See 1 Thessalonians 5:17; and Book of Mormon, 1830 ed., 211 [Mosiah 26:39].

After JS’s death in 1844, church leaders continued to hold the prayer meetings associated with temple ordinances that had been held earlier under JS’s direction. In June 1845 Brigham Young told Wilford Woodruff that the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in Nauvoo, along with Newel K. Whitney, George Miller, and a few others, had “met regularly twice a week on Sunday & Thursday evenings for some time back to offer up our prayers & thanksgiving agreeably to the order of the Holy Priesthood for the Salvation & peace of the saints. . . . For this we have supplicated by night & by day, & hitherto we have been prospered in a manner beyond our most sanguine expectations. We have never failed in our meetings to ask God to over-rule the Courts which have lately been held in this county, so that the enemy might have no power to drag any of us to Carthage, or otherwise harass and perplex us with writs.” (Brigham Young, Nauvoo, IL, to Wilford Woodruff, 27 June 1845, copy, Brigham Young Office Files, CHL; see also Esplin, “Brigham Young and the Power of the Apostleship,” 104–119.)

Brigham Young Office Files, 1832–1878. CHL. CR 1234 1.

Esplin, Ronald K. “Brigham Young and the Power of the Apostleship: Defending the Kingdom through Prayer, 1844–1845.” In The Eighth Annual Sidney B. Sperry Symposium: A Sesquicentennial Look at Church History, January 26, 1980, 102–122. Provo, UT: Religious Instruction, Brigham Young University, Church Educational System, 1980.