God Prepared the World to Receive His Gospel Again

For centuries, Christ's original church and Priesthood authority were not on the earth.  Many good people tried to set up churches according to the Bible's teachings, but none of them had Christ's authority and therefore weren't Christ's church.  This falling away from Christ's church wasn't a surprise.  It had been prophesied about.  When Peter the Apostle was preaching to the Thessalonians, they were concerned about when Christ would come again.  Peter answered them by saying in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition."  So essentially Jesus will not come again until there's a falling away first.  That falling away was the Great Apostasy which lasted from the time the apostles died to the time that Jesus Christ restored His full and complete gospel back to the earth in 1830 through another prophet, Joseph Smith.

God has always called prophets.  The very first man to live on the earth, Adam, was a prophet. There is a pattern of people following and rejecting the prophets in the Bible.  God has continually shown His love for us by calling prophets to lead and guide us.  During the Great Apostasy, there was no prophet on the earth since the people had rejected Jesus and His apostles and then weren't ready to have another prophet yet.

God needed to restore His church back to the earth, but the question is when?  I like to compare it to an emergency airplane landing.  Say you were flying in an airplane over a forest and something goes wrong and you have to make an emergency landing.  You wouldn't land straight into the trees or you would kill yourself and your terrified passengers.  You would start to slowly descend but not land until there was a clearing of some sort.  You would want to land as early as you safely can. It was the same way with restoring the gospel.  God needed to restore it but he waited and restored it as early as He safely could.  

The American continents were first discovered by the European world in 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.  Columbus testified that he was indeed inspired of God.  He said, "Our Lord unlocked my mind, sent me upon the sea, and gave me fire for the deed.  Those who heard of my enterprise called it foolish, mocked me, and laughed.  But who can doubt but that the Holy Ghost inspired me?" (Jacob Wasserman, Columbus, Don Quixote of the Seas, pp. 19-20)

In 1620, the first pilgrims crossed the sea to the Americas on the Mayflower in order to practice their religion freely.  Many groups followed them to set up their own colonies.  Over 150 years later, the United States of America gained independence from Great Britain and in 1788, the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing religious freedom.  17 years later, in 1805, Joseph Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont.  Almost 14 years after that, in 1820, he experienced what we refer to as the "first vision." In 1829 The Book of Mormon was published and in 1830, Jesus Christ restored His church with all of the proper Priesthood authority as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Less than 50 years after the United States was established on grounds of religious freedom and human rights, Jesus Christ's church was restored.  He restored it as early as He safely could.  Now, 184 years later, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has 15 million members and is still growing rapidly.  

Joseph Smith himself said, "No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every climb, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done."

I know that Jesus Christ's true and only church has been restored back to the earth.  There are 85,000 missionaries like myself all over the world in many different countries telling people the good news that Christ's gospel is on the earth and it's for everyone. The world was in an apostasy for a time after Christ and the Apostles died just like it had been multiple times in biblical times, but just as He always has, God called another prophet to restore God's truth back to the earth.  God lives and loves us and He manifests it to us every day.  I'm so grateful for this church and for my Savior, Jesus Christ. Next post will be about how Christ restored His church through Joseph Smith.

Acts 3:19-21 "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began."

Amen.