Under
the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, 2003, Excerpts
Joseph began winning
converts almost immediately after he received the plates from Moroni, well
before the book was printed and made public. When the Mormon Church was
formally established in April 1830, it claimed some fifty members. A year later
the membership exceeded one thousand, and fresh converts were arriving all the
time.
But perhaps the greatest
attraction of Mormonism was the promise that each follower would be granted an
extraordinarily intimate relationship with God. Joseph taught and encouraged
his adherents to receive personal communiqués straight form the Lord. Divine
revelation formed the bedrock of the religion.
The Lord routinely
issued commandments to Joseph, continually revealing sacred principles that
needed to be revised or changed outright. Indeed, the notion that each Mormon
prophet receives guidance from an ongoing series of revelations was, and
remains, one of the religion’s crucial tenets. These revelations are compiled
in a thin volume titled The Doctrine and Covenants, which in some ways has
supplanted The Book of Mormon as the Latter-day Saints’ most consequential scriptural
text.
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