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Show Zion to earth. The Structure of Mormon Thought Mormon theology is based upon a series of revelations received by Joseph Smith, the church's founder and prophet, beginning around 1820 with the First Vision and ending with his martyrdom in 1844. 3 Dismayed by the great number of competing religions, Joseph Smith had turned to the Lord for guidance in choosing the right one to join. He was instructed in a vision to avoid all existing churches for they had all "turned aside from the Gospel. 114 Instead, Smith himself was called to reform a modern Babylon and to work preparing God's elect for the time of the Second Coming. Smith's religious teachings reflected the widespread resurgence of a fundamentalist Christian Prim~tivism which swept through his nat ive New York State during the early years of the nineteenth century. 5 From this conservative religious philosophy, the Mormon faithful acquired a belief in the authority of the Bible as the word of God, in the immediacy of the millennium, and that they represented the restoration of Christ's true church to earth in the Last Days. In believing that they held "the same principles, the same doctrines, the same plan of salvation, the same gifts and graces, the same organization of the Church, the same authority that was in the Church in the ancient days, 116 the Mormons were reacting both against what they felt were t he apostate dogmas of established churches and the liberal "free will" excesses of the numerous evangelical sects which flourished in the New York countryside of Smith's youth. 7 33 |
