Philo Dibble Shot in the Abdomen at Jackson County — Miraculously Healed by Newel Knight's Priesthood Blessing (November 1833)

In November 1833, violent persecution erupted against the Latter-day Saints in Jackson County, Missouri. A mob attacked the settlement at the Big Blue River, and in the battle three Saints were killed and many were wounded.

Philo Dibble was shot in the abdomen — a musket-ball wound that was considered virtually fatal. A surgeon who examined him declared that no one could survive such a wound, given the risk of blood loss and infection in an era before modern medicine.

The Saints fled to Clay County for safety. Despite the danger — Brother Dibble's home was surrounded by a mob — Newel Knight went to visit him. Knight gave Brother Dibble a priesthood blessing and then left.

The very next day, Newel Knight met Philo Dibble ten miles from the house where he had seen him the day before. Dibble had walked those ten miles himself. Philo told Brother Knight that as soon as he had received the priesthood blessing, the pain seemed "to move as before a power driving it, until in a few minutes it was gone."

Philo Dibble miraculously recovered completely from an abdominal gunshot wound that should have claimed his life. He later crossed the plains to Utah and lived to share his testimony of the Restoration. His healing is one of the most dramatic priesthood-blessing miracles in early Church history, documented in the History of the Church and the Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt.

(Reference: Donna Hill, Joseph Smith: The First Mormon, p. 133, situates this event within the Jackson County persecutions of 1833.)