Wilford Woodruff Inspired to Move His Carriage — A Tree Falls on the Exact Spot Minutes Later (July 5, 1848)

On July 5, 1848, Wilford Woodruff had stopped his carriage with his family near a large tree. He felt a sudden, unmistakable impression: move the carriage and family away from this spot.

He obeyed immediately. They moved.

Thirty minutes later a whirlwind swept through. It uprooted the tree entirely and threw it down — directly onto the spot where his carriage had been standing.

If they had remained, the tree would have crushed them.

Wilford recorded this in his journal as one more in a long series of divine interventions that had preserved his life from childhood onward. He reflected in his later years that the pattern was unmistakable: the Lord had work for him to do, and no power on earth — not accident, not mob, not weather, not disease — could prevent him from completing it.

Wilford Woodruff became the fourth President of the Church and is perhaps best known for receiving the revelation that led to the Manifesto of 1890.