The Blind Man Healed by Dan Jones Dies in Burning Agony After Turning Against the Church (1847)

In the summer of 1846, Dan Jones baptized a blind man in Wales who was healed through administration and could 'see the candle plain' (an account previously recorded in the archive). After a local clergyman helped the man publish a pamphlet 'Reply' against Jones and the Church, the man continued in his opposition. According to Jones's report in the Millennial Star, the man was then seized by a mysterious burning pain that no amount of cold water could soothe, and he died about 80 miles away. Jones presented the death as a monument of God's displeasure for the man's hypocrisy, echoing the fate of Corah and Dathan.

The blind man's full name was Daniel Jones, and the Congregationalist minister who edited and published the anti-Mormon pamphlet was Josiah Thomas Jones of The Congregationalist Treasury. The specific title of the pamphlet published against Dan Jones was 'The Correct Image, wherein one can perceive clearly the Deceit of the Mormons.' In response, Dan Jones published his own Welsh rebuttal pamphlet titled '"Haman" hanging from his own gallows!'.

Fuller account of this event (in the witness’s own words):

Last summer I told the readers of the Star of a frolic I had in baptizing a blind man—how he got to “see the candle plain;” that the blind leaders of the blind led him to publish a ‘Reply’ to me. Well, this was edited and published by a Rev., sold, like fresh eggs, until the ‘Reply’ was out of press, that as that of ‘Cora Dathan’ awaited him doubly, if he recalled not his lies,” &c. No sooner was the reply out of press, than on the old blind man it came, hot and heavy. He cried out that he was burning up alive; his friends poured cold water on him night and day in vain! He would rush out from them to a pool that was by, and there he would roll, and wallow, and yelp until he terrified the passers by. Doctors admitted entire ignorance of the cause of his pain, some said he had a legion of * * * * in him, and others else. However, yesterday, by letter I was informed by an eye witness (for he lives about 80 miles off), that he took his departure hence, too. Yes, he died a monument of the displeasure of a just God for hypocrisy, is the admission of many besides Saints.