The Mighty and Strong

The Mighty and Strong is a prophetic title that turns disputed revelation into a claim to religious authority. In Onias’s pamphlet and subsequent revelations, it offered the Lafferty brothers a way to understand their conflict with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a divinely appointed effort to restore the church and prepare for the Second Coming. The title’s eventual multiplication—from Moses and Jesus Christ to Onias and Ron Lafferty—makes it not only a promise of restoration but also a framework for competing claims to leadership.

Revelation and Institutional Authority

The title draws force from a religious tradition in which revelation is central to legitimate authority. The Church’s supreme leader bears the title “President, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator,” reflecting the premise that religious truth and ecclesiastical authority derive from continuing divine communication. Joseph Smith initially emphasized personal revelation, teaching members to seek impressions from the Lord for guidance in their lives. But revelation received by everyone could also produce conflicting claims about truth and weaken the prophet’s control over his followers. The tension between individual access to divine instruction and centralized authority forms the background against which Onias’s claim could resonate.

Onias’s Challenge and the Laffertys’ Response

Onias’s pamphlet presented the “one mighty and strong” as the Lord’s chosen prophet and called on Church leaders to confess their errors and hand control of the church to him, warning that refusal would bring God’s wrath. To an outside observer, this demand could appear naïve and presumptuous; for the Lafferty brothers, it sounded like long-denied truth. They saw Onias as an ally in restoring Joseph Smith’s church to righteousness and preparing the earth for the Second Coming.

Onias’s revelations then tied the Laffertys to that purpose. In a revelation received on January 8, God was said to have singled them out before their births as an elect people and the true blood of Israel. Six weeks later, another revelation instructed Onias to appoint Ron Lafferty bishop of the School of the Prophets’ Provo chapter. Onias did so, and the younger brothers, including Dan Lafferty, approved; they had long looked up to Ron, and his new responsibilities were accepted by the group.

A Title Shared Among Claimants

A later revelation attributed to Onias directly broadened the title’s meaning. It affirmed that Moses and Jesus Christ had been Mighty and Strong, named Onias as another, and addressed Ron Lafferty as one as well. It also anticipated that others would be called to put the church and kingdom in order. In this account, the title did not designate a single successor whose authority excluded all rivals: there could be many Mighty and Strong figures. That interpretation allowed Onias’s authority and Ron’s appointment to coexist within the same revealed order.

The wider history of fundamentalist leadership shows why claims to a prophet’s mantle could carry consequences beyond a title. After John Y. Barlow’s death, Joseph Musser appointed Rulon Allred as his second elder and heir apparent, over objections from those who believed LeRoy Johnson should succeed him. Later, after LeRoy Johnson’s death, Rulon Jeffs’s succession was contested by Marion Hammon’s followers; nearly a third of the community left and formed the Second Ward. These disputes are not presented as episodes about Onias’s title, but they show how succession claims could divide communities and produce rival assertions of religious legitimacy.

Significance

The Mighty and Strong joins restoration language to a contest over who may speak for God and direct a religious community. For the Lafferty brothers, Onias’s use of the title made their opposition to established Church leadership part of a sacred mission, while the revelation naming several Mighty and Strong figures supplied a flexible basis for new leaders to be authorized. The result is a title that promises order but can also multiply authority: a call to set the church right becomes a source of competing claims about who has the right to do so.