John Taylor's 1886 Revelation Meeting was a private gathering in which the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presented a revelation affirming that plural marriage remained a divine commandment, then bound trusted followers to defend the practice. In the book's account, the meeting became a founding moment for Mormon Fundamentalism: it connected a disputed revelation to a covenant, delegated authority, and a prediction of future institutional crisis.

Background and the Revelation

The meeting answered a question raised by the Church's changing position on plural marriage. Mormon Fundamentalists argued that Wilford Woodruff's Manifesto had suspended the practice under pressure rather than revoked the scripture that commanded it. They pointed especially to Section 132 of The Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith's revelation on plural marriage, which remained part of the Church's scripture. In their view, discontinuing the practice did not cancel the underlying divine law.

Taylor's revelation, dated September 26, 1886, addressed that conflict directly. While hiding from federal officers seeking people who continued plural marriage, he asked God whether Joseph Smith's earlier commandment should be abandoned. The answer, as recounted in the book, was that commandments remained binding unless God or divine authority revoked them, and that the law of plural marriage had not been revoked. This claim turned a contested change in church policy into a dispute over who could alter a commandment and whether institutional compliance could supersede revelation.

The account associates the revelation with Taylor's stay at the home of John W. Woolley. Woolley's son Lorin later recalled light beneath the door to Taylor's room and voices during the night. When Taylor emerged the following morning, Lorin asked whom he had been speaking with. Taylor reportedly said that he had conversed with Joseph Smith and identified the third voice Lorin had heard as Jesus Christ's. The episode thus presents the revelation not merely as a private impression but as a message Taylor understood to have been confirmed through the presence of revered religious figures.

Covenant and Delegated Authority

Taylor promptly convened trusted followers to discuss what he had received. The group included John W. Woolley, Lorin C. Woolley, Samuel Bateman, and Daniel R. Bateman, among others. After sharing the revelation, Taylor placed those present under a covenant to defend celestial or plural marriage and to commit their lives, liberty, and property to sustaining it. The meeting transformed the revelation's assertion into a collective obligation: those assembled were not only to accept the principle, but to preserve it through personal commitment.

Taylor warned the group that some would be ostracized or expelled from the Church because of their fidelity to plural marriage, and that some might lose their lives. The warning framed opposition and punishment as foreseeable costs of keeping the covenant. It also gave the gathering a sense of succession: the commitment was meant to survive the immediate meeting and the pressure facing its participants.

Taylor then selected five of those present, including Samuel Bateman, John W. Woolley, and Lorin C. Woolley, and authorized them to perform celestial marriages and to ordain others who could do the same. The stated purpose was continuity, ensuring that plural marriages and children born within the practice would continue. Authority was therefore passed beyond the meeting itself through specific permissions and the ability to appoint further participants. This arrangement offered a means of sustaining the practice even if the main Church no longer publicly authorized it.

Prophecy and Historical Dispute

The eight-hour meeting concluded with a prophecy about a future Church president. Taylor predicted that during the tenure of the Church's seventh president, the Church would enter temporal and spiritual bondage, and that the One Mighty and Strong mentioned in Section 85 of The Doctrine and Covenants would appear. The prediction placed the participants' defense of plural marriage inside a larger story of institutional decline and anticipated restoration. Its significance lay not only in its warning, but in the future authority it promised: a later figure would set the Church in order.

The book emphasizes that the meeting's authenticity has been angrily disputed by General Authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That dispute is central to the event's meaning. For believers who accepted the account, Taylor's revelation and covenant preserved a commandment the institution had retreated from; for the Church's critics of the account, the claimed meeting could not simply be treated as an uncontested act of official authority. The event therefore became part of a continuing contest over religious memory and the right to define legitimate revelation.

Legacy in Mormon Fundamentalism

The narrative presents the meeting as the sowing of Mormon Fundamentalism's seeds. Four years later, the Church sustained the Manifesto and ended its official support for plural marriage. Fundamentalists instead treated Taylor's revelation and covenant as enduring authorization to uphold the practice, regardless of the course taken by the wider Church or the nation. The contrast was not simply between two marriage policies: it concerned whether a later institutional decision could nullify an earlier commandment and whether religious authority belonged exclusively to the established leadership.

The book traces the meeting's continuing force through later believers, including Dan Lafferty, residents of Colorado City, and Brian David Mitchell. For these modern adherents, September 27, 1886, became a sacred date associated with the expected arrival of the One Mighty and Strong. In this way, a private gathering and a disputed revelation acquired an afterlife as both a covenantal precedent and a prophetic timetable, helping later fundamentalists understand themselves as guardians of a principle they believed the mainstream Church had abandoned.