Mormonism

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is distinctive among all the religious cults and sects active in the United States in that it has by far the most fascinating history, and one worthy of consideration by all students of religions originating on the American continent.

The Mormons is the common name for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Mormon Church’s growth is due largely to their worldwide missionary program, numbering 16.2 million adherents in 2018.

The average active Mormon is usually marked by many sound moral traits. He is generally amiable, almost always hospitable, and extremely devoted to his family and to the teachings of his church. Sad to say, however, the great majority of Mormons are in almost total ignorance of the shady historical and theological sources of their religion. They are openly shocked at times when the unglamorous and definitely unchristian background of the Mormon Church is revealed to them. This little-known facet of Mormonism is “a side of the coin” that innumerable Mormon historians have for years either hidden from their people or glossed over in an attempt to suppress certain verifiable and damaging historical evidences. Such evidence the author has elected to review in the interest of obtaining a full picture of Joseph Smith’s religion.

 Early Mormon History

    1.      Joseph Smith Jr., “The Prophet,” better known to residents of Palmyra, New York, as just plain “Joe Smith,” was born in Sharon, Vermont, December 23, 1805, the fourth child of Lucy and Joseph Smith.

    2.      Joseph Smith Sr. was a mystic, a man who spent much of his time digging for imaginary buried treasure (he was particularly addicted to Captain Kidd’s legendary hoard!). Besides this failing, he sometimes attempted to mint his own money, which at least once brought him into decided conflict with the local constabulary. This fact is, of course, well known to any informed student of Mormonism.

In 1820, Joseph Smith Jr. claimed a heavenly vision that he said singled him out as the Lord’s anointed prophet for this dispensation, though it was not until 1823, with the appearance of the angel Moroni at the quaking Smith’s bedside, that Joe began his relationship to the fabulous “golden plates,” or what was to become the Book of Mormon.

According to Smith’s account of this extraordinary revelation, which is recorded in the Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith—History, 1:29–54, the angel Moroni, the glorified son of one Mormon, the man for whom the famous book of the same name is entitled, appeared beside Joseph’s bedside and thrice repeated his commission to the allegedly awestruck treasure hunter. Smith did not write this account down until some years later, but even that fails to excuse the blunder he made in transmitting the angelic proclamation. This confusion appears in the 1851 edition of the Pearl of Great Price, wherein Joseph Smith identifies the messenger as Nephi, an entirely different character found in the Book of Mormon.

This unfortunate crossing up of the divine communication system was later remedied by thoughtful Mormon scribes who have exercised great care to ferret out all the historical and factual blunders not readily explainable in the writings of Smith, Young, and other early Mormon writers. In current editions of the Pearl of Great Price, Moroni is identified as the nighttime visitor. However, the historical contradiction of whether Nephi or Moroni carried the message to Smith apparently makes little difference to the faithful.

What cannot be erased so easily is the original handwritten manuscript history of the church that contains this error, which was supervised by Joseph Smith during his lifetime. Later, in 1842, these manuscripts formed the basis of the published history of Mormonism, again, overseen by Smith, where Nephi appears again as the revelatory angel.4 The first edition of the Pearl of Great Price (1851), with the subtitle “Choice selections of revelations, translations, and narrations of Joseph Smith,” also contained the name Nephi because the published history of Mormonism set this foundation.

In 1827 Smith claimed to receive the golden plates upon which the Book of Mormon is alleged to have been written. Shortly after this historic find, unearthed in the hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York, Smith began to “translate” the “reformed Egyptian” hieroglyphics, inscribed thereupon by means of the “Urim and Thummim,” a type of miraculous spectacles, which the angel Moroni had the foresight to provide for the budding seer. A whirlwind of contradictory accounts swirled through Smith’s early history, particularly concerning his seer stones, first vision, translational work, revelations, and priesthood restoration.

From the now hallowed state of Pennsylvania, immortalized by Smith’s initiation into the priesthood of Aaron by John the Baptist, Joseph returned shortly to the home of Peter Whitmer in Fayette, New York, where he remained until the “translation” from the plates was completed and the Book of Mormon published and copyrighted in the year 1830. On April 6 of the same year, the prophet, in company with his brothers Hyrum and Samuel, Oliver Cowdery, and David and Peter Whitmer Jr., officially founded a “new religious society” entitled “The Church of Christ” in 1830 (renamed the Church of the Latter-day Saints in 1834 and finally as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1838). Thus it was that one of the more virulent strains of American cults came into existence—Mormonism had begun in earnest.

Sidney Rigdon, Parley P. Pratt, and his younger brother, Orson Pratt, it should be noted, were almost from the day of their “conversions” slated for greatness in the Mormon hierarchy; and it is their writings, along with those of Brigham Young, Charles Penrose, and James Talmage, that best argue in favor of the Mormon cause even to this day.

Martin, W., & Rische, J. M. (2020). The kingdom of the cults handbook: quick reference guide to alternative belief systems (pp. 121–124). Bethany House.