christian

A young man's vision gave rise to the Mormon Church. Joseph Smith
founded a booming faith that's confronting its past as it looks to the
future.
By Elise Soukup
Newsweek

Oct. 17, 2005 issue - Joseph Smith Jr. was struggling. It was a spring
day in 1820, in upstate New York-an era of fiery Protestant revivals
and a region so seared by evangelical fervor that it was known as the
"burned-over district." Smith was 14, from a family of small means but
grandiose expectations. His grandfather prophesied that a family member
would revolutionize the world of religion; his father had a series of
prophetic dreams about his family's salvation; his aunt became a local
celebrity by claiming that she had been healed by Jesus himself. And so
it was natural that Smith would wonder about his own faith. His mother
had just joined the Presbyterians; should he? Or should he stay outside
the mainline churches the way his father had?
Turning to the family Bible, Smith came to a verse in James that struck
him powerfully: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God ... and
it shall be given him." Inspired, Smith went into a grove of trees to
pray. As he began, a dark force seized him-until, Smith said, God
himself intervened. "At this moment of great alarm," Smith recalled, "I
saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the
sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me." God and Jesus
appeared and delivered a startling message: he shouldn't join any of
the churches of the world, for they had long ago fallen away from
Christ's true Gospel.
This experience, known as the First Vision by Smith's followers,
ultimately gave the world a new faith: Mormonism, or the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which now has more than 12 million
members and, thanks to the vigorous missionary tradition started by
Smith himself, is one of the fastest-growing Christian denominations in
the United States.
Prophet and polygamist, mesmerizer and rabble-rouser, saint and sinner:
Smith is arguably the most influential native-born figure in American
religious history, and is almost certainly the most fascinating. This
year marks the 200th anniversary of his birth, and the bicentennial is
prompting fresh and searching looks at Smith, the faith he built and
the legacy he left behind. The church is opening Smith's life and
contributions to research-a new stance for an institution whose early
experience with persecution has often made it defensive and secretive.
This summer, Brigham Young University hosted a six-week multifaith
seminar, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and
Smith's papers are now being consolidated and published.
Smith's times are much like our own, and his story has a particular
resonance in the first years of the 21st century. Like us, he lived in
an era of evangelical energy, deep patriotism, economic transformation,
sharp political divisions and anxiety about foreign forces' inflicting
harm on the homeland. Smith's teachings placed America at the center of
existence at just the moment in our history-in the wake of the
successful War of 1812-when nationalism was on the rise.

presidential prospect, to Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the
Senate, Mormons are increasingly visible in different spheres of
American society, particularly in politics and the Fortune 500.
Traditionally conservative but not really part of the religious right,
the church opposes *** marriage and abortion (unless the mother's life
is in danger or in cases of **** or ******). In the emotional case of
Terri Schiavo earlier this year, however, the church diverged from many
conservative Christians when it responded to news media by saying,
"Members should not feel obligated to extend mortal life by means that
are unreasonable." There is also room for policy differences among
public figures who happen to be Mormon: Romney opposes fetal-stem-cell
research, while Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah supports it. Meanwhile, the
faith's traditional views on morality and the family are fueling its
rapid growth in the developing world, where, despite a broad feeling of
global anti-Americanism, the church is expanding even more rapidly than
it is within the United States.
And it all began with the ****age Joseph Smith. For Mormons, Smith's
importance is singular. "He stands alone as a source of doctrine," says
Dallin H. Oaks, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, one of the
church's highest governing bodies. The characteristic features of the
LDS Church-sacred temple rites, personal revelation, tithing and a
history of polygamy-come directly from Smith. So does the emphasis on
high moral standards, family ties and community service: Mormonism
appeals to the fundamental human impulse for connection, security and a
promise of rewards not only on earth but beyond time and space.
Smith knew that his testimony required a leap of faith. "I don't blame
anyone for not believing my history," he said shortly before his death.
"If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it
myself." Three years after his first vision, Smith reported that an
angel named Moroni, an ancient prophet from the Americas, told him God
wanted him to bring forth new scripture-a set of gold plates
containing an account of Jesus during a post-resurrection visit to
America as well as a history of an ancient Israelite people there. The
plates were buried in a hill near Smith's house and were accompanied by
a Urim and Thummim-stones attached to a breastplate that were
supposed to help him translate the text from "reformed Egyptian," an
unknown tongue, into English.
His translation, known as the Book of Mormon, gave the sect its
nickname and brought him national attention-but still didn't give him
the "true church" he yearned for. In 1829 Smith was visited by
resurrected prophets and apostles who, he said, finally conferred on
him the authority to re-establish Christ's church on earth. He
officially founded that church in Fayette, N.Y., on April 6, 1830. His
missionaries, sent to surrounding communities, had luck in Kirtland,
Ohio: they baptized Sidney Rigdon, a prominent Campbellite minister,
and some 100 of his congregation, virtually doubling church membership.
During 1831, Smith asked his followers to move to Kirtland or to
Jackson County, Mo., which he said was the Biblical site of the Garden
of Eden and the future land of Zion.
This sudden influx of believers was unwelcome in Missouri, where the
Saints were seen as a cultural, political and economic threat. During
the next five years, the Missouri Saints were driven by mobs from
Jackson County to Clay County to Far West, Mo. As prejudice increased,
Missouri Gov. Lilburn Boggs issued an "extermination order" in 1838,
and Smith and his followers fled to Nauvoo, Ill. Smith's increasing
political activism there (he was commander of the local militia,
justice of the peace and a candidate for U.S. president) inflamed
Nauvoo's non-Mormons, who saw the makings of a dangerous theocracy.
After Smith ordered an antagonistic printing press destroyed, he was
jailed. "I am going like a lamb to the slaughter," he said, sensing his
fate. "But I am calm as a summer's morning. I have a conscience void of
offense towards God, and towards all men." On June 27, 1844, a mob
stormed the jail, fatally shooting Smith and his brother Hyrum and
injuring two other LDS men. Smith was 38.
His church survived (largely because follower Brigham Young led most of
the remaining Saints west to Utah) and, 161 years later, thrives-yet
remains mysterious to many. Central tenets of Mormonism seem
confusing-even literally incredible-to those outside the faith. An
angel named Moroni? "Plural" marriage? A resurrected Jesus visiting the
New World? These are questions posed by potential converts, and also by
historians and scientists testing Smith's claims.
Moses' burning bush isn't around to be carbon-dated or dissected, but
Smith and his followers left behind do***entation that can be subjected
to modern historical ****ysis. The record reveals a complicated man.
The church's early converts, many of whom learned about it from
missionaries, were sometimes shocked when they met Smith in person. He
was uneducated, he lost his temper, he enjoyed power-and perhaps most
startling for converts was the fact that, on occasion, his ventures
failed. Simply put, he didn't always seem like a prophet. "It was very
hard, even in his own times, to remain neutral on him," says Mark
Scherer, church historian for Community of Christ, a branch that
followed Smith's son Joseph III instead of Brigham Young after Smith's
death. "Either you thought the guy walked on water or you thought the
guy was a huge fraud." Smith was involved in dozens of lawsuits. By the
end of his life, he had accrued some 30 wives, massive debt and
hundreds of enemies. "I never told you I was perfect," he told his
followers. "But there is no error in the revelations which I have
taught."
That's a matter of debate. Last year, molecular biologist and former
LDS bishop Simon G. Southerton applied available DNA studies in his
book, "Losing a Lost Tribe," to argue that Native Americans are
descendants of Asians, contradicting the Book of Mormon account of an
Israelite family's coming to the New World in the sixth century B.C.
and eventually flourishing into two distinct civilizations. "Decades of
serious and honest scholarship have failed to uncover credible evidence


common theories about the Book of Mormon's geography, suggesting that
it takes place near an isthmus in southern Mexico instead of across the
Western Hemisphere, as many readers previously assumed.
Within limits, the church encourages internal debate, arguing that
doubt can be an important precursor to faith. "I think the Lord expects
us to think," President Gordon B. Hinckley, the in***bent prophet who
Mormons believe leads the church through divine revelation, told
NEWSWEEK. "That which comes easily departs easily. That which comes of
struggle remains." What authorities do not accept, however, is those
who publicly doubt and actively preach against church doctrines and
leaders. In 1993 six LDS academics (known as the September Six for the
month of their disciplinary action) were tried in church courts for
issues related to spreading allegedly false historical and feminist
teachings. Five were excommunicated. In the late 1970s LDS leaders
limited access to church records, prompting charges that they were
discouraging unauthorized accounts of church history. "Some authorities
apparently preferred that we have no history except that kept by
public-relations writers," wrote Leonard J. Arrington, the then
director of the church's historical department.
The reins are looser now. The church is likely always to be more
comfortable with orthodoxy than with inquiry, and this year's
celebrations won't bring the unsolicited airing of dirty laundry (a
church-sponsored art exhibit about Smith made no mention of his
polygamy, for example). But there is no longer the sense that do***ents
are being squirreled away. LDS historian Richard Bushman, professor
emeritus of history at Columbia University and author of the new
biography "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling," recently gave two
lectures in which he tackled some of the more difficult elements of
Smith's life in front of audiences that included high-ranking LDS
leaders. "I ran the risk of making them bridle at me," he says. "But
they liked the talks. And that leads me to believe that we don't have
to bury our stuff anymore. We're able to deal with the problems and
accept them."
No single Mormon doctrine or practice has been more controversial than
polygamy. Smith said he was commanded by God to take plural wives like
Abraham and other Old Testament figures. Most historians agree that he
married his first plural wife, a 16-year-old who worked in his house,
about 1833-and some 30 more in the next decade. Not everyone believed
God sanctioned the marriages. His associate Oliver Cowdery called the
first plural marriage "a dirty, nasty, filthy affair" (Cowdery later
rejoined the church). Though the LDS Church stands by polygamy as a
divine-albeit revoked-revelation, others are suspicious of Smith's
motives. "He committed ministerial abuse," says Scherer, whose church
long denied that Smith practiced polygamy. "He figured out a way to
commit adultery and to do it sacramentally."
In Utah after Smith's death, polygamy was practiced openly: at its
height, at least 25 percent of adults in some communities were members
of polygamous households. In 1890, facing intense pressure from federal
authorities, the then prophet Wilford Woodruff issued a "manifesto"
forbidding the practice. While some breakaway groups still follow
polygamist lifestyles, the LDS Church adamantly opposes the practice.
However, LDS doctrine holds that some polygamist marriages will exist
in the celestial kingdom, the highest tier of heaven. Smith taught that
humans (who were spirits in a "pre-existence") come to earth to get a
body and to be tested. After death, everyone is placed into one of
three kingdoms, depending on his level of righteousness. Those in the
highest degree will dwell with God, their families will be eternal and
they'll even become gods themselves-as God did. Lorenzo Snow, fifth
LDS prophet, articulated doctrine when he said, "As man is, God once
was; as God is, man may be."
Because of Mormonism's unique theology, some of which challenges early
Christian creeds, many Christian denominations don't consider the LDS
Church to be Christian. "There is no rightful claim by historic Mormon
doctrine to the name Christian, because they deny almost every one of
the major fundamental doctrines of Christendom," says Norman Geisler,
founder of the Southern Evangelical Seminary. But for Latter-day
Saints, who believe in the Jesus Christ of both the New Testament and
the Book of Mormon, the cold shoulder from other denominations is
baffling. "I am devastated when people say I am not a Christian,
particularly when generally that means I am not a fourth-century
Christian," says Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the Quorum of
the Twelve Apostles.
Had Smith's revelations ended with his first beatific visions, he
probably would have passed into history unremarked, one of innumerable
seekers who believed they had found the divine. Yet something made
people leave their homes to follow him, to endure persecution and risk
death. Some of the answer is personal-his charisma. "I don't think he
ever entered a room where he didn't feel dominant," says Bushman. But
many of Smith's most committed followers-among them future prophets
Young and Woodruff-joined the church without ever having met him. "I
think that these people felt they had found the sacred in a way they'd
never known it before," says Bushman. "And they would go to the ends of
the earth for that idea."
People still do, and given the church's emphasis on the daily needs and
concerns of its members, the reasons for its success become clearer. No
matter where Mormons live, they find themselves part of a network of
mutual concern; in Mormon theology everyone is a minister of a kind,
everyone is empowered in some way to do good to others, and to have
good done unto them: it is a 21st-century covenant of caring.
The church is organized into "wards" in which members deliver meals to
new mothers, help relocating families find housing, and pack and unpack
during moves. Mormons are also linked up with other believers for
monthly visits in which the members can offer each other a friendly ear
in good times and bad, providing a sense of connection amid the
complexities of daily life. This culture of taking care of one's own
almost certainly has its roots in the many decades of persecution the
faithful endured on their long journey west-what was a curse then
has, in the fullness of time, become a blessing.
Smith founded cities, built temples and ran for president. But his most
meaningful contribution was as "prophet, revelator and seer," as he
called himself-and as the architect of a church that tends to nurture
the bonds between its members in a spirit of charity. Smith's
vision-optimistic, vigorous, a source of continuing personal growth
for all who accept its blessings-in many ways echoes the American
Dream. Millions around the world now see in their own lives what a
young man found for himself in that New York grove.

ebeddoulos

Thank you
--
Ebed Doulos ~ A Christ seeking, Bible believing, Blood bought, Truth taught
Latter-day Saint Christian.

woody brison

Lance, you failed to reproduce one little part of this article:

"© 2005 Microsoft"

Look for people in suits to come knocking

christian

A young man's vision gave rise to the Mormon Church. Joseph Smith
founded a booming faith that's confronting its past as it looks to the
future.
By Elise Soukup
Newsweek

Oct. 17, 2005 issue - Joseph Smith Jr. was struggling. It was a spring
day in 1820, in upstate New York-an era of fiery Protestant revivals
and a region so seared by evangelical fervor that it was known as the
"burned-over district." Smith was 14, from a family of small means but
grandiose expectations. His grandfather prophesied that a family member
would revolutionize the world of religion; his father had a series of
prophetic dreams about his family's salvation; his aunt became a local
celebrity by claiming that she had been healed by Jesus himself. And so
it was natural that Smith would wonder about his own faith. His mother
had just joined the Presbyterians; should he? Or should he stay outside
the mainline churches the way his father had?
Turning to the family Bible, Smith came to a verse in James that struck
him powerfully: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God ... and
it shall be given him." Inspired, Smith went into a grove of trees to
pray. As he began, a dark force seized him-until, Smith said, God
himself intervened. "At this moment of great alarm," Smith recalled, "I
saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the
sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me." God and Jesus
appeared and delivered a startling message: he shouldn't join any of
the churches of the world, for they had long ago fallen away from
Christ's true Gospel.
This experience, known as the First Vision by Smith's followers,
ultimately gave the world a new faith: Mormonism, or the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which now has more than 12 million
members and, thanks to the vigorous missionary tradition started by
Smith himself, is one of the fastest-growing Christian denominations in
the United States.
Prophet and polygamist, mesmerizer and rabble-rouser, saint and sinner:
Smith is arguably the most influential native-born figure in American
religious history, and is almost certainly the most fascinating. This
year marks the 200th anniversary of his birth, and the bicentennial is
prompting fresh and searching looks at Smith, the faith he built and
the legacy he left behind. The church is opening Smith's life and
contributions to research-a new stance for an institution whose early
experience with persecution has often made it defensive and secretive.
This summer, Brigham Young University hosted a six-week multifaith
seminar, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and
Smith's papers are now being consolidated and published.
Smith's times are much like our own, and his story has a particular
resonance in the first years of the 21st century. Like us, he lived in
an era of evangelical energy, deep patriotism, economic transformation,
sharp political divisions and anxiety about foreign forces' inflicting
harm on the homeland. Smith's teachings placed America at the center of
existence at just the moment in our history-in the wake of the
successful War of 1812-when nationalism was on the rise.

presidential prospect, to Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the
Senate, Mormons are increasingly visible in different spheres of
American society, particularly in politics and the Fortune 500.
Traditionally conservative but not really part of the religious right,
the church opposes *** marriage and abortion (unless the mother's life
is in danger or in cases of **** or ******). In the emotional case of
Terri Schiavo earlier this year, however, the church diverged from many
conservative Christians when it responded to news media by saying,
"Members should not feel obligated to extend mortal life by means that
are unreasonable." There is also room for policy differences among
public figures who happen to be Mormon: Romney opposes fetal-stem-cell
research, while Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah supports it. Meanwhile, the
faith's traditional views on morality and the family are fueling its
rapid growth in the developing world, where, despite a broad feeling of
global anti-Americanism, the church is expanding even more rapidly than
it is within the United States.
And it all began with the ****age Joseph Smith. For Mormons, Smith's
importance is singular. "He stands alone as a source of doctrine," says
Dallin H. Oaks, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, one of the
church's highest governing bodies. The characteristic features of the
LDS Church-sacred temple rites, personal revelation, tithing and a
history of polygamy-come directly from Smith. So does the emphasis on
high moral standards, family ties and community service: Mormonism
appeals to the fundamental human impulse for connection, security and a
promise of rewards not only on earth but beyond time and space.
Smith knew that his testimony required a leap of faith. "I don't blame
anyone for not believing my history," he said shortly before his death.
"If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it
myself." Three years after his first vision, Smith reported that an
angel named Moroni, an ancient prophet from the Americas, told him God
wanted him to bring forth new scripture-a set of gold plates
containing an account of Jesus during a post-resurrection visit to
America as well as a history of an ancient Israelite people there. The
plates were buried in a hill near Smith's house and were accompanied by
a Urim and Thummim-stones attached to a breastplate that were
supposed to help him translate the text from "reformed Egyptian," an
unknown tongue, into English.
His translation, known as the Book of Mormon, gave the sect its
nickname and brought him national attention-but still didn't give him
the "true church" he yearned for. In 1829 Smith was visited by
resurrected prophets and apostles who, he said, finally conferred on
him the authority to re-establish Christ's church on earth. He
officially founded that church in Fayette, N.Y., on April 6, 1830. His
missionaries, sent to surrounding communities, had luck in Kirtland,
Ohio: they baptized Sidney Rigdon, a prominent Campbellite minister,
and some 100 of his congregation, virtually doubling church membership.
During 1831, Smith asked his followers to move to Kirtland or to
Jackson County, Mo., which he said was the Biblical site of the Garden
of Eden and the future land of Zion.
This sudden influx of believers was unwelcome in Missouri, where the
Saints were seen as a cultural, political and economic threat. During
the next five years, the Missouri Saints were driven by mobs from
Jackson County to Clay County to Far West, Mo. As prejudice increased,
Missouri Gov. Lilburn Boggs issued an "extermination order" in 1838,
and Smith and his followers fled to Nauvoo, Ill. Smith's increasing
political activism there (he was commander of the local militia,
justice of the peace and a candidate for U.S. president) inflamed
Nauvoo's non-Mormons, who saw the makings of a dangerous theocracy.
After Smith ordered an antagonistic printing press destroyed, he was
jailed. "I am going like a lamb to the slaughter," he said, sensing his
fate. "But I am calm as a summer's morning. I have a conscience void of
offense towards God, and towards all men." On June 27, 1844, a mob
stormed the jail, fatally shooting Smith and his brother Hyrum and
injuring two other LDS men. Smith was 38.
His church survived (largely because follower Brigham Young led most of
the remaining Saints west to Utah) and, 161 years later, thrives-yet
remains mysterious to many. Central tenets of Mormonism seem
confusing-even literally incredible-to those outside the faith. An
angel named Moroni? "Plural" marriage? A resurrected Jesus visiting the
New World? These are questions posed by potential converts, and also by
historians and scientists testing Smith's claims.
Moses' burning bush isn't around to be carbon-dated or dissected, but
Smith and his followers left behind do***entation that can be subjected
to modern historical ****ysis. The record reveals a complicated man.
The church's early converts, many of whom learned about it from
missionaries, were sometimes shocked when they met Smith in person. He
was uneducated, he lost his temper, he enjoyed power-and perhaps most
startling for converts was the fact that, on occasion, his ventures
failed. Simply put, he didn't always seem like a prophet. "It was very
hard, even in his own times, to remain neutral on him," says Mark
Scherer, church historian for Community of Christ, a branch that
followed Smith's son Joseph III instead of Brigham Young after Smith's
death. "Either you thought the guy walked on water or you thought the
guy was a huge fraud." Smith was involved in dozens of lawsuits. By the
end of his life, he had accrued some 30 wives, massive debt and
hundreds of enemies. "I never told you I was perfect," he told his
followers. "But there is no error in the revelations which I have
taught."
That's a matter of debate. Last year, molecular biologist and former
LDS bishop Simon G. Southerton applied available DNA studies in his
book, "Losing a Lost Tribe," to argue that Native Americans are
descendants of Asians, contradicting the Book of Mormon account of an
Israelite family's coming to the New World in the sixth century B.C.
and eventually flourishing into two distinct civilizations. "Decades of
serious and honest scholarship have failed to uncover credible evidence


common theories about the Book of Mormon's geography, suggesting that
it takes place near an isthmus in southern Mexico instead of across the
Western Hemisphere, as many readers previously assumed.
Within limits, the church encourages internal debate, arguing that
doubt can be an important precursor to faith. "I think the Lord expects
us to think," President Gordon B. Hinckley, the in***bent prophet who
Mormons believe leads the church through divine revelation, told
NEWSWEEK. "That which comes easily departs easily. That which comes of
struggle remains." What authorities do not accept, however, is those
who publicly doubt and actively preach against church doctrines and
leaders. In 1993 six LDS academics (known as the September Six for the
month of their disciplinary action) were tried in church courts for
issues related to spreading allegedly false historical and feminist
teachings. Five were excommunicated. In the late 1970s LDS leaders
limited access to church records, prompting charges that they were
discouraging unauthorized accounts of church history. "Some authorities
apparently preferred that we have no history except that kept by
public-relations writers," wrote Leonard J. Arrington, the then
director of the church's historical department.
The reins are looser now. The church is likely always to be more
comfortable with orthodoxy than with inquiry, and this year's
celebrations won't bring the unsolicited airing of dirty laundry (a
church-sponsored art exhibit about Smith made no mention of his
polygamy, for example). But there is no longer the sense that do***ents
are being squirreled away. LDS historian Richard Bushman, professor
emeritus of history at Columbia University and author of the new
biography "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling," recently gave two
lectures in which he tackled some of the more difficult elements of
Smith's life in front of audiences that included high-ranking LDS
leaders. "I ran the risk of making them bridle at me," he says. "But
they liked the talks. And that leads me to believe that we don't have
to bury our stuff anymore. We're able to deal with the problems and
accept them."
No single Mormon doctrine or practice has been more controversial than
polygamy. Smith said he was commanded by God to take plural wives like
Abraham and other Old Testament figures. Most historians agree that he
married his first plural wife, a 16-year-old who worked in his house,
about 1833-and some 30 more in the next decade. Not everyone believed
God sanctioned the marriages. His associate Oliver Cowdery called the
first plural marriage "a dirty, nasty, filthy affair" (Cowdery later
rejoined the church). Though the LDS Church stands by polygamy as a
divine-albeit revoked-revelation, others are suspicious of Smith's
motives. "He committed ministerial abuse," says Scherer, whose church
long denied that Smith practiced polygamy. "He figured out a way to
commit adultery and to do it sacramentally."
In Utah after Smith's death, polygamy was practiced openly: at its
height, at least 25 percent of adults in some communities were members
of polygamous households. In 1890, facing intense pressure from federal
authorities, the then prophet Wilford Woodruff issued a "manifesto"
forbidding the practice. While some breakaway groups still follow
polygamist lifestyles, the LDS Church adamantly opposes the practice.
However, LDS doctrine holds that some polygamist marriages will exist
in the celestial kingdom, the highest tier of heaven. Smith taught that
humans (who were spirits in a "pre-existence") come to earth to get a
body and to be tested. After death, everyone is placed into one of
three kingdoms, depending on his level of righteousness. Those in the
highest degree will dwell with God, their families will be eternal and
they'll even become gods themselves-as God did. Lorenzo Snow, fifth
LDS prophet, articulated doctrine when he said, "As man is, God once
was; as God is, man may be."
Because of Mormonism's unique theology, some of which challenges early
Christian creeds, many Christian denominations don't consider the LDS
Church to be Christian. "There is no rightful claim by historic Mormon
doctrine to the name Christian, because they deny almost every one of
the major fundamental doctrines of Christendom," says Norman Geisler,
founder of the Southern Evangelical Seminary. But for Latter-day
Saints, who believe in the Jesus Christ of both the New Testament and
the Book of Mormon, the cold shoulder from other denominations is
baffling. "I am devastated when people say I am not a Christian,
particularly when generally that means I am not a fourth-century
Christian," says Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the Quorum of
the Twelve Apostles.
Had Smith's revelations ended with his first beatific visions, he
probably would have passed into history unremarked, one of innumerable
seekers who believed they had found the divine. Yet something made
people leave their homes to follow him, to endure persecution and risk
death. Some of the answer is personal-his charisma. "I don't think he
ever entered a room where he didn't feel dominant," says Bushman. But
many of Smith's most committed followers-among them future prophets
Young and Woodruff-joined the church without ever having met him. "I
think that these people felt they had found the sacred in a way they'd
never known it before," says Bushman. "And they would go to the ends of
the earth for that idea."
People still do, and given the church's emphasis on the daily needs and
concerns of its members, the reasons for its success become clearer. No
matter where Mormons live, they find themselves part of a network of
mutual concern; in Mormon theology everyone is a minister of a kind,
everyone is empowered in some way to do good to others, and to have
good done unto them: it is a 21st-century covenant of caring.
The church is organized into "wards" in which members deliver meals to
new mothers, help relocating families find housing, and pack and unpack
during moves. Mormons are also linked up with other believers for
monthly visits in which the members can offer each other a friendly ear
in good times and bad, providing a sense of connection amid the
complexities of daily life. This culture of taking care of one's own
almost certainly has its roots in the many decades of persecution the
faithful endured on their long journey west-what was a curse then
has, in the fullness of time, become a blessing.
Smith founded cities, built temples and ran for president. But his most
meaningful contribution was as "prophet, revelator and seer," as he
called himself-and as the architect of a church that tends to nurture
the bonds between its members in a spirit of charity. Smith's
vision-optimistic, vigorous, a source of continuing personal growth
for all who accept its blessings-in many ways echoes the American
Dream. Millions around the world now see in their own lives what a
young man found for himself in that New York grove.

ebeddoulos

Thank you
--
Ebed Doulos ~ A Christ seeking, Bible believing, Blood bought, Truth taught
Latter-day Saint Christian.

christian

Woody Woodpecker:

Will the people in suits be wearing white shirts with black ties with
bicycles as transportation?

http://www.truthandgrace.com/mormonmission.htm

woody brison

Lance, you failed to reproduce one little part of this article:

"© 2005 Microsoft"

Look for people in suits to come knocking

christian

Woody Woodpecker:

Will the people in suits be wearing white shirts with black ties with
bicycles as transportation?

http://www.truthandgrace.com/mormonmission.htm