Excerpts from
Juvenile Instructor - 1887
Written by Thomas A. Shreeve (1851-1931)

The last Sunday but one before I was to start northward, I preached in Christchurch on the restoration of the gospel. One listener was a man named Brownrigg, who was not a member of the Church. He was a man of considerable means and a Catholic.

A day or two later I went up the country a short distance to bid the folks farewell, and then returned to Christchurch. I found that in the meantime Mr. Brownrigg had become Brother Brownrigg, having requested and received baptism at the hands of the Elders during my absence.

On the last Sunday of my stay in that region I again preached in Christchurch and bore my testimony to the assembled Saints. Brother Brownrigg was there—an attentive listener. The next day he called me into his business establishment and told me that he had been converted by the sermon which I had preached on the restoration of the gospel. He enquired what my means were, and when I answered that I was without money, he said:

"You cannot travel without means. Here are five pounds for you. This amount will help you some."

On the following Friday (the day before I was to start away) he again called me into his store, and this time presented me with an additional sum of three pounds—making a total of eight pounds, or $40, which he had given me within a week.

This circumstance impressed me very seriously. There was not a Saint in that mission who was able to give me the money needed for my journey until Brownrigg became a member of the Church; and he was so quick and generous with his gift that I was enabled to sail on the day appointed, without any further trouble or annoyance. But if I were impressed at this time, imagine my feeling when I learned shortly after that no sooner was I gone than Mr. Brownrigg apostatized, and called the whole system of the gospel "a pack of nonsense!" I then felt ready to admit that I had converted Mr. Brownrigg by the sermon on the restoration of the gospel; because if the Lord had converted him, he would not have been so ready to deny the truth. I do not like to call such a sordid matter as this a miracle, and yet it seems little short of miraculous that this man should have come into the Church, have given me the money necessary for the fulfillment of the Lord's direction to me—and then have apostatized. He was a Catholic and would not have given me the money without joining the Church.

I reached Auckland in due time; and on the last Sunday in June, 1880, I preached in Orange Hall, in Newton, Auckland, my farewell sermon in the Australasian Mission. I was greatly moved in delivering this final message of truth; and in the course of my address I bore a sincere testimony to the truth of the gospel, and then the spirit prompted me to give to the people assembled a solemn warning. I said:

"Other Elders will come to you; but you shall reject their testimony as you now reject mine. But after that, and before six years shall pass away other testimonies will be sent by the Almighty, which you can neither reject nor gainsay. These testimonies will be the testimonies of earthquakes and famines and pestilence; and they will continue to afflict you until but few of you shall live."

While uttering these words I felt so strongly impressed, so confident of their truth, that I told the people to write my utterance down, and watch for its fulfillment. But when I had finished and the Spirit had left me to my own thoughts, I felt almost horrified at the nature of the prophecy which I had almost unconsciously made. I felt my humility and my weakness most vividly, and I also felt almost ashamed, and certainly very fearful concerning the fulfillment of what I had said. That feeling of doubt and almost anger with myself came upon me during the years following, whenever the subject recurred to my mind.

In June, 1886, I received a visit from a brother who had recently come from New Zealand. We were talking about the experiences of my mission, and I said to him:

"It is now just six years since I left Auckland on my return."

No sooner were the words uttered than there flashed through my mind a recollection of the strange prediction which the Spirit had uttered through my lips in Orange Hall; and I thought to myself: "I must have been misled. I have watched the papers carefully, and there is no sign of any such disaster as that which I predicted. If those people did as I requested—if they wrote down the prophecy as it was uttered, some of them now will say, 'There is a falsehood which a Mormon Elder told.'"

This thing worried me for a week, but before ten days had elapsed I saw by the newspapers that a few days before the term of six years had expired a mighty and destructive earthquake occurred at Lake Rotomahana. The effects of this earthquake had been to sink the famous pink terraces of Lake Rotomahana; to substitute for the lake itself a mud volcano and five or six vomiting volcanoes sending forth streams of mud, dust, hot water and other debris which covered the country round about for miles in every direction to a prodigious depth; to destroy lives and to extinguish one village with most of its inhabitants.