A Latter-day Prophet’s View on the Accessibility of Eternal Truths

If I cannot know something about these things which are to come in the eternal world, I have no religion; I would not give a straw for it… If there is a God, I want a religion that supplies some means of certain and tangible communication with him. If there is a heaven, I want to know what sort of place it is. If there are angels, I want to know their nature, and their occupation, and of what they are composed. if I am an eternal being, I want to know what I am to do when I get through with time; whether I shall plant corn and hoe it, or be engaged in some other employment, I do not want any person to tell me about a heaven that is “beyond the bounds of time and space,” a place that no person can possibly know anything about, or ever reach, if he did. I do not wish any person to frighten me… by telling me about a hell where sinners are roasted upon gridirons, and tossed up by devils and upon pitchforks and other sharp-pointed instruments… I want nothing to do with such things, I care nothing about them. But as an intelligent being, if I have a mind capable of refection, I wish to contemplate the works of nature and to know something of nature’s God, and my destiny.
-John Taylor June 12, 1853