one mighty and strong

The phrase one mighty and strong names a promised restorer in a revelation to Joseph Smith, but its significance in the book lies in how many people later claimed, or were believed to possess, that role. It became a scriptural warrant for challenging the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recovering plural marriage, and asserting that a new prophet could put the church back in order. Its force came partly from the promise of divine authority and partly from the unresolved question of who, in any given community, could claim it.

Scriptural Origin and Promise

In Section 85 of The Doctrine and Covenants, revealed to Joseph Smith on November 27, 1832, God promises to send one mighty and strong, bearing a scepter of power and clothed with light, whose words will be eternal and who will set in order the house of God. The prophecy presents the figure not simply as a leader but as an instrument for correcting a disorder within the religious house. Its language joins visible authority, inspired speech, and institutional repair: the figure holds power, speaks truth, and restores a divinely intended order.

That compact promise could outlast the circumstances in which it first appeared. The prophecy does not, in the passages discussed here, identify a single future claimant by an unambiguous personal name. Instead, its striking title and task invite interpretation: what counts as disorder, who has authority to recognize it, and how the church is to be set right. Those open questions made the passage available to dissenters who believed that established leaders had abandoned essential doctrine.

A Prophecy Turned Against the Mainstream Church

For Mormon Fundamentalists, Section 85 became one of the most frequently cited scriptures after Section 132 of The Doctrine and Covenants, which concerns plural marriage. Their reading connected the promised restorer with the return of plural marriage and the correction of what they considered the modern church’s departure from Joseph Smith’s teachings. As the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned plural marriage and eventually urged government agencies to prosecute polygamists, fundamentalists cast that policy change as a betrayal rather than a necessary accommodation. The prophecy offered them a way to imagine the reversal: a divinely chosen leader would restore what the institution had relinquished.

This interpretation also gave the phrase a public and political edge. Fundamentalists who considered themselves keepers of the original faith could treat their distance from the mainstream church not as evidence of marginality but as proof that restoration remained unfinished. The anticipated figure promised both continuity with Joseph Smith and a future correction of present authority. The prophecy thus helped turn doctrinal disagreement into a dispute over who possessed the legitimate keys to lead the church.

The book shows that this claim did not belong to one community or one candidate. More than twenty fundamentalists, including Rulon Jeffs, Ron Lafferty, and Brian David Mitchell, were said to have claimed the title or role over the years. Their claims differed in setting and consequence, but the shared scriptural phrase allowed each to frame personal or communal dissent as part of a much larger divine succession.

Rival Claimants and Competing Successions

In Colorado City, residents regarded Rulon Jeffs as the one mighty and strong. His followers traced his divinely authorized leadership in a chain leading back to Joseph Smith, and the prophecy supported their confidence that their community’s prophet would restore the proper course of the church. The idea of succession also appeared materially in the portraits of revered leaders displayed in homes in Colorado City and Bountiful: the images represented a line of priesthood authority that, in the community’s understanding, reached from Joseph Smith through successive prophets to Rulon Jeffs and, after his death, Warren Jeffs. Other fundamentalist communities honored different prophetic lineages, showing that the language of restoration did not settle the question of succession; it became one of the grounds on which rival answers were advanced.

Robert Crossfield, known as Onias, built another claim around the prophecy. In March 1962, shortly after he began attending prayer meetings with polygamists in Creston, he recorded a revelation that invoked the coming figure and promised judgment on those opposing God’s work. Crossfield did not explicitly proclaim himself the one mighty and strong in public, but several of his revelations suggested that he privately considered the possibility. In 1974, he received a revelation declaring his interpretation of the true church correct and the UEP leadership’s interpretation wrong. A 1975 commandment called him Onias, identified him as the true prophet and rightful leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and assigned him the task of setting the church in order. The UEP leaders rejected this authority and expelled him from their prayer meetings. The same prophecy that furnished Crossfield with a claim to leadership could not compel the community he sought to lead to accept it.

The claim also surfaced among the LeBaron brothers. Benjamin LeBaron used a public feat of strength in Salt Lake City in the early 1950s as proof of his supposed status, while Joel LeBaron and Ervil LeBaron both claimed to be the one mighty and strong. Their competing claims unfolded within a family and religious movement already divided over prophetic authority. In another setting, Kenyon Blackmore’s revelations cast him as the last prophet before the return of Jesus Christ. Such cases show how the title could be adapted to different projects of authority, including claims extending beyond the restoration of plural marriage.

Onias, the Laffertys, and the Work of the Prophecy

The prophecy became a point of convergence between Onias and the Lafferty brothers in 1983. After they met through Bernard Brady, Onias enlisted the brothers in distributing a pamphlet drawn from his revelations to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leaders. It warned church authorities that they must acknowledge their errors and turn control over to God’s chosen prophet or face divine wrath. The Laffertys helped print, fold, collate, address, and mail more than fifteen thousand copies in two weeks. Their practical labor gave a circulating, material form to a prophecy that otherwise existed as scripture and revelation.

Onias’s revelations then connected the brothers themselves to a chosen lineage. In January 1984, he recorded that God had selected them before their birth as an elect people; six weeks later, he received a command to appoint Ron Lafferty bishop of the School of the Prophets’ Provo chapter. The appointment gave Ron a recognized office within the group at a time when he was facing personal losses, including divorce and the breakdown of his family life. The prophecy’s authority therefore operated not only at the level of an imagined future churchwide restoration, but also through present appointments and relationships within a small religious organization.

On March 13, Ron received a revelation that expanded the title rather than reserving it for one exclusive figure. It named Moses, Jesus Christ, Onias, and Ron as mighty and strong, and allowed that others would also be called to set the church and kingdom in order. This plural formulation made the prophecy more adaptable: authority could be shared among successive or simultaneous claimants rather than limited to one final restorer. The book presents that revelation alongside competing interpretations. Psychiatrist C. Jess Groesbeck regarded Ron’s revelations as delusional artifacts associated with depression and narcissism; Ron, by contrast, treated them as commands from God. The narrative records the dispute without making the prophetic claim itself proof of either diagnosis or divine origin.

Meaning and Consequences

The phrase’s repeated use reveals a tension built into the prophecy. Its promise of a divinely authorized restorer can be read as consolation by communities that feel excluded or betrayed, but it can also authorize challenges to existing leaders and institutions. Each claimant’s assertion that the church has gone astray makes the question of correction inseparable from the question of who gets to define the error. The prophecy offers a role and a task; it does not, by itself, produce agreement about the person entitled to perform them.

Across the book, one mighty and strong functions as both scriptural title and contested credential. It links Joseph Smith’s revelation to fundamentalist resistance over plural marriage, rival successions, Onias’s campaign to reform the church, and Ron Lafferty’s personal claim to prophetic authority. The phrase’s durability comes from this double capacity: it evokes an ordered restoration while leaving the identity of the restorer open. In the hands of different claimants, that openness repeatedly turns a promise to set the house of God in order into a struggle over who may speak for the house at all.