Brigham Young's Deliverance of Luke Johnson from Cholera

While serving in Zion's Camp near Rush Creek, Missouri, in 1834, Luke Johnson was struck by a severe cholera outbreak while digging graves for the deceased. As documented in the journal of Heber C. Kimball, Johnson suffered from acute cramping and blindness. Brigham Young intervened by pulling him from the grave, shaking him, praying for him, and forcefully exhorting him to exercise to stave off the illness. These persistent efforts successfully prevented the disease from overcoming Johnson.

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

While brother Luke Johnson was digging, the cholera attacked him with cramping and blindness; brother Brigham laid hold of him and pulled him out of the grave, and shook him about, talked to, and prayed for him, and exhorted him to jump about and exercise himself, when it would leave him for a few moments, then it would attack him again; and thus we had the greatest difficulty to keep the destroyer from laying [him] low.