

Dan Jones and the prophet start talking about the subject and Joseph Smith prophesies. He says to Dan, he says, you will yet see wells and fulfill the admission that has been assigned to you. They all thought they were going to die, perhaps next day. The next day they got up. Joseph Smith tells Danny, says, I’d like you to go to get my attorney and Quincy. So he writes some papers up. And Dan Jones leaves the jail. And as he leaves, he’s carrying his paper and there’s mob people outside and they think that he’s going to go get the Nava Legion, which had been disbanded, but they thought that it might be reorganized. And so they shoot at Dan and every shot misses him. But it confuses his horse, Enoch, that Dan actually goes down the wrong road that he was supposed to go on, only to find out later that there was a mob on the road a few miles out of town that had orders to kill Dan Jones. So at the jail and down the road, he avoided death. Later that day, he was taking a boat that went through Warsaw to Quincy.

There was a mob that searched the boat. Miraculously, they didn’t find him. He avoided death three times that day of the martyrdom. In fulfillment of Joseph’s prophecy, he went on to fulfill not only one mission, but two missions to Wales. He brought in thousands of people into the church. He could preach for 8 hours and hold the attention of the crowd. He published the first Book of Mormon in Welsh in the first gospel tracks in nonenglish. He converted people. One guy who became the first missionary to France. His work is phenomenal and he knew the prophet Joseph Smith. And often when he taught and he’s preached in front of people, tears would flow from his eyes when he testified at the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith, because he knew him as well as anybody on this planet. Like I said, thousands joined the church. He came back with some Welsh saints and they needed a choir for the general conference. His conference became the foundation. They sang in conference for the warmth of Tabernacle Choir, now called the choir Temple Square. So his impact he became the mayor of Manti, Utah as well. So the impact of Dan Jones on the church has been absolutely phenomenal.

And it all started because people were writing negative comments about the church, mainly Thomas Sharp. In fact, Dan Jones once wrote, he said, we would like to thank this Sharp and others who wrote about the saints that made us aware of them.

It was just so sensationalized that Dan was just like, let’s figure this out, let’s see if this is true.

So are we concerned when people miscategorize our church?

Yeah.

But sometimes good things happen to Benjamin and Dan Jones is a perfect example. Dan Jones is not only on the first page of the first lesson of the Preach My Gospel manual, but he’s also got a big portrait in the probable MTC as you walk in. That’s Dan Jones, the great missionary, the person who received the last prophecy, the prophet Joseph Smith.

Brian, thanks for being here. That was excellent. I’ve heard of Dan Jones, I saw him and preach my gospel as a missionary, but I didn’t know a lot of what you were talking about there. I found a new obsession.

I went to like research his whole.

Life story in town. Is this information in your book?

A little bit is if you just google Dan Jones. Brian Stutsman I’ve got some articles out there for free tells folks at Eliza Graham about Dan Jones.

Thanks for being here with Epics, and I’m really thanks for sharing with us guys. We’ll see you next time.