CHAPTER ONE
Prelude to the Restoration

The restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the establishment of Zion are the two great events in the history of mankind that precede the second coming of Jesus Christ. “The building up of Zion is a cause that has interested the people of God in every age,” wrote the Prophet Joseph Smith. “It is a theme upon which prophets, priests and kings have dwelt with peculiar delight; they have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we live.”¹ This latter-day restoration is the last act in God’s divine drama for his children before the Millennium. This is the “dispensation of the fulness of times” (Ephesians 1:10) in which the “restitution of all things” would take place as the Lord promised through “all his holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21).

The gospel is actually older than the earth itself. Its principles are eternal and were made known to God’s children in the councils in heaven. The Father’s plan centered on Jesus Christ, who was chosen to be the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). In those councils our Heavenly Father explained that the earth would provide a place of testing for his children, declaring, “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them” (Abraham 3:25). Therefore, the Father granted his children the eternal principle of agency so that they might choose good over evil. Lucifer rebelled against the Father and his plan and was cast out of heaven. He became known as Satan, or the devil, the father of all lies, who on earth would deceive men and “lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto [God’s] voice” (Moses 4:4).

On the other hand, God has raised up prophets to teach his children the saving principles and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ. From the beginning there has been a struggle between the kingdoms of God and Satan. The Church of Jesus Christ, the Lord’s earthly organization, was established at times on the earth to gather the chosen and obedient children of God into a covenant society and to train them to fight evil. The true Church has the necessary principles and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ that lead to eternal life.

A period when the Lord reveals his gospel doctrines, ordinances, and priesthood, is called a dispensation. For example, there were the dispensations of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and of the Nephites. These dispensations gave the faithful and obedient the opportunity on earth to overcome the wicked world and prepare for eternal life by conforming to the principles and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Time after time the flowering of the true Church was followed by an apostasy, or a falling away from the truth. Thus in world history these flowerings and apostasies were cyclical. Each time the Lord’s people fell into apostasy, there came a need for a restoration of the gospel. The Restoration discussed in this text is simply the last in the series of restorations that have occurred through the ages.

The New Testament Church

When the Lord Jesus Christ was born into mortality and ministered among Israel, he restored the gospel and the higher priesthood. He organized a church with a “foundation of the apostles and prophets” (Ephesians 2:20) to carry on the work after him. The Savior spent much of his ministry privately tutoring his Apostles, giving them the authority and keys to continue the work after his death. He chose Peter, James, and John to be the presiding Apostles. At his ascension he commissioned the Apostles to carry the message of salvation unto all the world.

The Church was small in numbers when the Apostles assumed its leadership. Just over a week after the Savior’s ascension, the Holy Spirit was manifest in rich abundance on the Day of Pentecost as the Apostles taught the gospel and bore witness of the reality of the resurrected Lord. On this occasion three thousand people were baptized into the Church. The Apostles continued to minister with power and authority resulting in the conversion of additional thousands. So far, the gospel had been confined to the house of Israel. One day, however, as Peter was praying on the roof of a house in Joppa, he had a vision in which he learned that God is no respecter of persons, that no group should be regarded as unclean, and that the gospel should go to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews (see Acts 10:9–48).

The conversion of Saul of Tarsus sometime later was of great significance to the growth of the Church. Saul, who had been persecuting the early believers, beheld the Savior in a bright light while on the road to Damascus. “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest” (Acts 9:5), proclaimed the risen Lord to the stricken Pharisee. And Saul, the agent of the Sanhedrin, became Paul the defender of the faith, a “chosen vessel” (Acts 9:15) to proclaim the name of Christ before Gentiles and kings. Over the next thirty years this intrepid Apostle, along with many other devoted disciples who accompanied him, spread the gospel message and established branches of the Church throughout much of the Roman Empire. As growth continued and branches multiplied, elders, bishops, deacons, priests, teachers, and evangelists (patriarchs) were called and given proper authority by the Apostles.

The Great Apostasy

While the Apostles and other missionaries were courageously working to establish the Lord’s kingdom on earth, the seeds of apostasy were already sprouting within the Church. Peter wrote that there were false teachers already among the people and that still others would come “who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1). Peter also predicted that “many shall follow their pernicious ways” (v. 2). Paul similarly testified that out of the congregation of believers would “men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:30).

But internal apostasy and disbelief were not the only challenges the early missionaries faced. While it was generally Roman policy to extend cultural and religious freedom to their subjects, there were intermittent periods when the Christians were severely persecuted, making it difficult for them to worship openly and proclaim the “good news” of the gospel. Naturally, at such times the Church leaders were especially targeted for imprisonment and death. The first notable Roman persecution occurred during the reign of Nero, who made the Christians the scapegoat for the burning of Rome in A.D. 64. Tradition says the Apostle Peter was crucified upside down and that later, in A.D. 67–68, the Apostle Paul was beheaded by the order of the emperor.

At first the Twelve perpetuated the apostolic office. For example, Matthias, who was not of the original Twelve, was called to be an Apostle. But through the spirit of prophecy, the leaders of the Church eventually recognized that an apostasy was not only inevitable but imminent. As the Apostles were killed, revelation to guide the Lord’s church ceased, along with authority to operate it.

The years after the Apostles died provided ample evidence of the predicted demise of Christ’s church. Principles of the gospel were corrupted by being mixed with prevailing pagan philosophies. Loss of the Holy Spirit was evidenced by a gradual disappearance of spiritual gifts. Changes were made in church organization and government, and essential ordinances of the gospel were modified.

According to President Joseph Fielding Smith, the results of the Apostasy were devastating: “Satan in his wrath drove the [Church] into the wilderness, or from the earth; the power of the Priesthood was taken from among men, and after the Church with its authority and gifts disappeared from the earth, then in his anger the serpent continued his war upon all who had faith and sought the testimony of Jesus, desiring to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. So successful did he become that his dominion extended over all the known world.”²

The Long, Dark Night

The change from truth to error in the Church did not take place in a day. The Apostasy, hastened by the death of the Apostles in the latter half of the first century, gradually deepened during the years that followed. By the fourth century there was hardly a trace of the Church of Jesus Christ that was recognizable, and the “long, dark night” was well underway. With the Apostles gone, local church officers gradually assumed more authority. Bishops determined policy and doctrine for their local areas, claiming to be the proper successors to the Apostles. Gradually, a few bishops in key cities, such as Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch gained supreme authority in their entire regions. A great diversity of practices and dogma came as church leaders relied upon logic and rhetoric rather than upon revelation. “The compromising of truth and error, the assimilation of the gospel of Christ with the philosophies of men produced a new religion. This new religion was an appealing composite of New Testament Christianity, Jewish traditions, Greek philosophy, Graeco-Roman paganism, and the mystery religions.”³

As the Christian church developed and spread, the Roman government changed its policy from mostly toleration to persecution. This was in part due to Christianity emerging as a group separate and distinct from Judaism, which had been allowed special privileges under Roman law. The Christians were considered antisocial in that they refused to hold political office, serve in the military, use the civil courts, or participate in public festivals. They were called atheists because there was no room in Christian monotheism for the Roman gods or for a deified emperor. For these reasons, and perhaps for others, the Romans sporadically launched attacks upon the church until the reign of Diocletian (A.D. 284–305). Diocletian determined to destroy everything that was not pagan as un-Roman. Churches were destroyed, scriptures burned, and Christians made to sacrifice or face torture. In an edict of 306 the persecution was ordered empire-wide.

It was perhaps inevitable that the empire would be forced to rescind its anti-Christian legislation. The church continued to grow, and the weakening condition of the empire called for unity, not disharmony. Constantine, at the Milvian Bridge in A.D. 312, utilized the cross as his symbol as he crushed his opponent Maxentius. The next year at Milan, Constantine issued his famous Edict of Toleration which granted to all people the right to worship as they pleased, revoking the measures which had meant to suppress Christianity.

Constantine himself did not become a Christian until he lay dying, but his acceptance and endorsement of Christianity placed the church in partnership with the aims of the empire. The desperate need to strengthen Roman unity is credited for Constantine’s interest in the theological dispute within the church. To resolve a dispute over the nature of the Godhead, Constantine was instrumental in calling the Council of Nicaea, the first of the great ecumenical councils, in a city just south of his capital in A.D. 325. The creed that emerged from the council’s deliberation, and was approved by the emperor, is a classic example of the way apostasy results when revelation is supplanted by argumentation and decree. As similar conflicts were resolved during the following centuries, a strong alliance developed between the state and the church, ensuring a growing secular influence upon the doctrines and practices of the church.

By the time of the barbarian invasion of Western Europe in the fifth century, many of the Germanic tribes already had been reached by various types of Christian missionaries. Therefore they took quickly to Roman culture and Catholicism. The sack of Rome in A.D. 410, however, was a clear signal that the empire was not invulnerable. The masses of Goths, Vandals, and Huns who crossed the imperial boundaries turned the unity of the West into a shambles, leaving behind the beginning of several nationalist states. Local political leaders exerted increased influence over the church in their areas at the expense of Rome. For the next several centuries, the churches in the various developing European countries became in effect the fiefs or feudal estates of the lords of the manors. Culture, education, and general morals retrogressed. It was a beginning of the time often referred to in history as the Dark Ages.

Renaissance and Reformation

By the fourteenth century, Europeans began to show renewed interest in classical Greece and Rome, resulting in a flowering of literature, science, and art. It was, in effect, a period of “rebirth,” or “renaissance,” when men with confidence in themselves started to explore new ways of exploiting their environment. Artists turned from dreary mysticism to employ their skills using new techniques in sculpture, art, and literature. It was an age of naturalism—when the tools of science and art were applied to glorify the human body and to erect vast new cathedrals.

Men seemed to unshackle themselves from old ways. Gunpowder revolutionized warfare; the mariners’ compass opened new vistas of travel and exploration; commerce was launched into the vast reaches of the Orient; and the Western Hemisphere was discovered. In the fifteenth century printing by movable type was greatly refined, and the whole field of printing gained new potential. This of course directly affected the rise of the universities and the dissemination of information.

The Renaissance was also a time of spiritual change. In their search for the classical past, men were introduced to the writings of the early church fathers and to copies of the scriptures in Hebrew and Greek. The scholars of the Renaissance began making these works available to the common people. Discovering the simplicity of the early church as opposed to the ritual and complexity of medieval Christianity led many to discover “anew” their original faith. These people founded or joined new religious orders, such as the Franciscans and Dominicans, as well as heretical movements, such as the Albigensians and Waldensians. In a sense, the effects of the Renaissance provided a setting for the Protestant reformation, which tore asunder the unity of Christendom once and for all.

The most famous of the Reformers was Martin Luther, who was born in Eisleben, Saxony, on 10 November 1483. When he was eighteen he was sent by his father, Hans Luther, to Erfurt to prepare for a career in law. In 1505, however, he abandoned his legal training to enter the monastery of the Augustinian Order of Eremites. In 1508 he was sent to Wittenberg to further his studies in theology and lecture on Aristotle’s philosophy. From his earliest years, he seemed to have been tormented by the wide discrepancy between the doctrines and teachings of the scriptures and the practices of Catholicism. During a journey to Rome in 1510, he was shocked at the corruption of the clergy and the religious apathy of the people. This did much to dispel the veneration in which he had held the papacy and armed him to challenge its authority. Luther’s intensive study of the Bible led him to the doctrinal position that later came to mark the reform movement: that men are justified by faith alone (see Romans 3:28) and not by their good works.

That which most provoked Luther’s direct opposition to the Church of Rome was the sale of indulgences by the agents of Pope Leo X. These indulgences were offered to repay Albert of Mainz his cost in acquiring the archbishopric of Mainz and to continue work on St. Peter’s unfinished basilica. The purchase of indulgences granted individuals the remission of sin and punishment in purgatory and complete remission of all sins for the dead. On 31 October 1517, Luther nailed to the church door at Wittenberg his Ninety-five Theses, which challenged the church to debate on the efficacy of indulgences and the church’s sacramental practices.

Luther’s theses were originally written to promote discussion among scholars, but the masses soon saw in him a champion and public hero. He defended himself against prelate and scholar and finally was even heard by the imperial diet (assembly) at Worms in 1521. By this time his movement had moved beyond the merely religious to the political, and the unity of the holy Roman Empire was threatened.

When Luther was ordered to give up his work, he boldly declared: “Unless I be refuted by Scriptural testimonies, or by clear arguments—for I believe neither the Pope nor the councils alone, since it is clear that they have often erred and contradicted one another—I am convinced by the passages of Scripture, which I have cited, and my conscience is bound in the word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything; since it is insecure and dangerous to act against conscience.”⁴

Luther’s resistance led to his excommunication from the church and to his being placed under the ban of the empire, which made him an outlaw. Luther was protected by German princes who sympathized with his ideas and who wanted more political autonomy from Rome. This protection enabled him to begin a German translation of the Bible. This translation was of transcendent importance in all of Europe because it was the first common language translation not based on Jerome’s Latin Vulgate.

Gradually new forms of worship and doctrinal innovations advocated by Luther were introduced in many of the German states. When it was evident the Catholic church would not reform, Luther’s followers founded the Lutheran church. Lutheranism became the religion of many of the northern and central German states but never succeeded in winning Bavaria and the states to the east. The faith spread northward, however, into Scandinavia and from there into Iceland. While it cannot be said that Luther brought religious freedom to Europe, the strength of his movement at least assured a pluralistic society where other religious groups could work for toleration.

Although Luther was the most famous of the Reformers, he was not the first. A century and a half earlier, in the 1300s, John Wycliffe in England denounced the corruption and abuses of the Catholic church and condemned the pope as anti-Christ. He translated the scriptures and circulated them among the common people. He was strongly condemned by the church, but his teachings were widely accepted among his countrymen. Thus, when Luther and other continental reformers began their work, many Englishmen sympathized with them.

The Reformation in England was different than in other countries. King Henry VIII, who disapproved of Luther, insisted that the pope did not have the authority to deny Henry a divorce from his wife. A quarrel ensued in which the king rejected the pope’s authority, and in 1533 the pope excommunicated the king. Henry then established the Church of England.

The two major reformers in Switzerland were Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin. Zwingli convinced the citizens of Zurich that the Bible should be the only standard of religious truth. Using this standard Zwingli rejected life in a monastery, celibacy, the mass, and other Catholic practices.

John Calvin was even more influential. At Geneva, he attempted to create a holy city around the biblical models. Gradually Calvinism became predominant in many parts of Switzerland, and from there it spread to France, England, Scotland, Holland, and in a lesser degree to Germany. John Knox, an early convert to Calvinism, helped refine and expand its teachings.

The Pilgrims and Puritans, two strict Calvinist groups who came to the New World, greatly influenced American values. For example, basic tenets of Calvinism prominent in early America included the absolute sovereignty of God, the election of man to grace, the idea that saved church members were to be instruments in God’s hand in redeeming others, and the concept that the church was to be “a light on the hill” to influence the affairs of men in this world.

The work of all these reformers was in preparation for the restoration of the gospel. President Joseph Fielding Smith has written:

“In preparation for this restoration the Lord raised up noble men, such as Luther, Calvin, Knox, and others whom we call reformers, and gave them power to break the shackles which bound the people and denied them the sacred right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. . . .

“Latter-day Saints pay all honor to these great and fearless reformers, who shattered the fetters which bound the religious world. The Lord was their Protector in this mission, which was fraught with many perils. In that day, however, the time had not come for the restoration of the fulness of the gospel. The work of the reformers was of great importance, but it was a preparatory work.”⁵

Discovery and Colonization of America

Another important preparation for the restoration of the gospel was the discovery and colonization of America. It had been preserved as a choice land from which the gospel would go to the nations of the earth in the last days. Moroni, an ancient American prophet, wrote: “Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written” (Ether 2:12).

The arrival of Christopher Columbus was seen in vision by Nephi, also an ancient American prophet, over two thousand years before Columbus was born. “And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren [descendants of Lehi], by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land” (1 Nephi 13:12). Columbus himself confirmed in his writings that he felt inspired in his ventures as a mariner and in establishing religion among the Indians.⁶

Nephi continued his prophecy: “And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters” (1 Nephi 13:13). Many people who settled the promised land were led there by the hand of God (see 2 Nephi 1:6).

Nephi foresaw many other events in America. He saw that the Lamanites would be scattered throughout the land by the Gentiles, and that the Gentiles would humble themselves and call upon the Lord, and the Lord would be with them. Nephi beheld that the Gentiles who had settled in North and South America would war against their “mother Gentiles” and would be delivered by the hand of the Lord (see 1 Nephi 13:14–19).

President Joseph Fielding Smith said, “The discovery [of America] was one of the most important factors in bringing to pass the purpose of the Almighty in the restoration of his Gospel in its fulness for the salvation of men in the latter days.”⁷

Religious Freedom in America

While many historians today insist that most early colonists came to America for economic reasons, many colonists were also seeking religious liberty. Among these were the Puritans, who established a powerful religious commonwealth in New England. They believed that they possessed the true faith and consequently did not tolerate any other religion.⁸ This intolerance had to be overcome before there could be a restoration of Christ’s church.

Certain dissenters among the Puritans, Roger Williams chief among them, argued that there ought to be a clear distinction between church and state and that no particular religion ought to be imposed upon the citizens. He also taught that all churches had fallen away from the true apostolic succession. Williams was banished from Massachusetts in 1635, and within a few years, he and others with similar ideas succeeded in obtaining a charter to establish the colony of Rhode Island, which allowed total toleration of all religions.

A courageous woman, Anne Hutchinson, who went to Massachusetts in 1634, disagreed with the local leaders on two theological issues: the role of good works in salvation and whether or not an individual may receive inspiration from the Holy Spirit. Mrs. Hutchinson was likewise banished from Massachusetts, and she sought refuge in Rhode Island in 1638. Despite the efforts of Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and others, religious toleration was not achieved in New England for another century and a half.

Meanwhile, various religiously motivated groups established settlements throughout the rest of the American colonies. Each in its way contributed to the religious environment of America. Roman Catholics who settled Maryland passed the first toleration act in American history. Quakers in Pennsylvania also promoted religious tolerance and separation of church and state. The various colonists were of so many different faiths that it was impossible for any one denomination to predominate. This religious pluralism was a major reason for the religious liberties that became a unique feature of the United States.

Even though there were many different churches in America, most colonists did not claim membership in any particular denomination. An important movement in American religious history was the Great Awakening, which began about 1739 and continued for almost two decades. This first widespread revival in early American history was a fervent effort to restore righteousness and religious zeal. The Great Awakening swept throughout the length and breadth of the thirteen colonies. Evangelists and itinerant preachers held services in informal settings, including homes, barns, and even pastures. The Great Awakening kindled a religious commitment that had not been felt in America for years, and it promoted greater participation by both laymen and ministers in the affairs of organized religion. It also aroused within the colonial Americans a desire to unite in a democratic order.⁹

In spite of this zeal, complete religious freedom was not achieved in America until the American Revolution enhanced the climate for religious freedom. As colonists united against the British, they discovered that their religious differences were really not important to their cause and that they could agree on the essentials of their religious beliefs.¹⁰ Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson was a fierce opponent of undue pressures upon government by organized religion. The Declaration of Independence, which he wrote, stated that man was capable of discovering correct political institutions for himself.

With the new feeling of freedom that followed the Revolutionary War, several states sought to protect basic human rights, including religious liberty. Virginia was one of the first in 1785 when it adopted Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, which guaranteed that no person could be forced to attend or support any church or be discriminated against because of his religious preference.¹¹

After a few years as an unsuccessful confederation of states, the United States drafted a new constitution in 1787 that was ratified in 1789. This document, which was formed “by the hands of wise men whom [the Lord] raised up unto this very purpose” (D&C 101:80), embodied both the democratic impulse for freedom and the fundamental need for order. Freedom of religion was guaranteed in the first amendment to the Constitution.

The Prophet Joseph Smith stated that “the Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God. It is a heavenly banner; it is to all those who are privileged with the sweets of liberty, like the cooling shades and refreshing waters of a great rock in a thirsty and weary land.”¹² One reason this was true was because “under the Constitution the Lord could restore the gospel and reestablish his church. . . . Both were part of a greater whole. Both fit into his pattern for the latter days.”¹³

Concurrent with the American Revolution and the establishment of the Constitution was a Second Awakening that brought about a reorientation of Christian thinking. Several new religious societies grew in strength and held a variety of beliefs: Unitarians, Universalists, Methodists, Baptists, and Disciples of Christ. Many beliefs were introduced in the new nation, including the idea that there was a need for the restoration of New Testament Christianity. Those searching for this restoration were popularly known as seekers. Many of them were ripe for the divine Restoration and became its early converts.¹⁴

Almost concurrently with the Second Great Awakening, there arose a spirit of revivalism. Itinerant preachers held spirited camp meetings among new settlers in frontier areas of the growing United States. Lonely settlers from farms and villages gathered in huge crowds to enjoy the camp meetings. Noisy but gifted preachers lent a festive air to these religious gatherings while trying to win converts to their faith.¹⁵

The Second Great Awakening also influenced the formation of voluntary associations to promote missionary work, education, moral reform, and humanitarianism. Revivals brought religious emotions to a fever pitch and aided the growth of the popular denominations, particularly the Methodists and Baptists.¹⁶ This religious awakening lasted for at least forty years, including the time of Joseph Smith’s first vision.

The restoration of the gospel and of the Lord’s true Church could not have taken place amidst the religious intolerance in Europe and early America. It was only possible in the setting of religious liberty, reevaluation of Christian thinking, and spiritual awakening that had developed in early nineteenth-century America. The Lord’s hand was evident in directing that the Restoration take place exactly when it did.

According to one historian, there was a special timing to when the Restoration took place:

“Its timing in 1830 was providential. It appeared at precisely the right moment in American history; much earlier or later and the Church might not have taken hold. The Book of Mormon would probably not have been published in the eighteenth century, in that still largely oral world of folk beliefs prior to the great democratic revolution that underlay the religious tumult of the early Republic. In the eighteenth century, Mormonism might have been too easily stifled and dismissed by the dominant enlightened gentry culture as just another enthusiastic folk superstition. Yet if Mormonism had emerged later, after the consolidation of authority and the spread of science in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, it might have had problems of verifying its texts and revelations.”¹⁷

God knows the end from the beginning and is the author of the grand design of human history. He directed the affairs of history so that America was appropriately fertile soil for the seed of the restored gospel to be planted and tended by his chosen seer, Joseph Smith.

Endnotes

1. History of the Church, 4:609.

2. Joseph Fielding Smith, The Progress of Man (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1952), p. 166.

3. Milton V. Backman, Jr., American Religions and the Rise of Mormonism (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1965), p. 6.

4. Henry Eyster Jacobs, Martin Luther: The Hero of the Reformation, 1483–1546 (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Knickerbocker Press, 1973), p. 192.

5. Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954–56), 1:174–75.

6. See Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1942), pp. 44–45, 279, 328.

7. Smith, Progress of Man, p. 258.

8. See Edwin Scott Gaustad, A Religious History of America (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 47–55; Sydney E. Ahlstrom, “The Holy Commonwealths of New England,” A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 135–50.

9. See Alan Heimert, “The Great Awakening as Watershed,” cited in John M. Mulder and John F. Wilson, eds., Religion in American History: Interpretive Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978), pp. 127–44.

10. See Sidney E. Mead, “American Protestantism during the Revolutionary Epoch,” in Mulder and Wilson, eds., Religion in American History, pp. 162–76.

11. The previous three paragraphs are derived from James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), pp. 10–11.

12. Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), p. 147.

13. Mark E. Petersen, The Great Prologue (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1975), p. 75.

14. See Backman, American Religions and the Rise of Mormonism, pp. 186–248.

15. See Martin E. Marty, Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1984), p. 168.

16. See Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, pp. 415–28.

17. Gordon S. Wood, “Evangelical America and Early Mormonism,” New York History, Oct. 1980, p. 381.

CHAPTER TWO
Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage

We are all affected and influenced by our surroundings. We are nourished and nurtured by families and friends and respond to our environment. Joseph Smith grew up on the family farm and was almost exclusively under his family’s influence. The things he learned at home were the most important legacy of his New England heritage. His parents emphasized hard work, patriotism, and personal religion. Joseph learned, listened well, and gleaned much from his heritage. During his formative years, Joseph Smith began to incorporate and manifest qualities that would help him fulfill his foreordained mission.

Paternal Ancestry of Joseph Smith

An examination of Joseph Smith’s ancestry shows that his family possessed important character traits that were perpetuated in him. He developed strong family bonds, learned to work hard, to think for himself, to serve others, and to love liberty. He recalled, “Love of liberty was diffused into my soul by my grandfathers while they dandled me on their knees.”¹ Although not always affiliated with a church, generations of his ancestors sought to live by correct religious principles, and some anticipated that an important spiritual leader would be raised up among their posterity.

Among the rolling hills about twenty miles north of Boston, Massachusetts, is the small township of Topsfield, where many of the Prophet’s ancestors lived. Five generations of Smiths lived in Topsfield. The first of these was Joseph Smith’s third-great-grandfather, Robert Smith, who emigrated from Topsfield, England, to Boston in 1638 while still in his teens. Robert married Mary French and, after a brief stay in nearby Rowley, settled in Topsfield, Massachusetts. They were the parents of ten children. When Robert died in 1693 he left an estate valued at 189 pounds, a comparatively large sum for the era. Samuel Smith, a son of Robert and Mary, was born in 1666. He was listed on the town and county records as a “gentleman” and apparently held a public office. He married Rebecca Curtis, and they had nine children.

Samuel and Rebecca’s first son was born in 1714. Samuel, Jr., was a distinguished community leader and a promoter of the American War of Independence. According to his obituary, “He was a sincere friend to the liberties of his country, and a strenuous advocate for the doctrines of Christianity.”² Samuel, Jr., married Priscilla Gould, who descended from one of Topsfield’s founders. Priscilla died after bearing five children, and Samuel married her cousin, also named Priscilla. They had no children together, but she raised Samuel’s children by his first wife, including Asael, Joseph Smith’s grandfather.

Asael, born in 1744, was affiliated with the established religion in New England, the Congregationalists, but he later became skeptical of organized religion. To his thinking the teachings of established churches were not reconcilable with scripture and common sense. At age twenty-three he married Mary Duty of Rowley, Massachusetts. At great sacrifice to himself and his family, Asael moved from Derryfield, New Hampshire, back to Topsfield where he worked for five years to liquidate the debts his father had been unable to pay before his death.

The Smiths remained in Topsfield until 1791 when Asael, Mary, and their eleven children moved briefly to Ipswich, Massachusetts, and then on to Tunbridge, Vermont, in quest of inexpensive, virgin land. At Tunbridge, Asael continued his community service, and during his thirty years there occupied nearly every elective office.

Asael’s philosophy agreed with that of the Universalists, who believed in Jesus Christ as a god of love who would save all of his children. Like all Universalists, Asael was more comfortable with a god who was more interested in saving than in destroying mankind. He believed that life continued after death.

In an address to his family, Asael wrote: “The soul is immortal. . . . Do all to God in a serious manner. When you think of him, speak of him, pray to him, or in any way make your addresses to his great majesty, be in good earnest. . . . And as to religion, study the nature of religion, and see whether it consists in outward formalities, or in the hidden man of the heart. . . .

“Sure I am my Savior, Christ, is perfect, and never will fail in one circumstance. To him I commit your souls, bodies, estates, names, characters, lives, deaths and all—and myself, waiting when he shall change my vile body and make it like his own glorious body.”³

Asael Smith also predicted that “God was going to raise up some branch of his family to be a great benefit to mankind.”⁴ Many years later when his son Joseph Smith, Sr., gave him a recently published Book of Mormon, he was vitally interested. George A. Smith recorded, “My grandfather Asael fully believed the Book of Mormon, which he read nearly through.”⁵ Asael died in the fall of 1830, confident that his grandson Joseph was the long-anticipated prophet and that he had heralded in a new religious age.

Mary Duty Smith outlived her husband Asael by six years. In 1836 Mary, accompanied by Elias Smith, a missionary grandson, traveled to Kirtland, Ohio, to join her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who had gathered there. “The meeting between the grandmother and her prophet descendant and his brother was most touching; Joseph blessed her and said she was the most honored woman on earth.”⁶ She completely accepted the testimony of her grandson and fully intended to be baptized. Unfortunately, her age and health prevented this. She died on 27 May 1836, just ten days after arriving in Kirtland.

Maternal Ancestry of Joseph Smith

Comparatively little is known about the Mack family through which Joseph’s mother, Lucy Mack, came. John Mack, who descended from a line of Scottish clergymen, left his native Inverness and arrived in New England in 1669. For a number of years he lived in Salisbury, Massachusetts. He and his wife moved to Lyme, Connecticut, in 1696. Their eighth child, Ebenezer, married Hannah Huntley, and they prospered for a time on the Mack estate. But prosperity was short-lived, and Solomon, born in 1732, was apprenticed to a neighboring farmer in Lyme at the age of four. He recalled, “I was treated by my master as his property and not as his fellow mortal.”⁷ He remained an apprentice until the age of twenty-one, but his master never taught or spoke to him about religion.

For most of the rest of his life, Solomon searched for the anchorage he never found as a youth. Having fulfilled his apprenticeship, he enlisted for service in the French and Indian War. In succeeding years Solomon was a merchant, land developer, shipmaster, mill operator, and farmer. Though he expended considerable effort, fortune did not favor him, and he was beset with accidents, hardships, and financial reverses.

This hearty adventurer did experience some good fortune in 1759, when he met and soon married Lydia Gates. Lydia, a trained and accomplished schoolteacher, was the first child of the respected and successful Congregationalist church deacon, Daniel Gates. Lydia had been a practicing Congregationalist from her early youth. Although Solomon and Lydia came from contrasting backgrounds, theirs was an enduring marriage. Lydia took charge of both the secular and religious educations of her eight sons and daughters. She probably taught her husband to read and write along with their children. Solomon believed that Lydia not only exhibited “the polish of education, but she also possessed that inestimable jewel which in a wife and mother of a family is truly a pearl of great price, namely, a pious and devotional character.”⁸

Soon after their marriage, Solomon purchased sixteen hundred acres of wilderness land in northern New York. A leg injury prevented him from clearing the land as the contract stipulated, and he lost the property. In 1761 Solomon and Lydia settled with two young sons in Marlow, New Hampshire. They remained there for ten years and had four more children. In 1771 the Macks moved to Gilsum, New Hampshire, where two additional children were born. The youngest, Lucy, was the Prophet Joseph Smith’s mother.

Solomon served a short term in the army during the American Revolution. Later he signed on for a second stint, this time in the artillery, but took ill and was sent home. He might have been safer with his unit. Not long after his return he was crushed by a tree his son had felled, and after four months of recuperation fell on a waterwheel. Thereafter he was subject to periods of unconsciousness, or “fits” as he called them.⁹

But Solomon Mack could never forego adventure for long. With his teenage sons, he joined the crew of an American privateer. After the war he sailed on a fishing schooner, purchased the boat when it was damaged in a hurricane, lost it in a shipwreck, and then fell ill. Returning home with nothing after four years away, he found Lydia and the children evicted from their house because of the underhanded dealings of a creditor. “I did not care whether I lived or died,” Solomon wrote of this period, but through hard work he was soon able to provide for his family again.¹⁰

Solomon Mack had not been outwardly religious, though he was a God-fearing and good-hearted man. He showed little inclination toward scripture reading or church-going, but in 1810 rheumatism forced him to reassess his values. “After this I determined to follow phantoms no longer, but devote the rest of my life to the service of God and my family.”¹¹ That winter he read the Bible and prayed earnestly; eventually he found peace of soul and mind. Until his death in 1820, Solomon spent much of his time telling others of his conversion and admonishing them to serve the Lord. He wrote an autobiography with the hope that others would not become enamored with material gain as he had. He enthusiastically shared his conviction with his grandchildren, among whom was young Joseph Smith, Jr. Solomon died just three weeks before his eighty-eighth birthday, several months after his grandson’s remarkable vision of the Father and the Son of which he was probably unaware.

During the years of Solomon’s mishaps and adventures, his wife, Lydia Gates, provided stability and direction for their children. All the children, especially Lucy, the youngest daughter, showed her influence. Lucy gave credit to her mother “for all the religious instructions as well as most of the educational privileges which I had ever received.”¹²

Lucy, though intelligent, assertive, and reared amid pious surroundings, did not experience significant spiritual stirrings until age nineteen. She wondered if life had meaning and soon concluded she needed to revise her gloomy attitude. To avoid being labeled worldly, she decided to join a church but was frustrated at the rival claims put forth by various clergymen. She inquired, “How can I decide in such a case as this, seeing they are all unlike the Church of Christ, as it existed in former days!”¹³

Lucy did not find a satisfying answer to her spiritual dilemma. Seemingly convinced that existing churches could not fulfill her needs, she temporarily put aside her quest for a church, and gradually her anxiety dissipated. In less than two years she met and married Joseph Smith, Sr. Little did Lucy realize that from that union would come a prophet-son who would give solace and direction to all who, like herself, were seeking to find the Church of Jesus Christ.

Parents of the Prophet

Lucy Mack met Joseph Smith, Sr., while visiting her brother Stephen at Tunbridge, Vermont. Joseph was twenty-five, over six feet tall, and powerfully built, like his father, Asael. After their marriage on 24 January 1796, they settled on one of the family farms in Tunbridge. They spent six years there, during which their first three children were born. Joseph and Lucy rented out their Tunbridge farm, possibly because of stony soil, and moved to Randolph in 1802, where they opened a mercantile establishment.

In Randolph Lucy fell ill. A physician diagnosed her condition as tuberculosis, the illness her older sisters, Lovisa and Lovina, had died from. Hearing that doctors said she would die, Lucy pleaded with the Lord to spare her life so that she might bring comfort to her children and husband.

Lucy wrote, “I made a solemn covenant with God that if He would let me live I would endeavor to serve him according to the best of my abilities. Shortly after this I heard a voice say to me, ‘Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Let your heart be comforted; ye believe in God, believe also in me.’

“. . . As soon as I was able I made all diligence in endeavoring to find someone who was capable of instructing me more perfectly in the way of life and salvation. . . .

“. . . I went from place to place for the purpose of getting information and finding, if it were possible, some congenial spirit who could enter into my feelings and thus be able to strengthen and assist me in carrying out my resolutions. . . .

“. . . I said in my heart that there was not then upon earth the religion which I sought. I therefore determined to examine my Bible and, taking Jesus and His disciples for my guide, to endeavor to obtain from God that which man could neither give nor take away. . . .

“At length I considered it my duty to be baptized and, finding a minister who was willing to baptize me and leave me free in regard to joining any religious denomination, I stepped forward and yielded obedience to this ordinance.”¹⁴

While Lucy was preoccupied with religion and salvation, her husband was embarking on an ill-fated economic venture. Learning that ginseng root, which grew wild in Vermont, was highly valued in China, Joseph, who had experienced a series of financial setbacks, invested heavily in the herb. Having obtained a substantial quantity, he was offered three thousand dollars for it by a Mr. Stevens from Royalton, but he declined. When Joseph went to New York to arrange for shipment, Mr. Stevens followed him to find out which ship Joseph’s cargo was on. Having some ginseng himself, he sent his son to represent himself and Joseph in selling the product. Young Stevens sold the ginseng at a good profit, but misrepresented the returns and gave Joseph Smith, Sr., only a chest of tea. When Stevens’ dishonesty was discovered, he fled to Canada with the money, leaving Joseph and Lucy with an eighteen-hundred-dollar debt. Lucy recalled, “This farm, which was worth about fifteen hundred dollars, my husband sold for eight hundred dollars in order to make a speedy payment.”¹⁵ To this Lucy added the one thousand dollars she had received for a wedding present. They were out of debt, but penniless.

Joseph and Lucy moved briefly to Royalton, Vermont, and then to Sharon in Windsor County, where they rented Lucy’s father’s farm. Joseph farmed in the summer and taught school in the winter. While in Sharon, Joseph and Lucy had another son, born 23 December 1805, whom they named Joseph. Naming him this fulfilled a prophecy of Joseph in Egypt who had predicted that a “choice seer” would be raised up among his descendants. One of the keys by which this seer could be identified was that he would receive the name of the ancient patriarch Joseph, which would also be his father’s name (see 2 Nephi 3:14–15).

Joseph Smith, Sr., and Lucy were dutiful parents and endeavored to teach their children religious precepts. Lucy especially encouraged her children to study the Bible. Their son William, born in 1811, recalled his mother’s concern with religious matters: “My mother who was a very pious woman and much interested in the welfare of her children, both here and hereafter, made use of every means which her parental love could suggest, to get us engaged in seeking for our souls’ salvation.”¹⁶

Joseph, Sr., was as gentle as he was big. Heber C. Kimball recalled he was “one of the most cheerful men I ever saw, and he was harmless as a child.”¹⁷ Lucy said he was “an affectionate companion and tender father as ever blessed the confidence of a family.”¹⁸

Though less inclined to teaching his family, Joseph, Sr., was religious. William remembered: “My father’s religious habits [were] strictly pious and moral.”¹⁹ Like his father, Asael, Joseph was suspicious of traditional churches but always retained a strong belief in God. Sometime in 1811, his “mind became much excited upon the subject of religion.”²⁰ While in this state of agitation and concern, he had the first of a series of dreams which came within an eight-year period. In the first dream Joseph found himself traveling through a barren field of dead timber with a spirit who told him the field represented the world without religion. Joseph was told he would find a box of food which if eaten would make him wise. He tried to partake but was prevented from doing so by horned beasts. He told Lucy he awoke trembling but happy and that he was now convinced that even the religious knew nothing of the kingdom of God.

Later in 1811, Joseph, Sr., experienced a second profound dream that related to his family. It was much like Lehi’s dream of the tree of life. He found himself following a path to a beautiful fruit tree. As he began to eat the delicious fruit, he realized that he must bring his wife and family to the tree so they could enjoy it together. He went and brought them, and they began to eat. He reported that “We were exceedingly happy, insomuch that our joy could not easily be expressed.”²¹

His last dream took place in 1819 in New York, shortly before his son’s first vision. A messenger said, “I have . . . always found you strictly honest in all your dealings. . . . I have now come to tell you that this is the last time I shall ever call on you, and that there is but one thing which you lack in order to secure your salvation.”²² He awoke before learning what he lacked. Because heavenly communications were part of Joseph, Sr.’s life, it was easy for him to accept his son’s prophetic calling. Eventually he learned that he lacked the saving principles and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which the Lord restored through his son Joseph.

Joseph Smith’s Early Boyhood

During Joseph Smith’s earliest years, his family moved frequently, looking for fertile soil or some other way to earn a livelihood. Their first move after his birth took them from Sharon to Tunbridge. In 1807, soon after Samuel was born, they moved to Royalton, Vermont, where two more sons were born. Shortly after William’s birth in 1811 the Smiths moved to the small community of West Lebanon, New Hampshire, and began, according to Lucy, “to contemplate, with joy and satisfaction, the prosperity which had attended our recent exertions.”²³ Her optimism gave way to despair when typhoid fever came into West Lebanon and “raged tremendously.” It was part of an epidemic that swept the upper Connecticut valley leaving six thousand people dead. One by one the Smith children fell ill. Sophronia, afflicted for three months, was near death but began to recover when Joseph and Lucy beseeched the Lord to spare her.

Seven-year-old Joseph, Jr., recovered from his fever after two weeks but suffered complications that eventually required four surgeries. The most serious complication involved a swelling and infection in the tibia of his left leg, a condition that today would be called osteomyelitis. Joseph was in agony for over two weeks. Throughout the ordeal his older brother Hyrum showed him great tenderness. Lucy recorded: “Hyrum sat beside him, almost day and night for some considerable length of time, holding the affected part of his leg in his hands and pressing it between them, so that his afflicted brother might be enabled to endure the pain.”²⁴

The first two attempts to reduce the swelling and drain the infection in Joseph’s leg failed. The chief surgeon recommended amputation, but Lucy refused and urged the doctors, “You will not, you must not, take off his leg, until you try once more.”²⁵ Providentially, “the only physician in the United States who aggressively and successfully operated for osteomyelitis” in that era was Dr. Nathan Smith, a brilliant physician at Dartmouth Medical College in Hanover, New Hampshire.²⁶ He was the principal surgeon, or at least the chief adviser, in Joseph’s case. In his treatment of the disease, Dr. Smith was generations ahead of his time.

Joseph insisted on enduring the operation without being bound or drinking brandy wine to dull his senses. He asked his mother to leave the room so she would not have to see him suffer. She consented, but when the physicians broke off part of the bone with forceps and Joseph screamed, she rushed back into the room. “Oh, mother, go back, go back,” Joseph cried out. She did, but returned a second time only to be removed again.²⁷ After the ordeal Joseph went with his Uncle Jesse Smith to the seaport town of Salem, Massachusetts, hoping that the sea breezes would help his recovery. Due to the severity of the operation, his recovery was slow. He walked with crutches for three years and sometimes limped slightly thereafter, but he returned to health and led a robust life.

According to his mother, Joseph’s operation may have been the only notable incident in his early boyhood.²⁸ About 1813 the family moved to Norwich, Vermont. There Joseph probably attended a common, or grammar, school for a brief period. He also received religious instruction and education in his home and likely engaged in the outdoor activities and games of his day. He was tall, athletic, and energetic, but was also contemplative and even-tempered. His mother said that Joseph “seemed much less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of our children, but far more given to meditation and deep study.”²⁹ In Norwich, the Smiths began to farm on the property of Esquire Murdock. It was their last attempt at wresting a livelihood from the Vermont soil. Lucy wrote, “The first year our crops failed; yet, by selling fruit which grew on the place, we succeeded in obtaining bread for the family.”³⁰ The second-year crops were also a dismal failure.

The Smiths’ third-year crops were frozen along with nearly everyone else’s in 1816, the infamous year without a summer. It was known as “eighteen hundred and froze to death.” Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) had exploded in a violent eruption in mid-April of 1815. It was considered the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. It ejected an estimated twenty-five cubic miles of volcanic debris. Dust blew into the stratosphere obscuring the sun more severely than any volcano since 1600 and altering the weather pattern for an extended period.³¹

New England was hard hit. Four killing frosts struck between 6 June and 30 August, which destroyed all but the hardiest of crops. Unaware of the cause, but discouraged by successive crop failures, hundreds of people left New England—among them the Smiths of Norwich, Vermont. During the decade of 1810–20, there was a major exodus from Vermont. More than sixty Vermont towns experienced population losses.³² Most Vermonters who left headed westward, stirred by newspaper advertisements of available lands in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, lands that were said to be “well-timbered, well-watered, easily accessible and undeniably fertile—all to be had on long-term payments for only two or three dollars an acre.”³³

Move to Palmyra

In 1816, Joseph, Sr., went to Palmyra, Ontario County, New York, in the company of a Mr. Howard. Before departing he called on his creditors and debtors to settle existing accounts, but some of them neglected to bring their accounts to the settlement. Evidently their claims against him were satisfied either by payment of cash or by the transfer of claims Joseph had against his debtors. Believing that all accounts were settled, he proceeded to Palmyra and purchased land. He then sent a communication to Lucy instructing her to stow their belongings on a wagon and prepare to move. Joseph arranged with Caleb Howard, cousin of the Mr. Howard who had traveled with him to Palmyra, to drive the team and bring his family to New York. Before Lucy Smith left to join her husband, however, additional creditors appeared and presented their uncancelled accounts for payment. Lucy described this event: “I concluded it would be more to our advantage to pay their unjust claims than to hazard a lawsuit. Therefore, by making considerable exertion, I raised the required sum, which was one hundred and fifty dollars, and liquidated the demand.” When well-meaning neighbors proposed to ease the burden by raising money through subscription, Lucy refused. “The idea of receiving assistance in such a way as this was indeed very repulsive to my feelings.”³⁴

Accounts settled, Lucy and her eight children, ranging in age from the infant Don Carlos to seventeen-year-old Alvin, set out for New York with Caleb Howard. In South Royalton, Lucy’s mother, Lydia, was injured by an overturning wagon. When Lydia was taken to her son’s home in Tunbridge, mother and daughter tearfully exchanged goodbyes. The aged Lydia admonished her daughter: “I beseech you to continue faithful in the service of God to the end of your days, that I may have the pleasure of embracing you in another and fairer world above.”³⁵ Lydia died two years later in Royalton of the injuries she had received at that time.

As the Smith family continued their journey, it became apparent to Lucy that “Mr. Howard, our teamster, was an unprincipled and unfeeling wretch.”³⁶ He spent the money Joseph, Sr., had paid him to gather the Smith family to New York on drinking and gambling.³⁷ Joseph, Jr., at the time a boy of ten, later remembered that even though he had not yet fully recovered from his leg operation, Howard made him walk “in my weak state through the snow 40 miles per day for several days, during which time I suffered the most excruciating weariness & pain.”³⁸

At Utica, several miles from their destination, Howard unloaded the Smith’s belongings and was about to leave with their team when Lucy confronted him: “Sir, I now forbid you touching the team, or driving it one step further.” The determined Lucy then reloaded the wagon and drove the team the rest of the way to Palmyra. She arrived with only two cents, but was “happy in once more having the society of my husband, and in throwing myself and children upon the care and affection of a tender companion and father.”³⁹

Influence of New England on Joseph Smith

The Smiths were but one of many New England families whose names are linked to the Restoration. Brigham Young, Joseph’s successor; Heber C. Kimball, faithful Apostle; and numerous other Church leaders had New England roots. Among their ancestors were men and women who sailed on the Mayflower or served in the American Revolution.⁴⁰ These industrious and independent people who carved homes and societies out of the New England wilderness were remarkable people. They were patriotic, socially responsible, and religious. Joseph Smith had no need to apologize for his comparatively humble origins. His was an enduring moral legacy.

Many of the principles of Puritanism that shaped and molded Joseph’s environment complemented revealed principles and doctrines he would later receive as a prophet. When Joseph learned by revelation that “Thou shalt not be idle” (D&C 42:42), this confirmed the appropriateness of the frugal and resourceful New England life. When the Lord told him to seek learning out of the best books “even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118), it reaffirmed the Puritan emphasis on education. When Joseph later promulgated the concept of an ideal theocratic society, he espoused a principle with which Puritan New England could readily identify.

But Joseph Smith was not bound by his New England heritage. In his lifetime he introduced gospel doctrines and ordinances that directly opposed his Puritan background, but exceeded any previous theological formulation of any other religious leader in their scope and clarity. For example, his concept of a personal and caring god opposed the Calvinistic idea of a stern god of justice. Revelations declaring the Godhead to be three separate and distinct personages directly contradicted traditional Calvinistic trinitarian theology.

But more than any environmental influence it was God who shaped the ideas of Joseph Smith. Indeed, it is part of Latter-day Saint theology that the Lord knew and prepared Joseph Smith in a previous sphere of existence to assume his pivotal role in restoring God’s church upon the earth. Joseph spoke of his foreordination when he said: “Every man who has a calling to minister to the inhabitants of the world was ordained to that very purpose in the Grand Council of heaven before this world was. I suppose that I was ordained to this very office in that Grand Council.”⁴¹

Brigham Young said of Joseph Smith: “It was decreed in the counsels of eternity, long before the foundations of the earth were laid, that he should be the man, in the last dispensation of this world, to bring forth the word of God to the people, and receive the fulness of the keys and power of the Priesthood of the Son of God. The Lord had his eye upon him, and upon his father, and upon his father’s father, and upon their progenitors clear back to Abraham, and from Abraham to the flood, from the flood to Enoch, and from Enoch to Adam. He has watched that family and that blood as it has circulated from its fountain to the birth of that man. He was foreordained in eternity to preside over this last dispensation.”⁴²

Endnotes

1. In History of the Church, 5:498.

2. Salem Gazette, 22 Nov. 1785, cited in Richard Lloyd Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1971), pp. 89, 91.

3. Cited in Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage, pp. 124–25, 129; see also pp. 130–40.

4. George A. Smith, “Memoirs of George A. Smith,” p. 2, cited in Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage, p. 112; see also History of the Church, 2:443.

5. Smith, “Memoirs,” p. 2, cited in Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage, pp. 112–13.

6. Edward W. Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: Star Printing Co., 1886), biographical appendix, p. 157.

7. Solomon Mack, A Narrative of the Life of Solomon Mack (Windsor, Vt.: [1811]), p. 4.

8. Lucy Mack Smith, preliminary manuscript of Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, cited in Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage, p. 27.

9. See Mack, Narrative of the Life of Solomon Mack, pp. 11–12, 17; see also Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), p. 15.

10. Mack, Narrative of the Life of Solomon Mack, p. 17; see also Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, pp. 15–16.

11. In Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith, ed. Preston Nibley (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), pp. 7–8.

12. Smith, Biographical Sketches, p. 68, cited in Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage, p. 29.

13. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 31.

14. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, pp. 34–36.

15. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 40.

16. William Smith, William Smith on Mormonism (Lamoni, Iowa: Herald Steam Book and Job Office, 1883), p. 6.

17. In Journal of Discourses, 8:351.

18. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 182.

19. William Smith, cited in Richard Lloyd Anderson, “Joseph Smith’s Home Environment,” Ensign, July 1971, p. 58.

20. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 46.

21. In Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 49; see also pp. 48–50.

22. In Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 68.

23. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 51.

24. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 55.

25. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 56.

26. LeRoy S. Wirthlin, “Nathan Smith (1762–1828) Surgical Consultant to Joseph Smith,” Brigham Young University Studies, Spring 1977, p. 337; see also LeRoy S. Wirthlin, “Joseph Smith’s Boyhood Operation: An 1813 Surgical Success,” in Sidney B. Sperry Symposium, 26 Jan. 1980, pp. 328–47.

27. In Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 57.

28. See Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 67.

29. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 82.

30. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 59.

31. Henry Stommel and Elizabeth Stommel, Volcano Weather (Newport, R.I.: Henry and Elizabeth Stommel, 1983), pp. 3, 11–12.

32. Larry C. Porter, “A Study of the Origins of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the States of New York and Pennsylvania, 1816–1831,” Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1971, p. 30.

33. Lewis D. Stilwell, “Migration from Vermont (1776–1860),” cited in Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society (Montpelier, Vt.: Vermont Historical Society, 1937), p. 135.

34. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 61.

35. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 62.

36. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 62.

37. See Milton V. Backman, Jr., Joseph Smith’s First Vision, 2d ed. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), p. 165.

38. Manuscript History of the Church, cited in Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1984), p. 666; spelling standardized.

39. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 63.

40. See Gustive O. Larson, “New England Leadership in the Rise and Progress of the Church,” Improvement Era, Aug. 1968, p. 81.

41. History of the Church, 6:364.

42. In Journal of Discourses, 7:289–90.

CHAPTER THREE
The First Vision

For centuries the world was in spiritual darkness because of the rejection of the Lord’s Apostles. Except for a few glimmers of light, such as those seen by the Reformers, the heavens were closed. A young boy’s experience in a grove in upstate New York in the spring of 1820 changed all of this. A day of spiritual enlightenment dawned.

President Gordon B. Hinckley taught: “This glorious First Vision . . . was the parting of the curtain to open this, the dispensation of the fulness of times. Nothing on which we base our doctrine, nothing we teach, nothing we live by is of greater importance than this initial declaration. I submit that if Joseph Smith talked with God the Father and His Beloved Son, then all else of which he spoke is true. This is the hinge on which turns the gate that leads to the path of salvation and eternal life.”¹

The Setting in Western New York

Joseph Smith, Sr., chose to settle in Palmyra, a small village in the Finger Lakes area of New York state. The region bore this name because the lakes resembled fingers. Sparsely inhabited at the turn of the nineteenth century, the population of the Finger Lakes area grew rapidly. By 1820 there were many communities along the shores.

Fertile soil and heavily wooded land contributed greatly to the territory’s growth. The Erie Canal, a vital inland waterway designed to transport goods and persons across New York State from Albany to the Great Lakes, also brought growth to the area. Completed mostly by hand in 1825 at a cost of more than seven million dollars, this 363-mile watercourse reduced transportation time across the state from three weeks to six days and cut expenses by millions of dollars. The canal passed within a block of Palmyra’s main street.

Joseph Smith, Sr., the father of a family of ten—eleven by 1821—worked hard for a living. After two years in Palmyra, he accumulated enough money for a down payment on one hundred acres of wooded land in the nearby township of Farmington. During the first year he and his sons cleared thirty acres of heavy timber, prepared the ground for cultivation, and planted wheat.² Clearing land meant not only felling trees with handsaws and axes but also removing stumps and roots by sheer physical toil of man and beast. Young Joseph later recalled that “it required the exertions of all that were able to render any assistance for the support of the Family.”³ Eventually the township of Farmington was divided, and in 1822 the Smith farm became part of the newly created township of Manchester.

At this time Joseph’s opportunities for schooling were limited. He attributed this to the “indigent circumstances” he was raised under. “We were deprived of the benefit of an education. Suffice it to say, I was merely instructed in reading, writing, and the ground rules of arithmetic which constituted my whole literary acquirements.”⁴

As more and more Americans crossed the Catskill and Adirondack mountains to settle in the Finger Lakes area of western New York, they tended to lose contact with established churches in their former homes. These “unchurched” settlers worried religious leaders of the main denominations, principally the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, who established proselyting programs for their disadvantaged brothers in the West.

A typical camp meeting about 1830–35, drawing by A. Rider Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The Methodists and Baptists were particularly zealous in their efforts to bring religion to those without its benefits. The Methodists employed circuit riders. These were traveling ministers who rode horseback from town to town throughout a given region, or circuit, ministering to the religious needs of the people. The Baptists used the farmer-preacher system. In this system a local man earned his living by farming but occupied a nearby pulpit on the Sabbath.

These efforts were bolstered by the enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening which was then sweeping the United States. Nearly all churches in upstate New York conducted revivals. These were evangelistic gatherings designed to awaken the religiously inert. Revivals were often in the form of camp meetings held on the edge of a grove of trees or in a small clearing in the forest. Participants often traveled many miles over dusty or rut-filled roads to pitch their tents or park their wagons on the outskirts of the encampment. Camp meetings frequently lasted several days with some sessions lasting nearly all day and into the night. Ministers rotated, but it was not uncommon to find two or three ministers exhorting their listeners simultaneously.⁵ So fervent and enthusiastic was the religious zeal in western New York in the early 1800s that the region came to be known as the Burned-Over District. Because the Finger Lakes area was set figuratively ablaze with evangelistic fire, it is not surprising that young Joseph Smith and his family were caught up in the fervor.

Joseph’s Personal Quest

Farmington (later Manchester township) was one of several settlements in its district affected by this religious enthusiasm. In later years Lucy Mack Smith remembered it as “a great revival in religion, which extended to all the denominations of Christians in the surrounding country in which we resided. Many of the world’s people, becoming concerned about the salvation of their souls, came forward and presented themselves as seekers after religion.”⁶ Most folks wanted to join some church but were undecided on which one to adopt. The Prophet Joseph recalled that about two years after they moved to the farm there was “an unusual excitement on the subject of religion. It commenced with the Methodists, but soon became general among all the sects in that region of country. Indeed, the whole district of country seemed affected by it, and great multitudes united themselves to the different religious parties, which created no small stir and division amongst the people” (Joseph Smith—History 1:5).

Revivals and camp meetings affected young Joseph. He wrote in his personal history that “at about the age of twelve years, my mind became seriously impressed with regard to the all important concerns for the welfare of my immortal soul.”⁷ This, in turn, led him to search the scriptures and seek for forgiveness of his sins. As for the claims put forth by the various teachers of religion, he said, “I knew not who was right or who was wrong, but considered it of the first importance to me that I should be right, in matters . . . involving eternal consequences.”⁸ Joseph said, “I attended their several meetings as often as occasion would permit. . . . It was impossible for a person young as I was, and so unacquainted with men and things, to come to any certain conclusion who was right and who was wrong” (Joseph Smith—History 1:8).

Joseph was also confused by the bitterness and hypocrisy he witnessed among ministers and fellow Christians. He said, “My intimate acquaintance with those of different denominations led me to marvel exceedingly, for I discovered that they did not adorn their profession by a holy walk and Godly conversation agreeable to what I found contained in that sacred depository [the holy scriptures]. This was a grief to my soul.”⁹ When the converts began to join first one church and then another, he saw that the “seemingly good feelings of both the priests and the converts were more pretended than real for a scene of great confusion and bad feeling ensued—priest contending against priest, and convert against convert; so that all their good feelings one for another, if they ever had any, were entirely lost in a strife of words and a contest about opinions” (Joseph Smith—History 1:6).

One can only imagine the impact such conditions had on Joseph’s youthful, searching mind. The very men he thought could point the way to God “understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible” (v. 12). Joseph explained, “In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?” (v. 10).

Joseph Smith came from a religious family. His mother, a sister, and two brothers had joined the Presbyterian faith, but that system of belief did not satisfy him. Nevertheless, his parents had instructed him in the Christian religion from childhood. One of the existing churches must be right, he reasoned, but which one was it? In his search for the correct church, Joseph did not intend to start his own church, nor did he think that truth was not on the earth. He simply did not know where to find the truth, but, trained to believe the scriptures, he turned there for his answer.

Like many other frontier families, the Smiths owned a Bible. Seeds planted by “goodly parents,” were nurtured by the Holy Spirit. How many days and nights he pondered, searched, and prayed for light he does not say. Nor does he tell us whether he confided his secret feelings and desires to his family. His years of preparation and his time, effort, and meditation were rewarded. He found a possible solution to his problem at age fourteen while reading this passage in the Bible: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5).

This passage had a profound impact on Joseph. “Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know” (Joseph Smith—History 1:12).

The Bible did not tell Joseph which church was true, but it told him that prayer could solve his problem. He reflected on this idea.

“At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. . . .

“So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty” (vv. 13–14). It was the first time he had ever tried to pray vocally (see v. 14).

What happened next set Joseph Smith apart from his contemporaries for ever after. God the Eternal Father and his Son Jesus Christ appeared to him. The word theophany is used to describe a vision of deity. The Bible confirms that theophanies are real. At Peniel, Jacob rejoiced, saying, “for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Genesis 32:30). With Moses, God spoke “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11; see also Numbers 12:8). And Isaiah wrote, “Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5).

God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ appeared together to the fourteen-year-old Joseph Smith. Not since the resurrection of Jesus Christ had there been such a threat to the devil’s kingdom. Little wonder, then, that Satan was present that morning.

Like Moses (see Moses 1:12–22), Joseph experienced direct opposition from Satan: “After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction” (Joseph Smith—History 1:15).

The powers of darkness were terrible, but greater powers brought deliverance. Joseph exerted all his strength to call upon God to deliver him from the enemy that had seized him. Joseph described this experience:

“At the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction . . . , I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

“It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (vv. 16–17).

Satan and his power were banished. In his place stood the Father and the Son in immortal glory. As soon as he was able to speak, Joseph asked the Personages which of the sects was right and which he should join. He reported:

“I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: ‘they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.’

“He again forbade me to join with any of them. . . . When I came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back, looking up into heaven” (vv. 19–20). He was weak from the presence of deity, and it was some time before he regained his strength and returned home.

Joseph was profoundly affected by the heavenly vision. In addition to being given the answer to his question about which church was right, he was told that his sins were forgiven¹⁰ and that “the fullness of the Gospel should at some future time be made known unto [him].”¹¹ The effects of this experience influenced the Prophet throughout his life. In later years he remembered its impact vividly: “My soul was filled with love, and for many days I could rejoice with great joy, and the Lord was with me.”¹²

Reaction to Joseph’s Vision

Shortly after he arrived home, his mother, perhaps noticing his weakened condition, asked him what was wrong. He replied, “Never mind, all is well—I am well enough off. . . . I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true” (Joseph Smith—History 1:20). Joseph did not say whether or not he told his mother more at this time. Eventually he confided his theophany to other family members. His brother William affirmed, “We all had the most implicit confidence in what he said. He was a truthful boy. Father and Mother believed him, why should not the children?”¹³ The momentous occurrence answered Joseph’s question, but it did not do so for others. He reported, “I soon found, however, that my telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion, and was the cause of great persecution, which continued to increase” (Joseph Smith—History 1:22).

One of the first outside the family to hear Joseph’s account of what happened to him was “one of the Methodist preachers, who was very active in the before mentioned religious excitement.” Joseph naively believed that the minister would welcome this great news from heaven. Joseph wrote, however: “I was greatly surprised at his behavior; he treated my communication not only lightly, but with great contempt, saying it was all of the devil, that there were no such things as visions or revelations in these days; that all such things had ceased with the apostles, and that there would never be any more of them” (v. 21).

Such an attitude was commonplace in the sectarian world. It was unthinkable that Almighty God would condescend to make himself known to a fourteen-year-old boy in 1820 the way he had made himself known to ancient prophets. Joseph’s sacred experience brought on bitter persecution. The hatred of those who professed Christianity was difficult for him to understand. As he put it, “I was an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and my circumstances in life such as to make a boy of no consequence in the world, yet men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite the public mind against me. It was often the cause of great sorrow” (vv. 22–23). William Smith later reflected: “We never knew we were bad folks until Joseph told his vision. We were considered respectable till then, but at once people began to circulate falsehoods and stories in a wonderful way.”¹⁴

The reality of what Joseph Smith experienced enabled him to endure the increasing persecution. He compared himself to Paul the Apostle who saw the risen Lord and heard his voice. Very few people believed Paul, and some even claimed he was dishonest or mentally deranged. Yet this did not destroy the reality of what Paul knew he had experienced. Joseph declared, “So it was with me. I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me; and though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true” (Joseph Smith—History 1:25).

Joseph felt much like the child who has been wrongly accused and punished. He said, “I was led to say in my heart: Why persecute me for telling the truth? I have actually seen a vision; and who am I that I can withstand God, or why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen? For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it” (v. 25). To deny it would place him under condemnation, and he dared not risk offending God.

Significance of the First Vision

The First Vision was a pivotal event in the rise of the kingdom of God on the earth in the last days. Joseph Smith, although only an unlettered youth, learned profound truths that have become the foundation of the faith of the Latter-day Saints. He had actually seen and spoken with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. Therefore, he learned that the promise in James is true. God will answer sincere prayer of inquiry and not chastise. To Joseph, God became an approachable reality, a vital source of truth, and a loving Heavenly Father. Joseph Smith’s belief in the reality of God was no longer a matter of faith; it was based on personal experience. Thus, he was qualified, as was the Apostle Peter, to be a witness who was chosen of God and commanded to preach and testify of Jesus Christ (see Acts 10:39–43). He could also testify that the Father and Son were separate and distinct glorious beings in whose literal image man is made.

Joseph Smith now also knew of the reality of Satan, a being who possessed formidable power and a foe determined to destroy the work of God. Satan failed in the Sacred Grove, but the conflict had just begun. Joseph would fight many battles with this adversary of righteousness before his work was done. Moreover, the Lord’s answer to his question about which church was true, was a sweeping indictment of nineteenth century Christianity, for no church then on earth had divine approval. Just as the Savior warned his disciples against the doctrinal “leaven” of the Pharisees and Sadducees (see Matthew 16:6–12), he taught Joseph Smith that the existing churches taught the “commandments of men” (Joseph Smith—History 1:19). Therefore, he was to join none of them.

Joseph F. Smith, nephew of the Prophet and sixth President of the Church, elaborated on the importance of the First Vision: “The greatest event that has ever occurred in the world, since the resurrection of the Son of God from the tomb and his ascension on high, was the coming of the Father and of the Son to that boy Joseph Smith, to prepare the way for the laying of the foundation of his kingdom—not the kingdom of man—never more to cease nor to be overturned. Having accepted this truth, I find it easy to accept of every other truth that he enunciated and declared during his mission of fourteen years in the world.”¹⁵

Endnotes

1. Gordon B. Hinckley, in Conference Report, Oct. 1998, pp. 90–91; or Ensign, Nov. 1998, p. 71.

2. See Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith, ed. Preston Nibley (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), pp. 63–64.

3. “History of Joseph Smith By Himself,” 1832 (written in Kirtland, Ohio, between 20 July and 27 Nov. 1832), LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City, p. 1; see also Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1984), p. 4 (contains a printing of all the known holographic writings of Joseph Smith).

4. “History of Joseph Smith By Himself,” p. 1; spelling, punctuation, and capitalization standardized; Jessee, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, p. 4.

5. This paragraph is derived from Milton V. Backman, Jr., Joseph Smith’s First Vision, 2d ed. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), pp. 71, 73.

6. Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 68.

7. “History of Joseph Smith By Himself,” pp. 1–2; spelling, punctuation, and capitalization standardized; Jessee, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, pp. 4–5.

8. Joseph Smith, “History A-1,” Nov. 1835, LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City, p. 120.

9. “History of Joseph Smith By Himself,” p. 2; spelling, punctuation, and capitalization standardized; Jessee, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, p. 5.

10. See “History of Joseph Smith By Himself,” p. 3; Jessee, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, p. 6.

11. History of the Church, 4:536. This statement is part of a reply written by Joseph Smith to Mr. John C. Wentworth, editor of the Chicago Democrat. Mr. Wentworth had written in behalf of a friend of his, Mr. Bastow (his actual name was George Barstow), who was writing a history of New Hampshire and wished to include “correct information” respecting the rise and progress of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

12. “History of Joseph Smith By Himself,” p. 3; spelling, punctuation, and capitalization standardized; Jessee, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, p. 6.

13. In J. W. Peterson, “Another Testimony, Statement of William Smith, Concerning Joseph the Prophet,” Deseret Evening News, 20 Jan. 1894, p. 11.

14. In Peterson, “Another Testimony,” p. 11.

15. Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1939), pp. 495–96.

CHAPTER FOUR
A Period of Preparation, 1823–29