Tomorrow is a Latter Day

Holy Watermelon

Brigham Young gets a lot of credit as the "American Moses," but it's nothing compared to the work Joseph Smith did to earn that title. Moses led the people for many years, from place to place, but he never entered the Promised Land--like Joseph Smith. Joshua was the one who led the final trek into their new home--THAT'S Brigham's parallel.

The Latter Day Saint movement (Utah Mormonism, et al) lives within the broader category of millennial restorationism. Not your typical Protestants, these guys believe in an angelic restoration of the church after a complete apostacy from the divinely appointed church.

The volcanic explosion of Mount Tambora in 1815 is credited with not only the bad weather that brought us Frankenstein's monster, but also with moving the Smith family from Vermont to where they would find the Golden Codex of Mormon.

Who was Joseph Smith? What did the early Mormons believe? What's the deal with polygamy? After considering the Smith family connection to Methodist and Presbyterian churches in the Second Great Awakening, we take time to explore the principal Mormon sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, Endowment, and Marriage. Polygyny (a subset of polygamy) deserves some special attention, and we deliver.

Joseph Smith reported countless angelic and divine visitations, and it was an angel that instructed him relative to the Book of Mormon as early as 1823. It's worth noting that the "Mormon Bible" is a poor label for the Book of Mormon, since the church officially sticks with the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible in English-speaking congregations.

In 1844, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were assassinated while in jail, murdered by an angry mob. We explore some of the details that led to their martyrdom.

This week's episode is the first half of a two-part exploration of the Mormon tradition. Next time we'll talk about the splits before and after the assassination, and what makes the Brighamite Majority LDS Church in Utah (Latter-Day Saints, with a hyphen) different from the others.

All this and more....

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