It began with a single verse.

Preachers in Palmyra were contending over which church was true, and Joseph — by his own account — could not settle the question by reasoning alone. The verse he found promised another way: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God… and it shall be given him.” He resolved to do exactly what it said.

“Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart.” — Joseph Smith, History 1:12

He described being seized first by a darkness so thick he thought he would be destroyed — and then by light: “a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun.” In it he saw two personages, the Father and the Son. To his question of which church to join, he was told to join none of them.

“This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” — Joseph Smith, History 1:17

The messenger named himself Moroni, quoted Malachi and Isaiah, and repeated the entire message three times through the night — then a fourth time the next day in a field, telling Joseph to tell his father. Joseph found the plates in the hill that afternoon but was not permitted to take them. Instead came four years of annual visits and instruction: a farm boy’s apprenticeship.

Word spread quickly, and repeated attempts were made to steal the plates — a fence rail ambush, ransacked cabinets, a torn-up floor. To find peace enough to work, Joseph and Emma moved a hundred miles south to her family’s land in Harmony, Pennsylvania, where the translation could finally begin.

Emma, who also served as scribe, later described her husband dictating hour after hour and — after meals or interruptions — beginning again “where he had left off, without either seeing the manuscript or having any portion of it read to him.”

“These were days never to be forgotten — to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven.” — Oliver Cowdery, 1834

Given the Aaronic Priesthood, they baptized each other in the Susquehanna River that same day. Weeks later, they testified, the ancient apostles Peter, James, and John conferred the Melchizedek Priesthood — the same authority, Latter-day Saints believe, that Christ gave his original Twelve.

All eleven allowed their names to be printed in every copy of the book. Several later broke with Joseph Smith — some bitterly — yet none of them ever denied what he had signed his name to.

“I have never at any time denied that testimony or any part thereof.” — David Whitmer, final testimony, 1887

The title page states the book’s purpose in one line: the convincing of Jew and Gentile “that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations.” It has since been published in the hundreds of millions, in more than a hundred languages.

The sacrament was administered, believers were confirmed, and baptisms followed in a nearby stream. The church that would one day fill a desert valley — and count millions of members on every continent — numbered exactly six members on paper.

A December 1830 revelation had said simply: “ye should go to the Ohio.” Converts poured in faster than the town could house them. In Kirtland the church gained a First Presidency, a Quorum of Twelve Apostles, and most of the revelations now printed in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Within two years, older settlers — alarmed at the flood of northern newcomers who voted together and opposed slavery — destroyed the church’s printing office, tarred and feathered its leaders, and drove twelve hundred Saints from the county at gunpoint. It was a preview of the decade to come.

The Saints were poor and few, and the building consumed nearly everything they had. Witnesses of the dedication week described speaking in tongues, visions of angels, and a sound like a rushing mighty wind — they called it a latter-day Pentecost.

Elijah’s return answered Malachi’s ancient promise — that hearts of the children would turn to their fathers. Latter-day Saints trace their worldwide work of family history and temple worship to this single spring afternoon.

“I have accepted this house… and I will manifest myself to my people in mercy in this house.” — Doctrine & Covenants 110:7

Three days later a militia unit attacked the small settlement at Haun’s Mill, killing seventeen men and boys. That winter, as many as ten thousand Saints abandoned Missouri for Illinois, most on foot. The order remained on Missouri’s books until 1976, when it was formally rescinded with an apology.

His letters from the jail — part anguish, part revelation — were later canonized. To the cry “O God, where art thou?” came the answer that generations of Latter-day Saints have carried through their own winters:

“My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment.” — Doctrine & Covenants 121:7

The swamp was drained, streets were platted, and converts arrived by the boatload — thousands of them from the apostles’ missions in England, many too poor to bring more than a trunk. By 1845 Nauvoo held roughly twelve thousand people.

“We are going to do something extraordinary… we expect extraordinary occasions and pressing calls.” — Emma Smith, first meeting of the Relief Society

Baptism for the dead had been taught in 1840; the first endowments were given in the upper room of the Red Brick Store in May 1842, before the temple walls were shoulder high. The doctrine was audacious: that family bonds, sealed by priesthood authority, could outlast death itself.

He had crossed the river to safety days earlier — and came back, saying that if his life was of no value to his friends, it was of none to himself. The governor had personally pledged the brothers’ protection.

“I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer’s morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all men.” — Doctrine & Covenants 135:4

Many present recorded — some at the time, more in later years — that as Brigham spoke he seemed for a moment to carry Joseph’s voice and bearing. Not everyone followed the Twelve; smaller groups gathered around other claimants. But the great body of the Saints, and the road west, went with Brigham.

The Nauvoo Temple was dedicated that spring — completed, used for a season of ordinances, and then left behind. The Saints had covenanted to see it finished, and they kept the covenant on their way out the door. Arsonists burned it in 1848.

Clayton composed it in April 1846 on receiving word that his wife, far behind in Nauvoo, had safely delivered a son. Its last verse looks death in the eye without blinking:

“And should we die before our journey’s through — happy day! All is well.” — William Clayton, “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” 1846

The advance company had entered the valley two days earlier and was already plowing. Within hours of arriving, the pioneers dammed City Creek to soften the baked ground and planted potatoes — irrigation before shelter, five weeks’ food supply from home.

A ten-acre temple block was platted on the spot, and the entire city was laid out from it — every street numbered by its distance from the temple corner. Salt Lake City addresses still work that way today.

Brigham wanted a building that would stand through the Millennium. When cracks appeared in the sandstone footings, he ordered them torn out and replaced with granite. He would not live to see the walls reach half their height — he died in 1877, twenty-six years before the temple was finished.

Rescue wagons left the valley within days. More than two hundred died on the trail; hundreds more were carried in frostbitten and alive. Of roughly seventy thousand pioneers who crossed the plains before the railroad came in 1869, most walked.

“The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay.” — attributed to Francis Webster, Martin Handcart Company

Woodruff then challenged the Saints to finish the interior in a single year — after thirty-nine years on the walls alone — so the temple could be dedicated forty years to the day from its cornerstones. They did it.

Woodruff had joined the church in 1833, carried the Missouri exile, the Nauvoo exodus, and the plains in his own body, and outlived nearly everyone who had started the walls. The question asked over an open Bible in 1820 — ask of God — had become a house of God in granite, built by the people who believed the answer.