Dreams of Preaching Fulfilled in Reality
Published March 25, 2026 at 3:32 AM
Contributed by
Todd Morgan
Beaumont, CA, 92223
About a year after his vision of his deceased brother praying, Benjamin Brown — a New York farmer then unconnected with any church — received a singular dream: he saw himself called to preach the gospel, and his first sermon was delivered in a schoolhouse in an adjoining town. When he awoke he could distinctly remember each member of the small congregation and the position each person occupied. He told his wife, who scouted the idea, but agreed to believe the dream if it proved true — and her own mother, living in that town, then revealed she had dreamed the same thing the same night. Five years later, after Brown met the Latter-day Saints and was baptized in 1835, he was called to preach. His first sermon as a Latter-day Saint was delivered in that very schoolhouse, and the dream was fulfilled: he beheld the identical room and people, each sitting in the positions he had described to his wife years before. Brown later recorded that the fulfillment gave him 'greater evidence of the truth' than he had ever expected, and he devoted the rest of his life to preaching the restored gospel.
In Their Own Words
“Things went on much as usual, till something like a year afterwards, when I had a singular dream, which, as it had a bearing on my future life, I will relate. I dreamed that I had been called to preach the gospel, and the first time I thus officiated, it was in a schoolhouse, in an adjoining town, with which I was well acquainted. I saw all the members of the congregation, which was small, and, when I awoke, I could distinctly remember the position each person occupied in the room. This so impressed my mind that I told my wife of it, and said I believed it would be realized, but she scouted the idea. What was I, a working man, to do with preaching! Well, at other times, it would have appeared equally foolish to myself, but it had been given to me that her mother, living at the place, knew by a dream the same thing, and I told this to my wife. At last she consented that if it turned out to be the case, she would believe the dream to be true.”
“In a day or so we paid her mother a visit, and found that she had dreamed, that night, that I was coming to preach in the town where she lived, and we learned, from her friends, that she had been entreating one of her relatives to carry her to my residence, that she might tell me of it. Although the truth of the dream was thus evidenced to me, I little thought what doctrines I was to preach, and in connection with what people or church. But I was to have greater evidence of the truth of my dream, as will be seen hereafter.”
— Benjamin Brown, Autobiography (1794–1853), in Testimonies for the Truth (1853)
Sources & References
Benjamin Brown, Autobiography (1794–1853), in 'Testimonies for the Truth' (Liverpool, 1853); full text at https://doctrineandcovenantscentral.org/history/benjamin-brown/ (research confidence: high)
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