How did the Mormon Church get started?
In 1820, a 14-year-old boy named Joseph Smith Jr. knelt in the woods near Palmyra, N.Y., to ask God which church he should join. He later reported that he saw two glowing figures who told him that all the churches of the day had fallen into apostasy, believing false doctrines. It would be up to him to restore the truth. Over the next several years, Smith said he was visited by an angel named Moroni, son of Mormon, who directed him to golden plates buried in upstate New York and helped him translate them from a language Smith called “reformed Egyptian.” The Book of Mormon was published in 1830; the church was founded that year with a handful of believers. Since then, it’s grown to 13 million members worldwide, including nearly 5.8 million in the U.S. Do Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers? Mormon theology holds that the savior and the devil are both sons of God. Therefore, an official church website explains, “Jesus was Lucifer’s older brother.” But as former Mormon Bishop
