Joseph F. Smith — Vision of the Redemption of the Dead (October 3, 1918)

On October 3, 1918, President Joseph F. Smith received a comprehensive vision of the spirit world now recorded as Doctrine and Covenants 138. In the vision he saw the hosts of the dead and witnessed how Jesus Christ, during the three days His body lay in the tomb, organized the righteous spirits to preach the gospel to those in spirit prison; the vision established the doctrinal framework for how those who died without the gospel could receive the message and be redeemed through proxy ordinances performed in temples. Later that month, on the evening of November 5, 1918, Susa Young Gates and her husband Jacob stopped by the Beehive House in Salt Lake City to pick up a box of apples. President Smith, who was elderly and gravely ill after a year of profound personal losses (including the sudden death of his eldest son Hyrum M. Smith in January, the death of a son-in-law in February, and the death of his daughter-in-law Ida in September leaving five orphaned children), shared with them the transcendent vision he had received earlier that month.