200th Anniversary of Moroni’s Visit

Angel Moroni Giving the Plates to Joseph Smith by Jorge Cocco

200 years ago, 17-year-old Joseph Smith was under constant and severe persecution for claiming he had seen God and Jesus Christ—persecution intended to make him deny that vision or any heavenly manifestation— persecution which under any other circumstance would have closed the heavens! Yet in this very environment, young Joseph announced a second remarkable vision, one in which the promised messenger of the Lord had come to prepare the way for the long-prophesied restoration.

As is the pattern of restoration, this messenger quoted several Biblical prophecies and stated that they were beginning to be fulfilled, of angels appearing to men, old men having remarkable dreams, young men having glorious visions and power and truth coming to the earth once more!

This messenger called himself Moroni and spoke of a new book of scripture, its translation, and of Joseph’s role in this restoration. This visit was so critical that Moroni repeated it three times over the course of the night and again the next day.

Despite Hell’s intensifying fury, the heavens were forever opened, God stood revealed, and man could finally know his purpose and destiny! Moroni and other angelic visitors would now mentor Joseph as the restoration unfolded and which, as Moroni prophesied, is now filling the world.


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Thursday, September 21, 2023, for the Family Fireside
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Daguerreotype Discovery the Real Joseph Smith?

Isn’t it every child’s dream to discover a lost treasure that peeks into the past? Daniel Larsen may have done just that. In 1992 Larsen’s mother, Lois Smith Larsen, daughter of Frederick Madison Smith, RLDS Church President, and son of Joseph Smith III, bequeathed him some family heirlooms. One was a pocket watch with a Joseph Smith III monogram. The second was a similar but smaller locket. The locket was gold plated, about 1 ½”, and had a jammed mechanism. He secured these in a safe for later perusal.

In 2020, he came across the keepsake items and grew curious. This time he forced open the locket and discovered a picture, a daguerreotype. Larsen said, “I looked at it and I looked at it and saw those eyes. I told my wife to come in and look at this. We looked at it and…almost at the same time said, ‘This is a photo of Joseph Smith.’” quoted from Trent Toone’s article “Does an image of Joseph Smith exist? What one descendant found in a forgotten family heirloom” in the Deseret News.

Dan Larsen then emailed a photo of the image to his nephew, Lachlan Mackay, avid historian and Community of Christ Apostle. Mackay shared the image with the Community of Christ historian and archivist Ron Romig, and they began to investigate the provenance and possibility that the daguerreotype could be the earliest image of Joseph Smith. They spent the next two years working to authenticate the daguerreotype before their public announcement.

To view details of the authentication process (expert analysis, historical research, facial recognition software, forensic artist & overlays and cutaways): and to see pictures, see:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVpwIOViIuw

Joseph Smith, Jr. wrestles a man

Young Joseph by Ivan J. Barrett p. xiii-xiv

One day, when Joseph Smith, Jr. was about fifteen years of age, he and Porter Rockwell, who was eight, set out on an errand for Joseph’s father. Walking along the Canadaigua Road, they neared a small log shack. Suddenly they heard the crises and pleadings of a woman’s voice accompanied by the sharp resounding of a lash on human flesh. Joseph, with Porter at his heels, sped to the back of the log cabin. There they saw a brutal husband beating his wife with a leather strap. Bruised and bleeding, she sobbingly pled for mercy. Joseph, sickened at the sight of this heartless cruelty, rushed upon the brutal fellow, and grabbing him by the collar, snatched the leather strap from his hand. Joseph raised his fist and laid a sledge hammer blow on the whiskered jaw of the wife beater. The impact of Joseph’s slug sent the fellow sprawling on his back against a wood pile. He staggered to his feet, shaking his head and holding his jaw he gasped, “Who hit me?”

Seeing a fifteen-year-old boy standing there ready for action maddened the man beyond control and with an oath, he rushed towards Joseph muttering, “I’ll kill this lad.” But the agile youth was ready, and quickly springing to the side, he whanged the wife beater a blow on the back of the neck that sent him face down in the dirt. As the fellow rose to his knees, he grabbed for Joseph and caught his trousers, whirling the boy around. From that moment on, the fight was nip and tuck. When it seemed as though Joseph would have to give up, he remembered that this man had whipped his wife and that gave him courage. Watching from an opening in the man’s guard, he punched a powerful blow to his stomach with a left fist and with a splintering right on the jaw, felled the man, three times his age and almost twice his size. Battered and beaten by the youthful Joseph, the man said he’d had enough.

Twenty-three years after this in his remarks to the workmen on the Nauvoo Temple, Joseph alluded to this boyhood experience. “The finishing of the Nauvoo House is like a man finishing a fight; if he gives up he is killed; if he holds out a little longer, he may live. I’ll tell you a story: A man who whips his wife is a coward. When I was a boy, once fought with a man who had whipped his wife. It was a hard contest; but I still remembered that he had whipped his wife; and this encouraged me, and I whipped him til he said he had enough.” (History of the Church, 7 Vols., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1978, 5:285.)

Gift Honors Surgery that Saved Joseph Smith’s Leg

http://dartmed.dartmouth.edu/spring16/html/giving_surgery/

By Nancy Fontaine

giving_surgery_01Descendants of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, have created a scholarship at the Geisel School of Medicine to honor and give thanks for a pioneering surgery that Dartmouth’s Dr. Nathan Smith performed on young Joseph.

Two hundred years ago, a surgeon in rural New Hampshire saved a young boy’s leg and possibly his life. This was no ordinary treatment, however. The surgeon was Dr. Nathan Smith, founder of Dartmouth’s medical school; the child was Joseph Smith, who later founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and the surgery was far ahead of its time.
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