Joseph Smith: The Latter Day Prophet

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Joseph Smith Jr. was a very religious and God fearing man. He founded the Latter Day Saint movement, better known as the Mormon Church. He was persecuted by some and embraced by others, as well. He has been one of the most controversial men in history, today, because of his beliefs and his teachings. They were different for his time and still very strange for our time. Joseph Smith Jr. was born on December 23, 1805 in Sharon, Vermont. His father Joseph Smith Sr. and his mother Lucy Mack Smith were poor uneducated farmers. Soon after his birth, the Smith family moved to western New York, where they continued to farm near the town of Palmyra. Joseph had five brothers and three sisters. There he spent the next four years of his life just being a kid, before moving to Manchester. (Book of Mormon: Joseph Smith History Ch.1) Smith had little involvement in religious organizations during his youth. He read and studied the Bible, and held his own religious opinions. He was influenced by the common folk religion of the area. Most people, during this time, were of Methodist faith. The region where Smith grew up was also an area of intense revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. (Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia: 2008 Early Life of Joseph Smith Jr.) Smith mainly worked the fields with his father and brothers, and had no time for formal education. In 1820, at age fourteen, Joseph Smith Jr. was confronted with a decision to join a church. Being a man of no formal education or religious organization, he went to a grove of trees to pray and ask God which church was the right one to join. Smith said God and Jesus appeared to him as “Two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description.” (Book of Mormon: Joseph Smith History Ch. 1 Verse 17) They told him that none of the churches had it right, and he should not join any of them. Soon after the “First Vision,” Joseph Smith Jr. was in the company of a Methodist preacher who was very active in the revivalism. As the two were conversing about religion, Smith mentioned his accounts with the Father and the Son. The preacher treated it lightly, but with contempt, saying it was the devil. The preacher concluded that visions did not happen in the current time, and such things stopped with the apostles and would never happen after that.

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