Mormonism And Authority
Within Mormonism, the priesthood authority to act in God's name was said by its founder, Joseph Smith, to have been removed from the primitive Christian church through a Great Apostasy, which Mormons believe occurred due to the deaths of the original apostles. Mormons maintain that this apostasy was prophesied of within the Bible to occur prior to the Second Coming of Jesus (see ) and was therefore in keeping with God's plan for mankind. Smith claimed that the priesthood authority was restored to him from angelic beings—John the Baptist and the apostles Peter, James, and John. Some Christians have argued that a complete apostasy of the Christian church is impossible, because Christ is perfect. The Mormon belief is that Jesus, as Jehovah, also guided the Old Testament prophets and their followers, but that there are biblical descriptions of many apostasies amongst them, evidencing that Jehovah, who was perfect, did not intercede to prevent mankind from using agency and corrupting ...
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Mormonism
Mormonism is the religious tradition and theology of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity started by Joseph Smith in Western New York in the 1820s and 1830s. As a label, Mormonism has been applied to various aspects of the Latter Day Saint movement, although there has been a recent push from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to distance themselves from this label. A historian, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, wrote in 1982, "One cannot even be sure, whether ormonismis a sect, a mystery cult, a new religion, a church, a people, a nation, or an American subculture; indeed, at different times and places it is all of these." However, scholars and theologians within the Latter Day Saint movement, including Smith, have often used "Mormonism" to describe the unique teachings and doctrines of the movement. A prominent feature of Mormon theology is the Book of Mormon, which describes itself as a chronicle of early indigenous peoples of the Ame ...
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