Mormonism Begginning

In 1820, according to the Mormon faith, Joseph Smith (1806-1844) prayed to God to ask him for a sign that would tell him what church he ought to join. Instead, Jesus Christ and God appeared to the young man and told him he ought to found what the Mormon Church is today. Smith was fourteen at the time, a farmer from the region of western New York known as the "burned-over district" because of its unrelenting religious enthusiasm. Joseph Smith said that when he told his community about God's visit, that it initiated his fierce persecution. Later he said that he received visits from the angel Moroni, who Joseph Smith said was a resurrected being who had died close to Smith's area in New York state about 1400 years earlier. Moroni, Joseph Smith asserted, had buried in New York in the Hill Cumorah a record of his people who had lived on the American continent from about 600 B.C. to about 421 A.D. That record, Joseph Smith was told, would be given to him to translate. Then, a few years later Joseph Smith said that he received the record, called the Urim and Thummim, written on gold plates in "reformed Egyptian" language that no one but he could understand. He was also told not to show these gold plates to anyone, but that some time later a few selected people chosen by God would be given the privilege to view them. He is said to have then translated the plates and published the material as the "Book of Mormon" in March 1830 after which he returned the gold plates back to the angel Moroni. Soon after on April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith organized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and became its first president.