John Taylor's Prophetic Presentment in Penrith

While John Taylor was a seventeen-year-old Methodist exhorter in England, he received a spiritual presentment while walking to a village appointment that he should go to America to preach the Gospel.

In his 1892 biography, B. H. Roberts provides further context to this event, noting that Taylor was walking about a mile outside of Penrith toward a small country town seven miles away with a fellow Methodist brother when the impression struck him. He reportedly stopped suddenly under this powerful influence and openly declared to his companion, 'I have a strong impression on my mind, that I have to go to America to preach the gospel!'

Fuller account of this event (as retold in B. H. Roberts, The Life of John Taylor, Third President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon & Sons, 1892), Chapter 2.):

At the age of seventeen he was made a Methodist exhorter, or local preacher. His first appointment was at a small country town some seven miles from Penrith. One day, while walking to this appointment, accompanied by a brother in the church, when about a mile out of Penrith, he suddenly stopped, and said to his companion: 'I have a strong impression on my mind, that I have to go to America to preach the gospel!' This was a strange impression for a youth of seventeen, who had never been away from home, and who had no means to travel, to have; but it was the beginning of a series of impressions and events that eventually led him to the United States, and into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.