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Chapter 1 Introduction"Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. Let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He did not leave that open to us. He did not intend to." - C.S. Lewis1 A Restoration ChurchThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) is a radical religion by the standards of most modern religions--and it was considered even more strange in the time and place it originated. Perhaps no other major religious movement in American history has given rise to so much controversy, curiosity, admiration, and animosity. The Church has been variously described as a non-Christian "revival of primitive paganism in a modified form"2, a "cult,"3 and, by a much more sympathetic observer, a completely new Christian religious tradition.4 But what does it claim for itself? Mormonism emphatically claims to be Christian--but considers itself neither Protestant nor Catholic. Rather, it differs from both in that it claims to be the restored Church of Jesus Christ. That is, the Church claims that all other Christian traditions have come down to us as incomplete remnants of the original Church which Jesus organized, which necessitated God restoring the true body of Christ to the earth through a prophet--Joseph Smith, Jr. Thus, the Latter-day Saints claim their church is an actual restoration of primitive Christianity, as it existed under the Apostles in the first century A.D. Joseph Smith--The Prophet Of The RestorationBefore we go on, however, we must set the stage by summarizing how the LDS Church claims this restoration took place, and why it was needed. Therefore, we must begin with the story of the Prophet of the Restoration. Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844) grew up as a farmboy in frontier Vermont and upstate New York. When Smith, who had little formal education, was fourteen years old, a series of religious revivals swept through his part of the country, exciting intense religious feelings as well as sharp divisions between those belonging to different religious sects. Confused by this "strife of words and . . . contest about opinions" (Joseph Smith History 1:6), young Joseph visited the various religious camps trying to decide which one to attend. He leaned toward the Methodists, but was unsure. Upon reading a passage in the book of James, Joseph thought he had found a way to resolve his difficulties. He read: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." (James 1:5) Joseph recounted: Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible. (Joseph Smith History 1:12) After reading this scripture, young Joseph retired to a grove of trees near his house to pray for an answer as to which church he should join. On a spring day in 1820, he did just that. While he was praying in the grove, two personages "whose glory def[ied] all description" descended in a pillar of light. One of them pointed to the other and said, "This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" (Joseph Smith History 1:16-17) When Joseph asked which church to join, the Savior replied that he "must join none of them, for they were all wrong . . . they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof." (Joseph Smith History 1:18-19) Nearly four years later, Smith received another visionary experience. An angel identifying himself as an ancient American prophet appeared in Joseph's bedroom and informed him that he would be entrusted with the translation of a certain prophetic record. This record told of an ancient American people, now extinct, who had migrated to this hemisphere from Jerusalem about 600 B.C. He was informed that God had a work for him to do and that his "name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people." (Joseph Smith History 1:33) After being shown where the metal plates upon which this record was inscribed were hidden, Joseph was commanded to meet with the angel at that place for instruction each year. These meetings took place each year until September 22, 1827, when Joseph was given the plates, and the spiritual discernment to translate them. This record, known as the Book of Mormon, was finally published early in 1830, although when historians consider Joseph's other activities during this period, they conclude he must have produced the book in about two months. After the translation was finished the angel took back the plates, since they contained prophecies and other information that the world was not yet prepared to receive. However, included in each edition of the Book of Mormon are the testimonies of eleven other men who claimed to have seen the record Joseph translated. In 1829, while in the business of translating, Joseph and Oliver Cowdery (Smith's scribe who was also one of the witnesses of the plates) were visited by the angel of John the Baptist, who ordained them to the priesthood of Aaron. Later the two were visited by the Apostles Peter, James, and John who ordained them to the higher priesthood, that of Melchizedek, and to the Apostleship. (For more information on these two priesthoods, see Hebrews 7 and D&C 107.) Shortly after the Book of Mormon had been published, Joseph was commanded by revelation to organize the Church of Jesus Christ on April 6, 1830. Through the rest of his life, Joseph Smith received revelation upon revelation restoring what he claimed were doctrines and practices related to the ancient gospel, which Christianity had lost over time after the first century A.D. Finally, in 1844, Joseph Smith was martyred at the hands of a mob. A Bold Claim and an Exacting TestThese assertions of angels appearing with metal books to translate, visions of God Himself, and a restoration of the ancient Church were outrageous to the society in which Joseph Smith was reared. What is more, Joseph claimed to have restored various doctrines and practices that properly belonged to antiquity, especially ancient Christianity. But the scientific, historical study of early Christianity was barely in its infancy at the time. Many new documents from that period have been discovered since then, and what documents had been discovered (other than the New Testament) were for the most part not available to Joseph Smith. Were the beliefs and practices he "restored" truly early Christian? The purpose of this book is to explore that question. MethodsThe purpose of this study is not to create a portrait of ancient Christianity and then compare Mormonism to it. Although it will be possible to identify some of the characteristics of the primitive Church with reasonable certainty, such a methodology would, I believe, be inappropriate if too broadly applied. Since scholars agree that "conditions [in the early centuries of Christianity] were favorable to the coexistence of a wide variety of opinions even on issues of prime importance,"5 it is difficult to say with absolute certainty that the doctrines and organization Joseph Smith restored were identical to those revealed by Jesus. The question as to what the original Church taught and practiced is the subject of serious and sometimes heated debate. But what if we find that the doctrines Joseph Smith restored were, indeed, legitimate early Christian beliefs and practices from the first two or three centuries after Christ? If Joseph Smith taught doctrines that are in harmony with those of the early church but which were essentially unknown in his time, the skeptic must provide an explanation for the phenomenon. We shall see that the Prophet did restore legitimate early Christian doctrines, many of which can be shown to have preceded the present doctrines of the mainline Christian denominations--and he did so in the absence of much of the primary data available today. How could this have happened? If Joseph Smith's explanation does not suffice, some other explanation must be put forth. Notes1 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Company, 1952), 56. 2 Ed Decker and Dave Hunt, The God Makers (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1984), 12 3 "Mormonism: Christian or Cult?," Saints Alive tract, 1. 4 Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985). 5 ECD 4.
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