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Show 33 comfort to the Mormon faithful, rocked the Christian world and sent chills down the spines of their neighbors. Smith and his converts experienced opposition almost from the first. Consequently, in I83I Joseph announced that Kirtland, Ohio was to be the new gathering place of the Church. By this time, serveral important tenets of Church doctrine were emerging. One of the concepts that frequently overshadowed the course of Mormon history was the prophet's views on the millennium.^ At this late date in the earth's history, the millennium was said to be on the brink of becoming reality. The time was rapidly approaching when all wickedness would be overthrown, and Christ would come to rule the earth for a thousand years. The Saints would play a key role in bringing this to pass. The Mormons viewed the world as a wicked place which was ripe for destruction at the hands of an indignant God. Church leaders frequently sermonized on the theme of the degraded world and the Imminent millennium, using the writings of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and John the Revelator for their text. Members were quick to identify these ancient scriptures with conditions that existed in the contemporary world. Jeremiah wrote that the Lord would "raise up against Babylon,..." and "Babylon shall become heaps,... without an inhabitant."11' Isaiah, too, prophesied of coming destruction: "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners out of it."5 The Book of Mormon also warned the inhabitants of the earth of catastrophe when they "harden their hearts against the Holy One of Israel. It was Joseph Smith, however, that propelled the scourges of the last days into the present. The apocalyptic visions of the "end of the world were a favorite theme of the prophet. While still in New York on September |
