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churchofjesuschrist.org. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is the largest Latter Day Saint denomination. Founded by Joseph Smith during the Second Great Awakening, the church is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has established congregations and built temples worldwide.
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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), church that traces its origins to a religion founded by Joseph Smith in the United States in 1830. The term Mormon, often used to refer to members of this church, comes from the Book of Mormon, which was published by Smith in 1830; use of the term is discouraged by the church. Now an international movement, the church is characterized by a unique understanding of the Godhead, emphasis on family life, belief in continuing revelation, desire for order, respect for authority, and missionary work. Its members obey strict prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea and promote education and a vigorous work ethic.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and had more than 16 million members by the early 21st century. A significant portion of the church’s members live in the United States and the rest in Latin America, Canada, Europe, Africa, the Philippines, and parts of Oceania.
In western New York state in 1823, Joseph Smith had a vision in which an angel named Moroni told him about engraved golden plates buried in a nearby hill. According to Smith, he received subsequent instruction from Moroni and, four years later, excavated the plates and translated them into English. The resultant Book of Mormon—so called after an ancient American prophet who, according to Smith, had compiled the text recorded on the plates—recounts the history of a family of Israelites that migrated to America centuries before Jesus Christ and were taught by prophets similar to those in the Old Testament. The religion Smith founded originated amid the great fervour of competing Christian revivalist movements in early 19th-century America but departed from them in its proclamation of a new dispensation. Through Smith, God had restored the “true church”—i.e., the primitive Christian church—and had reasserted the true faith from which the various Christian churches had strayed.
The new church was millennialist, believing in the imminent Second Coming of Christ and his establishment of a 1,000-year reign of peace. This belief inspired Smith’s desire to establish Zion, the kingdom of God, which was to be built somewhere in the western United States. He received revelations not only of theological truth but also providing day-to-day practical guidance. The early members of the church devised new secular institutions, including collective ownership (later changed to a system of tithing) and polygamy, which was practiced by Smith himself and by most leading Mormons in the church’s early years.
Soon after the church’s founding, Smith and the bulk of the members moved to Kirtland, Ohio, where a prominent preacher, Sidney Rigdon, and his following had embraced the faith. In Jackson county, Missouri, where it was revealed that Zion was to be established, Smith instituted a communalistic United Order of Enoch. But strife with non-Mormons in the area led to killings and the burning of Mormon property. Tensions between church members and local slave-owning Missourians, who viewed the Mormons as religious fanatics and possible abolitionists, escalated to armed skirmishes that forced 15,000 of the faithful to leave Missouri for Illinois in 1839, where Smith built a new city, Nauvoo. There the commercial success and growing political power of the newcomers once again provoked renewed hostility from their non-Mormon neighbours. Smith’s suppression of some dissidents among the Nauvoo Mormons in 1844 intensified non-Mormon resentment and furnished grounds for his arrest. Smith and his brother Hyrum were murdered by a mob while both were in jail in Carthage, near Nauvoo, on June 27, 1844.
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After Smith’s unexpected death, the government of the church was left in the hands of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, whose senior member was Brigham Young. Ignoring several claimants to the church leadership, the majority of its members supported Young, who became the church’s second president. Increasing mob violence, however, made their continued presence in Nauvoo untenable, and Young thus led a mass 1,100-mile (1,800-km) migration to Utah in 1846–47. There they hoped to establish a commonwealth where they could practice their religion without persecution. Envisioning a new state that he called Deseret, Young helped to establish more than 300 communities in Utah and neighbouring territories. To build the population, he sent missionaries across North America and into Europe. Converts were urged to migrate to the new land, and it is estimated that about 80,000 Mormon pioneers traveling by wagon, by handcart, or on foot had reached Salt Lake City by 1869, when the arrival of the railroads made the journey much easier.
The history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) has three main periods, described generally as: [1][2][3] the early history during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, which is in common with most Latter Day Saint movement churches; the "pioneer era" under the leadership of Brigham Young and his 19th-century successors;
Feb 9, 2010 · In Fayette, New York, Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church), organizes the Church of Christ during a meeting with a small ...
- Missy Sullivan
There, during the winter and early spring of 1846–47, the Latter-day Saints prepared for their historic trek to the remote valley of the Great Salt Lake, 1,000 miles to the west. Brigham Young’s advance party led the way, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley on June 22, 1847. During the next 22 years, an estimated 68,000 Latter-day Saints ...
Oct 5, 2009 · The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in New York State in the USA in 1830. Smith had received a revelation from God, first through an angel, and then through ...
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hrist, with all of its truths and priesthood authority. Ten years later, after a series of revelations and dramatic visitations to Joseph and others, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was ofi. ially organized on April 6, 1830, in Fayette, New York.THE BOOK OF MORMON: ANOTHER TESTAMENT OF JESUS CHRIST In September of 1823, Joseph ...
