What Mormons Believe ...

Mormons believe that in 1823 an angel appeared to a teenager named Joseph Smith and told him he had been chosen to translate the book of Mormon which was written on golden plates hidden near where Joseph was then living in Palmyra, New York. These plates were written in a language called "reformed Egyptian". God taught young Joseph how to translate reformed Egyptian and the "Book of Mormon was the result.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence today that these golden plates ever existed because after he was finished with them, Smith returned them to the angel that gave them to him.

The Book of Mormon is the account of people who came from the Middle-East to America between 600 B.C. and 400 A.D. These people were the Jaredites, who were from Babylon, and the Nephites and Lamanites who were Jews from Jerusalem. The Nephites and Lamanites had a war in America in which the Nephites were defeated in 428 A.D. The Lamanites continued and their descendants are the people now known as native Americans. The Book of Mormon is the account of the Nephite leader, Mormon, and is about the culture and civilization of the Nephites, and about how Jesus came to America.

Unfortunately there is no evidence today that anyone ever came to America from the Middle-East between 600 B.C. and 400 A.D. and absolutely no archaeological evidence that these societies ever existed in America, except for the so-called Lamanites, the native Americans.

Mormons believe that Adam (of Adam and Eve fame) once lived in Spring Hill, Davies County, Missouri. They believe that after Jesus was resurrected he visited America, and until the church realised it violated civil law and renounced the practice, they believed in polygamy (Joseph Smith had 27 wives). There are about 13 million Mormons in the world. About 6 million Mormons are American. The Mormons send out missionaries (door-knockers) who convince an extra quarter of a million people to become Mormons every year.

Ironically, most Mormons don't believe in the Tooth Fairy, despite the presence of considerably more evidence to support that particular myth.