Judaism and Mormonism

Mormonism teaches that its adherents are either direct descendants of the House of Israel or adopted into it. As such, Mormons regard Jews as a covenant people of God and hold them in high esteem. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the largest church in Mormonism, is philo-Semitic in its doctrine. Studies have shown that American Jews generally view Mormons more positively than any other religious group, despite often voting on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Explanations for Jews' high regard for Mormons is speculated to come both from their solidarity with other historically abused religious minorities and the philo-semitism of Mormon theology. Comparison of Mormonism and Judaism- Nature of God: God in Judaism is strictly monotheistic, an absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence. The Hebrew Bible presents Yahweh as the creator of the world and as the only power controlling history. The Hebrew Bible commands the Israelites not to worship other gods, but only YHWH, the God who brought them out of Egypt (Ex. 20:1-4; Deut. 5:6-7). The Babylonian Talmud references other, "foreign gods" as non-existent entities to whom humans mistakenly ascribe reality and power. Mormon theology maintains that God the Father (Heavenly Father), Jesus Christ (his son), and the Holy Ghost are three separate and distinct beings in person and in substance, yet one in purpose and glory. James E. Faust expounded this LDS Church doctrine, when he said, The First Vision confirms the fact there are three separate Gods: God the Father—Elohim, to whom we address our prayers; Jesus the Christ—Jehovah; and the Holy Ghost—the Comforter, through whose spirit we may know the truth of all things. Together, the three comprise the Godhead, unified in purpose and heart. God the Father and Jesus Christ have tangible, perfected bodies of flesh and bone. Humans are literal children of a Father in Heaven, and through the atonement of Jesus Christ they can return to him and become gods. In his King Follet discourse, Joseph Smith taught: God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens. That is the great secret .... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and to know ... that he was once a man like us. Here, then, is eternal life—to know that only wise and true God, and you have got to learn how to become Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you. ... God himself, the father of us all dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ. Jesus: Jesus is not mentioned in Jewish records of the time, and no Jewish religious practice recognizes Jesus as a divine figure. Jewish responsa to Jesus take two paths, addressing the issue of his divinity and his identification as the Jewish messiah. With regard to the divinity of Jesus, a basic tenet of Judaism is that God is one; therefore a trinity, even of divine persons, can have no place in the Jewish belief system. Jews also do not believe that God has a physical manifestation. As a result, God does not have a physical body and the idea that God might have physical, "begotten" children is therefore not possible. In addition, Jews believe God is the only being to whom we should offer prayer. With regard to the question of Jesus as the messiah, there have been many claimants to the title in Jewish history, and none are regarded as having fulfilled the requirements of that role. Jesus is not considered differently from any of the others. What individual Jews think of Jesus ranges from "never existed," to "irrelevant," to "actually Mithras," to "Jesus never claimed to be a messiah or a prophet." In any case, however, the Jewish messiah was never expected to be, or described as, anything but an ordinary person. According to Mormon beliefs, Jesus Christ was the Only Begotten Son of God the Father. Latter-day Saints identify Jesus with the Old Testament Jehovah, not with God the Father, indicating that the Israelites' covenant with Jehovah was actually with Jesus. Due to Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection, all mankind is saved from death and will rise again and receive a perfected physical body. Furthermore, the atonement satisfies the demands of justice; grace, forgiveness, and mercy (i.e. salvation) are extended to all who accept Christ as their personal Savior and become his lifelong disciples. Mormons also believe that there is only one God to whom prayer is offered, that is God the Father. Mormons do not pray to Jesus. In Latter-day Saint beliefs, the atonement goes so far as to cover everyone who is doing his best to be good (including non-Christians), eventually even rescuing the spirits of the wicked from hell. The type of reward they receive, however, depends on the level of their acceptance and obedience. Prophecy: Judaism holds that prophecy ceased after the death of Malachi, and will be restored with the Messianic Age, whereas Mormons believe that revelation was present during the dispensation of Jesus, and that through Joseph Smith prophecy was restored to the earth from an age of apostasy. Thus they believe that Smith and his successors are prophets. Mormons believe that, in addition to the various prophecies from the New Testament, divine prophecy has been restored beginning with Joseph Smith. Additionally, during the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, Jesus, Moses, Elijah, and Elias appeared to Smith and Oliver Cowdery, giving them authority. They committed to Smith and Cowdery the keys of the gathering of Israel from the four parts of the earth, the leading of the ten tribal families from the north, the administering of the keys of the Abrahamic dispensation, and the keys of sealing powers (D&C 110:3–4, 7). Temples: Solomon's Temple held the Ark of the Covenant in a room of the temple referred to as the Holy of Holies. The presiding high priest would enter into this room, said to contain the Shekhina (the presence of God), once a year on Yom Kippur. The LDS Church's Salt Lake Temple contains a Holy of Holies wherein the church's president—acting as the Presiding High Priest—enters to fulfill the relationship between the High Priest of Israel and God, in accordance with the LDS interpretation of the Book of Exodus (Exodus 25:22). Hence, this Holy of Holies is considered a modern cognate to the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle and Temple in Jerusalem. Of the 146 temples operated by the LDS Church today, only the Salt Lake Temple has a Holy of Holies; previous to the completion of the Salt Lake Temple in 1893, the Manti Temple housed a Holy of Holies for the use of the President of the Church. While the room itself still exists in the Manti Temple, it was used as a sealing room for marriages for time, but since it is such a small room, it is now only open for viewing by temple patrons. Latter-day Saints believe that the Jews will one day rebuild a Temple in Jerusalem, and that the Jews will restore the practice of rituals of the Law of Moses within that Temple. Priesthood and clergy: Judaism holds that literal male descendants of Aaron are Kohanim, or priests. As well, other literal male descendants of Levi are Leviim, members of the Hebrew tribe of Levi who form a different order of priesthood. Kohanim and Leviim have specific religious rights, duties, and (in the case of Kohanim) restrictions. The daughter of a Kohen (a bat-Kohen) also has specific rights and restrictions, but does not pass on the status of Kohen to her offspring (unless their father is also a Kohen). Judaism recognizes no other forms of priesthood. Rabbis are not necessarily Kohanim; rather they are Jews who are particularly learned in Jewish law and practice. Although not required, it is typical for a congregation to have at least one rabbi. While it is typical for rabbis to act similarly to spiritual leaders in other religions—delivering a weekly sermon, visiting the sick, officiating at weddings and other life events, and so on—a rabbi's most important function in his or her congregation is interpreting and teaching Jewish law. Training to become a rabbi includes extensive education in Jewish law and practice, and may also include education in Jewish history and philosophy. In general, a congregation will hire a rabbi after reviewing applications and interviewing several candidates—there is no central body that assigns a rabbi to a congregation. Orthodox Judaism accepts only male rabbis. Reform Judaism ordained its first woman rabbi in 1972, Reconstructionist Judaism in 1974, and Conservative Judaism in 1985. The Reform and Reconstructionist movements also accept openly gay and lesbian rabbis. Conservative Judaism (typically a more conservative branch than the Reform or Reconstructionist movements) moved to allow individual congregations to choose whether or not to accept both gay and lesbian rabbis and same-sex commitment ceremonies in December 2006. There are no restrictions in any branch of Judaism with regard to race or descent. The LDS Church allows "literal descendants of Aaron" the legal right to preside as bishop, when so directed by the First Presidency. (See Doctrine and Covenants, Section 68). When no LDS descendants of Aaron are available, Melchizedek priesthood holders preside instead. The orders of the priesthood are the Aaronic, modeled after the priesthood of Aaron the Levite, the first high priest of the Hebrews, and his descendants (Kohen); and the Melchizedek priesthood, modeled after the authority of the prophet Melchizedek. The LDS Church does not recognize a patriarchal order of priesthood separate from the Melchizedek priesthood, and considers that both the Patriarchal and Aaronic priesthoods are subsets of the Melchizedek. Members of the Tribe of Levi are said to have held the Levitical priesthood by right of birth before Jesus, whereas after Jesus, holders of the Aaronic priesthood have received it "by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands". The Doctrine and Covenants, however, contains an indication that the Aaronic priesthood is only available until the Tribe of Levi again "makes an offering unto the Lord in righteousness". The Aaronic priesthood is now typically given at the age of twelve. Just as the priest's and the high priest's lines were subsets of the tribe of Levi, parallels may be drawn between levels of authority within the offices of the Latter-day Saint Aaronic priesthood and offices under the Law: deacons, corresponding to Levites; teachers, corresponding to Kohathites; priests, corresponding to the priestly line; and bishops, corresponding to the Aaronic High Priest's descendants (not to be confused with the High Priesthood of Melchizedek). The LDS Church propagates an all-male priesthood. All worthy LDS males receive the Aaronic Priesthood at age twelve. At age eighteen, worthy members of the Aaronic priesthood are usually ordained as elders in the Melchizedek Priesthood. Depending on the needs of a church, an elder may be ordained a high priest, patriarch, seventy, or apostle of the Melchizedek Priesthood. Males of African descent were prohibited from receiving the priesthood until 1978, at which time the LDS Church announced that its leaders had received a revelation permitting all worthy males to receive the priesthood. Some Mormon fundamentalist sects reject this revelation. Some Latter Day Saint churches, including the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), have adopted the use of women in clerical roles, which is not accepted by the LDS Church. Diet: The laws of kashrut ("keeping kosher") are the Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with halakha (Jewish law) is termed kosher, and food not in accord with Jewish law is termed treifah or treif. Kosher laws address what kinds of animals can be eaten, and requires separation of milk and meat, that vegetables be thoroughly inspected for insects, that animals be ritually slaughtered by certified persons, and that many food products be produced under rabbinical supervision. Produce of the Land of Israel has further restrictions. Jews are expected or required to drink wine on certain occasions. Wine is typically consumed at Sabbath evening meal, after a special blessing. In addition, the drinking of wine is an important part of the observation of two major Jewish holidays—Passover and Purim. Mormons believe the Word of Wisdom to be modern revelation similar to the laws of kashrut. The revelation, which is found in LDS D&C 89, contains three parts; a list of substances such as wine, strong drink, and tobacco that should not be used (89:1-9), a list of foods that should be used, sometimes with certain limitations (89:10-17), and a promise to those who follow the guidelines (89:18-21). Among the substances which the revelation indicates should not be used, the first is "wine or strong drink", which the revelation says should not be drunk except for wine, which may be used as part of the sacrament (the Mormon communion). The revelation gives the further precaution that if wine is used, it should be pure wine and "of your own make" or made by fellow church members. The LDS Church has done away with wine altogether, with water replacing wine in the sacrament, according to a revelation on the subject, section (27), Members are instructed to not drink any alcoholic beverages. The revelation also advises against the use of tobacco and "hot drinks" (which was explained by Joseph Smith and his associates as meaning coffee and tea). Tobacco is believed to be "not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man, but is an herb for bruises and all sick cattle, to be used with judgment and skill." The list of foods and substances which the revelation encourages includes wholesome herbs, fruit, and meat; however, meat is to be eaten sparingly, if at all, and ideally only in winter, famine, or "excess hunger". Other references (1 Timothy 4:1-4 and Section 49:18-19,21) expand on meat and flesh. The revelation also encourages the use of grains, particularly wheat. Barley is also encouraged for use in making "mild drinks." Sabbath: Shabbat, lasting from sunset Friday night to the appearance of three stars on Saturday night, celebrates God's creation with a day of rest that commemorates God's day of rest upon the completion of creation. It plays an important role in Jewish practice and is the subject of a large body of religious law. The most notable law with regard to observation of Jewish Sabbath is the requirement to abstain from creative work of any kind (the most widely known implication of this being the prohibition against kindling a fire). Observant Jews will prepare food ahead of time to avoid having to cook on Sabbath, and observant Orthodox Jews will avoid turning on electric lights (which "creates" an electric circuit) or driving. While almost all work is forbidden on Sabbath, acts of leisure and pleasure are appropriate, as long as they do not violate any proscription with regard to doing work. A special meal is eaten (including wine and meat, if possible, even if the household cannot afford these luxuries the rest of the week). Married couples are encouraged to engage in sexual relations. The Sabbath for Latter-day Saints is Sunday. This is explained in the LDS Bible Dictionary as: "After the ascension of Christ, the members of the Church, whether Jews or gentiles, kept holy the first day of the week (the Lord's day) as a weekly commemoration of our Lord's resurrection (Acts 20: 7; 1 Cor. 16: 2; Rev. 1: 10); and by degrees the observance of the seventh day was discontinued." There are some notable exceptions, such as in Israel and some Arab countries, where Latter-day Saints celebrate Sabbath on Saturday or on Friday. The focus of Sabbath for Latter-day Saints is as a day of rest from worldly concerns and endeavors and to concentrate on spiritual matters such as attending church meetings, scripture study, visiting the sick and infirm, and family activities. Members are further encouraged not to make any purchases on the Sabbath, unless an emergency demands otherwise. Members are also to fast on the first Sabbath of the month from the night before Sabbath until the evening of Sabbath. This period of fasting is used to pray and reflect on their own relationship with God. The money that would have been spent on the two missed meals is usually donated as a fast offering to the church. These fast offerings are dedicated to feed the poor and the needy. Scriptures: Judaism's most holy book is the Torah. Virtually all Jewish congregations own at least one sefer Torah (copy of the Torah, hand-calligraphed on parchment) of which a portion is read aloud every week. The Torah, the Nevi'im (the Prophets) and Ketuvim (the Writings), make up the Tanakh. The Tanakh is explained and supplemented by the Talmud, which is made up of two parts: the Mishnah (Oral Torah) and the Gemara (rabbinic commentaries and analysis). More recent work explaining Jewish law includes the Shulkhan Arukh, which was written in the 16th century. Traditionally, Jews believe that the Torah was given to Moses at Mount Sinai, to be passed on to the Jewish people. Scrolls of the Torah are copied by hand by specially trained scribes. Joseph Smith said, "I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book." Thus, the study of The Book of Mormon is emphasized by LDS leaders and teachers, but they also encourage the study of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and believe in literal fulfillment of Biblical prophecies and covenants, including the Abrahamic covenant. The eighth Article of Faith states, "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." In addition to these two books, in keeping with the meaning of the ninth Article of Faith, the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price are also considered canonical scripture. According to Mormon doctrine, the Book of Mormon was originally written in reformed Egyptian by a group of the House of Israel who had migrated from the area of Jerusalem. The book was translated by Joseph Smith "by the gift and power of God". The Book of Mormon is in a style that closely resembles the language used in the King James Version of the Bible. Afterlife: Jewish beliefs with regard to an afterlife are highly variable. Physical resurrection of the dead at the time of the Mashiach is a traditional belief (with some European Jews being buried facing Jerusalem, so they would be ready on that day). Other Jewish sages promoted the idea of a purely spiritual resurrection. Adherents of Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism are more likely to believe in a general Messianic Age than in a physical Moshiach, with or without resurrection. There is also the possibility of reincarnation in some cases. In general, religious Jews believe that the soul undergoes a period of reflection and penance after death, before moving on to whatever comes next. This period does not exceed 12 months, and Jewish mourners will say special prayers for the dead during this time, to ease the departed soul's passage. Heaven and Hell as they are understood in Christian theology are roughly analogous to the Jewish Olam habah and Gehenna, with certain major differences. Jewish faiths generally agree that reward in the afterlife or world to come, whatever its form, is not exclusive to Jews, and that punishment in the afterlife is not eternal but corrective. Mormonism teaches of a physical resurrection at the time of the second coming of Christ. It is held by the LDS Church that between the time of an individual's death and the second coming (when the individual will be resurrected), the individual inhabits an intermediary afterlife in the Spirit world, corresponding to Tartarus. The nature of this afterlife depends on the individual. Deceased persons who lived good lives and repented during their life of any major sins they had committed are said to inhabit Paradise. However, spirits inhabiting spirit paradise may also receive an assignment to do "missionary work" to other souls in paradise or to the souls in spirit prison, the condition in which Mormons believe the spirits of the "rebellious and ungodly" reside. The term "spirit prison" is sometimes used to describe the condition of any spirit who is awaiting being taught the gospel or having the opportunity to accept ordinances that allow them to progress in gaining further knowledge during their time in the spirit world. Mormons hold that missionary work in the spirit world was started by Christ during the days between his death and resurrection (Doctrine and Covenants 138). As Smith's personal writings and Mormon scriptures indicate, it is also possible that if one follows the commandments, then one may be worthy of becoming a literal god and assist the Father in "bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39). Gospel Principles, an official book of the LDS Church, states that God the Father was a mortal on another earth the same as Jesus Christ was, and like Jesus was resurrected. Following that example, Latter-day Saints hope to attain same godhood status, while eternally worshiping the Father and the Son (Gospel Principles, chapter 47). In 1977, church president Spencer W. Kimball said, concerning this doctrine of exaltation: "We remember the numerous scriptures which, concentrated in a single line, were said by a former prophet, Lorenzo Snow: 'As man is, God once was; and as God is, man may become.' This is a power available to us as we reach perfection and receive the experience and power to create, to organize, to control native elements. How limited we are now! We have no power to force the grass to grow, the plants to emerge, the seeds to develop. Mormonism teaches the existence of the three heavens or kingdoms of heaven, and three "degrees of glory" within the celestial world, as well as outer darkness, a "kingdom of no glory". Outer darkness is considered to be the second spiritual death, for those few souls who know a fullness of truth and openly rebel and fight against God. The other levels have been labeled the telestial kingdom, the terrestrial kingdom, and the celestial kingdom, with the celestial kingdom itself consisting of "three heavens or degrees" (see Doctrine and Covenants 131). This afterlife is what Mormons believe comes after an individual's resurrection and judgment. Some individuals will be resurrected before or at the second coming of Jesus, while others will be resurrected years later. The LDS faith believes that all three kingdoms, celestial, terrestrial and telestial, are kingdoms of glory. They are all places of glory suitable to the individuals that will reside in them, based on the desires of their hearts. Mormonism teaches that baptism performed by the proper authority is required to enter the celestial kingdom. Conversion and proselytization: As a general rule, Jews refrain from active proselytizing, and some denominations discourage conversion. In Judaism, conversion is not a requirement or prerequisite to goodness or salvation, and if a person truly wishes to convert, they will seek out a community and rabbi they feel comfortable with and begin the process there. Conversion to Judaism involves extensive instruction in Jewish law, renouncing of other religious affiliations, immersion in a mikveh, and, for males, circumcision. If the potential convert is already circumcised, a procedure known as hatafat dam brit is performed, in which blood is drawn from the penis. Orthodox Judaism also requires acceptance of the entire code of Jewish Law. The LDS Church has a widespread proselytizing program, with its missionaries encouraged to invite others to convert and be baptised. Baptism carries with it not only membership in the church, but also, according to Mormon belief, the blessings of the covenants given to the House of Israel. In order to be baptized, individuals must agree to abide by the Word of Wisdom and the law of chastity, agree to pay tithes, attend church meetings, and declare that they have repented of their sins. Like most Christian churches, Mormonism does not require circumcision, denying its necessity as a covenant or token of covenant. Water purification- Mikveh: To achieve a state of ritual purification, observant Jews immerse in a Mikveh. Certain kinds of utensils and other objects are also immersed (this practice should not be confused with the physical cleaning required for kashrut). The most common use of the Mikveh is the practice of immersion after menstruation, miscarriage, or childbirth. This immersion marks the end of a period of sexual separation, and the woman's rejoining with her husband. It is also required that a woman immerse before her wedding. Some men use the Mikvah regularly, either daily, weekly, or before Yom Kippur. This is especially true in Hasidic circles. It is also required for Conversion into Orthodox Judaism for both sexes. Jewish laws with regard to Mikveh are extensive. The most notable aspect of these laws is that a Mikveh must be filled with "living water," namely, water that has come directly from the earth in the form of caught rainwater or spring water (water flowing in a river or stream is also acceptable in some cases). Once water has been carried in a vessel or run through a pipe, it is no longer considered "living." Additionally, immersion must be complete (including the head and hair), and there can be nothing between the water and the person immersing—not only clothing, but also makeup and jewelry are removed. The common practice is to wash thoroughly before immersion (to remove any dirt or dead skin on the body), and to enter the Mikveh while still wet (to avoid any air bubbles that might be trapped on the skin or in the hair). Unlike baptism, immersion is a private event—unless a physical handicap makes it impossible, the person undergoing immersion enters the Mikveh alone, and says any appropriate prayers themselves. When performed as part of Conversion to Orthodox Judaism, the act of immersion needs to be witnessed by a Beth-din of three Rabbis; however, the person immerses him/herself. "Symbolic" immersions, where only drops of water are applied, where "carried" water is used, or where the immerser wears any kind of clothing or underclothing, are not considered valid immersions under Jewish law. Jews do not practice or recognize any kind of "Proxy" immersion, where one person immerses in the place of another person (living or dead). Baptism: Baptism is a water purification ritual where one is immersed in water. The practice of purification via immersion exists in many cultures. The word baptize derives from the Greek word βάπτειν (the infinitive; also listed as the 1st person singular present active indicative βαπτίζω, which loosely means "to dip, bathe, or wash"). The Christian ritual of baptism traces back to the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, who the Bible says baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. Mormon belief holds that baptisms were performed in Adam and Eve's day. Baptism is a required ordinance and ritual cleansing process when joining the LDS Church, and is considered to be a purification process in one's conversion. In the event of one's excommunication or adoption of another faith, individuals are required to be rebaptized when returning to the church. Baptism is also seen as symbolic of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ with the water representing the grave. After the one being baptized is determined to be worthy through an interview with their priesthood leader, he is dressed in white clothing, symbolizing the purification of the baptism. The ordinance is performed by a priest of the Aaronic priesthood or any holder of the Melchizedek priesthood. Mormon children are not baptized until they turn eight years old, which is considered to be the age of accountability. In the past, it was common for Mormons to be re-baptized for health, or as a re-affirmation of belief. This practice slowly diminished, and is no longer practiced by any of the mainstream denominations. Washing and anointing: In Mormonism, washing and anointing is an ordinance that symbolizes ritual cleansing and anointing to be a king or queen in heaven. In the LDS Church, the ritual is performed in temples. The ordinance of washing and anointing symbolizes the ritual cleansing of priests that took place at Israel's Tabernacle, the temple of Solomon, and later temples in Jerusalem (see Exod. 28:40–42, 29:4–9, 29:20–21, 29:29–30, 30:18–21). Marriage- Polygamy in Judaism: The Hebrew Bible recounts several cases of polygamy among the ancient Hebrews. One source of polygamy was the practice of levirate marriage, wherein a man was required to marry and support his brother's widow. Ashkenazi Jewry has not practiced polygamy since Rabbenu Gershom's ban in the 11th century "except in exceptional circumstances requiring obtaining in advance the permission of 100 rabbis." Some Sephardi and Mizrahi groups, in particular those from Yemen and Iran (where polygamy is the cultural norm), only discontinued polygamy much more recently, for non-religious reasons. When these groups immigrated to the State of Israel after its 1948 creation, existing polygamous families were "grandfathered" in. Polygamous marriage is banned in the State of Israel, however, and no new polygamous marriages are permitted among those groups. Polygamy in Mormonism: Early in its history, the LDS Church practiced polygamy in North America and referred to it as "plural marriage". The practice was introduced by Joseph Smith and was canonized in scripture as being from "the Lord thy God ... the Alpha and Omega" (Doctrine and Covenants 132:1, 2, 66). It was publicly acknowledged by the church in 1852. The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ, rejected polygamy and declared themselves an independent church in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith III, the eldest son of the founding leader. The practice of polygamy led to opposition to the LDS Church and the enacting of anti-polygamy laws in the United States. (The U.S. Congress made the practice illegal in U.S. territories in 1862.) Many members of the church fled to Canada or Mexico in an attempt to set up communities free from prosecution. Although Latter-day Saints believed that plural marriage was protected by the United States Constitution as a religious practice, opponents used it to delay Utah statehood until 1896. Increasingly harsh anti-polygamy legislation stripped church members of their rights as citizens, revoked the right to vote for LDS women, disincorporated the Church, and permitted the seizure of church property until the church formally discontinued the practice with the 1890 Manifesto. National attention in the United States focused on polygamy in the church in the early-20th century during the House hearings on Representative-elect B. H. Roberts and Senate hearings on Senator-elect Reed Smoot (the Smoot Hearings). This caused church president Joseph F. Smith to issue the "Second Manifesto" against polygamy in 1904. Since that time, it has been church policy to excommunicate any member either practicing or openly advocating the practice of polygamy. The ban on polygamy resulted in a schism within the LDS Church, with various Mormon fundamentalist groups leaving the church to continue the practice of polygamy. Collectively, such groups now comprise less than three tenths of one percent of the total membership in the Latter Day Saint movement. Polygamy among these groups persists today in Utah and neighboring states, as well as among isolated individuals with no organized church affiliation. The largest church supporting polygamy is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, believed to have about 10,000 members. According to one source there are as many as 37,000 fundamentalist Mormons, with less than half of them living in polygamous households. Most of the polygamy is believed to be restricted to about a dozen extended groups of polygamous Mormon fundamentalists. Divisions: Judaism encompasses a spectrum of observance with several recognized branches: Hasidic Judaism, Haredi Judaism (often referred to as "ultra-Orthodox"), Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, and Humanistic Judaism. Further divisions exist within the divisions. Approximately 98 percent of Latter Day Saint adherents are members of the LDS Church; however, there are several other groups, such as the Community of Christ and numerous smaller churches within Mormon fundamentalism. The second largest group, the Community of Christ, refer to themselves as Latter Day Saints but not as Mormons, though they do continue to use the Book of Mormon as scripture. The doctrine of the Community of Christ doctrine has changed markedly since their reorganization by Joseph Smith III. Two major changes have been the acceptance of the trinitarian concept of God and ordaining women to the priesthood. Fundamentalist Mormons, in contrast, claim adherence to traditional beliefs and practices that have been rejected or changed by the LDS Church. Mormon claims of House of Israel descent: Mormons consider themselves to be the descendants of the Biblical Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (also known as "Israel") or adoptees into the House of Israel, and contemporary Mormons use the terms "House of Israel" and "House of Joseph" to refer to themselves. The Book of Mormon tells of families of the Tribe of Manasseh and the Tribe of Ephraim that migrated from Jerusalem to an unknown location in the Americas. According to Mormon doctrine, this migration fulfilled the prophecy of Jacob on his son, Joseph: "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall" (Genesis 49:22). The Book of Mormon also tells of a group from the Tribe of Judah who came to the Americas after its defeat by Babylon around 600 BCE. The official position of the LDS Church is that those who have accepted Mormonism or are a part of the Latter Day Saint movement are primarily from the House of Joseph. Adherents believe they are members of one of the tribes of Israel, either by blood lineage or by adoption, when the recipient is not a literal descendant of Jacob, also known as Israel. Individual church members are told their tribal affiliation through a patriarchal blessing. The LDS Church teaches that all of the tribes exist within their numbers, though not every tribe in every country. Ephraim and Manasseh are by far the two largest tribes in the LDS Church. Tribal affiliation is not usually discussed in everyday LDS life, and all members, regardless of tribal affiliation, worship together. The knowledge of one's tribal affiliation is usually only shared with one's immediate family. In modern Jewish culture, by contrast, it is generally accepted that knowledge of individual tribal affiliation has been lost to antiquity, except in the case of Levites and Cohens, where such knowledge is relevant to religious practice. Some Jewish families, however, hold family traditions of descent from other tribes. The Sephardi Chief Rabbinate of Israel has recognized the Beta Israel of Ethiopia as the Tribe of Dan, and the Bene Menashe of India as the Tribe of Menasseh. The Bene Israel of India and the Lemba people of Africa claim descent from Kohanim—according to a government report, these claims are supported by DNA analysis. The position of those who consider themselves Jewish with regard to Mormons is similar to their feelings about other Christian groups—while peaceful coexistence is strongly desired, attempts at conversion are considered inappropriate and unwanted. Some Jewish groups like Jews for Judaism reject wholesale the claims of the LDS that the conversion to Mormonism reveals a familial connection between the convert and ethnic Jews. They base their position on Judaism's interpretation of Hebrew scriptures and advances in biological science, saying "No amount of genetic testing or DNA sampling will show the Jewish people and the Latter-day Saints to be of the same ancestry. The Latter-day Saints are simply not of Israelite origins.... For all their assertions and genealogical research, the Latter-day Saints are not descendants of Joseph and can never join Judah in fulfillment of a nonexistent prophecy." On similar grounds they reject LDS claims that American Indians have Hebrew origins, saying "There is no genetic, linguistic, or cultural evidence to substantiate this claim that the Mongoloid native American Indians are descended from Semitic Israelites." They also critique LDS scripture for, in their view, an erroneous use of the word "Jew", saying "If the American Indians are descendants of Manasseh that would make them Israelites but not specifically Jews. The term 'Jews' is associated with the tribe of Judah and those of Israelite descent who practice Judaism. ... In the Book of Mormon the inhabitants of what are now the Americas are referred to as descendants of Jews although the dominant group supposedly stems from Manasseh. Thus, Nephi is alleged to have written, 'And thus shall the remnant of our seed know concerning us, how that we came out from Jerusalem, and that they are descendants of the Jews' (2 Nephi 30:4)." Jewish symbolism in Mormonism: The LDS Church includes among its traditional symbols the Star of David, which has been the symbol of Judaism since at least the 13th century. For the LDS Church, it represents the divine Israelite covenant, Israelite regathering, and affinity with Judaism; a Star of David is prominently depicted in a stained glass window in the landmark Salt Lake Assembly Hall. Jewish presence in Utah: Not long after the LDS church reached the Salt Lake Valley, those who practiced Judaism also arrived. Alexander Neibaur, a Jewish convert to Mormonism, arrived in 1848. The first permanent Jewish family in Utah is thought to be Julius Gerson Brooks and his wife Isabell. The first Jewish cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah, was on land donated by Brigham Young in 1869, and the first Reform synagogue in Salt Lake was funded by the LDS Church. Inspired by the Jewish back-to-the-land movement, Eastern European Jewish immigrants from Philadelphia and New York established the Clarion colony in Sanpete County in 1910. The colony was organized by the Jewish Agricultural and Colonial Association, and with approximately 200 individuals at its height, was one of the largest Jewish farming colony initiatives of its era. Simon Bamberger, the fourth Governor of Utah (1917–1921) was Jewish; antisemitic publications targeting Bamberger were denounced by most Utahns. B. H. Roberts, a Mormon politician and church leader, supported Bamberger's campaign by nominating him for the governor. Baptism for the dead: A longtime practice of the LDS Church has been to vicariously baptize their relatives. This stems from the LDS belief that all individuals must receive all saving ordinances to achieve exaltation. Under Mormon theology, vicarious performance of the ordinance of baptism and other temple ordinances does not automatically make a deceased individual a Mormon, but rather allows the person (believed by Mormons to be alive in the afterlife) the option of freely accepting or rejecting the ordinances performed on their behalf. Mormons do not claim the power to compel acceptance of vicarious ordinances or change a deceased person's religious affiliation against his will. From time to time, and contrary to LDS Church policy, Latter-day Saint genealogists have submitted the names of other prominent individuals, including at one point Jewish and other victims of the Holocaust. Official church policy states that church members submit the names of their own relatives for these type of ordinances, and requires that permission of the closest living relative be obtained for any baptism that is to be performed for deceased individuals born within the last 95 years. Regardless, some baptisms were performed on behalf of Holocaust victims. When this information became public, it generated vocal criticism of the LDS Church from Jewish groups, who found this ritual to be insulting and insensitive. In 1995, in part as a result of public pressure, church leaders promised to put new policies into place that would help stop the practice, unless specifically requested or approved by the surviving spouse, children or parents of the victims. In late 2002, information surfaced that members of the church had not stopped the practice of baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims despite directives from the church leadership. Criticism once again arose from Jewish groups. The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center is on record as opposing the vicarious baptism of Holocaust victims. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the center stated, "If these people did not contact the Mormons themselves, the adage should be: Don't call me, I'll call you. With the greatest of respect to them, we do not think they are the exclusive arbitrators of who is saved." Recently, church leaders have agreed to meet with leaders of the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. In December 2002, independent researcher Helen Radkey published a report showing that the church's 1995 promise to remove Jewish Nazi victims from its International Genealogical Index (IGI) was not sufficient; her research of the church's database uncovered the names of about 19,000 who had a 40 to 50 percent chance of having "the potential to be Holocaust victims ... in Russia, Poland, France, and Austria." Genealogist Bernard Kouchel conducted a search of the IGI, and discovered that many well-known Jewish people have been vicariously baptized, including Rashi, Maimonides, Albert Einstein, Menachem Begin, Irving Berlin, Marc Chagall, and Gilda Radner. Some permissions may have been obtained, but there is currently no system in place to verify that these permissions were obtained, which has angered many in various religious and cultural communities. In 2004, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Jewish genealogy columnist for The Jerusalem Post, noted that some Jews, even those with no Mormon descendants, are being rebaptized after being removed from the rolls. In an interview, D. Todd Christofferson, a church official, told The New York Times that it was not feasible for the church to continuously monitor the archives to ensure that no new Jewish names appear. On April 11, 2005, Jewish and Mormon officials met and created a joint Jewish/Mormon committee with the goal of preventing future issues. The committee met intermittently over the next few years. On September 1, 2010, Jewish and Mormon leaders issued a joint statement "acknowledging that concerns between members of both groups over the sensitive doctrinal issue have been eliminated."[52] However, in February 2012, the issue re-emerged after it was found that the parents of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal were added to the LDS Church genealogical database. Mormons and the State of Israel: The LDS Church is officially neutral when it comes to the Arab–Israeli conflict. Mormons, as well as many Jews, are also in favor of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. The LDS Church recognizes Jews and Arabs as children of Abraham. The LDS Church has two congregations in Israel: the Galilee Branch in Tiberias and the Jerusalem Branch in Jerusalem. Latter-day Saints in Israel hold their worship services on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. "Missionaries are allowed to proselytize, although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) voluntarily refrains from proselytizing under an agreement with the Government." Brigham Young University (BYU) has a study center in Jerusalem that is active in research and cultural activities (e.g., classical music concerts). Its creation was initially protested by Haredi Jewish groups which claimed, despite Mormon reassurances, that it would be a center of proselytizing activities. BYU was allowed to open the center in Jerusalem only after promising the mayor that no proselytizing would take place and that all students would be foreigners. The courses at the center, attracting students from BYU and other institutions of higher learning in the US who wanted to do credit coursework in Israel, have previously been temporarily suspended due to security concerns. Jewish people in Mormon literature- Scriptural teaching about the Jewish people and the House of Israel: The Book of Mormon, part of the scripture of Latter-day Saints, on its title page states that its purpose is "the convincing of the Jew and the Gentile that Jesus is the Christ." However, it contains a specific condemnation of antisemitism: "Yea, and ye need not any longer hiss, nor spurn, nor make game of the Jews, nor of any remnant of the house of Israel; for behold, the Lord remembereth his covenant unto them, and he will do unto them according to that which he hath sworn."3 Nephi 29:8 The Book of Mormon also specifically uses the Greek word "synagogues"' in Alma 16:13: "And Alma and Amulek went forth preaching repentance to the people in their temples, and in their sanctuaries, and also in their synagogues, which were built after the manner of the Jews" (Alma 16:13). The Doctrine and Covenants, a collection of canonized prophecies of Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders, contains prophecies regarding the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel: "And the children of Judah may begin to return to the lands which thou didst give to Abraham, their father." In addition, it states: "Let them, therefore, who are among the Gentiles flee unto Zion. And let them who be of Judah flee unto Jerusalem, unto the mountains of the Lord’s house." The Book of Mormon also calls for those who identify with Judaism to repent and accept Jesus Christ but also emphasizes that the Jewish people remain the Lord's chosen with whom he has made a covenant. Other Mormon literature: In 1982, Bruce R. McConkie published a book titled The Millennial Messiah, which devotes an entire chapter to "The Jews and the Second Coming". It states: "Let this fact be engraved in the eternal records with a pen of steel: the Jews were cursed, and smitten, and cursed anew, because they rejected the gospel, cast out their Messiah, and crucified their King. ... Let the spiritually illiterate suppose what they may, it was the Jewish denial and rejection of the Holy One of Israel, whom their fathers worshiped in the beauty and holiness, that has made them a hiss and byword in all nations and that has taken millions of their fair sons and daughters to untimely graves. ... What sayeth the holy word? "They shall be scourged by all people, because they crucify the God of Israel, and turn the hearts aside, rejecting signs and wonders, and the power and glory of the God of Israel. And because they turn their hearts aside,…and have despised the Holy One of Israel, they shall wander in the flesh, and perish, and become a hiss and by-word and be hated among all nations.: (1 Ne. 19:13-14; 2 Ne. 6:9-11.) Such is the prophetic word of Nephi." In a May 2, 1976, speech at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Ezra Taft Benson declared that he cherished his friendship with the Jews of Israel: "Among some of my most cherished experiences and recollections are the fond association I have enjoyed in past years with the Jewish people in the United States and the land of Israel. I have visited Israel three times. I have met hundreds of government officials, farmers, business and trade people, and leaders in professions. No visits have been more impressive than the visits with David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and Moshe Dayan." Benson called on Mormons to understand, learn from, and befriend the Jewish people: "But our affinity toward modern Judah is not prompted merely out of mutual suffering; it is prompted out of a knowledge of our peculiar relationships together—relationships which claim a common heritage. Jeremiah has prophesied that in the latter times "the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together." (Jer. 3:18.) My prayer is that because of evenings spent together like this one, this prophecy will come to be fulfilled. We need to know more about the Jews, and the Jews ought to know more about the Mormons. When we understand one another, then perhaps you will understand why Ben-Gurion said, "There are no people in the world who understand the Jews like the Mormons." Benson then criticizes the Crusades' violence: "Some of the most evil of those deeds were perpetrated upon the remaining Jews in Palestine in the name of Christianity during the Crusades. Will Durrant has correctly written of this sad chapter of human suffering, 'No other people has ever known so long an exile, or so hard a fate.'" Benson laments the suffering and "ruins of what was the largest Jewish ghetto in Europe in the Jewish section of Warsaw, Poland": - "Here 250,000 descendants of Judah had lived prior to the war. Under the Nazi rule, through forced labor, Jews were required to build a wall around the ghetto. Later some 150,000 Jews from other parts of Europe were brought into that area. The Germans first tried to starve them out, but when that did not work, they transported over 310,000 Jews to the extermination camps. When Himmler found that there were still some 60,000 Jews alive in the ghetto, he ordered their "resettlement." When they forcibly resisted, the German S. S. General Stroop ordered the tanks, artillery, flamethrowers, and dynamite squads on the ghetto. The extermination which was to have taken three days lasted four weeks. The final report by the general read, "Total number of Jews dealt with: 56,065, including both Jews caught and Jews whose extermination can be proved." This report left 36,000 Jews unaccounted for which were no doubt claimed by the gas chambers. (William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publishers, 1965, p. 1272.) - "I have visited some of the concentration camps, the mass graves, and the crematoriums where, it is estimated, six million of the sons and daughters of Judah lost their lives, reducing their world population from seventeen to eleven million. - "I have been impressed to tears as I visited some of these wanderers, those persecuted and driven sons of our Heavenly Father, my brethren of Judah. Yes, the prophecies regarding the dispersion and suffering of Judah have been fulfilled. But the gathering and reestablishment of the Jews was also clearly predicted. The LDS Church includes among its traditional symbols the Star of David, which has been the symbol of Judaism since at least the 13th century. For the LDS Church, it represents the divine Israelite covenant, Israelite regathering, and affinity with Judaism; a Star of David is prominently depicted in a stained glass window in the landmark Salt Lake Assembly Hall. Jewish presence in Utah: Not long after the LDS church reached the Salt Lake Valley, those who practiced Judaism also arrived. Alexander Neibaur, a Jewish convert to Mormonism, arrived in 1848. The first permanent Jewish family in Utah is thought to be Julius Gerson Brooks and his wife Isabell. The first Jewish cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah, was on land donated by Brigham Young in 1869, and the first Reform synagogue in Salt Lake was funded by the LDS Church. Inspired by the Jewish back-to-the-land movement, Eastern European Jewish immigrants from Philadelphia and New York established the Clarion colony in Sanpete County in 1910. The colony was organized by the Jewish Agricultural and Colonial Association, and with approximately 200 individuals at its height, was one of the largest Jewish farming colony initiatives of its era. Simon Bamberger, the fourth Governor of Utah (1917–1921) was Jewish; antisemitic publications targeting Bamberger were denounced by most Utahns. B. H. Roberts, a Mormon politician and church leader, supported Bamberger's campaign by nominating him for the governor. Baptism for the dead: A longtime practice of the LDS Church has been to vicariously baptize their relatives. This stems from the LDS belief that all individuals must receive all saving ordinances to achieve exaltation. Under Mormon theology, vicarious performance of the ordinance of baptism and other temple ordinances does not automatically make a deceased individual a Mormon, but rather allows the person (believed by Mormons to be alive in the afterlife) the option of freely accepting or rejecting the ordinances performed on their behalf. Mormons do not claim the power to compel acceptance of vicarious ordinances or change a deceased person's religious affiliation against his will. From time to time, and contrary to LDS Church policy, Latter-day Saint genealogists have submitted the names of other prominent individuals, including at one point Jewish and other victims of the Holocaust. Official church policy states that church members submit the names of their own relatives for these type of ordinances, and requires that permission of the closest living relative be obtained for any baptism that is to be performed for deceased individuals born within the last 95 years. Regardless, some baptisms were performed on behalf of Holocaust victims. When this information became public, it generated vocal criticism of the LDS Church from Jewish groups, who found this ritual to be insulting and insensitive. In 1995, in part as a result of public pressure, church leaders promised to put new policies into place that would help stop the practice, unless specifically requested or approved by the surviving spouse, children or parents of the victims. In late 2002, information surfaced that members of the church had not stopped the practice of baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims despite directives from the church leadership. Criticism once again arose from Jewish groups. The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center is on record as opposing the vicarious baptism of Holocaust victims. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the center stated, "If these people did not contact the Mormons themselves, the adage should be: Don't call me, I'll call you. With the greatest of respect to them, we do not think they are the exclusive arbitrators of who is saved." Recently, church leaders have agreed to meet with leaders of the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. In December 2002, independent researcher Helen Radkey published a report showing that the church's 1995 promise to remove Jewish Nazi victims from its International Genealogical Index (IGI) was not sufficient; her research of the church's database uncovered the names of about 19,000 who had a 40 to 50 percent chance of having "the potential to be Holocaust victims ... in Russia, Poland, France, and Austria." Genealogist Bernard Kouchel conducted a search of the IGI, and discovered that many well-known Jewish people have been vicariously baptized, including Rashi, Maimonides, Albert Einstein, Menachem Begin, Irving Berlin, Marc Chagall, and Gilda Radner. Some permissions may have been obtained, but there is currently no system in place to verify that these permissions were obtained, which has angered many in various religious and cultural communities. In 2004, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Jewish genealogy columnist for The Jerusalem Post, noted that some Jews, even those with no Mormon descendants, are being rebaptized after being removed from the rolls. In an interview, D. Todd Christofferson, a church official, told The New York Times that it was not feasible for the church to continuously monitor the archives to ensure that no new Jewish names appear. On April 11, 2005, Jewish and Mormon officials met and created a joint Jewish/Mormon committee with the goal of preventing future issues. The committee met intermittently over the next few years. On September 1, 2010, Jewish and Mormon leaders issued a joint statement "acknowledging that concerns between members of both groups over the sensitive doctrinal issue have been eliminated." However, in February 2012, the issue re-emerged after it was found that the parents of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal were added to the LDS Church genealogical database. Mormons and the State of Israel: The LDS Church is officially neutral when it comes to the Arab–Israeli conflict. Mormons, as well as many Jews, are also in favor of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. The LDS Church recognizes Jews and Arabs as children of Abraham. The LDS Church has two congregations in Israel: the Galilee Branch in Tiberias and the Jerusalem Branch in Jerusalem. Latter-day Saints in Israel hold their worship services on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. "Missionaries are allowed to proselytize, although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) voluntarily refrains from proselytizing under an agreement with the Government." Brigham Young University (BYU) has a study center in Jerusalem that is active in research and cultural activities (e.g., classical music concerts). Its creation was initially protested by Haredi Jewish groups which claimed, despite Mormon reassurances, that it would be a center of proselytizing activities. BYU was allowed to open the center in Jerusalem only after promising the mayor that no proselytizing would take place and that all students would be foreigners. The courses at the center, attracting students from BYU and other institutions of higher learning in the US who wanted to do credit coursework in Israel, have previously been temporarily suspended due to security concerns. Jewish people in Mormon literature- Scriptural teaching about the Jewish people and the House of Israel: The Book of Mormon, part of the scripture of Latter-day Saints, on its title page states that its purpose is "the convincing of the Jew and the Gentile that Jesus is the Christ." However, it contains a specific condemnation of antisemitism: "Yea, and ye need not any longer hiss, nor spurn, nor make game of the Jews, nor of any remnant of the house of Israel; for behold, the Lord remembereth his covenant unto them, and he will do unto them according to that which he hath sworn." (3 Nephi 29:8) The Book of Mormon also specifically uses the Greek word "synagogues"' in Alma 16:13: "And Alma and Amulek went forth preaching repentance to the people in their temples, and in their sanctuaries, and also in their synagogues, which were built after the manner of the Jews" (Alma 16:13). The Doctrine and Covenants, a collection of canonized prophecies of Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders, contains prophecies regarding the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel: "And the children of Judah may begin to return to the lands which thou didst give to Abraham, their father." In addition, it states: "Let them, therefore, who are among the Gentiles flee unto Zion. And let them who be of Judah flee unto Jerusalem, unto the mountains of the Lord’s house." The Book of Mormon also calls for those who identify with Judaism to repent and accept Jesus Christ but also emphasizes that the Jewish people remain the Lord's chosen with whom he has made a covenant. Other Mormon literature: In 1982, Bruce R. McConkie published a book titled The Millennial Messiah, which devotes an entire chapter to "The Jews and the Second Coming". It states: "Let this fact be engraved in the eternal records with a pen of steel: the Jews were cursed, and smitten, and cursed anew, because they rejected the gospel, cast out their Messiah, and crucified their King. ... Let the spiritually illiterate suppose what they may, it was the Jewish denial and rejection of the Holy One of Israel, whom their fathers worshiped in the beauty and holiness, that has made them a hiss and byword in all nations and that has taken millions of their fair sons and daughters to untimely graves. ... What sayeth the holy word? "They shall be scourged by all people, because they crucify the God of Israel, and turn the hearts aside, rejecting signs and wonders, and the power and glory of the God of Israel. And because they turn their hearts aside,…and have despised the Holy One of Israel, they shall wander in the flesh, and perish, and become a hiss and by-word and be hated among all nations.: (1 Ne. 19:13-14; 2 Ne. 6:9-11.) Such is the prophetic word of Nephi." In a May 2, 1976, speech at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Ezra Taft Benson declared that he cherished his friendship with the Jews of Israel: "Among some of my most cherished experiences and recollections are the fond association I have enjoyed in past years with the Jewish people in the United States and the land of Israel. I have visited Israel three times. I have met hundreds of government officials, farmers, business and trade people, and leaders in professions. No visits have been more impressive than the visits with David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and Moshe Dayan." Benson called on Mormons to understand, learn from, and befriend the Jewish people: "But our affinity toward modern Judah is not prompted merely out of mutual suffering; it is prompted out of a knowledge of our peculiar relationships together—relationships which claim a common heritage. Jeremiah has prophesied that in the latter times "the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together." (Jer. 3:18.) My prayer is that because of evenings spent together like this one, this prophecy will come to be fulfilled. We need to know more about the Jews, and the Jews ought to know more about the Mormons. When we understand one another, then perhaps you will understand why Ben-Gurion said, "There are no people in the world who understand the Jews like the Mormons." Benson then criticizes the Crusades' violence: "Some of the most evil of those deeds were perpetrated upon the remaining Jews in Palestine in the name of Christianity during the Crusades. Will Durrant has correctly written of this sad chapter of human suffering, 'No other people has ever known so long an exile, or so hard a fate.'" Benson laments the suffering and "ruins of what was the largest Jewish ghetto in Europe in the Jewish section of Warsaw, Poland": "Here 250,000 descendants of Judah had lived prior to the war. Under the Nazi rule, through forced labor, Jews were required to build a wall around the ghetto. Later some 150,000 Jews from other parts of Europe were brought into that area. The Germans first tried to starve them out, but when that did not work, they transported over 310,000 Jews to the extermination camps. When Himmler found that there were still some 60,000 Jews alive in the ghetto, he ordered their "resettlement." When they forcibly resisted, the German S. S. General Stroop ordered the tanks, artillery, flamethrowers, and dynamite squads on the ghetto. The extermination which was to have taken three days lasted four weeks. The final report by the general read, "Total number of Jews dealt with: 56,065, including both Jews caught and Jews whose extermination can be proved." This report left 36,000 Jews unaccounted for which were no doubt claimed by the gas chambers. (William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publishers, 1965, p. 1272.) - "I have visited some of the concentration camps, the mass graves, and the crematoriums where, it is estimated, six million of the sons and daughters of Judah lost their lives, reducing their world population from seventeen to eleven million. "I have been impressed to tears as I visited some of these wanderers, those persecuted and driven sons of our Heavenly Father, my brethren of Judah. Yes, the prophecies regarding the dispersion and suffering of Judah have been fulfilled. But the gathering and reestablishment of the Jews was also clearly predicted.

fedora

its raining and i'm in my fedora. it's a nice hat

Joseph Smith experience

i had a Joseph Smith experience. Joseph Smith was in a grove and a vision of light showed him god and his son Jesus Christ and i was on a couch in the LDS church listening to green river running red when i met a boy introduced to me by his mom. that was nice

stupid

i can't believe i yelled, "sorry i'm late" and ran in. everyone thought i was the teacher

funny

it's funny that i ate a baked potato in the middle of class. plus i was on the computer so i ate it in 1 hand and used a mouse with the other.

cutie

what i call my kids. they're my babies

Yesharah Society

The Yesharah Society is a social organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) for females who have returned from serving as church missionaries. The organization was created in December 1928 under the name "Y Missionary Women" ("Y" referring to Brigham Young University (BYU)). In 1932, the name of the society was changed to "Yesharah", a Hebrew word meaning "upright, just, good, or pleasing". The Yesharah Society reached its peak in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, but began to decline at the end of the 20th century. Although the organization still exists today, most of the chapters are beginning to fade away. Beginnings: Single Latter-day Saint women have been missionaries for the LDS Church since 1898, when Amanda Inez Knight Allen and Lucy Jane Brimhall Knight received their calling to serve in the British Isles. However, the number of women serving missions for the church were few until the early 1920s. In 1915, the First Presidency, consisting of Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund, and Charles W. Penrose, stated that they were "greatly in need of lady missionaries in the United States Missions" With a growing number of returning female missionaries, there became a both a need and a desire to form an organization of returned women missionaries. The Yesharah Society did not begin as an independent group, however. From 1915 to 1929, female returned missionaries were included with male returned missionaries in the Young Doctors of Divinity Club, or Y.D.D. On November 11, 1928, the YDD was invited to reorganize as part of the Friars' Club, an all-male Christian organization. An initial vote was taken by the Y.D.D. on the issue and the motion to join the Friars' Club failed. However, several of the male members of the Y.D.D. and the University of Utah Friars' Club attempted to push ahead with the reorganization anyway. Finally, BYU President Franklin S. Harris assessed the situation and stated that the Y.D.D. would only be able to reorganize into the Friars' Club if the "lady missionaries" were reorganized into their own club as well. The "Y" Missionary Women Consititution: After Harris's announcement, the "lady missionaries" acted on their own before the Y.D.D was dissolved. In December 1928, returned sister missionaries of the Y.D.D invited other female missionaries to meet with them at the home of Amanda Inez Knight Allen, who held the prominent position of being the first single sister missionary for the LDS Church. There, under the direction of Barbara Maughn Roskelly, this group of women formed the "Y Missionary Women" group, electing Allen as the first president. Some of the initial members of the "Y Missionary Women" included, along with Allen and Knight, Elizabeth Souter, Georgia Maesar, Anna Boss Hart, Alice Louise Reynolds, and others. In the earliest years of the group there were approximately 40 members. Out of these 40 initial members, 34 were single and only six were married. Although the "Y Missionary Women" reorganized itself before the Y.D.D. could vote to exclude them, it was not something that the Y.D.D. women originally wanted to do. Re-organization was something that they fought against, and it would remain a bitter memory for the Yesharah Society even into the late 1950s. At its founding in December 1928, the "Y Missionary Women" took part of the Friars' Club Constitution and placed it word-for-word in their own. The plagiarized statement outlined the intentions of the "Y Missionary Women" as to "keep ever paramount in the lives of its members the high and worthy ideals of manhood which they have promulgated while active in the missionary field" and to "promote educational, cultural, and social development in the members of the organization". To these first two purposes copied from the Friars' Club, the "Y Missionary Women" added three others: "1) To be a sister in very deed to each and every member, 4) Uphold the ideals and promote the interests of the educational institutions with which this organization shall be affiliated, and 3) Give special encouragement to our sisters laboring in the mission field." The qualifications to be a member of the organization were threefold: to have been "regularly called to and honorably released" from an LDS Mission, Be in good standing with the church, and be affiliated with BYU. From the beginning, the emphasis of the organization was placed on missionary work. The "Y Missionary Women" rejected the word "club" so that it would be clear that the women were to be a missionary organization with local chapters. Organization of the Yesharah Society: In 1932, at the suggestion of BYU professor Sidney Sperry, the "Y Missionary Women" changed its name to "Yesharah". "Yesharah" is a Hebrew adjective meaning "straight, upright, just, righteous, good, and pleasing". At this time, the new society further organized itself. The Yesharah Society's revised 1932 Constitution stated that the organization's executive officers would consist of a President, First and Second Vice Presidents, Recording Secretary-Treasurer, and a Corresponding Secretary. In addition there were to be three committees within the society: The membership committee, program committee, and project committee. The annual dues at the time were $2.00 per member, and members were to be organized in to more local chapters, the first of which was the Provo Chapter. The emphasis within the newly named society continued to be missionary work. The Yesharah Society maintained a standard of high ideals, as characterized by a 1932 Yesharah Poem: Should mission memories be forgot and never brought to mind? Should we forget the days we spent in service to mankind? Oh know we'll strive our very best to ever keep in mind. The lessons we to others taught, the way of life to find. And here's a vow, my sisters true we'll make anew this day That we shall teach in faith and love the truths that point the way. The Yesharah Society's Constitution ensured that the organization would remain professional and purpose-centered, specifying that the Constitution and by-laws were to be read biannually, and that all meetings would be conducted according to Roberts Rules of Order. As the Yesharah Society evolved and its purposes changed in the following years, its Constitution reflected those changes.

Michaela Garecht

Michaela Joy Garecht was nine years old when she was abducted on November 19, 1988, in Hayward, California, San Francisco Bay Area, in broad daylight at the corner of Mission Boulevard and Lafayette Avenue, outside a grocery store then known as Rainbow Market, now called Mexico Super. Abduction: Garecht was abducted at approximately 10:15 a.m. on November 19, 1988. Garecht and a friend left home at 10:00 a.m. and rode their scooters to the market, two blocks from Garecht's home. They left the scooters by the side door as they went inside the store. Upon leaving the store, the two girls started walking home, completely forgetting about the scooters. When they realized they had forgotten them, they turned back to where they left them; however, they saw that Garecht's scooter was missing. Garecht then spotted her scooter farther down in the market parking lot, where it had been placed near a parked car. When Garecht bent down to pick the scooter up, an unidentified white male jumped out of the parked car, picked up Garecht from behind, and threw her into the back of his car. Garecht's friend was the only witness and she ran back into the store to get help. The abductor managed to escape with Garecht and she has not been seen or heard from since. Witness' description: Garecht's abductor is described as a white male in his 20s at the time of the abduction. The most distinguishing characteristic was that he seemed to have severe acne, boils and pockmarks on his face. He had shoulder length, dirty blonde hair. He may have been wearing his hair in a ponytail at the time. He was around 6 feet 0 inches (1.83 m) in height and had a slender build. The witness described him as having fox-like eyes. The abductor drove a large older model American-made sedan. It was possibly a four-door vehicle and was either cream or tannish gold in color. The car may have had cement splatters on the sides and lights set into the rear bumper. The front bumper was battered; the vehicle appeared run-down, it may have previously been in an accident. The car was last seen speeding south on Mission Boulevard towards nearby Union City, California, with Michaela inside. Search: Garecht's kidnapping led to one of the most extensive police investigations by the Hayward Police department and they received 5,000 tips in the first year alone. In 1994, The Daily Review reported that police had followed up more than 15,000 leads. More than two decades later, the investigation at the Hayward Police Station continues. Chief investigator Inspector Robert Lampkin declared, "We'll go anywhere, any corner of the earth to try to bring Michaela home". It has also remained an open case with the FBI and it is believed to still be solvable. At the time of the kidnapping, Garecht's photo was featured as a missing child on milk cartons nationally and thousands of fliers and posters were spread throughout the community. Garecht's kidnapping was one of the most high-profile missing-child cases and received national media attention. Garecht's case was the first missing-child case to feature on America's Most Wanted in 1988. The case featured once again on the show in 2009. The case has also featured on numerous other television shows including Unsolved Mysteries (twice) and many talk shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dateline NBC, Larry King Live, CNN, Geraldo, Leeza, Maury, The Susan Powter Show, The Jane Whitney Show, The Today Show, Good Morning and The Early Show. The case has since caught the attention of the international media. The reappearance of kidnapped schoolgirl Jaycee Lee Dugard, after 18 years in captivity, led police to be initially hopeful that Dugard's abductor, Phillip Garrido, might have also been involved in Garecht's disappearance. Hayward is within an hour's drive from Garrido's Antioch home in Contra Costa County, and Garecht's abduction took place three months after Garrido was freed from prison for rape and kidnapping. Like Garecht, Dugard was also thrown into the back of a car in broad daylight and in the presence of witnesses. The general description of the kidnapper and the car used in both kidnappings are also similar. Although no evidence has been found linking Garecht's abduction to the Garridos, a connection to the abductors has not yet been ruled out and the investigation continues. Wesley Shermantine, one of the so-called Speed Freak Killers duo, wrote a letter to The Stockton Record after his partner in crime, Loren Herzog, committed suicide in January 2012, in which he pointed out that Herzog bore a resemblance to the composite of the person who kidnapped "that Hayward girl." The anniversary of Garecht's kidnapping is marked every year by her family at the location where the kidnapping took place. Several ribbons are tied to the tree next to where the kidnapper's car was parked.

Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith, Jr. was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was twenty-four, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death fourteen years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religious culture that continues to the present. Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, but by 1817, he had moved with his family to the burned-over district of western New York, a site of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw "two personages" (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel named Moroni directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. Members of the church were later called "Latter Day Saints", or "Mormons", and in 1838, Smith announced a revelation that renamed the church as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In 1831, Smith and his followers moved west, planning to build a communalistic American Zion. They first gathered in Kirtland, Ohio, and established an outpost in Independence, Missouri, which was intended to be Zion's "center place". During the 1830s, Smith sent out missionaries, published revelations, and supervised construction of the expensive Kirtland Temple. Nevertheless, the collapse of the church-sponsored Kirtland Safety Society and violent skirmishes with non-Mormon Missourians caused Smith and his followers to establish a new settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois, where he became a spiritual and political leader. In 1844, Smith and the Nauvoo city council angered non-Mormons by destroying a newspaper that had criticized Smith's power and practice of polygamy. After Smith was imprisoned in Carthage, Illinois, he was killed when a mob stormed the jailhouse. Smith published many revelations and other texts that his followers regard as scripture. His teachings include unique views about the nature of God, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His followers regard him as a prophet comparable to Moses and Elijah, and several religious denominations consider themselves the continuation of the church he organized, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ. Life- Early years (1805–27): Joseph Smith, Jr. was born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont, to Lucy Mack Smith and her husband Joseph Sr., a merchant and farmer. After suffering a crippling bone infection when he was seven, the younger Smith hobbled around on crutches for three years. In 1816–17, after an ill-fated business venture and three years of crop failures, the Smith family moved to the western New York village of Palmyra, and eventually took a mortgage on a 100-acre (40 ha) farm in the nearby town of Manchester. During the Second Great Awakening, the region was a hotbed of religious enthusiasm; and between 1817 and 1825, there were several camp meetings and revivals in the Palmyra area. Although Smith's parents disagreed about religion, the family was caught up in this excitement. Smith later said he became interested in religion at about the age of twelve; without doubt, he participated in church classes and read the Bible. As a teenager, he may have been sympathetic to Methodism. With other family members, Smith also engaged in religious folk magic, not an uncommon practice at the time. Both his parents and his maternal grandfather reportedly had visions or dreams that they believed communicated messages from God. Smith said that although he had become concerned about the welfare of his soul, he was confused by the claims of competing religious denominations. Years later Smith said that in 1820 he had received a vision that resolved his religious confusion. While praying in a wooded area near his home, he said that God, in a vision, had told him his sins were forgiven and that all contemporary churches had "turned aside from the gospel." Smith said he told the experience to a preacher, who dismissed the story with contempt; but the experience was largely unknown, even to most Mormons, until the 1840s. Although Smith may have understood the event as a personal conversion, this "First Vision" later grew in importance among Mormons, who today see it as the first event in the "restoration of the Gospel". Smith said that in 1823 while praying one night for forgiveness from his sins, he was visited by an angel named Moroni, who revealed the location of a buried book made of golden plates, as well as other artifacts, including a breastplate and a set of interpreters composed of two seer stones set in a frame, which had been hidden in a hill in Manchester near his home. Smith said he attempted to remove the plates the next morning but was unsuccessful because the angel prevented him. Smith reported that during the next four years, he made annual visits to the hill but each time returned without the plates. Meanwhile, the Smith family faced financial hardship due in part to the November 1823 death of Smith's oldest brother Alvin, who had assumed a leadership role in the family. Family members supplemented their meager farm income by hiring out for odd jobs and working as treasure seekers, a type of magical supernaturalism common during the period. Smith was said to have an ability to locate lost items by looking into a seer stone, which he also used in treasure hunting, including several unsuccessful attempts to find buried treasure sponsored by a wealthy farmer in Chenango County, New York. In 1826, Smith was brought before a Chenango County court for "glass-looking", or pretending to find lost treasure. The result of the proceeding remains unclear as primary sources report various conflicting outcomes. While boarding at the Hale house in Harmony, Pennsylvania, Smith began courting Emma Hale. When Smith proposed marriage, Emma's father Isaac Hale objected because Smith was "a stranger" who had no means of supporting his daughter other than money digging, of which he disapproved. Smith and Emma eloped and were married on January 18, 1827, after which the couple began boarding with Smith's parents in Manchester. Later that year, when Smith promised to abandon treasure seeking, Hale offered to let the couple live on his property in Harmony and help Smith get started in business. Smith said that he made his last annual visit to the hill on September 22, 1827, taking Emma with him. This time, he said he retrieved the plates and put them in a locked chest. He said the angel commanded him not to show the plates to anyone else but to publish their translation, reputed to be the religious record of indigenous Americans. Smith said that the plates were engraved in an unknown language, reformed Egyptian, and he told associates that he was capable of reading and translating them. Although Smith had left his treasure hunting company, his former associates believed he had double-crossed them by taking for himself what they considered joint property. After they ransacked places where a competing treasure-seer said the plates were hidden, Smith decided to leave Palmyra. Founding a church (1827–30): In October 1827, Smith and his pregnant wife moved from Palmyra to Harmony (now Oakland), Pennsylvania, aided by money from a relatively prosperous neighbor, Martin Harris. Living near his in-laws, Smith transcribed some characters that he said were engraved on the plates, and then dictated a translation to his wife. In February 1828, Martin Harris arrived to assist Smith by transcribing his dictation. Harris also took a sample of the characters to a few prominent scholars, including Charles Anthon, who Harris said initially authenticated the characters and their translation but then retracted his opinion after learning that Smith was supposed to have received the plates from an angel. Anthon denied Harris's account of the meeting, claiming instead that he had tried to convince Harris that he had been the victim of a fraud. Nevertheless, Harris returned to Harmony in April 1828, encouraged to continue as Smith's scribe. Smith continued to dictate to Harris until mid-June 1828, when Harris began having doubts about the project, fueled in part by his wife's skepticism. Harris convinced Smith to let him take the existing 116 pages of manuscript to Palmyra to show a few family members, including his wife. Harris lost the manuscript—of which there was no other copy—at about the same time Smith's wife, Emma, gave birth to a son, Alvin, who died the same day. Smith said that as punishment for losing the manuscript the angel took away the plates and revoked his ability to translate. During this dark period Smith briefly attended Methodist meetings with his wife until a cousin of hers objected to inclusion of a "practicing necromancer" on the Methodist class roll. Smith said that the angel returned the plates to him on September 22, 1828, and he resumed dictation in April 1829, after he met Oliver Cowdery, who replaced Harris as his scribe. They worked full time on the manuscript between April and early June 1829, and then moved to Fayette, New York, where they continued to work at the home of Cowdery's friend Peter Whitmer. When the narrative described an institutional church and a requirement for baptism, Smith and Cowdery baptized each other. Dictation was completed around July 1, 1829. Although Smith had previously refused to show the plates to anyone, he told Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer that they would be allowed to see them. These men, known collectively as the Three Witnesses—along with a later group of Eight Witnesses composed of male members of the Whitmer and Smith families—signed statements testifying that they had seen the golden plates; the eight witnesses also said they had actually handled the plates. According to Smith, the angel Moroni took back the plates once Smith finished using them. The completed work, the Book of Mormon, was published in Palmyra on March 26, 1830, by printer E. B. Grandin, Martin Harris having mortgaged his farm to finance it. Soon after, on April 6, 1830, Smith and his followers formally organized the Church of Christ, and small branches were established in Palmyra, Fayette, and Colesville, New York. The Book of Mormon brought Smith regional notoriety and opposition from those who remembered his money-digging and the 1826 Chenango County trial. After Cowdery baptized several new members, the Mormons received threats of mob violence; and before Smith could confirm the newly baptized members, he was arrested and brought to trial as a disorderly person. He was acquitted, but both he and Cowdery had to flee Colesville to escape a gathering mob. In probable reference to this period of flight, Smith said that Peter, James, and John had appeared to him and had ordained him and Cowdery to a higher priesthood. Smith's authority was undermined when Oliver Cowdery, Hiram Page, and other church members also claimed to receive revelations. In response, Smith dictated a revelation which clarified his office as a prophet and an apostle and which declared that only he held "the keys of the mysteries, and the revelations" with the ability to inscribe scripture for the church. Shortly after the conference, Smith dispatched Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, and others on a mission to proselytize Native Americans. Cowdery was also assigned the task of locating the site of the New Jerusalem. On their way to Missouri, Cowdery's party passed through northeastern Ohio, where Sidney Rigdon and over a hundred followers of his variety of Campbellite Restorationism converted to Mormonism, more than doubling the size of the church. Rigdon soon visited New York and quickly became Smith's primary assistant. With growing opposition in New York, Smith gave forth as revelation that Kirtland was the eastern boundary of the New Jerusalem and that his followers must gather there. Life in Ohio (1831–38): When Smith moved to Kirtland, Ohio, in January 1831, he encountered a religious culture that included enthusiastic demonstrations of spiritual gifts, including fits and trances, rolling on the ground, and speaking in tongues. Smith tamed these outbursts by producing two revelations that brought the Kirtland congregation under his own authority. Rigdon's followers had also been practicing a form of communalism, and this Smith adopted, calling it the United Order. Smith had promised church elders that in Kirtland they would receive an endowment of heavenly power, and at the June 1831 general conference, he introduced the greater authority of a High ("Melchizedek") Priesthood to the church hierarchy. Converts poured into Kirtland. By the summer of 1835, there were fifteen hundred to two thousand Mormons in the vicinity, many expecting Smith to lead them shortly to the Millennial kingdom. Though the mission to the Indians had been a failure, the missionaries sent on their way by a government Indian agent, Cowdery reported that he had found the site of the New Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri. After Smith visited in July 1831, he agreed, pronouncing the frontier hamlet of Independence the "center place" of Zion. Nevertheless, Rigdon disapproved, and for most of the 1830s the church remained divided between Ohio and Missouri. Smith continued to live in Ohio, but visited Missouri again in early 1832 in order to prevent a rebellion of prominent church members, including Cowdery, who believed the church in Missouri was being neglected. Smith's trip was hastened by a mob of Ohio residents who were incensed over the United Order and Smith's political power; the mob beat Smith and Rigdon unconscious, tarred and feathered them, and left them for dead. In Jackson County, Missouri residents resented the Mormon newcomers for both political and religious reasons. Tension increased until July 1833, when non-Mormons forcibly evicted the Mormons and destroyed their property. Smith advised them to bear the violence patiently until they were attacked a fourth time, after which they could fight back. After armed bands exchanged fire and one Mormon and two non-Mormons were killed, the old settlers brutally expelled the Mormons from the county. Smith ended the communitarian experiment and changed the name of the church to the "Church of Latter Day Saints" before leading a small paramilitary expedition, later called Zion's Camp, to aid the Missouri Mormons. As a military endeavor, the expedition was a failure; the men were outnumbered and suffered from dissension and a cholera outbreak. Nevertheless, Zion's Camp transformed Mormon leadership, and many future church leaders came from among the participants. After the Camp returned, Smith drew heavily from its participants to establish five governing bodies in the church, all originally of equal authority to check one another; among these five groups was a quorum of twelve apostles. Smith gave a revelation saying that to redeem Zion, his followers would have to receive an endowment in the Kirtland Temple, and in March 1836, at the temple's dedication, many participants in the promised endowment saw visions of angels, spoke in tongues, and prophesied. In late 1837, a series of internal disputes led to the collapse of the Kirtland Mormon community. Smith was blamed for having promoted a church-sponsored bank that failed and accused of engaging in a sexual relationship with his serving girl, Fanny Alger. Building the temple had left the church deeply in debt, and Smith was hounded by creditors. Having heard of a large sum of money supposedly hidden in Salem, Massachusetts, Smith traveled there and received a revelation that God had "much treasure in this city". But after a month, he returned to Kirtland empty-handed. In January 1837, Smith and other church leaders created a joint stock company, called the Kirtland Safety Society, to act as a quasi-bank. The company issued bank notes capitalized in part by real estate. Smith encouraged the Latter Day Saints to buy the notes and invested heavily in them himself, but the bank failed within a month. As a result, the Latter Day Saints in Kirtland suffered intense pressure from debt collectors and severe price volatility. Smith was held responsible for the failure, and there were widespread defections from the church, including many of Smith's closest advisers. After a warrant was issued for Smith's arrest on a charge of banking fraud, Smith and Rigdon fled Kirtland for Missouri on the night of January 12, 1838. Life in Missouri (1838–39): By 1838, Smith had abandoned plans to redeem Zion in Jackson County. After Smith and Rigdon arrived in Missouri, the town of Far West became the new Mormon "Zion". In Missouri, the church also received a new name, the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", and construction began on a new temple. In the weeks and months after Smith and Rigdon arrived at Far West, thousands of Latter Day Saints followed them from Kirtland. Smith encouraged the settlement of land outside Caldwell County, instituting a settlement in Adam-ondi-Ahman, in Daviess County. During this time, a church council expelled many of the oldest and most prominent leaders of the church, including John Whitmer, David Whitmer, W. W. Phelps, and Oliver Cowdery. Smith explicitly approved of the expulsion of these men, who were known collectively as the "dissenters". Political and religious differences between old Missourians and newly-arriving Mormon settlers provoked tensions between the two groups, much as they had years earlier in Jackson County. By this time, Smith's experiences with mob violence led him to believe that his faith's survival required greater militancy against anti-Mormons. Around June 1838, recent convert Sampson Avard formed a covert organization called the Danites to intimidate Mormon dissenters and oppose anti-Mormon militia units. Though it is unclear how much Smith knew of the Danites' activities, he clearly approved of those of which he did know. After Rigdon delivered a sermon that implied dissenters had no place in the Mormon community, the Danites forcibly expelled them from the county. In an oration given at the town's Fourth of July celebration, Rigdon declared that Mormons would no longer tolerate persecution by the Missourians and spoke of a "war of extermination" if Mormons were attacked. Smith implicitly endorsed this speech, and many non-Mormons understood it to be a thinly-veiled threat. They unleashed a flood of anti-Mormon rhetoric in newspapers and in stump speeches given during the 1838 election campaign. On August 6, 1838, non-Mormons in Gallatin tried to prevent Mormons from voting, and the election-day scuffles initiated the 1838 Mormon War. Non-Mormon vigilantes raided and burned Mormon farms, and Danites and other Mormons pillaged non-Mormon towns. During this period Smith's heated rhetoric encouraged some of his followers to take aggressive measures Smith himself might not have approved. Under the impression that an approaching group of armed men were a band of vigilantes, Mormons attacked the Missouri state militia in what became known as the Battle of Crooked River. Governor Lilburn Boggs then ordered that the Mormons be "exterminated or driven from the state". Even though they were yet unaware of Boggs's order, on October 30 a party of Missourians surprised and killed seventeen Mormons in the Haun's Mill massacre. The following day, the Latter Day Saints surrendered to 2,500 state troops and agreed to forfeit their property and leave the state. Smith was immediately brought before a military court, accused of treason, and sentenced to be executed the next morning; but Alexander Doniphan, Smith's former attorney and a brigadier general in the Missouri militia, refused to carry out the order. Smith was then sent to a state court for a preliminary hearing, where several of his former allies testified against him. Smith and five others, including Rigdon, were charged with "overt acts of treason", and transferred to the jail at Liberty, Missouri, to await trial. Smith's months in prison with an ill and whining Rigdon strained their relationship. Meanwhile Brigham Young, then-president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, rose to prominence among the Mormon faithful when he organized the move of about 14,000 Saints to Illinois and eastern Iowa. Smith bore his imprisonment stoically. Understanding that he was effectively on trial before his own people, many of whom considered him a fallen prophet, he wrote a personal defense and an apology for the activities of the Danites. "The keys of the kingdom," he wrote, "have not been taken away from us". Though he directed his followers to collect and publish their stories of persecution, he also urged them to moderate their antagonism toward non-Mormons. On April 6, 1839, after a grand jury hearing in Davis County, Smith and his companions escaped custody, almost certainly with the connivance of the sheriff and guards. Life in Nauvoo, Illinois (1839–44): Many American newspapers criticized Missouri for the Haun's Mill massacre and the state's expulsion of the Latter Day Saints, and Illinois accepted Mormon refugees who gathered along the banks of the Mississippi River, where Smith purchased high-priced, swampy woodland in the hamlet of Commerce. Smith also attempted to portray the Latter Day Saints as an oppressed minority and unsuccessfully petitioned the federal government for help in obtaining reparations. During the summer of 1839, while Latter Day Saints in Nauvoo suffered from a malaria epidemic, Smith sent Brigham Young and other apostles to missions in Europe, where they made numerous converts, many of them poor factory workers. Smith also attracted a few wealthy and influential converts, including John C. Bennett, the Illinois quartermaster general. Bennett used his connections in the Illinois legislature to obtain an unusually liberal charter for the new city, which Smith named "Nauvoo" (Hebrew נָאווּ, meaning "to be beautiful"). The charter granted the city virtual autonomy, authorized a university, and granted Nauvoo habeas corpus power—which allowed Smith to fend off extradition to Missouri. Though Mormon authorities controlled Nauvoo's civil government, the city promised an unusually liberal guarantee of religious freedom. The charter also authorized the Nauvoo Legion, an autonomous militia whose actions were limited only by state and federal constitutions. "Lieutenant General" Smith and "Major General" Bennett became its commanders, thereby controlling by far the largest body of armed men in Illinois. Smith made Bennett Assistant President of the church, and Bennett was elected Nauvoo's first mayor. In 1841, Smith began revealing the doctrine of plural marriage to a few of his closest male associates, including Bennett, who used it as an excuse to seduce numerous women wed and unwed. When embarrassing rumors of "spiritual wifery" got abroad, Smith forced Bennett's resignation as Nauvoo mayor. In retaliation, Bennett wrote "lurid exposés of life in Nauvoo". The early Nauvoo years were a period of doctrinal innovation. Smith introduced baptism for the dead in 1840, and in 1841, construction began on the Nauvoo Temple as a place for recovering lost ancient knowledge. An 1841 revelation promised the restoration of the "fulness of the priesthood"; and in May 1842, Smith inaugurated a revised endowment or "first anointing". The endowment resembled rites of freemasonry that Smith had observed two months earlier when he had been initiated into the Nauvoo Masonic lodge. At first, the endowment was open only to men, who were initiated into the Anointed Quorum. For women, Smith introduced the Relief Society, a service club and sorority within which Smith predicted women would receive "the keys of the kingdom". Smith also elaborated on his plan for a millennial kingdom. No longer envisioning the building of Zion in Nauvoo, Smith viewed Zion as encompassing all of North and South America, with Mormon settlements being "stakes" of Zion's metaphorical tent. Zion also became less a refuge from an impending tribulation than a great building project. In the summer of 1842, Smith revealed a plan to establish the millennial Kingdom of God, which would eventually establish theocratic rule over the whole earth. By mid-1842, popular opinion had turned against the Mormons. After an unknown assailant shot and wounded Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs in May 1842, anti-Mormons circulated rumors that Smith's bodyguard, Porter Rockwell, was the shooter. Though the evidence was circumstantial, Boggs ordered Smith's extradition. Certain he would be killed if he ever returned to Missouri, Smith went into hiding twice during the next five months before the U.S. district attorney for Illinois argued that Smith's extradition to Missouri would be unconstitutional. (Rockwell was later tried and acquitted.) In June 1843, enemies of Smith convinced a reluctant Illinois Governor Thomas Ford to extradite Smith to Missouri on the old charge of treason. Two law officers arrested Smith, but were intercepted by a party of Mormons before they could reach Missouri. Smith was then released on a writ of habeas corpus from the Nauvoo municipal court. While this ended the Missourians' attempts at extradition, it caused significant political fallout in Illinois. In December 1843, Smith petitioned Congress to make Nauvoo an independent territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense. Smith then wrote to the leading presidential candidates and asked them what they would do to protect the Mormons. After receiving noncommittal or negative responses, Smith announced his own third-party candidacy for President of the United States, suspended regular proselytizing, and sent out the Quorum of the Twelve and hundreds of other political missionaries. In March 1844, following a dispute with a federal bureaucrat, Smith organized the secret Council of Fifty with authority to decide which national or state laws Mormons should obey. The Council was also to select a site for a large Mormon settlement in Texas, California, or Oregon, where Mormons could live under theocratic law beyond other governmental control. Death: By the spring of 1844, a rift developed between Smith and a half dozen of his closest associates. Most notably, William Law, Smith's trusted counselor, and Robert Foster, a general of the Nauvoo Legion, disagreed with Smith about how to manage Nauvoo's economy. Both also said that Smith had proposed marriage to their wives. Believing the dissidents were plotting against his life, Smith excommunicated them on April 18, 1844. These dissidents formed a competing church and the following month, at Carthage, the county seat, they procured indictments against Smith for perjury and polygamy. On June 7, the dissidents published the first (and only) issue of the Nauvoo Expositor, calling for reform within the church and appealing to the political views of the county's anti-Mormons. The paper decried Smith's new "doctrines of many Gods", alluded to Smith's theocratic aspirations, and called for a repeal of the Nauvoo city charter. It also attacked Smith's practice of polygamy, implying that Smith was using religion as a pretext to draw unassuming women to Nauvoo in order to seduce and marry them. Fearing the newspaper would bring the countryside down on the Mormons, the Nauvoo city council declared the Expositor a public nuisance and ordered the Nauvoo Legion to destroy the press. Smith, who feared another mob attack, supported the action, not realizing that suppression of the press would sooner incite an attack than libel would. Destruction of the newspaper provoked a strident call to arms from Thomas C. Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal and longtime critic of Smith. Fearing an uprising, Smith mobilized the Nauvoo Legion on June 18 and declared martial law. Officials in Carthage responded by mobilizing their small detachment of the state militia, and Governor Thomas Ford appeared, threatening to raise a larger militia unless Smith and the Nauvoo city council surrendered themselves. Smith initially fled across the Mississippi River, but shortly returned and surrendered to Ford. On June 23, Smith and his brother Hyrum rode to Carthage to stand trial for inciting a riot. Once the Smiths were in custody, the charges were increased to treason. On June 27, 1844, an armed mob with blackened faces stormed Carthage Jail where Joseph and Hyrum were being held. Hyrum, who was trying to secure the door, was killed instantly with a shot to the face. Smith fired a pepper-box pistol that a friend had lent him for self-defense, then sprang for the window. He was shot multiple times before falling out the window, crying, "Oh Lord my God!" He died shortly after hitting the ground, but was shot several times more before the mob dispersed. Five men were later tried for his murder, but all were acquitted. Smith was buried in Nauvoo, and is currently interred there at the Smith Family Cemetery. Throughout his life Smith had been sharply criticized by newspaper editors, and after his death newspapers were almost unanimous in portraying Smith as a religious fanatic. Conversely, within Mormonism, Smith was memorialized first and foremost as a prophet, martyred to seal the testimony of his faith. Legacy- Impact: Smith attracted thousands of devoted followers before his death in 1844 and millions in the century that followed. Among Mormons, he is regarded as a prophet on par with Moses and Elijah. In a 2015 compilation of the 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time, Smithsonian magazine ranked Smith first in the category of religious figures. Mormons and ex-Mormons have produced a large amount of scholarly work about Smith, and to a large extent the result has been two discordant pictures of very different people: a man of God on the one hand, and on the other, a fraud preying on the ignorance of his followers. Believers tended to focus on his achievements and religious teachings, deemphasizing his personal defects, while detractors focused on his mistakes, legal troubles, and controversial doctrines. During the first half of the 20th century, some writers suggested that Smith might have suffered from epileptic seizures or from psychological disorders such as paranoid delusions or manic-depressive illness that might explain his visions and revelations. Many modern biographers disagree with these ideas. More nuanced interpretations range from viewing Smith as a prophet who had normal human weaknesses, a "pious fraud" who believed he was called of God to preach repentance and felt justified inventing visions in order to convert people, or a gifted "mythmaker" who was the product of his Yankee environment. Biographers, Mormon and non-Mormon, agree that Smith was one of the most influential, charismatic, and innovative figures in American religious history. Memorials to Smith include the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Joseph Smith Building on the campus of Brigham Young University, and a granite obelisk marking his birth place. Religious denominations: Smith's death resulted in a succession crisis. Smith had proposed several ways to choose his successor, but had never clarified his preference. Smith's brother Hyrum, had he survived, would have had the strongest claim, followed by Smith's brother Samuel, who died mysteriously a month after his brothers. Another brother, William, was unable to attract a sufficient following. Smith's sons Joseph III and David also had claims, but Joseph III was too young and David was yet unborn. The Council of Fifty had a theoretical claim to succession, but it was a secret organization. Some of Smith's chosen successors, such as Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, had left the church. The two strongest succession candidates were Brigham Young, senior member and president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Sidney Rigdon, the senior member of the First Presidency. In a church-wide conference on August 8, most of the Latter Day Saints elected Young, who led them to the Utah Territory as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Membership in Young's denomination surpassed 14 million members in 2010. Smaller groups followed Sidney Rigdon and James J. Strang, who had based his claim on an allegedly-forged letter of appointment. Others followed Lyman Wight and Alpheus Cutler. Many members of these smaller groups, including most of Smith's family, eventually coalesced in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith III and formed what was known for more than a century as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ), which now has about 250,000 members. As of 2013, members of the denominations originating from Smith's teachings number approximately 15 million. Family and descendants: The first of Smith's wives, Emma Hale, gave birth to nine children during their marriage, five of whom died before the age of two. The eldest, Alvin (born in 1828), died within hours of birth, as did twins Thaddeus and Louisa (born in 1831). When the twins died, the Smiths adopted another set of twins, Julia and Joseph, whose mother had recently died in childbirth; Joseph died of measles in 1832. In 1841, Don Carlos, who had been born a year earlier, died of malaria. In 1842, Emma gave birth to a stillborn son. Joseph and Emma had four sons who lived to maturity: Joseph Smith III, Frederick Granger Williams Smith, Alexander Hale Smith, and David Hyrum Smith (born in 1844 after Smith's death). As of 2013, DNA testing had provided no evidence that Smith had fathered any children by women other than Emma. Throughout her life, Emma Smith frequently denied that her husband had ever taken additional wives. Emma said that the very first time she ever became aware of a polygamy revelation being attributed to Smith by Mormons was when she read about it in Orson Pratt's periodical The Seer in 1853. Emma campaigned publicly against polygamy, and was the main signatory of a petition in 1842, with a thousand female signatures, denying that Smith was connected with polygamy. As president of the Ladies' Relief Society, Emma authorized publishing a certificate in the same year denouncing polygamy, and denying her husband as its creator or participant. Even on her deathbed, Emma denied Joseph's involvement with polygamy, stating, "No such thing as polygamy, or spiritual wifery, was taught, publicly or privately, before my husband's death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge of ... He had no other wife but me; nor did he to my knowledge ever have". After Smith's death, Emma Smith quickly became alienated from Brigham Young and the church leadership. Young, whom Emma feared and despised, was suspicious of her desire to preserve the family's assets from inclusion with those of the church, and thought she would be even more troublesome because she openly opposed plural marriage. When most Latter Day Saints moved west, she stayed in Nauvoo, married a non-Mormon, Major Lewis C. Bidamon, and withdrew from religion until 1860, when she affiliated with the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, first headed by her son, Joseph Smith III. Emma never denied Smith's prophetic gift or repudiated her belief in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Revelations: According to Richard Bushman, the "signal feature" of Smith's life was "his sense of being guided by revelation". Instead of presenting ideas with logical arguments, Smith dictated authoritative revelations and let people decide whether to believe. Smith's teachings came primarily through his revelations, which read like scripture: oracular and open to interpretation. Smith and his followers viewed his revelations as being above teachings or opinions, and Smith's actions seemed to indicate that he believed in his revelations as much as his most loyal followers. Smith's first recorded revelation was a rebuke from God for having let Martin Harris lose 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript, chastising him for "fearing man more than God". The revelation was given in the voice of God rather than as a declaration mediated through Smith; and subsequent revelations assumed a similar authoritative style, often opening with words such as "Hearken O ye people which profess my name, saith the Lord your God." Book of Mormon: The Book of Mormon has been called the longest and most complex of Smith's revelations. It is organized as a compilation of smaller books, each named after its main named narrator or a prominent leader. It tells the story of the rise and fall of a religious civilization beginning around 600 BC and ending in 421 AD. The story begins with a family that leaves Jerusalem, just before the Babylonian captivity. They eventually construct a ship and sail to a "promised land" in the Western Hemisphere. There, they are divided into two factions: Nephites and Lamanites. The Nephites become a righteous people who build a temple and live the law of Moses, though their prophets teach a Christian gospel. The book explains itself to be largely the work of Mormon, a Nephite prophet and military figure. The book closes when Mormon's son, Moroni, finishes engraving and buries the records written on the golden plates. Christian themes permeate the work; for instance, Nephite prophets in the Book of Mormon teach of Christ's coming, and talk of the star that will appear at his birth. After the crucifixion and resurrection in Jerusalem, Jesus appears in the Americas, repeats the Sermon on the Mount, blesses children, and appoints twelve disciples. The book ends with Moroni's exhortation to "come unto Christ". Early Mormons understood the Book of Mormon to be a religious history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Smith's followers view it as a companion to the Bible and an additional witness of Christ, akin to a large apocryphal work. Modern historian Fawn Brodie has called the Book of Mormon a response to pressing cultural and environmental issues of Smith's times, saying that Smith composed the Book of Mormon drawing from scraps of information available to him; Dan Vogel, another historian, says that the work is autobiographical in nature. Smith never said how he produced the Book of Mormon, saying only that he translated by the power of God and implying that he had transcribed the words. The Book of Mormon itself states only that its text will "come forth by the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof". As such, considerable disagreement about the actual method used exists. For at least some of the earliest dictation, Smith is said to have used the "Urim and Thummim", a pair of seer stones he said were buried with the plates. Later, however, he is said to have used a chocolate-colored stone he had found in 1822 that he had used previously for treasure hunting. Joseph Knight said that Smith saw the words of the translation while he gazed at the stone or stones in the bottom of his hat, excluding all light, a process similar to divining the location of treasure. Sometimes, Smith concealed the process by raising a curtain or dictating from another room, while at other times he dictated in full view of witnesses while the plates lay covered on the table. After completing the translation, Smith gave the brown stone to Cowdery, but continued to receive revelations using another stone until about 1833 when he said he no longer needed it. Although the Book of Mormon drew many converts to the church, Fawn Brodie argued in 1945 that the "book lives today because of the prophet, not he because of the book." Smith had assumed a role as prophet, seer, and apostle of Jesus Christ, and by early 1831, he was introducing himself as "Joseph the Prophet". The language of authority in Smith's revelations was appealing to converts, and the revelations were given with the confidence of an Old Testament prophet. Moses and Abraham: Smith said that in June 1830, he received a "revelation of Moses" in which Moses saw "the world and the ends thereof" and asked God questions about the purpose of creation and man's relationship to God. This revelation initiated a revision of the Bible on which Smith worked sporadically until 1833 and which remained unpublished at his death. Smith said that he believed the Bible had been corrupted through the ages, and that his revision worked to restore the original intent; it added long passages rewritten "according to his inspiration". While many changes involved straightening out seeming contradictions or making small clarifications, other changes added large "lost" portions to the text. For instance, Smith's revision nearly tripled the length of the first five chapters of Genesis in what would become the Book of Moses. The Book of Moses begins with Moses' inquiring of God as to the purpose of creation, and is told in this account that God made the earth and heavens to bring humans to eternal life. The book also provides an enlarged account of the Genesis creation narrative and expands the story of Enoch, the ancestor of Noah. In the narrative, Enoch speaks with God, receives a prophetic calling, and eventually builds a city of Zion so righteous that it was taken to heaven. The book also elaborates and expands upon foreshadowing and "types" of Christ, in effect Christianizing the Old Testament. In 1835 Smith encouraged some Latter Day Saints in Kirtland to purchase rolls of ancient Egyptian papyri from a traveling exhibitor. Over the next several years, Smith worked off and on as events allowed, to produce a supposed translation of one of these rolls, which he published in 1842 as the Book of Abraham. The Book of Abraham speaks of the founding of the Abrahamic nation, astronomy, cosmology, lineage and priesthood, and gave another account of the creation story. The papyri from which Smith dictated the Book of Abraham were thought to have been lost in the Great Chicago Fire, but several fragments were rediscovered in the 1960s, were translated by Egyptologists, and were determined to be part of the Book of the Dead with no connection to Abraham. Other revelations: According to Parley P. Pratt, Smith dictated revelations orally, and they were recorded by a scribe without revisions or corrections. Revelations were immediately copied, and then circulated among church members. Smith's revelations often came in response to specific questions. He described the revelatory process as having "pure Intelligence" flowing into him. Smith, however, never viewed the wording to be infallible. The revelations were not God's words verbatim, but "couched in language suitable to Joseph's time". In 1833 Smith edited and expanded many of the previous revelations, publishing them as the Book of Commandments, which later became part of the Doctrine and Covenants. Smith gave varying types of revelations. Some were temporal, while others were spiritual or doctrinal; some were received for a specific individual, while others were directed at the whole church. Notable revelations include an 1831 revelation called "The Law" containing directions for missionary work, rules for organizing society in Zion, a reiteration of the Ten Commandments, an injunction to "administer to the poor and needy", and an outline for the law of consecration. An 1832 revelation called "The Vision" added to the fundamentals of sin and atonement, introduced doctrines of life after salvation, the theme of exaltation, and a heaven with degrees of glory. Another 1832 revelation "on Priesthood" was the first to explain priesthood doctrine. Three months later, Smith gave a lengthy revelation called the "Olive Leaf" containing themes of cosmology and eschatology, and discussing subjects such as light, truth, intelligence, and sanctification; a related revelation given in 1833 put Christ at the center of salvation. Also in 1833, at a time of temperance agitation, Smith delivered a revelation called the "Word of Wisdom," which counseled a diet of wholesome herbs, fruits, grains, a sparing use of meat, and recommended that Latter Day Saints avoid "strong" alcoholic drinks, tobacco, and "hot drinks" (later interpreted to mean tea and coffee). The Word of Wisdom was not originally framed as a commandment, but a recommendation. As such, Smith and other Latter Day Saints did not strictly follow this counsel, though it later became a requirement in the LDS Church. In 1835 Smith gave the "great revelation" that organized the priesthood into quorums and councils, and served as a complex blueprint for church structure. Smith's last revelation on the "New and Everlasting Covenant" was recorded in 1843, and dealt with the theology of family, the doctrine of sealing, and plural marriage. Before 1832, most of Smith's revelations dealt with establishing the church, gathering his followers, and building the City of Zion, while later revelations dealt with the priesthood, endowment, and exaltation. The revelations slowed in Kirtland during the autumn of 1833, and again after the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, as Smith relied more heavily on his own teachings. Smith moved away from written revelations opening with "verily thus saith the Lord" and taught more in sermons, conversations, and letters. For instance, the doctrines of baptism for the dead and the nature of God were introduced in sermons, and one of Smith's most famed statements about there being "no such thing as immaterial matter" was recorded from a casual conversation with a Methodist preacher. The Holy Spirit may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass.- Joseph Smith Views and teachings- Cosmology and theology: Smith taught that all existence was material, including a world of "spirit matter" so fine that it was invisible to all but the purest mortal eyes. Matter, in Smith's view, could neither be created nor destroyed; the creation involved only the reorganization of existing matter. Like matter, Smith saw "intelligence" as co-eternal with God, and taught that human spirits had been drawn from a pre-existent pool of eternal intelligences. Nevertheless, spirits could not experience a "fullness of joy" unless joined with corporeal bodies, according to Smith. The work and glory of God, then, was to create worlds across the cosmos where inferior intelligences could be embodied. Though Smith initially viewed God the Father as a spirit, he eventually began teaching that God was an advanced and glorified man, embodied within time and space. By the end of his life, Smith was teaching that both God the Father and Jesus were distinct beings with physical bodies, but the Holy Spirit was a "personage of Spirit". Through the gradual acquisition of knowledge, according to Smith, those who received exaltation could eventually become like God. These teachings implied a vast hierarchy of gods, with God himself having a father. In Smith's cosmology, those who became gods would reign, unified in purpose and will, leading spirits of lesser capacity to share immortality and eternal life. In Smith's view, the opportunity to achieve exaltation extended to all humanity; those who died with no opportunity to accept saving ordinances could achieve exaltation by accepting them in the afterlife through ordinances performed on their behalf. Smith said that children who died in their innocence would be guaranteed to rise at the resurrection and receive exaltation. Apart from those who committed the eternal sin, Smith taught that even the wicked and disbelieving would achieve a degree of glory in the afterlife. Religious authority and ritual: Smith's teachings were rooted in dispensational restorationism. He taught that the Church of Christ restored through him was a latter-day restoration of the early Christian faith, which had been lost in the Great Apostasy. At first, Smith's church had little sense of hierarchy; his religious authority was derived from visions and revelations. Though Smith did not claim exclusive prophethood, an early revelation designated him as the only prophet allowed to issue commandments "as Moses". This religious authority encompassed economic and political as well as spiritual matters. For instance, in the early 1830s, he temporarily instituted a form of religious communism, called the United Order, that required Latter Day Saints to give all their property to the church, which was divided among the faithful. He also envisioned that the theocratic institutions he established would have a role in the worldwide political organization of the Millennium. By the mid-1830s, Smith began teaching a hierarchy of three priesthoods—the Melchizedek, the Aaronic, and the Patriarchal. Each priesthood was a continuation of biblical priesthoods through patrilineal succession or ordination by biblical figures appearing in visions. Upon introducing the Melchizedek or "High" Priesthood in 1831, Smith taught that its recipients would be "endowed with power from on high", thus fulfilling a need for a greater holiness and an authority commensurate with the New Testament apostles. This doctrine of endowment evolved through the 1830s, until in 1842, the Nauvoo endowment included an elaborate ceremony containing elements similar to Freemasonry and the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah. The endowment was extended to women in 1843, though Smith never clarified whether women could be ordained to priesthood offices. Smith taught that the High Priesthood's endowment of heavenly power included the sealing powers of Elijah, allowing High Priests to effect binding consequences in the afterlife. For example, this power would enable proxy baptisms for the dead and priesthood marriages that would be effective into the afterlife. Elijah's sealing powers also enabled the second anointing, or "fulness of the priesthood", which, according to Smith, sealed married couples to their exaltation. Theology of family: During the early 1840s, Smith unfolded a theology of family relations called the "New and Everlasting Covenant" that superseded all earthly bonds. He taught that outside the Covenant, marriages were simply matters of contract, and that in the afterlife individuals married outside the Covenant or not married would be limited in their progression. To fully enter the Covenant, a man and woman must participate in a "first anointing", a "sealing" ceremony, and a "second anointing" (also called "sealing by the Holy Spirit of Promise"). When fully sealed into the Covenant, Smith said that no sin nor blasphemy (other than the eternal sin) could keep them from their exaltation in the afterlife. According to Smith, only one person on earth at a time—in this case, Smith—could possess this power of sealing. Smith taught that the highest level of exaltation could be achieved through "plural marriage" (polygamy), which was the ultimate manifestation of this New and Everlasting Covenant. Plural marriage, according to Smith, allowed an individual to transcend the angelic state and become a god, accelerating the expansion of one's heavenly kingdom. Polygamy: Smith had by some accounts been teaching a polygamy doctrine as early as 1831, and there is unconfirmed evidence that Smith was a polygamist by 1835. Although the church had publicly repudiated polygamy, in 1837 there was a rift between Smith and Oliver Cowdery over the issue. Cowdery suspected that Smith had engaged in a relationship with his serving girl Fanny Alger. Smith never denied a relationship, but insisted it was not adulterous, presumably because he had taken Alger as a plural wife. In April 1841, Smith wed Louisa Beaman; and during the next two-and-a-half years he married or was sealed to about 30 additional women, ten of whom were already married to other men (this was generally done with the knowledge and consent of their husbands, and the records and circumstances of several of these unions support that they may have been considered "eternity-only" sealings). Ten of Smith's plural wives were between the ages of fourteen and twenty; others were over fifty. The practice of polygamy was kept secret from both non-Mormons and most members of the church. Polygamy caused a breach between Smith and his first wife, Emma. Although Emma knew of some of her husband's marriages, she almost certainly did not know the extent of his polygamous activities. In 1843, Emma temporarily accepted Smith's marriage to four women boarded in the Smith household, but she soon regretted her decision and demanded that the other wives leave. In July, Smith dictated a revelation directing Emma to accept plural marriage, but the two were not reconciled until September, after Emma began participating in temple ceremonies. Political views: While campaigning for President of the United States in 1844, Smith had opportunity to take political positions on issues of the day. Smith considered the U.S. Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, to be inspired by God and "the Latter Day Saints' best and perhaps only defense." He believed a strong central government was crucial to the nation's well-being and thought democracy better than tyranny—although he also taught that a theocratic monarchy was the ideal form of government. In foreign affairs, Smith was an expansionist, though he viewed "expansionism as brotherhood". Smith favored a strong central bank and high tariffs to protect American business and agriculture. He disfavored imprisonment of convicts except for murder, preferring efforts to reform criminals through labor; he also opposed courts-martial for military deserters. He supported capital punishment but opposed hanging, preferring execution by firing squad or beheading. Smith published a pro-slavery essay in 1836 but later opposed the practice. During his presidential campaign, he proposed abolishing it by 1850 and compensating slaveholders through sale of public lands. Smith said he did not believe blacks to be inherently inferior to whites; he welcomed both freemen and slaves into the church. However, he opposed baptizing slaves without permission of their masters, and he opposed miscegenation. Smith declared that he would be one of the instruments in fulfilling Nebuchadnezzar's statue vision in the Book of Daniel: that secular government would be destroyed without "sword or gun", and would be replaced with a "theodemocratic" Kingdom of God. Smith taught that this kingdom would be governed by theocratic principles, but that it would also be multidenominational and democratic, so long as the people chose wisely. Ethics and behavior: A succinct statement of ethics by Smith is found in his 13th Article of Faith: We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. Smith said his ethical rule was, "When the Lord commands, do it". He also taught: that which is wrong under one circumstance, may be and often is, right under another. God said thou shalt not kill—at another time he said thou shalt utterly destroy. This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted—by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the elders of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right ... even things which may be considered abominable to all those who do not understand the order of heaven. Beginning in the mid-1830s and into the 1840s, as the Mormon people became involved in conflicts with the Missouri and Illinois state governments, Smith taught that "Congress has no power to make a law that would abridge the rights of my religion," and that they were not under the obligation to follow laws they deemed as being contrary to their "religious privilege". Smith may have thus felt justified in promoting polygamy despite its violation of some traditional ethical standards.

why do you care?

what i should've asked my ex-boyfriend when he was jealous over friends.

Origin of the Book of Mormon

There are several theories as to the actual origin of the Book of Mormon. Most adherents to the Latter Day Saint movement view the book as a work of inspired scripture. The most common theory accepted by adherents is that promoted by Joseph Smith, who said he translated the work from an ancient set of golden plates inscribed by prophets, which Smith discovered near his home in Palmyra, New York, in the 1820s after being told to go there by the angel Moroni, a prophet in the Book of Mormon narrative. Besides Smith himself, there were more than 11 witnesses who said they saw the plates physically (three claiming to have been visited by an angel as well) in 1829. There were also several other witnesses, some of them friendly to Smith and some hostile, who observed him dictating the text that eventually became the Book of Mormon. Nevertheless, critics have explored a number of issues, including (1) whether Joseph Smith actually had golden plates, or whether the text of the Book of Mormon originated in his mind or through inspiration; (2) whether it was Smith himself who composed the book's text, or whether an associate of Smith's such as Oliver Cowdery or Sidney Rigdon could have composed the text; and (3) whether the book was based on prior works such as the View of the Hebrews, the Spalding Manuscript, or the Bible. Theories of authorship: There are differing views on the origin of the Book of Mormon. - Miraculous origins theories generally accept Joseph Smith's own account that he translated an ancient record compiled and abridged by Mormon, a pre-Columbian resident of the Western Hemisphere who recorded the spiritual history of generations of his people, and the teachings of their ancestors, the Hebrews. - Variations on the miraculous origin theory include the view that the work is a divinely inspired narrative regardless of its historicity (i.e., "Inspired Fiction"). or that the book was written by Smith through a process known as "automatic writing." - Joseph Smith as the sole author, without intentional assistance. One line of thinking proposed by several authors is that the Book of Mormon is a "primary source" reflecting events in Smith's own life. - Theories of multiple authors argue Smith collaborated with others to produce the Book of Mormon. These theories generally cite Book of Mormon scribe Oliver Cowdrey or Sidney Rigdon as potential co-authors. Miraculous origin theory: According to the accounts of Joseph Smith and his associates, the original record was engraved on thin, malleable sheets of metal with the appearance of gold and bound with three rings at one edge. The leaves were engraved on both sides with considerable skill. According to the account presented in the book, the prophet-historian named Mormon abridged the records of the local civilizations from the preceding thousand years. Mormon then delivered the account to his son, Moroni, who added a few words of his own and concealed the plates about AD 400. Near the end of Moroni's life (approximately AD 421), he placed these plates along with several other items in a stone box in a hillside (now named Cumorah) near present-day Palmyra, New York. Then, by Smith's account, on September 21, 1823, this same Moroni, then a resurrected being, appeared to Smith to instruct him about this ancient record and its destined translation into the English language. Smith was shown the location of the plates (including the other items in the box), but was not immediately allowed to take them. After four years of meeting with the angel and being instructed, Smith was entrusted with possession of the plates. Through the power of God and the Urim and Thummim, which were ancient seeing stones hidden along with the plates, he was able to translate the characters (which, according to the Book of Mormon, were written in Reformed Egyptian into English. Smith was commanded to show the plates to several people and no one else. Accounts by these individuals are recorded in the front of the Book of Mormon as "The Testimony of the Three Witnesses" and "The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses." Smith taught—and most Mormons believe—that the existence of the Book of Mormon was prophesied by Biblical scripture. Rigdon's son John, discussing an interview with his father in 1865, states: My father, after I had finished saying what I have repeated above, looked at me a moment, raised his hand above his head and slowly said, with tears glistening in his eyes: "My son, I can swear before high heaven that what I have told you about the origin of the Book of Mormon is true. Your mother and sister, Mrs. Athalia Robinson, were present when that book was handed to me in Mentor, Ohio, and all I ever knew about the origin of the Book of Mormon was what Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed they saw the plates have told me, and in all of my intimacy with Joseph Smith he never told me but one story." Apologists of the Book of Mormon do not find the instances of purported plagiarism troubling; to the contrary, they feel that the repetition further proves the authenticity of the Book of Mormon—that God reveals similar, if not the same teachings, to all people since he is "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" and that the repetition fulfills prophecy that "in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established". LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball stated, "Prophets say the same things because we face basically the same problems" and that "warnings must be repeated. Just because a truth is repeated does not make that truth any less important or true. Indeed, the opposite is true." Smith as sole author: According to the Smith-as-sole-author hypothesis, the Book of Mormon was written by Joseph Smith without the intentional complicity of anyone else. These theories argue that the simplest explanation is that Smith authored the Book of Mormon himself. It is argued that the Book of Mormon reflects experiences in Smith's life. For example, the tree of life vision in the Book of Mormon has parallels with a dream Joseph Smith, Sr. had (as recorded in 1845 by Lucy Mack Smith). The golden plates were sometimes called the "Golden Bible," in early descriptions. The label "Golden Bible" predates the Book of Mormon, as legends of such an artifact circulated in Canada and upstate New York while Smith was growing up in Vermont. Smith companion Peter Ingersoll later claimed that Smith had told him of the legend of the Canadian Golden Bible. Theories of multiple authors: According to this family of theories, Smith was aided in the creation of the Book of Mormon by one or more co-authors. Sidney Rigdon and Oliver Cowdery have been posited as possible authors or co-authors. Both Rigdon and Cowdery had more formal education than Smith and these theories argue that either could have helped Smith author the book. The author David Persuitte, in suggesting evidence for the multiple-authors theory, points to a revelation of Smith's, dated March 1829, that apparently limited Smith's power to translation. Persuitte argues that the wording indicates at least one other collaborating but secret author, since such a self-imposed limitation would make sense "if he had some partners who had imposed it upon him in order to prevent him from gathering too much power to himself." In contrast, co-authors Jerald and Sandra Tanner argue the early text of the revelation merely demonstrates that "Joseph Smith was not planning on doing any other work besides the Book of Mormon". Oliver Cowdery: Oliver Cowdery was a third-cousin of Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph Smith's mother. A pastor who lived near Cowdery, Ethan Smith, had written View of the Hebrews, a work that is sometimes argued to have been a source for the Book of Mormon. Cowdery served as scribe during the transcription of the Book of Mormon and he served as one of the Three Witnesses to the golden plates. Sidney Rigdon: Sidney Rigdon was a Baptist preacher who became prominent among Smith's earliest followers. Rigdon served as a scribe for the production of the Book of Moses, received revelations jointly with Smith, served as Smith's spokesperson, and with Smith carried the title "Prophet, Seer, and Revelator". After Smith's death, Rigdon led his own faction of Latter Day Saints and continued to announce revelations. However, there is little or no extant evidence that Smith knew of or was in contact with Rigdon until after the Book of Mormon was published, although some witness accounts place Rigdon in upstate New York in 1825 and 1826. Most histories state that Rigdon learned of the Book of Mormon from Parley P. Pratt, a member of Rigdon's Kirtland, Ohio, congregation, who had joined the Latter Day Saints in September 1830 in Palmyra. Upon Pratt's return to Ohio, Rigdon reportedly learned of Smith and the Book of Mormon and was baptized by Pratt. According to these histories, only after his own baptism did Rigdon travel to New York, where he first met Smith in December 1830, nine months after the Book of Mormon's publication. Purported sources: Those who reject the miraculous origin theory of the Book of Mormon cite a number of works that could have served as sources for the Book of Mormon. King James Version of the Bible: Those who reject the miraculous origin theory believe that the King James Bible was used as a source for the Book of Mormon. In the Book of Mormon, the prophet Nephi explicitly quotes the Book of Isaiah. Segments of the Book of Mormon—for example 1 Nephi chapters 20–21 and 2 Nephi chapters 7–8 and 12–24—match nearly word-for-word chapters 48:1–52:2 and 2–14 (respectively) of the King James Version (1611) of the Book of Isaiah. In addition, 58 quotes from Isaiah found in the Book of Mormon are paraphrased versions of those found in the King James Version. Other parallels include Mosiah chapter 14 matching KJV Isaiah 53; 3 Nephi chapter 22 matching KJV Isaiah 54; 3 Nephi chapters 24–25 matching KJV Malachi 3–4; and 3 Nephi chapters 12–14 matching KJV Matthew 5–7. In total, there exist 478 verses in the Book of Mormon which are quoted in some form from the book of Isaiah. The majority of modern scholars have accepted that the sources used for the King James Version of the Bible were not the earliest or most reliable sources (e.g., see Alexandrian text-type and Dead Sea scrolls). The Book of Mormon claims to have been written over 1100 years prior to the King James Version, but it contains some of the same errors. One example is Mark 16:15-18, which is quoted nearly word-for-word in Mormon 9:22-24. The passage concerns believers holding snakes and drinking poison; however, it does not appear in many early biblical manuscripts and is widely believed to have been composed in the 2nd century. Additionally, the Book of Mormon reflects KJV literary and linguistic style. The KJV was the most commonly used translation of the Bible when the Book of Mormon was produced. Apocrypha: It has been claimed that the books of the Apocrypha were a source for the Book of Mormon. In particular, 2 Maccabees includes the name "Nephi". Spalding's "Manuscript Found": In 1834, E. D. Howe in his book Mormonism Unvailed introduced a theory which claimed Smith plagiarized material from the manuscript for an unpublished novel by Solomon Spaulding. Howe had the manuscript in his possession at the time of publication. Spaulding's story, called "Manuscript Story", revolves around a group of seafaring Romans who sail to the New World around two millennia ago. Critics long speculated that Smith had access to the original script and that Smith he plagiarized heavily from it in writing the Book of Mormon. The only known Spalding manuscript, "Manuscript Story", was discovered in 1884 and now resides at Oberlin College in Ohio. Once the manuscript was available for study, most critics discarded this theory because the "extensive parallels" previously thought to exist consisted only of a few minor details: intercontinental seafaring, the existence (and use) of a seer stone, and the discovery of records under a stone (Latin parchments in the Spaulding manuscript, golden plates with "reformed Egyptian" writing according to Smith). Most of the other purported similarities, attested to by various witnesses in affidavits gathered by Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, were not found to exist. Historian Fawn Brodie expressed suspicion regarding these affidavits, claiming that the style of the statements was too similar and displayed too much uniformity. Some have suggested that the discrepancies can be explained by the fact that "Manuscript Story" was a different document than "Manuscript Found", which has ironically still not been found. View of the Hebrews: One purported source of the Book of Mormon is View of the Hebrews, first published in 1823 by Ethan Smith, a pastor of a church in Poultney, Vermont, who was of no relation to Joseph Smith. It is argued that the works share several passages and many thematic elements. Ethan Smith was a pastor of a church in Poultney, Vermont, which was attended by Book of Mormon witness and scribe Oliver Cowdery. View of the Hebrews was first published in 1823, seven years before the publication of the Book of Mormon. In the early 20th century, Mormon apologist B. H. Roberts authored a manuscript titled Studies of the Book of Mormon, in which he compared the content of the Book of Mormon with View of the Hebrews. Roberts's conclusion was that, assuming a hemispheric geography theory for the Book of Mormon, sufficient parallels existed that future critics could claim that View of the Hebrews could have provided a structural foundation for the Book of Mormon story. Roberts's manuscript was private and shared only with church leadership at the time he did the analysis. Publicly, Roberts continued to support the miraculous origin theory of the Book of Mormon. Roberts's list of parallels included: - extensive quotation from the prophecies of Isaiah in the Old Testament; - the Israelite origin of the American Indian; - the future gathering of Israel and restoration of the Ten Lost Tribes; - the peopling of the New World from the Old via a long journey northward which encountered "seas" of "many waters;" - a religious motive for the migration; - the division of the migrants into civilized and uncivilized groups with long wars between them and the eventual destruction of the civilized by the uncivilized; - the assumption that all native peoples were descended from Israelites and their languages from Hebrew; - the burial of a "lost book" with "yellow leaves;" - the description of extensive military fortifications with military observatories or "watch towers" overlooking them; - a change from monarchy to republican forms of government; and - the preaching of the gospel in ancient America. David Persuitte has presented a large number of parallels between passages in View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon, but notes that there are no instances of direct copying. The parallels between the two books that Persuitte presents cover a broad range of topics, including religious ideas about the responsibility of the American people in convincing the Indians of their "Israelite" origins and converting them to Christianity. Persuitte quotes from View of the Hebrews Ethan Smith's theory about what happened to the ancient Israelites after they arrived in America. That theory is also essentially a summary of the basic story line of the Book of Mormon, including the idea that the ancient Israelite immigrants to America split into two factions: a civilized group and a savage group that subsequently exterminated the civilized group. Persuitte also quotes from the two books several similar descriptions of structures built by the civilized faction and wars that were fought between the two factions, as well as numerous other similarities. According to Persuitte, the ideas that can be found in View of the Hebrews are sufficient to have "inspired" Joseph Smith to have written the Book of Mormon had he read it. Joseph Smith himself mentioned Ethan Smith and cited passages from View of the Hebrews in an article published in the Times and Seasons in June 1842. Oliver Cowdery's family members were members of Ethan Smith's congregation in Poultney when he arrived and assumed leadership in November 1821. Even prior to his book's publication, Ethan Smith advocated his views regarding the origins of Native Americans in sermons to his congregations. In 1825, Ethan Smith published the much-enlarged second edition of View of the Hebrews, the same year that Cowdery left Poultney for New York State. The Wonders of Nature: Critics have claimed that Smith based several passages and thematic material in the Book of Mormon on material he found in The Wonders of Nature, published in 1825 by Josiah Priest. The Golden Pot: The Golden Pot: A Modern Fairytale is a novella by German author E. T. A. Hoffmann, first published in 1814. It has been suggested as an inspiration for the story of the golden plates. Much of the narrative occurs in the imagination of the protagonist Anselmus. Alleged similarities include: - Anselmus encounters Archivarius Lindhorst, the last archivist of Atlantis. - Archivarius Lindhorst is a guardian of ancient treasures (like Moroni) - Significant events occur on the fall equinox - Anselmus receives a gold record and asked to decipher the writing on it. The Late War: The Late War is an account of the War of 1812 which is written in the style of the King James Bible. The 2008 work Mormon Parallels and a 2010 work have discussed possible similarities between the two works. In 2013, The Late War was the subject of discussion among both ex-Mormons and Mormon apologists.

pushing for it

the sisters who helped baptize me pushed for my baptism since last year. I'm like, "don't push that type of thing." i think it should be god who reveals when the baptism should happen