Eliza Dana Gibbs Healed from Consumption Through Heavenly Manifestation

Around 1833, Eliza Dana Gibbs of Hammond, New York, was suffering from what her doctor and all who knew her diagnosed as consumption — a fatal lung disease. She fully expected to die and had even spiritually prepared herself for death, writing that she 'anticipated with a great amount of satisfaction the happy change' of passing on.

During this illness, she received a heavenly vision of a radiant personage clothed in white. Immediately following the vision, she began to recover unexpectedly. She wrote of her surprise: 'Instead of dying I began to recover, and when I became sensible that I was really getting well I was quite disappointed.'

The recovery was so contrary to all medical expectation that it stands as a remarkable account of divine healing. Eliza went on to live to age 87, crossing the plains as a pioneer, surviving Missouri persecution, the destruction of Nauvoo, and the hardships of early Utah settlement — a long and eventful life made possible by this miraculous recovery.