The Standard Works of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are the four books that currently constitute its open scriptural canon. The four books of the standard works are:
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several groups following different leaders; the majority followed Brigham Young, while smaller groups followed Joseph Smith III, Sidney Rigdon, and James Strang. Most of these smaller groups eventually merged into the Community of Christ, and the term Mormon typically refers to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as today, this branch is far larger than all the others combined. People who identify as Mormons may also be independently religious, secular, and non-practicing or belong to other denominations. Since 2018, the LDS Church has emphasized a desire for its members be referred to as "members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", or more simply as "Latter-day Saints".
Mormonism is the theology and religious tradition 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 since 2018 there has been a push from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to distance themselves from this label. A historian, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, wrote in 1982 that, depending on the context, the term Mormonism could refer to "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."
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.
The Joseph Smith Translation (JST), also called the Inspired Version of the Holy Scriptures (IV), is a revision of the Bible by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, who said that the JST/IV was intended to restore what he described as "many important points touching the salvation of men, [that] had been taken from the Bible, or lost before it was compiled". Smith was killed before he deemed it complete, though most of his work on it was performed about a decade beforehand. The work is the King James Version of the Bible (KJV) with some significant additions and revisions. It is considered a sacred text and is part of the canon of Community of Christ (CoC), formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and other Latter Day Saint churches. Selections from the Joseph Smith Translation are also included in the footnotes and the appendix of the Latter-day Saint edition of the LDS-published King James Version of the Bible. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' edition of the Bible includes selections from the JST in its footnotes and appendix. It has officially canonized only certain excerpts that appear in the Pearl of Great Price. These excerpts are the Book of Moses and Smith's revision of part of the Gospel of Matthew.
In orthodox Mormonism, the term God generally refers to the biblical God the Father, whom Latter Day Saints also refer to as Elohim or Heavenly Father, while the term Godhead refers to a council of three distinct divine persons consisting of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. However, in Latter Day Saint theology the term God may also refer to, in some contexts, the Godhead as a whole or to each member individually.
James Edward Talmage was an English chemist, geologist, and religious leader who served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1911 until his death.
Mormon cosmology is the description of the history, evolution, and destiny of the physical and metaphysical universe according to Mormonism, which includes the doctrines taught by leaders and theologians of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormon fundamentalism, and other denominations within the Latter Day Saint movement. Mormon cosmology draws from Biblical cosmology, but has many unique elements provided by movement founder Joseph Smith. These views are not generally shared by adherents of other Latter Day Saint movement denominations who do not self-identify as "Mormons", such as the Community of Christ.
In the Latter Day Saint movement, baptism is recognized as the first of several ordinances (rituals) of the gospel.
According to the Book of Mormon, Zenos was an old world prophet whose pre-Christian era writings were recorded upon the plates of brass. Zenos is quoted or paraphrased a number of times by writers in the Book of Mormon, including Nephi, Jacob, Alma, son of Alma, Nephi, son of Helaman, Samuel the Lamanite, and Mormon.
Robert James Matthews was a Latter-day Saint religious educator and scholar, teaching in the departments of Ancient Scripture and Religious Education at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints focuses its doctrine and teaching on Jesus Christ; that he was the Son of God, born of Mary, lived a perfect life, performed miracles, bled from every pore in the Garden of Gethsemane, died on the cross, rose on the third day, appeared again to his disciples, and now resides, authoritatively, on the right hand side of God. In brief, some beliefs are in common with Catholics, Orthodox and Protestant traditions. However, teachings of the LDS Church differ significantly in other ways and encompass a broad set of doctrines, so that the above-mentioned denominations usually place the LDS Church outside the bounds of orthodox Christian teaching as summarized in the Nicene Creed.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a temple is a building dedicated to be a House of the Lord. Temples are considered by church members to be the most sacred structures on earth.
Mormonism and Nicene Christianity have a complex theological, historical, and sociological relationship. Mormons express their doctrines using biblical terminology. They have similar views about the nature of Jesus Christ's atonement, bodily resurrection, and Second Coming as mainstream Christians. Nevertheless, most Mormons do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity as codified in the Nicene Creed of 325 and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. Although Mormons consider the Protestant Bible to be holy scripture, they do not believe in biblical inerrancy. They have also adopted additional scriptures that they believe to have been divinely revealed to Joseph Smith, including the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Mormons practice baptism and celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, but they also participate in other religious rituals. Mormons self-identify as Christians.
Islam and Mormonism have been compared to one another since the earliest origins of the latter in the nineteenth century, sometimes by detractors of one or both religions, but also at least once by Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, himself. Smith was also frequently referred to as "the Modern Muhammad" by several publications of the era, notably in the New York Herald, shortly after his assassination in June 1844. This epithet repeated a comparison that had been made from Smith's earliest career, one that was not intended at the time to be complimentary.
In the theology of the Latter Day Saint movement, an endowment refers to a gift of "power from on high", typically associated with the ordinances performed in Latter Day Saint temples. The purpose and meaning of the endowment varied during the life of movement founder Joseph Smith. The term has referred to many such gifts of heavenly power, including the confirmation ritual, the institution of the High Priesthood in 1831, events and rituals occurring in the Kirtland Temple in the mid-1830s, and an elaborate ritual performed in the Nauvoo Temple in the 1840s.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, marriage between a man and a woman is considered to be "ordained of God". Marriage is thought to consist of a covenant between the man, the woman, and God. The church teaches that in addition to civil marriage, which ends at death, a man and woman can enter into a celestial marriage, performed in a temple by priesthood authority, whereby the marriage and parent–child relationships resulting from the marriage will last forever in the afterlife.
This is a bibliography of works on the Latter Day Saint movement.
