A Methodist Chairman's Fifty-Year-Old Dream of the Savior on the Ladder, Fulfilled in Elder John Griffiths at Woolwich (c. 1791)
Published October 4, 2026 at 5:05 AM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
A man who acted as chairman during a debate between Elder John Griffiths and a company of Methodists in Woolwich later attended the LDS church. He recounted a dream he had experienced fifty years prior, in which he saw the sun clothed in darkness, the moon turned into blood, and a ladder reaching from heaven to earth. He saw the Lord Jesus Christ standing on the ladder, with a man at the top extending his hand to him. When he saw Elder Griffiths enter the debate, he recognized him as the man from his dream.
In Their Own Words
“This person attended our church on the Sunday subsequent to our debate, and after service stated to me a singular dream which he said he dreamed fifty years ago. It was as follows:—He saw the sun clothed in darkness, and the moon turned into blood, and he saw many scenes in the heavens truly awful and appaling, and he saw a ladder which reached from heaven to earth, and our Lord Jesus Christ standing on the ladder and a man standing on the top of the ladder extending his hand towards him, (the dreamer) bidding him come up into heaven. The dreamer states that, owing to the singularity of the dream, it never became totally obliterated from his memory; and the moment he saw me enter the place where the debate was held the circumstance flashed across his mind, and his feelings may be more easily imagined than described when he recognized me as the man he saw on the top of the ladder.”
— John Griffiths, The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 2, No. 8
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), December 1841 (Vol. 2, No. 8). https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1841-12_2_8 (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. 2, No. 8 (December 1841), p. 126 https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1841-12_2_8
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