On this day in Mormon History
http://TodayInMormonHistory.com/
-- 170 years ago today - Jul 2, 1856 --
[Wilford Woodruff]
P[arley] P. Pratt asked Presidet Young what He should do with regard to tithing. Said he had been travelling & preaching a good deal & had not paid any tithing. Presidet Young Said the Law of tithing reached evry man. He should pay his tithing if he had to have five times as much from the tithing office in order to live & all that he had from the tithing office should be charged to him & he should Consecrate what he had to the Church. He said that he should consecrate what he had to the Church that his children when he was dead should not squander his property & go to Hell upon it. (1)
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-- 155 years ago today - Jul 2, 1871 --
The "Liberal Institute" is dedicated in Salt Lake City at the corner of Second South and Second East. This architectural landmark seats over 1000 and is constructed mostly by Godbeites and disaffected Mormons. Susan B. Anthony, who attended the dedication, writes that the reformers "sang their songs of freedom, poured out their rejoicings over the emancipation from the thrall of the Theocracy of Brigham, and told of the beatitudes of soul-to-soul communion with the All-Father." The Institute became a home for Methodists, Presbyterians, Jews, Swedish Lutherans and "Reorganite Mormons" as well as suffragettes, spiritualists (including mediums and their debunkers), and free thinkers.
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-- 30 years ago today - Jul 2, 1996 --
"Security leader and de facto second in command" of the Russian Republic publicly apologizes a week after calling Russia's Mormons "filth and scum." The LDS church has no more than 5,000 converts and 300 missionaries there. The apology occurs because LDS members (Republicans) of the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate ask the Democratic "Clinton administration to reconsider aid to Russia because of [Aleksandr] Lebed's stand." (2)
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1 - Wilford Woodruff's Journal: 1833-1898 Typescript, Volumes 1-9, Edited by Scott G. Kenney, Signature Books 1993,
http://amzn.to/newmormonstudies
2 - The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn, [New Mormon History database (
http://bit.ly/NMHdatabase)]