Chapters

INTRODUCTION

How and Why Christianity Came to America

The Big Picture

Go ye unto all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.  St. Mark 16:15-16

As our nation approaches America’s 250th birthday, Jesus Christ’s pronouncement ignited a chain of providential preparation—creating Western civilization, enabling America’s founding, and making possible the Restoration of the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Across centuries that only God could orchestrate, this unfolding work arrested spiritual decline, expanded civil and religious liberties, and opened the path to exaltation (eternal life) for innumerable souls. Isaiah’s words fit it perfectly: “a marvelous work and a wonder.”

The gospel perspective impels us to see one another as we truly are—literal brothers and sisters, sharing the same heavenly origin and separated, in the eternal view, by only a brief span of instruction and ordinances. Our charge as members of the Restored Church is to learn truth and carry it to others. Yet that very perspective also demands humility: God continues to raise up and employ people outside his Church to accomplish his purposes.

All around us, organizations, churches, and individuals lift societies by teaching moral courage, practicing real compassion, and providing steadying influences for those reaching for a better life. The freedom, imagination, and creativity, encouraged—and protected—by our constitutional system do more than benefit a nation; they give the Lord’s work room to advance across the globe.

Even when the beauties and glories of the Restored Gospel are not fully recognized, honoring the good done by others does lessen our core beliefs or dilute our convictions—it strengthens our purpose. The doctrines and teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are unparalleled: the most profound system of philosophy and spiritual truth the world has ever known. Foretold by Isaiah, Daniel, a host of other Hebrew prophets, the Savior and his apostles, they will be established prominently and spread freely from one to another across the earth—incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation—for the moral and mutual instruction of mankind. As this work gathers force, millions of God’s children will join with it, fulfilling his purposes: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.