A PROPHETIC INCIDENThttps://bookofmormonevidence.org/guardi ... f-america/
“In the April number of the Century is a well-written and profusely illustrated article on the Inauguration of Washington, by Clarence Winthrop Bowen. Among the illustrations is a facsimile of the page of the Bible on which Washington laid his hand while taking the oath of office, and it is to this that I wish specially to call attention.
It was Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, one of the committees of five appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence, who administered the oath of office to Washington. “Just before the oath was to be administered,” says Mr. Bowen, “it was discovered that no Bible was in Federal Hall. Luckily Livingston, a Grand Master of Free Masons knew that there was one at St. John’s Lodge in the City Assembly Rooms near by, and a messenger was dispatched to borrow the Bible, which is to-day the the third oldest lodge in the United States.”
George Washington takes the oath of office at Federal Hall in lower Manhattan, April 30, 1789.
In further describing the solemn ceremonies of that occasion the Century article says: “Secretary Otis of the Senate held before him [Washington] a red velvet cushion, upon which rested the open Bible of St. John’s Lodge. ‘You do solemnly swear,’ said Livingston, ‘that you will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of your ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ ‘I do solemnly swear,’ said Washington, ‘that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He then bowed his head and kissed the sacred book, and with the deepest feelings uttered the words, ‘So help me God!’ ”
Mural by Allyn Cox in the U.S. Capitol depicts George Washington taking the oath of office
The page of the Bible which Washington kissed, and on which his hand rested while taking the oath, is indicated in the Bible of St. John’s Lodge by the leaf being turned down. A copper-plate engraving is on the opposite page illustrating the blessings of Zebulun and Issachar as pronounced upon them by the patriarch Jacob in Genesis xlix, thirteenth and fourteenth verses respectively. The page on which Washington’s hand rested contains part of chapter forty-nine of Genesis, beginning with the thirteenth verse; and also part of the fiftieth chapter down to verse eight inclusive. The particular thing which struck me as being a remarkable circumstance is that the page indicated contains the blessing of Jacob upon the head of his favorite son Joseph, which reads as follows:
“22. Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a wall, whose branches run over the wall.
...Let others believe all this to be coincidence if they choose, but for my own part there is too much that is significant to assign it to that class of phenomena so conveniently disposed of by calling them coincident. And I believe that the men who opened the old masonic bible at the page containing the blessing of Joseph were unwittingly prompted by the powers of heaven, and it heralded an era big with promise for the descendants of Joseph,’ — the establishment of a grand government under which they would eventually attain to the full enjoyment of all that was pronounced upon their great progenitor by the inspired patriarchs Job and Moses.” B. H. Roberts.
“The very great majority of the patriarchal blessings given to the Latter-day Saints so far, proclaims them to be the descendants of Joseph through his son Ephraim“—B. H. Roberts. May Ensign 1973 Comments
