Joseph Smith Junior, known as founder of Mormonism, was born on December 23rd, 1805, in Sharon, a little town of Vermont State (USA). When he was 14 years old – spring of 1820 – he revealed that God itself had visited him while he was praying asking for wisdom.
Three years later, according to Smith, God sent him an angel called Moroni, who put in Smith’s hands a sacred book with covers made of gold and written in an Egyptian dialect. It was not until 1830 that Smith finally ended the translation and decided to publish it, with the title of Book of Mormon.
The first printing was dated on March 26th in Palmyra (New York – USA) and soon after, on April 6th, Smith and his first followers founded the Church of Christ with the aim of restoring the original sense of Christianity, being Smith as its head and prophet. The organization rooted soon in the state of New York, increasing in popularity but also in rejection among the population and authorities.
This led Smith and his comrades to look for what has to be called the American New Jerusalem, the sacred city that the Book of Mormon prophesied. They decided to leave New York State and tried to establish in Ohio, Missouri and finally Illinois. The spreading of Smith’s holy message led the Church of Christ (to be known as the Latter Day Saint Movement) to a stronger position, turning followers from dozens to hundreds and soon thousands. But they never achieved to became well received in the communities were they established.
Constant mobs and prosecution finally ended with Joseph Smith incarceration on June 24th, 1844, ordered by the Illinois governor. By then, Smith was the elected mayor of Nauvoo; a small town in Hancock County re-founded in the spring of 1840 by his followers, and also was leading a theocratic movement with the purpose of becoming independent from the Illinois State authorities.
In the afternoon of June 27th a violent raid of 200 armed men, disguised with their faces covered with wet gunpowder, assaulted the jail where Smith and two of his councilors were kept. When the rioted people entered the building Smith tried to flee by jumping from a window, but fell dead wounded by three bullets shot on his back and chest.
After this tragic incident, the Mormon movement seemed dead wounded too, but surprisingly survived after moving to a new location near the Salt Lake in the Utah State in 1847. Nowadays, the Mormon Church founded by Joseph Smith is followed by 14 million people around the world.