Elders' fasting and prayer prevents spiritualistic seance
Published November 2, 2026 at 2:30 AM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
Some elders in England had rented a hall in a building where spiritualistic mediums held seances. The mediums persistently invited the missionaries to attend. Heber J. Grant advised them to stay away, but eventually allowed them to go on the condition that they fast and pray all day that the Lord would prevent the mediums from carrying out their operations. The elders followed these instructions and attended the meeting, and the spiritualists were subsequently unable to hold any seance that night.
In Their Own Words
“I remember that some of the elders over in England had rented a hall on one floor of a building where spiritualistic mediums had their seances. They kept inviting the boys to come to their meetings. I told them to stay away. I said: 'I do not want you to go to those meetings. You have no business there.' Finally the boys pleaded with me to let them go. I said: 'All right, you can go on one condition'—it was a night meeting—'that is, that you do not eat anything that day, and that you go there fasting and praying to the Lord to prevent them from carrying on their spiritualistic operations.' They went to the meeting, and the spiritualists were unable to have any seance that night. They were absolutely powerless to do anything. The Lord heard the prayers of those boys who went there fasting and praying, and He stopped the operations of those people.”
— Heber J. Grant, Millennial Star, Vol. 96, No. 18
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), Vol. 96, No. 18 (1934). https://archive.org/details/millennialstar9618eng (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high) Full first-person account: The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 96, No. 18 (1934), p. 276 https://archive.org/details/millennialstar9618eng Image: Heber Grant LOC 26246797433.jpg — via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heber_Grant_LOC_26246797433.jpg
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