P3

“I have seen ministers of justice, clothed in magisterial robes and criminals arraigned before them, while life was suspended on a breath in the courts of England; I have witnessed a congress in solemn session to give laws to nations;...but dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains at midnight, in a dungeon, in an obscure village of Missouri.”
                                                                                        -Parley P. Pratt

P3 was an interesting guy. I've been reading his (very lengthy) autobiography and he's got some great stories in there, and was a very talented writer. He never apostatized and lived to become one of the 12 apostles. He was murdered in the 1850s when he was on a trip to Arkansas. He also was an excellent preacher and could pretty much 'win' any theological argument.  My favorite example of this was this story, which I've trimmed down for space:

In this neighborhood there lived a Baptist minister by the name of Dotson, who opposed us with much zeal…his principal objection was that God could give no new revelation--the New Testament contained all the knowledge that God had in store for man, and there was nothing remaining unrevealed.

Said I, "Mr. Dotson, relate to me your experience and call to the ministry."

"Why, sir, said he, "I was called by a "vocal voice from Heaven."

"Well, Mr. Dotson, *there* is one exception to your general rule. We come to you with a new revelation, and you reject it, because there can be no new revelation; and yet you profess to have a new revelation, God having spoken from the heavens and called you, and commissioned you to preach eighteen hundred years after the New Testament was written, and all revelation finished! How is this?

"The New Testament no where calls you by name; neither makes mention of you as a minister of the gospel; but new revelation does, if we are to believe you. And yet you would teach your hearers and us, and all the world, to disbelieve all modern revelation merely because it is new. Consequently, we are all bound by your own rule to reject your call to the ministry, and to believe it is a lie."

He could say no more.