Young Mosiah Hancock's Spirit Leaves His Body During Missouri Mob Attack — Personage in White Sends Him Back

During the brutal Missouri persecutions of 1838, young Mosiah Lyman Hancock — then just four years old — witnessed and experienced horrors beyond imagination. Two mob members seized him and, after telling him he could pray, did him great violence.

He recorded what followed:

'I could look upon my body, and I was far above them and was glad; for behold, I saw a personage draped in perfect white who said to me, "Mosiah, you have got to go back to the earth, for you have a work to do!" How I ever came back I can never say!'

A near-death experience in the most literal sense — his spirit left his body during the assault, he viewed himself from above, and a heavenly messenger in white appeared to tell him his mission on earth was not finished. He was then returned to his body.