Eliza Dana Gibbs Healed from Consumption Through Heavenly Manifestation

Around 1833, Eliza Dana Gibbs of Hammond, New York, was suffering from what her doctor and all who knew her diagnosed as consumption — a fatal lung disease. She fully expected to die and had even spiritually prepared herself for death, writing that she 'anticipated with a great amount of satisfaction the happy change' of passing on.

During this illness, she received a heavenly vision of a radiant personage clothed in white. Immediately following the vision, she began to recover unexpectedly. She wrote of her surprise: 'Instead of dying I began to recover, and when I became sensible that I was really getting well I was quite disappointed.'

The recovery was so contrary to all medical expectation that it stands as a remarkable account of divine healing. Eliza went on to live to age 87, crossing the plains as a pioneer, surviving Missouri persecution, the destruction of Nauvoo, and the hardships of early Utah settlement — a long and eventful life made possible by this miraculous recovery.

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

While in this unhappy state of mind I was taken sick. The doctor and all my friends pronounced me in the consumption. Of course, I thought my days were numbered. One night between sundown and dark I was laying on the bed in the bedroom pondering on my condition, thinking I would soon have to prove the realities of a future existence, when all in a moment I was enshrouded in a clear, white light and was enwrapped in a heavenly vision. I saw a personage so lovely that description fails to convey an idea of the celestial beauty. She was clothed in a pure white robe, which seemed to be of a texture that I had never seen before. She appeared quite a little distance from me at first and seemed to glide rather than walk as she approached me. She came within a few steps of me and as she looked at me she smiled such a sweet heavenly smile and passed on. Every doubt and fear in regard to God and a hereafter was entirely obliterated and a heavenly calm and peace seemed to pervade my whole system. Still I thought I was surely going to die but death had lost all terrors. I felt that I was in the hands of a kind and merciful Father and that all would be well. But instead of dying I began to recover and when I became sensible that I was really getting well I was quite disappointed, for I had anticipated with a great amount of satisfaction the happy change.