Mormon is mortally wounded in the battle at a place called Cumorah, and the Nephites are nearly obliterated, but Moroni survives another 36 years and adds material to the Book of Mormon before sealing up the plates in Joseph, Sr. Although none die, young Joseph develops a leg infection that doctors initially think will require amputation.
A novel type of surgery saves the boy's limb, but he must use crutches for the next three years and will walk with a limp thereafter. Palmyra lies within an area known as the "Burned-over District" for the evangelical fervor of its residents. One spring morning, he goes into the woods and witnesses a pillar of light descending from heaven, followed by an image of God and Jesus Christ who are perceived by Joseph as separate "personages" forgiving his sins and warning Smith that all denominations have strayed from the truth and he should not join any of them.
This event, known to Mormons as the First Vision, does not dramatically change Smith's life. He continues to work the farm and treasure hunt with his father, and when he mentions the vision to a local minister, he is scorned.
Smith will not give his followers a detailed description of this vision until According to Moroni, the book describes the people who used to inhabit America and contains "the fullness of the everlasting Gospel. September Guided by his vision, Smith locates the book in a box in the Hill Cumorah, just three miles from the Smith farm, but is told by Moroni that he cannot take the gold plates yet; instead he must return on September 22 for each of the next four years and be instructed on the mission God has in store for him.
When Smith attempts to touch the box anyway, he receives a shock and is thrown to the ground. November Joseph Smith's eldest brother Alvin dies, putting greater financial strain on the family. No treasure is found, but Smith meets and falls in love with year-old Emma Hale while boarding at her father's house.
He admits to using them in the past but says he has now given up the practice. September Now that four years have passed, Smith successfully digs up the gold plates. Warned by Moroni not to let anyone else see them, he does show his mother an unusual pair of spectacles with precious stones where the eyepieces would normally be.
These stones are to help Smith translate the book from the "reformed Egyptian" in which it is written. But rumors of a golden Bible have begun to circulate in the neighborhood, so Joseph and Emma Smith must flee potential thieves. Financially assisted by a local farmer named Martin Harris, the couple sets out for Harmony, hiding the gold plates in a barrel of beans. December: Emma's father allows the couple to stay in a small house on his property, and Joseph begins the task of translating the writing of the gold book, using his interpretation device and dictating the results to Emma.
Over the next two months, they produce pages of text, but then Harris takes it back to Palmyra to show his doubting wife and loses the only copy. June Emma gives birth to a child, Alvin, who dies that same day only five of the couple's 11 children will live beyond infancy. When weeks pass with no word from Harris, Joseph heads back to Palmyra and discovers the loss. Begging for forgiveness, he is visited by an angel who takes the gold plates for a time as punishment for Smith's indiscretion.
The two men finish work in June. May In the midst of their translation, Cowdery and Smith take to the woods to pray and are visited by John the Baptist, who confers the Aaronic priesthood upon them. This is a critically important event in the history of the church since it precedes the restoration of the church.
John the Baptist also tells the two young men that the Melchizedek Priesthood will also be restored and that when it is restored, it will give them power to "lay on hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. The two men then baptize each other in the Susquehanna River. Eleven witnesses will later sign statements that they have seen the gold plates from which The Book of Mormon was translated; three of them, including Harris and Cowdery, further assert that they saw an angel bearing the plates.
August: Smith locates a publisher for the Book of Mormon in Palmyra and typesetting begins. Subscriber Account active since. Our next President may be a Mormon, so it seems a good time to learn some things about that particular religion.
And how did Mormonism come to be, anyway? Wasn't it founded only a relatively little while ago by some dude in upstate New York? Upstate New York?! Krakauer's book is mainly about the horrific killing of a mother and her baby by two "Fundamentalist" Mormons in Utah, who believe that God ordered them to do it. These fundamentalists don't have much to do with mainstream Mormonism, in the same way that fundamentalists in most religions don't have much to do with the mainstream in those religions.
But Krakauer's book also tells the story of Mormonism in general, with several chapters devoted to the founding of the religion, the "exodus" that took the early Mormons west, the current church, and one of the favorite Mormon topics of non-Mormons, polygamy more on this soon, I promise.
Anyway, on the assumption that many of you might also be interested in Mormonism—and, importantly, with what the Mormonism of our President might mean for the rest of us non-Mormons—I'm going to tell you some of what I've learned. Krakauer is obviously only one source albeit, I think, a neutral one.
Mormons accept this account; non-Mormons say that either Smith was good at mesmerizing these men or they were in on the fraud. Learn more about prophets of reform before Protestantism. It was first published in March , just one month before Smith formally founded the Church of Latter-day Saints.
During the years he was working on the Book of Mormon, Smith had several visions that dictated to him the structure of this new church. He taught that the authority of the Christian church was lost because of corruption from the 2nd century to the s. Smith ordained elders to help lead the church and received a revelation that he was not just the founder of the church, but a prophet who would continue to receive revelations from God.
Although there is some overlap between Mormonism and Christianity, with Mormons attending services on Sundays as Christians do and sharing a belief in Christ, Mormons are generally stricter than most Christians and do not consume alcohol or coffee. Contrary to popular belief, only a small percentage of Mormons are polygamists have multiple wives.
Despite the many similarities between Mormonism and Christianity, they share several differences as well. Most significantly, Mormons do not believe that the Bible is a flawless document and that everything in the Bible should be followed as the word of God. But then between and an angel came down to him, no fewer than three times, urging him to get on with it. And so it came to pass that Joseph Smith, visionary and creator of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, took to himself up to 40 wives, engaging in sexual relations with between 12 and 14 of them.
What is stunning is that the official version of his polygamist life has now been published by the Mormon church itself, an institution that in recent decades has gone out of its way to downplay the unconventional marital practices of its early male founders, not least Smith himself.
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