Notes
 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(March 2015) |
The Church of Christ, informally referred to as the Church of Christ (Whitmerite), was a denomination of the Latter Day Saint movement based on the claims of David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon's Golden Plates.
There were actually two separate organizations of this church. In 1847, William E. McLellin, who led a congregation of Latter Day Saints in Kirtland, Ohio, remembered that Joseph Smith, the movement's deceased founder, had designated David Whitmer as his successor. McLellin encouraged Whitmer to come forward and lead his church. Whitmer agreed and gathered others to his cause, including fellow Book of Mormon witnesses Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, Hiram Page and John Whitmer.
Taking the original name of the church, the Church of Christ published a periodical from Kirtland called, The Ensign of Liberty. Whitmer, however, never joined the main body of his followers in Kirtland and the church dissolved.
However, by the 1870s Whitmer was active again and had reorganized his Church of Christ. In 1887 he published his "An Address to All Believers in Christ" which promoted his church and affirmed his testimony of the Book of Mormon.
Whitmer died in 1888, but the Whitmerite church continued on. The church published a periodical called The Return beginning in 1889, which became known as The Messenger of Truth in 1900. The church published its own edition of the Book of Mormon under the name, The Nephite Record and published a new edition of the Book of Commandments. By 1925, most remaining members of the Whitmerite church had united with the Church of Christ (Temple Lot). The last of the Whitmerites was John C. Whitmer's daughter Mayme Janetta Whitmer Koontz, who died in 1961.
| This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(March 2015) |
In Mormonism, the restoration refers to a return of the authentic priesthood power, spiritual gifts, ordinances, living prophets and revelation of the primitive Church of Christ after a long period of apostasy. While in some contexts the term may also refer to the early history of Mormonism, in other contexts the term is used in a way to include the time that has elapsed from the church's earliest beginnings until the present day. Especially in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "the restoration" is often used also as a term to encompass the corpus of religious messages from its general leaders down to the present.
Martin Harris was an early convert to the Latter Day Saint movement who financially guaranteed the first printing of the Book of Mormon and also served as one of Three Witnesses who testified that they had seen the golden plates from which Joseph Smith said the Book of Mormon had been translated.
Oliver H. P. Cowdery was an American religious leader who, with Joseph Smith, was an important participant in the formative period of the Latter Day Saint movement between 1829 and 1836. He was the first baptized Latter Day Saint, one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon's golden plates, one of the first Latter Day Saint apostles, the Assistant President of the Church.
The Church of Christ was the original name of the Latter Day Saint church founded by Joseph Smith. Organized informally in 1829 in Upstate New York and then formally on April 6, 1830, it was the first organization to implement the principles found in Smith's newly published Book of Mormon, and thus its establishment represents the formal beginning of the Latter Day Saint movement. Later names for this organization included the Church of the Latter Day Saints, the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church of God, the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The Evening and the Morning Star was an early Latter Day Saint movement newspaper published monthly in Independence, Missouri, from June 1832 to July 1833, and then in Kirtland, Ohio, from December 1833 to September 1834. Reprints of edited versions of the original issues were also published in Kirtland under the title Evening and Morning Star.
The Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate, often shortened to Messenger and Advocate, was an early Latter Day Saint monthly newspaper published in Kirtland, Ohio, from October 1834 to September 1837. It was the successor to The Evening and the Morning Star and the predecessor to the Elders' Journal.
The Latter Day Saint movement is a religious movement within Christianity that arose during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century and that led to the set of doctrines, practices, and cultures called Mormonism, and to the existence of numerous Latter Day Saint churches. Its history is characterized by intense controversy and persecution in reaction to some of the movement's doctrines and practices and their relationship to mainstream Christianity. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the different groups, beliefs, and denominations that began with the influence of Joseph Smith.
David Whitmer was a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who eventually became the most interviewed of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon's golden plates.
The Three Witnesses is the collective name for three men connected with the early Latter Day Saint movement who stated that an angel had shown them the golden plates from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon; they also stated that they had heard God's voice, informing them that the book had been translated by divine power. The Three are part of twelve Book of Mormon witnesses, who also include Smith and the Eight Witnesses.
William Earl McLellin was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement. One of the original members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, McLellin later broke with church founder Joseph Smith.
John Whitmer was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement. He was one of the Eight Witnesses of the Book of Mormon's golden plates. Whitmer was also the first official Church Historian and a member of the presidency of the church in Missouri from 1834 to 1838.
The Book of Mormon witnesses were a group of contemporaries of Joseph Smith who claimed to have seen the golden plates from which Smith translated the Book of Mormon. The most significant witnesses were the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses, all of whom allowed their names to be used on two separate statements included with the Book of Mormon. Critics have challenged the nature and reliability of the accounts, but church leaders contend that none of the witnesses ever denied what they saw.
Phineas Howe Young was a prominent early convert in the Latter Day Saint movement and was later a Mormon pioneer and a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Phineas Young was an older brother of Brigham Young, who was the president of the LDS Church and the first governor of the Territory of Utah.
Steven Craig Harper is a professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. He was a historian for the Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From 2019, he is the Editor-in-Chief of BYU Studies Quarterly.
Harvey Gilman Whitlock (1809–1874) was an early member of the Latter Day Saint movement and one of the witnesses to the Book of Commandments. He was among those Latter Day Saints driven by mobs from Jackson County, Missouri, in the summer of 1833. From 1835 he was in and out of multiple Latter Day Saint groups several times.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help){{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help){{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
