Sidney Rigdon: The Preacher Whose Conversion Brought Thousands into the Kingdom

Sidney Rigdon (1793–1876) was one of the most influential preachers on the American frontier in the early 1830s. A Campbellite minister, he had developed a large, devoted following in the Kirtland, Ohio area and was known for his extraordinary oratorical power and theological depth.

When Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, and Peter Whitmer Jr. passed through Kirtland on the first Lamanite mission in late 1830, Parley P. Pratt — Rigdon's own former parishioner — presented him with the Book of Mormon. Rigdon took two weeks to read and pray over it. His conversion, after sincere study and prayer, was based on powerful spiritual witness.

Rigdon described the experience: the Spirit bore witness to him that the Book of Mormon was true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. He was baptized and almost immediately, over 100 members of his congregation followed him into the waters of baptism. This mass conversion transformed Kirtland from a small outpost into the next headquarters of the Church.

Rigdon traveled to New York to meet Joseph Smith, and the two became close collaborators. Joseph wrote in his journal that he and Sidney together received the Vision of the Degrees of Glory (D&C 76) — one of the most expansive revelations in this dispensation. Joseph declared: 'Sidney is a man whom I love.'

In February 1832, while Rigdon and Smith were working together on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, they were both caught up in vision together and jointly received and simultaneously described the Vision of the Three Degrees of Glory, with those around them witnessing their faces shine.

Fuller account of this event (the complete account as preserved in Sidney Rigdon, Wikipedia):

Rigdon read the Book of Mormon in fourteen days, proclaimed its truthfulness, and was baptized into the church on November 14, 1830, in Mentor, Ohio.